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On October 13th, a charter plane carrying 45 passengers, along with the family of the rugby players crash-landed into the Andes mountains. Rescue operators from Three different countries were underway, but since the plane was white, it made it hard to see from above. They had a radio so they could hear news. After eight days, all rescue operators were cancelled, their only option was to push through, and get themselves off the mountain, Deprived of proper food and nutrients, it was clear their bodies were starting to break down, and get weaker. on day 17 the remaining 27 survivors were struck with an avalanche destroyed the fugitive they were living in, for three days they were completely buried inside with only a small pocket of ventilation, an additional eight people died during this. Them being desperate and out of options, they had to made a decision to eat their newly dead comrades for sustenance, they understood that in order to survive, this was their only option.  Three of the survivors decided to trek up the mountain for any sort of help, but one went back down after realising it would take much longer than anticipated. The other two finally stumbled upon a Chilean herder who rode hours to tell authorities about the survivors. After 72 days of them being trapped in the mountain, all survivors were helped and all the bodies were retrieved so they could have proper burials.

I think what was amazing about this, was how they worked together and made decisions together in order to survive, another thing that surprised me was how easy the authorities gave up on rescuing them.

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Todd Endris was a 24-year-old surfer in California, taking the waves of Monterey Bay on with a friend, Brian Simpson. The two had spotted a playful pod of dolphins in the water, delighting in their antics. Endris stopped for a rest, sitting on his board about 75 yards (or about 69 metres) from the shore. Suddenly, he was violently struck from below and thrown 15 feet in the air, only to land in the water. As he frantically climbed back on his board, the Great White closed its mammoth jaws on him, digging its serrated teeth into his back.

The shark then clamped down on his leg and repeatedly dragged Todd under the water, despite his pounding it on the snout and face with his free leg and fist. His friend and other surfers around him began panicking and trying to get out of the water, despite Endris’ calls for help. The shark shook him in a violent display of its sheer power. Then, six dolphins began a defence. They leaped out of the water around Endris, creating whitecaps. They surrounded the victim, slapping their flukes as the water turned red with his blood.

Then, they leaped right over him, creating a spectacle, one which obviously had the desired effect on the Great White, as it soon released Todd’s leg. The dolphins then positioned themselves between the shark and the surfer. Surrounding surfers seized this opportunity to help Todd back on his board and to shore, where the magnitude of his terrible injuries could be seen. His spine and organs were exposed and his leg was bleeding badly. Astoundingly, Todd survived despite the shark’s having missed his aorta by only two millimetres, losing half the volume of blood in his body and requiring over 500 stitches and 200 staples.

Todd Endris had been swimming in one of the areas that constitute the Red Triangle, known for its abundance of sharks. In addition, there are many sea lions and seals in this area; a favourite meal for the Great White Shark. Such an increased population of both predator and prey makes for an increased chance of attack.

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Abby Sunderland was attempting to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world, when a strong storm snapped the mast of her 40-foot yacht, Wild Eyes. The 16-year-old was stranded in the Indian Ocean, 2,000 miles from land after being hit by gale-force winds and freezing temperatures. She was rescued by fishermen two days after raising a distress signal.

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Mauro Prosperi is an Italian police officer who gained worldwide famed after becoming lost in the Sahara Dessert in 1994. A 6-day-long endurance race, a sandstorm caused Mauro to become disorientated and lose his way. 24 hours after going off track, he found himself in a Muslim Shrine in Algeria. In order to survive, he killed and ate bats and was forced to drink his own urine. For nine days he walked through the desert and ate insects and reptiles. Finally, he found a small village, where he was given water, food and shelter. From there he was flown to a hospital.

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A castaway who says he spent  13 months lost in the Pacific Ocean.
Jose had left Mexico with a friend for a trip in a fibre glass boat in  december 2012.  Hey says a fishermen colleague who was also in the boat had died at sea.
Jose claims to have survived the 8000 KM ordeal by catching Fish, Sea Birds and Turtles with his bare hands.

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Peter Skyllberg was found in Umea, a city in Sweden stuck in his car which had been buried in snow and ice. He was stuck in his car for 2 months. All he had to survive was ice and snow. His body learnt to adapt to very cold temperatures which was at least -30. I really think he's lucky to survive being in that car for so long .

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Dr Segerberg said it was not unusual for someone to survive such a period of starvation.

"Starvation for one month, anyone can tolerate that if they have water to drink," said Dr Segerberg. "If you have body fat, you will survive even longer, although you end up looking like someone coming from a concentration camp."

He estimated that Mr Skyllberg could have lost more than three stone of his body weight over the period. Earlier police reports suggested Mr Skyllberg was in "really bad shape" when he was found.

He conceded that it was incredibly rare for someone to survive for so long outside in the cold Swedish winter.

"This is a case in a lifetime. Every winter we have people who have frozen to death. But a case like this, with someone caught outside for such a long time, is very rare, because it's very rare that you are not missed by anyone, which seems to be the case in this instance."

Mr Skyllberg has so far declined all requests for interviews about his ordeal.

"The patient only wants it to be known that he is feeling well and is being well-treated in the hospital," the hospital said.

Mr Skyllberg has already been moved into an ordinary ward, and is conversing with nurses and other patients. He is likely to be released within days.

Mr Skyllbrg's neighbour meanwhile said he was a "loner" who disappeared after a failed business venture left him mired in debt.

