Top 20 People Who Survived Nightmare Situations

#19: Phineas Gage

In 1848, a seemingly regular day at work ended in disaster. During a moment of pure bad luck, Phineas Gage started to speak at the same time his tamping iron connected with the rock below. At that moment, the rod shot out of the ground, entered through his jaw and pierced through the top of his head. Others would’ve died on the spot, but miraculously, he sat up and spoke on his own. He made it to a doctor even while constantly spitting up blood. Though the incident reportedly warped his personality, physically, he was fine. He went on to live another 12 years with his condition before passing away. To this day, he still remains one of history’s biggest medical mysteries.

#18: Betty Lou Oliver

Talk about a bad day at work! In 1945, Betty Lou Oliver and the other employees inside the Empire State Building were suddenly interrupted by a lost B-25 Mitchell bomber plane flying directly into their workplace. Oliver was the building’s elevator operator, and the force of the blast threw her from the car, leaving her with burns and broken bones. Emergency personnel put her in another elevator to be taken down and treated. It seemed all was well – and then the cables snapped. She plummeted down the shaft over 1,000 feet, leaving those she’d left above believing she’d died. In a stroke of luck, the broken wires landed before she could, cushioning the fall and allowing her to survive.

#17: Stacey Gustafson

For many, waking up during surgery is a genuine fear. As in every profession, anesthesiologists are bound to make mistakes. Stacey Gustafson can attest to this, as she suffered through one of these accidents during a 2019 hernia operation. As the procedure began, she realized she was still awake – but the anaesthesia left her paralyzed enough to not be able to call or motion for help. She had to lie there and endure each painful slice into her abdomen. Even after they noticed she was awake, they still didn’t correct the issue. She made it out alive, but traumatized. It was then discovered that the staff had allegedly forgotten to reconnect her IV, opening them up to a lawsuit that’s still ongoing today.

#16: Helen Klaben

When Ralph Flores and his passenger boarded his plane in February of 1963, neither of them had any clue that he would crash into the Yukon. After living through the fall, he and 21-year-old Helen Klaben were left stranded. The pilot was relatively uninjured, but her foot was all but shattered. With hardly enough food for one of them, it seemed all was lost. By using snow as a water source, the two survived for weeks. As time went by, Helen’s foot turned black and the bone stuck out. Fortunately, after almost 50 days, they were spotted by a pilot named Charles Hamilton and rescued. Despite the severity of her injuries, Klaben went on to recover, and live a full life.

#15: Violet Jessop

Never has one person been given so many signs to switch careers. In 1911, Violet Jessop found work as a stewardess on the RMS Olympic, which collided with another ship and was forced to redock. A year later, she was switched to the RMS Titanic, where she was aboard the night of the fateful iceberg crash. There, she boarded one of the final lifeboats and escaped. In her final brush with death, she was forced to flee the HMHS Britannic in 1916 when it hit an underwater mine. It was her closest call yet, as she’d suffered a head injury after jumping from a perilous escape vessel. Luckily, that was her final aquatic disaster, and she went on to live a peaceful life.

#14: Anatoli Bugorski

Accidents happen, and he’s lucky this one didn’t take his life. While working on the Soviet Union’s U-70 synchrotron in 1978, Anatoli Bugorski moved his head into the machine’s path just as the safety precautions failed. In that moment, a proton beam was shot directly into the back of his skull. Despite having been through a day-ruining incident, he continued to work, and kept it to himself until the physical symptoms set in. Doctors thought he would die, especially when his skin peeled to reveal burned sections of his brain tissue. Somehow, his injuries were non-fatal, and he suffered no loss to his intellectual capabilities. Bugorski was left with paralysis and hearing loss on the left, which he still lives with today.

