These Survivors Made it When the End Seemed Inevitable

Being in a harrowing situation where you feel your death is inevitable is something that, luckily, most people will never have to experience in their lifetimes.

It is hard to even fathom what to do when this situation occurs or to be sure of how you would act. Would you panic? Would you step up and do all that is essential and necessary to make it through the situation alive? Well, these people did what it took and lived to tell the tales of their amazing survival.

Gileno Vierira de Rocha was an engineer who was working on the highway around northern Brazil. One day while he was leaving work for home, he took what he thought would be a short cut and somehow ended up in the forest and quickly realsied he was incredibly lost.

He somehow managed to survive for twelve days in the Amazon jungle by eating wasps and flies. He continued to get as much protein from insects as he could until he was eventually rescued.

A group of police officers and fire fighters were able to find him with the help of sniffer dogs.

Harrison Okene was the chef on a ship that capsized – a truly terrifying event, he felt as though he would not make it out as he was trapped below decks with water coming into the ship.

Everyone else on the ship had died, and he was unable to get out of the boat. He feared that he too would succumb to his inevitable demise but when divers on the mission to search the capsized ship went down looking they found him still alive, although weak.

Mauro Prosperi was an Italian police officer and an athlete who, unfortunately, lost his way in the Sahara Desert in the midst of a six-day endurance event.

He was at the midpoint of the event when all of a sudden a sand storm blew in and took him off course. He ended up a long way from where he was supposed to be, in fact, he was in Algeria, almost two hundred miles away from the course that he wanted to be on.

Luckily, he was able to stumble upon an abandoned mosque and take refuge within the walls. Although he soon ran out of food and water, which are obviously essential elements of survival, he ended up catching two bats and drinking their blood.

In addition, he also drank his own urine. After living like this for nine days, he was rescued by a nomadic family that had stumbled upon him.

Juliane Koepcke was the only survivor in a plane crash that occurred as a result of the plane being struck by lightening, which caused the aircraft to fall apart. She was somehow still strapped into her seat and ended up falling thousands of feet.

Unbelievably, one of her only injuries was a broken collarbone since the impact of her fall was lessened by the jungle’s canopy. She ended up being stranded in the jungle for nine days before she was rescued by loggers after finding the courage and strength to walk through the jungle to their camp.
In one of the more bizarre tales of survival – one which did not even involve a human – a chicken somehow managed to survive after a farmer cut off his head.

Even with his head cut off the chicken was still able to walk, albeit in a very clumsy fashion, and was also able to balance along a perch. The chicken survived for an amazing eighteen months after loosing it’s head, it inevitably succumbed as a result of choking on a small grain of corn that the farmer would slide down its neck.

Ricky Megee was stranded in the Australian outback; when he was eventually found he looked like a walking skeleton, according to the people who found him. No one can be exactly sure how Ricky ended up so lost to begin with. He was discovered in a crude shelter and he’d survived by eating insects, leeches, and frogs, for about twelve weeks after he decided that he was going to go on a survival mission in the Australian outback.

He first claimed that his car broke down and then hitchhikers drugged him and left him for dead.

One of the more famous modern survival stories, especially since there was recently a movie about it starring James Franco, is that of Aron Ralson.

Aron was climbing in Utah canyon when his arm became trapped by a loose boulder that pinned it to the wall of the canyon. After four days being stuck in that position, he decided that his only chance of survival was to cut off his arm at the forearm. He used a very cheap multi-tool to cut off his arm, then climbed down and walked for many miles before finding help.

The human survival instinct is very strong. These brave souls have some of the most amazing stories of harrowing situations turning into triumphant survivals.