"He had got into a lot of debt, and he couldn't pay his bills, and then he just disappeared," said Magnus Jernberg, Mr Skyllberg's neighbour in Karlskrona, Sweden. "It was a bit of a joke for us. We said 'Oh, I think they just found Peter'. And then it was Peter."

The local court late last year ordered for Mr Skyllberg's properties to be seized, after he was unable to pay debts of 1.6m Swedish Kronor (£150,000).

According to a neighbour who spoke to Sweden's Aftonbladet, Mr Skyllberg's girlfriend had left him by the time he disappeared.

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Swedish man survived for two months in snowbound car thanks to 'igloo' effect

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Dr Segerberg said it was not unusual for someone to survive such a period of starvation. "Starvation for one month, anyone can tolerate that if they have water to drink," said Dr Segerberg. "If you have body fat, you will survive even longer, although you end up looking like someone coming from a concentration camp."

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In 2006 this guy named Mat Suter was in was in his grandmas trailer home when the weather started to get windy and rowdy, as he was standing on the sofa trying to attempt to shut the door it suddenly got more windy than what it was, out of the middle of now where a massive force hit the trailer home, as the door and windows went flying of the hinges he new the storm was a twister, in the out come of the twister he survived with only a few scratches and the trailer home lifted and moved 1,307 feet, and landed in a clear paddock of grass       http://www.cracked.com/article_20581_5-survival-stories-almost-too-miraculous-to-be-real.html

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I think this story is amazing because he survived. He survived 3 days without any water and any food. He was lucky that the divers came to get the body and noticed him in there. He worked as a cook on the ship but he was working for an oil company. The ships name was the Jascon Four. He was lucky that he swim to the control room and there was an air pocket. He also find a life vest with a flashlight, a bottle of coke and a mattress. He survived for 3 days in the sunken ship.

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he survive 70 day in the Australian outback

https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/a-new-lease-1.495735

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Paul was a brave and extraordinary man. He fought in the British Army, travelling around the world. Once he survived that he then decided to settle down being a river guide in Zimbabwe. He was taking a group of tourists down the Zambezi river, he came across an attack by a bull hippo. He jumped in to help the guide but the hippo attacked Paul instead going in head first. The hippo's upper teeth pierced his armpits, punctured his back, pinning both of his arms to the side of him. He somehow slithered out, surviving after a 7 hour operation which included amputating his arm. After his recovery he still leads safari trips.

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My story is about Juliane Koepcke the sole survivour of a devastating plane crash. Juliane Koepcke at the age of 17 was in plane crash in the Peruvian jungle where she spent 10 days, the only thing she found to eat was boild sweets (which ran out on day four) she eventually was found by three forest workers

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But falling from the sky was only the beginning of her troubles. The forest that had saved her life became her prison. She was now lost in deep uninhabited jungle with danger behind every bush.

There were jaguars, scorpions and poisonous snakes camouflaged as leaves, which she couldn't see because she had lost her glasses. Equally unsettling were the rivers with piranhas and alligators. And December in the rainforest is wet. By day Koepcke was dotted with the black outlines of a hundred bugs. By night she was lashed with ice-cold rain.

Koepcke didn't have any tools for survival such as a machete or plastic boots. She was just a girl in a thin cotton minidress with a broken zip and one white sandal (the other was lost in the crash and she decided that one was better than none), with nothing to sustain her but a bag of boiled sweets (which ran out on day four) and a simple belief that she had to keep going. But 10 days after the plane crashed, on January 3 1972, Koepcke was found by three forest workers.

Her story gripped the world. There was something powerfully life-affirming in its cocktail of luck, bravery and the invincibility of the human spirit. That same month, the first interview appeared in her native country, Germany, in Stern magazine.

Then media coverage exploded. One journalist was so desperate to get an interview she pretended to be a nurse. Koepcke was being talked about and written about all over the globe.

At first she obliged, even collaborating with the makers of the 1974 film Miracles Still Happen, in which Susan Penhaligon starred as Juliane. But after a year or so the attention overwhelmed her. 'I thought, it's like dogs hunting me,' she told me. She brushed journalists away, and effectively disappeared for four decades. Until now. When I Fell from the Sky, her memoir of the crash, was published in Germany last year, and will be released in Britain in March.

We meet in her office at the State Collection of Zoology in Munich, where Juliane Koepcke is the head librarian and deputy director. She is neat and professional in enamel beads and traditional librarian glasses, and is even smaller now than she was at the time of the crash, having lost an inch to age.

At 57 she is not as skinny as she was, but she still has the same startling fair skin (so badly sunburnt in the jungle) and gentle desire for precision. What upset her most about the journalists was the way they kept getting facts wrong, writing that she built a raft (impossible), and that the cut in her arm got infested with worms (it was maggots). She still takes a dim view of the panettone she is supposed to have taken from the crash site (the plane was filled with Christmas gifts) and eaten on her journey. 'It was mush! Soggy. Not possible to eat.'