#13: Chilean Miners

There are some situations that are so dire that survival seems all but impossible. When thirty-three miners were left trapped underground in the San José copper–gold mine following a sudden collapse, it seemed truly inescapable. With little food and even less ventilation, they did their best to stay alive until they were found. Miraculously, they all survived until they were discovered weeks later. They were then given supplies and told they’d have to wait until rescuers could successfully drill through to them. After another month and a half of darkness and desolation, a capsule finally reached them. One by one, they were lifted out. By October 15th, after 69 days, all thirty-three had been extracted, creating an unexpectedly happy ending to the horrid tale.

#12: Juliane Koepcke

Imagine graduating high school and then immediately having to fend for yourself in a jungle. That is exactly what Juliane Koepcke went through in 1971, when the plane she and her mother had been on was struck by lightning and plummeted to the ground. Juliane survived the fall with several injuries, but her tribulations were only beginning. While following a creek to a larger waterway, she was forced to live on her own for eleven days in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. On the way, she braved the elements and botflies laying eggs in her injured arm. After being found, she ventured back into the canopy to help authorities find the site of the crash. If that isn’t strength, we don’t know what is.

#11: José Salvador Alvarenga

Though the events in “Cast Away” are dramatic, they pale in comparison to real life. In 2014, the world was shocked when José Salvador Alvarenga was suddenly found by locals on the Marshall Islands. What they didn’t know was that he’d been missing for over a year following a horrible storm that left him and his deceased shipmate Ezequiel Córdoba drastically off-course. With all electronic appliances damaged and no food, the pair was left to drift. Alvarenga led the charge, catching marine life for them to eat. After four months, Córdoba passed from starvation, leaving him alone. Months later, he finally washed ashore, significantly less healthy but alive. Afterwards, he was left with a fear of water – and we can’t say we blame him.

#10: Aron Ralston

Nowadays, everyone knows about Ralston’s incredible story through Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours.” In April of 2003, Ralston was hiking alone in Utah’s Bluejohn Canyon when a horrible accident left his arm pinned by an 800-pound boulder. Ralston spent five days inside the cramped slot canyon and fully believed that he would die. By the end of the fifth day, he had videotaped goodbye messages for his family and carved his name, date of birth, and estimated date of death into the wall. Following a hallucination in which he saw himself with a young child, Ralston did the impossible and amputated his own arm with a cheap multi-tool. It’s a thrilling survival story, a brilliant showcase of both human ingenuity and perseverance.

#9: Roy Sullivan

It’s been said that lightning can strike the same place twice – but seven times feels personal. Beginning in 1942, park ranger Roy Sullivan fell victim to several lightning strikes. The first occurred as he fled from a lookout tower. In 1969, a second bolt struck his truck. The third in 1970 happened in his front yard, and the fourth in 1972 at a ranger station. He tried to outrun the fifth and sixth in 1973 and 1976, to no avail. The final strike in 1977 hit his head and traveled down his body. His hair had been set on fire five times and several body parts had suffered bad burns. Yet, no matter how much the sky tried, it couldn’t take Roy down.

#8: Mauro Prosperi

In 1994, an Italian pentathlete, Mauro Prosperi decided to participate in the Marathon des Sables, an ultramarathon spanning over 150 miles of the Sahara Desert. Four days into the race, Prosperi got lost in a violent sandstorm and eventually took shelter inside an abandoned shrine. While there, he hydrated himself by sucking on wet wipes and drinking blood from the bats he managed to catch and kill. He later attempted to end his own life, but this failed and he continued searching for rescue. Prosperi eventually came across goat droppings in the desert and followed them to a local camp populated by Tuareg nomads. He was then taken to the hospital, having survived a week and a half alone in the barren desert.

#7: Ludger Sylbaris

Known as “The Paris of the Caribbean,” Saint-Pierre, Martinique was decimated by the eruption of Mount Pelée in 1902. A pyroclastic flow struck at 8:02 AM on May 8, destroying the entire city and leaving very few survivors. One was Ludger Sylbaris. The night before the eruption, Sylbaris was thrown in jail after a physical altercation. He was placed in a cell which just so happened to be the safest location in the city thanks to its stone walls, poor ventilation, and underground location. Sylbaris survived the flow but was badly burned from the hot air entering through the small grate. He later toured with Barnum & Bailey’s circus, being touted as The Man Who Lived Through Doomsday.