Koepcke wanted to withdraw completely after the crash, and her office is so tucked away that you can't even hear the busy road to Stuttgart outside. She is still surrounded by wildlife - but now it's vivid plastic. A garland of birds hangs from the ceiling over her desk: macaw, cockatoo, budgerigar, hummingbird. Pictures of toucans decorate coffee cups and A4 files. They are all birthday and Christmas presents from her colleagues - a homage to her mother, Maria, a leading ornithologist - and their volume is evidence of the decades she has worked here. Koepcke was recruited part-time in the mid-1980s while studying for a PhD on bats at the University of Munich, and has stayed ever since. She even met her husband here; they married in 1989. Erich Diller, now 74, an expert on parasitic wasps, works upstairs.

At first glance Koepcke seems ultra-normal. You could spend hours talking to her without thinking her anything other than an intelligent, pleasant, charming woman. And yet, it becomes clear, the trauma of the crash goes very deep.

For years she had the same dream: 'I'm racing furiously at a low height through a dark space, incessantly racing along a wall without hitting it. There's a roaring, humming sound in my ears as if I myself were equipped with an engine, which is a very strange feeling, and then I wake up covered with sweat.' She says she wasn't offered any therapy - counselling wasn't widespread in those days: 'I was left alone with my problems.' Not being an especially demonstrative person, she bottled up her emotions.

It took 10 years for the full force of her mother's death to sink in. 'I had an awful time,' she says.

'I cried for hours and hours, all day long, almost without end, and thought of my mother and all the things and important subjects I didn't discuss with her.' She thinks she is still suffering from shock to this day. 'It's a mechanism that allows us to live with a monstrous experience.'

The closest she had to a counsellor was Werner Herzog. As fate would have it, he had tried but failed to book a seat on that same flight to Pucallpa to get to the jungle to shoot scenes for his film Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972). In 1998 Herzog contacted Koepcke and offered to take her back to the crash site as part of his documentary about her, Wings of Hope (2000). 'He helped me towards working through my past,' she observes. 'His empathetic questions and his ability to truly listen, as well as the chance to return to the site of my terror, were the best therapy.'

And now, finally, she is ready to tell her story. 'I am making peace with my own past,' she says.

Juliane was born in 1954, the only child of two eminent German zoologists, Hans-Wilhelm and Maria Koepcke, who worked at the Javier Prado Museum of Natural History in Lima. She had what she describes as a 'lucky' upbringing, with an emphasis on animals. 'My first pet was Tobias, a parrot,' she says. 'He was already there when I was born and he was very jealous.' She was mired in nature from an early age. 'She [Juliane] has already collected a herbarium,' wrote her mother in a letter to a friend in Germany when Juliane was five.

Juliane was very close to her mother; her father, 10 years his wife's senior, was more distant. In many ways her parents were polar opposites: he was dark, irascible, emotionally awkward; she was blond, gentle, compassionate. But they shared one passion: a love of nature. And this united them, made their connection extraordinary, like a fairy tale.

'They had a symbiotic co-existence,' Koepcke says. 'It was very unusual.' Not only did her parents work feverishly together on scientific publications, but 'when they were invited to dinner and couples were mixed up, my parents insisted on sitting together,' Koepcke recalls. 'It was not possible for them to be separated.'

She says she was very much a 'wanted child' but there was no space for another. So although their home was busy - it was a renowned meeting place for visiting scientists - Koepcke sometimes felt lonely. 'Work was so important to my parents,' she says. 'They left me alone because they worked late in the evening and this is also why I didn't have children. I am very occupied with my work and I wouldn't have enough time to care for a child in the way it needs.'

In 1968 her parents decided to move from Lima to the middle of the Amazon rainforest, where they set up Panguana, a research station on stilts, named after a native bird. Aged 14, Koepcke became a 'jungle child'.

Outside was a tangle of vines and trees, birds and howler monkeys. Inside were her parents' books, no running water, and the routine of shaking out rubber boots every morning to remove poisonous spiders. For her parents it was 'heaven on earth'. And she grew to love it, too. Koepcke lived here for 18 months, home-schooled by her parents.

'I had a very strict programme. My father taught me maths and then every morning I went with my parents into the forest.' This is when she learnt the lessons that would save her life: always pick your feet up from the ground to avoid tripping over a root; if you've lost your way, follow a flow of water and you will find your way out.

But the educational authorities didn't approve and in March 1970 Koepcke had to return to the German-Peruvian Alexander von Humboldt School in Lima to take her exams. She passed. And on December 23 1971, she graduated.

Koepcke has spent quite a bit of the past four decades going over just why she was so adamant about going to the ceremony to collect her diploma. But she can't make the outcome any different. Her mother, who was working in Lima, wanted to fly back to Panguana on December 19 or 20. 'But on December 22 we had a very important event for a teenager, the graduation ball,' Koepcke says.

For weeks she saved up money to buy her first long dress: blue, puffy-sleeved, a little bit low-cut. This was her big chance to wear it. 'I begged my mother. Of course she understood.'

They agreed to fly home on Christmas Eve. But all the flights were fully booked - except for one with the airline Lansa. Her mother booked two seats on the plane. In moments of guilt Koepcke returns to the memory of her mother saying, 'I think it will be OK.'

'Lansa had a very bad reputation,' she explains, 'My father had said to my mother, "Please don't fly with Lansa. Any other airline but not Lansa." Its reputation was based on the type of planes in Lansa's fleet: the L-188 Electra, an American turboprop built by Lockheed, had been blighted by problems since its launch in 1957. (Over the next 50 years, 58 out of 170 Electras would be written off because of crashes and other accidents.) The year before the doomed Flight 508, Lansa Flight 502 had crashed shortly after take-off from Cuzco, killing 99 of the 100 people on board.

At 11am on December 24 their flight was called and Koepcke sat two rows from the back, next to the window. Her mother was in the middle seat and a heavy-set man in the aisle. 'We were only 15 minutes from landing,' Koepcke recalls, 'and suddenly it went very dark as we entered the storm. The turbulence was terrible. Parcels, jackets, bags fell from the overhead lockers, Christmas cakes and gifts. People began to cry and panic. Then I saw a blinding white light over the right wing.'

In that instant her mother knew what was in store. 'She said very calmly, "Now it's all over."

'The plane made a nose-dive and I could see the cockpit and there was terrible crying from the people and the very deep roaring of the engines - not a normal sound, much louder - and then suddenly it was all over. The noise was gone. I was outside the plane and it was completely quiet.'

Koepcke has often wondered why she didn't drop like a stone through the sky like the others. In the jungle after the crash she found the remains of a bank of three seats, like the one she and her mother were sitting in, although this one was rammed head first about three feet into the soil. 'The heads of the passengers - two men and a woman - were stuck there in the rainforest floor.'

She has four theories about how she survived the fall: first, that the powerful updraught from the thunderstorm slowed her plunge; secondly, that the three-seat bench worked like the wing of a maple seed spinning as it fell (this is Herzog's explanation); thirdly, that the trees where she fell were particularly dense and knitted together; and lastly, that she hit the trees with the seat below her, and fell through the branches 'as in a boat' to land relatively gently on the rainforest floor.

So this was luck, and more luck was to follow. Koepcke had landed about 30 miles from Panguana, and she was attuned to the forest here - the animals, bugs and general feel. 'I felt no fear because it was the same environment I knew from home,' she says.

She knew instantly that it was important to get out to find help because this was an uninhabited area. She found a stream, as her father told her (in the belief that it would lead to a larger river and people).

She knew that piranhas are only dangerous in shallow water, so she floated mid-stream; she knew that much of what grew was poisonous, but the water from the creeks was safe.

'There isn't much danger of dysentery in uninhabited forest.' And she knew exactly what to do when she heard the call of hoatzins, because didn't her mother tell her about these birds? 'You only find hoatzins near larger rivers, open water,' she says. But the sound was not coming from where she was heading. So she left 'her' creek, which felt wildly counterintuitive, and followed the birdcall through dense thickets until she came out into the open and saw the river. 'I was very proud of myself.'

She was lucky not to step on a stingray; or to get attacked by an alligator; or to catch the poison arrow frog she was so desperate to eat - the poison is normally too weak to kill, but in her state it could have been fatal. What's more, the men who found her only visited their logging camp very rarely. It was pure chance that they came that day.

Do you feel lucky, I ask. 'Sometimes I feel unlucky that I have to carry this heavy weight because it is a heavy weight for the psyche,' she replies. 'It's always there, like a visitor that entered my life and although I reject him, he is there. I cannot push him away. But I am healthy and I can do work that I love and this is only possible because I survived - so I am lucky too.'

By March 1972 Koepcke had recovered and was back at school in Lima. Her plan was to study for two years for the German university entrance exam. She loved school and was happy to be back with her friends. But this is when she had another traumatic change. She continued to be besieged by journalists and her father had a panic attack and sent her to Germany to live with his mother and sister Cordula, a journalist and writer. On top of everything else, Koepcke had lost her home.

'I was very angry,' she says. 'Panguana and my school were the only things left for me. It took about two years to accept it. But fortunately I had a very nice school in Kiel in northern Germany and very nice friends. But with my father it was very difficult.' (She was eventually reconciled with him after he moved back to Germany in 1974.)

Her feeling of abandonment was to return some 40 years later in 2010, while she was researching her book. Her aunt died that year and while leafing through her papers Koepcke found a letter from her father.

'I am dismayed that Juliane wants to come back here already,' the letter read. This was Christmas 1972. He wanted his sister to know that Juliane was forbidden from returning to Panguana. Juliane burst into tears as she read it. 'I always suspected that for him it was a problem that I survived and not my mother,' she explains. 'But then I understood. He was paralysed with grief. That Christmas was the first anniversary of her death. He was completely alone in Panguana, alone with his grief, and the last thing he wanted to see in those moments was me because I looked a lot like my mother and that was a problem for him.'

She says her father never recovered. 'His life was finished.' He left Lima three years after the crash without even saying goodbye to his colleagues at the museum, and began a new life in Hamburg. But the inner turmoil didn't go away. 'He lived like a machine,' Koepcke says. He never returned to Peru and died in 2000, aged 87. 'After he died I found a small candle and it was named the Panguana candle and every year on Christmas Eve - the official anniversary of my mother's death - he put the candle by his bedside and lit it.'

Koepcke also discovered something else from her father's letters. 'My mother wasn't dead when she fell from the plane,' she reveals. 'My father thought she'd survived for nearly two weeks - perhaps up to January 6, because when he went to identify her body it wasn't as decomposed as you'd expect in that environment - it's very warm and humid and there are lots of animals that would eat dead bodies. He thought she'd broken her backbone or her pelvis and couldn't move.'

Koepcke pauses. 'My husband says, "Don't think about it. You cannot change it." But it bothers me very much. I think, what must it have been like for her in those last days there?'