#6: Vesna Vulović

Many people are afraid of heights, but this takes things to a whole other level. Vesna Vulović was working as a flight attendant when JAT Flight 367 was bombed over Germany in 1972. Everyone else on board was blown out of the aircraft from the depressurization, but Vulović proved incredibly lucky when she was pinned in the fuselage by a food cart. She then rode the fuselage 33,000 feet to the ground, where its impact was cushioned by tall trees and deep snow. Her injuries were extensive, but Vulović survived after being found by a local villager. She suffered amnesia and was briefly paralyzed from the waist down, but Vulović eventually recovered, albeit with a twisted spine and a limp.

#5: Anna Bagenholme

On May 20, 1999, Anna Bågenholm was skiing with work colleagues when she fell into a frozen river, trapping her head and torso under roughly eight inches of ice. Bågenholm’s colleagues attempted to free her to no avail. Luckily, Bågenholm was able to find an air pocket, but forty minutes in the freezing water led to cardiac arrest. She was eventually freed by a rescue team and taken to the hospital with a body temperature of 56.7 °F, which is the lowest ever recorded in a case of accidental hypothermia. Bågenholm began showing signs of life following extensive surgery and later spent months recuperating in the hospital. She has since made a full recovery, minus some nerve damage in her hands and feet.

#4: Harrison Okene

A Nigerian chef, Harrison Okene, was working on a tugboat as it was stabilizing an oil tanker in the Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately, the boat encountered some violent waves and capsized, sending it 100 feet to the ocean floor. While most of the crew perished in the accident, Okene was left alive and made his way to the engineer’s office in complete darkness. The office was about four feet in height and contained an air pocket that allowed Okene to breathe. He then fashioned a makeshift buoy out of a mattress and remained in the pitch-black air pocket for over sixty hours. He was eventually rescued by a team of divers who had been sent to retrieve the bodies. Imagine their surprise.

#3: Miracle of the Andes Survivors

One of the most spectacular survival stories of all time, this event has been immortalized in both literature and film. On Friday October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed into the Andes, leaving thirty-four survivors stranded on a freezing mountain. Over the next seventy-two days, the survivors faced countless hardships. Many suffered from exposure and critical injuries sustained in the crash, and a fatal avalanche struck the area seventeen days after the accident. All suffered from debilitating hunger, resulting in the unthinkable becoming reality. Without the hope of rescue, two survivors climbed a 15,000-foot peak without any climbing gear and hiked their way into Chile, where they eventually found help. Of the thirty-four initial survivors, only sixteen made it home.

#2: Louis Zamperini & Russell Phillips

War is hell for everyone, but these men faced a particular kind of hell. While conducting a rescue mission south of Oahu, their B-24 experienced mechanical failure and crashed into the ocean. Of the eleven people on board, only three survived. While aboard the life raft, the men had to contend with hunger and dehydration, shark attacks, dangerous storms, and even Japanese bombers attempting to shoot them. They subsisted on rainwater and fish. The third man, Francis McNamara, eventually died, but Zamperini and Phillips made it to the Marshall Islands after forty-seven days at sea. However, they were caught by the Japanese and held as prisoners of war, during which time they were frequently beaten. Against all odds, they survived, and were released once the war concluded.

#1: Tsutomo Yamaguchi

A Japanese marine engineer, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on business when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city on August 6, 1945. Yamaguchi witnessed the explosion and was left temporarily blind. He also suffered from radiation burns and ruptured eardrums. Astoundingly, he returned home and reported to work three days later - work and home being in Nagasaki. While discussing the Hiroshima bombing with his supervisor, the US bombed Nagasaki too. Unlike his experience in Hiroshima, Yamaguchi was left uninjured, despite being less than two miles from ground zero. Although he suffered radiation-inflicted ailments later in life, Yamaguchi lived to be ninety-three and passed away in 2010.

Who do you think overcame the worst odds of survival? Let us know in the comments below!