Juliane Koepcke returned to Panguana in 1981 to study bats for her PhD (her father's suggestion: Panguana had an abundance of vampire bats - one even bit her big toe while she was sleeping as a child). She spent 18 months in her old home and identified 52 bat species. But it was ultimately the trip back to the crash site with Herzog that prompted her to take responsibility for her parents' legacy. 'It became clear to me that the time had come for me to assume responsibility for the research station and the inhabitants.'

She is still devoted to Panguana, which is poised to become a nature reserve. She has expanded its size from 460 to 1,730 acres and is due to sign the papers to make the conservation plans legal next month. 'I'm now trying to save the rainforest that saved my life,' she says. She and Erich visit twice a year. Which, of course, means flying. 'Long flights are difficult,' she admits. 'I get so tense that even sleeping pills don't work.' Then she adds, engagingly, 'Red wine is always good. And a whisky.'

But still she worries that she is not doing enough. 'In the lonely nights I passed in the forest I said to myself, if I survive this, I will make something important for humanity and nature. Those are great words, but only words and up to now I have been thinking, have I achieved this or not? And that is another way of feeling guilty.'

Writing the book brought up memories she didn't want to remember. 'But it has been a kind of finishing,' she says. 'Something was not done and I was always looking and searching - for what I don't know.' She smiles her shy smile. 'But now I feel better. It was an important book to write.'

'When I Fell from the Sky: The True Story of One Woman's Miraculous Survival' by Juliane Koepcke (Nicholas Brealey Publishing) can be pre-ordered for £10.99 plus £1.25 p&p from Telegraph Books (0844-871 1515)

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Sole survivor: the woman who fell to earth

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But falling from the sky was only the beginning of her troubles. The forest that had saved her life became her prison. She was now lost in deep uninhabited jungle with danger behind every bush. There were jaguars, scorpions and poisonous snakes camouflaged as leaves, which she couldn't see because she had lost her glasses.

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His boat had sunk and he was left drifting in the ocean with only a small amount of fresh water. He was battling dehydration and had many shark encounters. He was found after 76 days by some fishermen.

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Human beings are capable of incredible things, especially when under the pressures to survive. Eating leeches? Building Ice Caves? Cutting off your own toes? Read on, my survival enthused friends.

Ricky MeGee
The last place on earth you would want to wake up alone is in the Australian Outback. Well, it became reality for one man after he claimed he was left for dead in the infamous desert with no clue of how he got there in the first place.

On January 24, 2006, Ricky Megee was cruising down an isolated road when he believes his car was high jacked by three aboriginal men who then drugged and dumped his body in the middle of the outback. He woke up unaware and confused to dingos' scratching at him in his shallow grave. And so began Megee's 70 day struggle to make it out alive.

Surviving on a diet of frogs, leeches, lizards, and cockroaches, Megee found a dam and was able to stay well hydrated until he was found by "jackaroos" or farm hands on April 6. By then, he was a walking skeleton and deeply tanned from the extreme desert sun, but he was alive. MeGee's car and the mysterious aboriginal men were never found.

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates
It was a beautiful day for climbing in 1985, as Joe Simpson and Simon Yates attempted to ascend the then unclimbed west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes.

But the challenging trip quickly took a bone-crunching turn.

Simpson broke his leg during the ascent, putting Yates in the position to get them both down to safety in the frigid temperatures. Matters continued to get worse as a storm hit making visibility difficult and the ascent even more dangerous. Badly frostbitten and unsure if Simpson was alive or dead, Yates found himself in a desperate situation and he cut the rope.

Well, turns out Simpson survived the 150 ft fall, and dug himself an ice cave to ride out the storm. Afterward, he battled three days without food and water, and though he was severely injured, managed to crawl back to base camp for help.

Steven Callahan
This man of the sea found himself in quite the predicament when a whale bumped his sailboat in the middle of the night during a lone expedition. Callahan's boat, Napoleon Solo, slowly sunk to the ocean bottom and Callahan found himself stranded in his inflatable raft with little water and a small number of provisions. Surviving the blaring sun, battling dehydration and constant shark encounters, Callahan found solace in the Dorado fish that hung around his raft constantly-his "doggies". Seven times he shot flares at passing ships only to be left in frustration.

After 76 days and floating 1800 miles, he was finally found by some fisherman who rescued him, but unfortunately caught all of his beloved "doggies."

Aron Ralston
We all know this story; does the movie 127 hours ring a bell?

An avid climber and outdoorsman, Ralston embarked on what he believed would be a delightful day trip of easy hiking and biking on the Blue John Canyon of southeast Utah. He was so unconcerned by the trip that he told no one where he was going. When he slipped in a narrow canyon slit and became stuck with an 800 lb boulder pinning his right arm-things got a tad bit unnerving.

After 5 days, his water bottle was bone dry and no food had touched his lips-his will to live was tested and he made the incredulous decision to amputate his own arm from the elbow down using a blunt pocketknife. After managing to make it out of the canyon, he flagged down some hikers and was airlifted to safety.

Jan Baalsrud
Ok folks - the grand finale. This is a pro-survival status.

Jan Baalsrud was a young instrument maker who was asked to help the anti-Nazi resistance in Norway during WWII. During his trip on board a ship in the icy Norwegian waters, German soldiers showered his boat with bullets, killing everyone on board except him. He managed to dive into the water, with only one boot and sock, minus his big toe that had been shot off.

Pursued by at least 50 Nazis, he was able to swim to the Norwegian coast where two girls on the beach rescued him. He had several Norwegian civilians secretly help him to reach safety in Sweden, but it took many attempts to finally make it. On one attempt, Baalsrud journeyed across the snow-capped mountains while hiding from possible Nazi attack. An avalanche caused him to fall 300 feet and left him blind and severely concussed, aimlessly wandering in the snow for days, plagued with hallucinations.

Needless to say, Baalsrud was found and nursed back to health. He continued to try and push for the Swedish border again and again but was held back by Nazi soldiers. He was forced to find shelter in ice holes where he ended up cutting off the rest of his toes to save his feet and at one point, attempted suicide.

Baalsrud eventually made it to safety in Sweden, but not after undergoing a journey through icy hell itself.

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Five of the Greatest Wilderness Survival Stories in History

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Human beings are capa­ble of incred­i­ble things, espe­cial­ly when under the pres­sures to sur­vive. Eat­ing leech­es? Build­ing Ice Caves? Cut­ting off your own toes? Read on, my sur­vival enthused friends. Ricky MeGee The last place on earth you would want to wake up alone is in the Aus­tralian Out­back.

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i think eric nerhus was so lucky to survive a shark attack in the New South Wales waters the shark opend his mouth and he wriggled out and his son rescued him

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Shark

He was the man who, quite literally, snatched back his life from the gnashing jaws of death. Australian diver Eric Nerhus this week became one of the luckiest people alive after he survived being swallowed head-first by a 10-foot great white shark. The 41-year-old was fishing for abalone in murky waters near the town of Eden, New South Wales, when the shark attacked. In a remarkable piece of good fortune, the shark's jaws clamped down on Mr Nerhus's lead diving belt, sparing him what would almost certainly have been a fatal blow. "I felt down to the eye socket with my two fingers and poked them into the socket," Mr Nerhus said. "The shark reacted by opening its mouth and I just tried to wriggle out." Mr Nerhus was eventually rescued by his son and flown to hospital where he was treated for multiple lacerations and a broken nose.

Leopard

While most Britons have to deal with little more than a stray fox strolling into their neighbourhood, residents of Nisak, an affluent city close to India's financial capital Mumbai, woke up earlier this month to find an angry leopard prowling their streets.

When a crowd began pelting it with stones the startled animal sunk its teeth into a man's arm. Eventually, after a seven-hour chase it was cornered and clubbed to death. The footage was broadcast on television in India and sparked a nationwide debate about the implications of the country's creeping urbanisation on wildlife. The number of leopard attacks is steadily rising as India's sprawling cities and increasing urbanisation eat further and further into what were once natural habitats for the big cats.

Grizzly bear

Ask anyone who lives in bear country how to protect yourself from a grizzly attack and the advice will always be: "Don't fight back." But that is exactly what 68-year-old hunting veteran Gene Moe did in November 2000 as he was set upon by an Alaskan brown bear, one of the largest bears in the world, whose paws are the size of a man's face. In a remarkable escape, Mr Moe managed to stab the bear at least three times before reaching for his gun and killing it. "The bear was trying just to survive," Mr Moe told the National Geographic Channel's Hunter Hunted documentary. "The bear was starving and needed the meat. I had no choice but to defend myself." Mr Moe now has the bear's skin pinned to his living room wall.

Elephant

Michael Fay was accustomed to being charged at by elephants. As an internationally acclaimed explorer who once spent 455 days walking througheast Africa, he had often come across an angry pachyderm or two.

But early in 2003 he and his companions were attacked by a female protecting her calf in the Loango National Park, Gabon. Mr Fay was gored by her tusks.

"You mess with elephants all the time and you get close to them, eventually one of them is going to go for the full Monty," he told National Geographic magazine. "I just thank God that I had time to turn around, grab those tusks and ride that bronco as long as I could."

White tiger

The professional magician Roy Horn, one half of the Las Vegas act Siegfried and Roy, received the worst birthday present of his life in October 2003 when he was mauled during a live show by his pet white tiger. The seven-year-old male, known as Montecore, had been bred in captivity and never before showed a violent side. After the show, Horn's partner, Siegfried Fischbacher, said Montecore was simply wanting to play with Horn, who before passing out reportedly told journalists: "Don't kill the cat." Horn was rushed to hospital in a critical condition and following extensive surgery, began a return to health. Montecore was spared and returned to his enclosure.

Hippopotamus

It was an exotic tale of beauty and the beast played out in the African bush - without the fairytale ending.

When Diana Tilden-Davis, winner of Miss South Africa 1991 and a former finalist in the Miss World contest, was paddling in a canoe in the Okavango Delta in Botswana four years ago she was attacked by a hippopotamus which nearly bit off her leg. According to her husband, who helped Ms Tilden-Davis run a safari company in the area, hippos were behaving aggressively at the time because the region had been hit by a serious drought and food was hard to come by.

The beauty queen was lucky to escape with her life and was still walking on crutches two years later. Two weeks before she was attacked, another woman, who was on her honeymoon, was killed by a hippo on the same stretch of water.

Alligator

"I think my head was so far down his mouth that I touched his taste buds," mused tourist James Morrow after a terrifying near-miss with an alligator while snorkelling in Florida. "When he tasted me, I think that's why he let me go." The 45-year-old from Florida is one of the few people to have survived an attack by a hungry gator. While on an ill-fated trip in 1997, Mr Morrow was swimming underwater when he suddenly found his head inside an alligator's mouth. He suffered horrific injuries, including a punctured lung and multiple head wounds, but was saved by his mask, which took the brunt of the attack.

Dolphin

Sun, sea, and swimming with dolphins: it sounded like the perfect holiday. While Billie Finley and her three fellow Americans were in Cancun, Mexico, last October, they visited an aquarium, where they paid to swim with the dolphins. One of the females was bleeding from injuries. The tourists were told she was in season and it was not unusual for dolphins to fight, but there was no risk to humans. But minutes into her session, Ms Finley was attacked by one of the six adult dolphins, which dragged her across the pool by her feet and slammed her against a wall. "Initially everything was calm, they were having pictures taken then suddenly everything changed and the trainers were yelling at everyone to get out of the pool," Ms Finley recounted. She almost drowned and suffered cuts.

Polar bear

Kootoo Shaw, a 46-year-old Inuit guide from the remote Canadian town of Kimmirut, used to make his living guiding hunting parties until he was attacked by a polar bear. Mr Shaw was three days into a hunt when he was set upon by the bear as he slept in his tent. Another hunter managed to shoot the bear. Mr Shaw suffered numerous deep slashes and needed nearly 300 stitches to reattach his scalp. "He had his claws under my neck for a while, I could hear his breathing," Mr Shaw recalled. In recent years, polar bear attacks have become more common as the animals wander further to find food due to rising global temperatures.

Cougar

Forget your rifle, your hunting knife and your pepper spray. The ultimate fighting tool of the great outdoors is ... a ball-point. In what is the second remarkable escape from an animal attack this week, a 65-year-old Californian woman managed to save her husband's life after fighting off a cougar with nothing more than a pen.

Jim and Nell Hamm were hiking in northern California when the mountain lion pounced on them. "Jim was talking to me all through this," Mrs Hamm said. "He said, 'I've got a pen in my pocket and get the pen and jab him in the eye. So I got the pen and tried to put it in his eye, but it didn't want to go in as easy as I thought it would."

Mr Hamm was taken to hospital suffering multiple lacerations and two cougars were later shot by rangers.

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Survival stories: When animals attack (and humans survive)

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Shark He was the man who, quite literally, snatched back his life from the gnashing jaws of death. Australian diver Eric Nerhus this week became one of the luckiest people alive after he survived being swallowed head-first by a 10-foot great white shark.

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When a man was drowning, three strangers saved him.

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When a man was drowning, three strangers saved him.

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7.15am on June 1, 2016 a man Gary Messina was on a morning run along New York City's East River. When he noticed a man who launched himself in the deep dark choppy water. He instantly regretted it and was yelling for help bobbing up and down the water clearly unable to swim. Two other joggers (David and John) heard his screaming so they dropped everything to dive in and save his life.
He was definitely lucky to survive and David and John were very brave as they could of got in danger themselves.

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It was 7:15 a.m. on June 1, 2016, and Gary Messina, now 58, was on his morning run along New York City's East River. Suddenly something caught his eye-a large 60-year-old man balancing on the four-foot-high railing that guarded the path from the water. As Messina, a New York City Police Department captain (now a deputy inspector), got closer to the scene, the man took a step forward and plunged into the dark, choppy river below.

When Messina reached the railing, the man was bobbing in the water, clearly unable to swim. If he had intended to kill himself that morning, he had now changed his mind. He screamed frantically for help as the current pulled him away from the seawall.

Other joggers also heard the man's pleas. David Blauzvern, now 25, and John Green, now 31, dropped their phones and keys on land, along with Green's sneakers, and jumped in. "People had called the police, but it was unclear when they'd get there," says Green, a commercial insurance broker. "We just reacted." Messina joined them in the river.

Just as the jumper was losing strength, Blauzvern, an investment banking analyst at CSG Partners, grabbed hold of him. The pair were about 30 yards from the seawall when Messina and Green caught up to them. They stabilized the man, with Blauzvern supporting his back and Messina and Green holding him up from either side. He was unresponsive but not unconscious and no longer thrashing about.

As the men made their way toward the concrete seawall that stretched for blocks in each direction, Blauzvern had an awful realization: With the water flowing a good eight feet below the lip of the wall and no ladder or dock in sight, there was no way out of the river.

By now, a crowd had gathered on land. "A rescue boat is on its way," someone yelled to them. Treading water was getting tougher by the minute. The jumper, who was six foot two and weighed around 260 pounds, was deadweight in his rescuers' arms, which meant they could use only their legs to maneuver themselves. After ten minutes, they managed to get to the river's edge. Green tried wedging a hand and a foot into a tiny crack in the wall, cutting himself in the process. But he couldn't hold on for long. Fighting the current and holding the man above the water quickly became exhausting, so they gave in to drifting while staying as close to the wall as they could. (Don't miss these other water rescue stories that will make you rethink how you swim.)

"I've never been so out of breath," says Blauzvern.

Fifteen minutes after the men had jumped into the river, the two-man rescue boat appeared. But because it couldn't risk getting too close to the seawall, the men had to swim out to it. As they approached the boat, they encountered a new threat: The undertow created by the current was sucking them under the boat.

Blauzvern remembers being pulled down just as someone in the boat grabbed onto the man, allowing Blauzvern to let go. "I was completely out of energy at this point," he says.

Somehow, he grasped a pole attached to the boat deck and hauled himself aboard. The men in the water pushed the jumper while the men in the boat pulled him up and, finally, to safety. Messina and Green then got themselves aboard, and within ten minutes, the group was back on land. The man they had saved was taken to the hospital for evaluation. Details on his condition have not been released.

As for the rescuers, each of them was at work by 10:30 a.m. "I was a bit late," admits Blauzvern, smiling. "But I had a good excuse."

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These Three Strangers Saved a Drowning Man | Reader's Digest

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It was 7:15 a.m. on June 1, 2016, and Gary Messina, now 58, was on his morning run along New York City's East River. Suddenly something caught his eye-a large 60-year-old man balancing on the four-foot-high railing that guarded the path from the water.

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In January 2014, this man named Jose Salvador Alvarenga survived 13 months in the Pacific Ocean in a 7-meter boat and washed onto deserted Ebon Atoll shore and rescued by Coconut farmers. He lived through the 5,000-mile voyage by eating fish, birds and turtles. And drinking urine, rainwater and bird blood

I think he lucky

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a family of 8 (Willie, Sadie, Rebecca, John, Ashley, Chrys, Ryan and the father John) were lost at sea for 32 days out in the Pacific ocean. It was 27th of january, 1970. The family planned a vacation from there dairy farm or atleast there  children for the father (John) original plan was to take them around the world to 'educate' them on there yacht out at sea untill it was attacked by killer whales. after the attack they survived off little food and drinking water they had untill a Japenese ship saw them stranded and returned them home to Falmouth.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-18877090

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https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/73995752/pike-river-survivor-five-years-on-im-alive-thats-the-way-to-look-at-it
Daniel Rockhouse and
Russell Smith  made their way out of the Pike River mine after a Methane blast on November 19, 2010, dragging Smith with him.
They escaped after the explosion.

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I think the story of what happened Harrison Okene is a story of pure luck. Harrison worked out at sea as a cook for an oil company's ship the Jascon Four. While going to the restroom at night the ship began to sink and Harrison was thrown around the restroom until the ship finally hit the sea floor. He was lucky enough to swim into the control room and find a small air pocket with enough air to last him sixty hours. He also found a life vest with a flashlight, a bottle of coke and a mattress to keep him out of the cold water and help prevent hyperthermia. He was trapped down in the sunken ship for three days until a diving salvage crew found and rescued him.

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Okene was in the bathroom of his boat when it capsized and rapidly sunk, Of the coast of Nigeria, And spent three days in a small air pocket until recovery divers came to recover the body's Okene stuck his hand through the water at one of the divers to let them know he was there.

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I think that this story of what happened to Scotty anmer is amazing. As he went form a great day in Las Vegas with monster energy shooting a bmx video for his sponsor ship with them. Too ending up in hospital after having 4 brain bleeds and losing the front of his skull/forehead to save him. As well as leaving all of his front teeth. After a month or 2 he got his forehead and teeth replaced.

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While shooting a video with his team at Monster Energy in the fall of 2016, American BMX rider Scotty Cranmer fell off his bike. He suffered several facial fractures and endured complications after surgery. His best chance at survival was to remove the front portion of his skull. Now, just a few months later he is having his forehead finally replaced.

For updates on Scotty's recovery and to donate to his healing check out his Road2Recovery.

There is so much on the internet these days, it's sometimes hard to decipher the real from the fake. Photos of a baby werewolf circulated on social media, claiming the creature was found in Malaysia. The rumors brought upon some controversial responses but is the human-faced creature actually real? The Bucket List Boys join our RightThisMinute hosts on-set to figure out just what this thing is. While they're at it, they check "host a television show" off their bucket lists! We're glad to help boys! View Now

She's currently one of the stars of the hit TV show "This Is Us," but Mandy Moore has had a long career in movies and music since she was a teenager. Cosmopolitan has their March cover girl turn back time and read some of her most iconic lines from her acting projects including the blockbuster hits "Princess Diaries," "A Walk to Remember" and "Tangled." View Now

WARNING: Adult language used. We already know she's a good actress and singing force of nature in movies like "Frozen," but Kristen Bell is also one funny lady. In this Funny or Die video with costar Yvette Nicole Brown, Kristen is just a little bit in love with her therapist and sings a hilarious yet a bit stalkerish ballad. We'll be your therapist, Kristen! View Now

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After Freak Accident BMX Rider Gets New Forehead

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While shooting a video with his team at Monster Energy in the fall of 2016, American BMX rider Scotty Cranmer fell off his bike. He suffered several facial fractures and endured complications after surgery. His best chance at survival was to remove the front portion of his skull.

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I think that this story was a true act of commitment and bravery. What went from a causal day hiking to being trapped in by a 360kg chock stone boulder down in a canyon. I was amazed by the fact he had the courage to cut his hand of but that was his only way of surviving.

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By the spring of 2003, Ralston still hadn't quite completed the challenge. And now the snows were starting to melt, he'd have to wait until the following winter to pick up where he left off. 'Those mountains contain some of the deadliest snowpack in the world,' Ralston says. 'And I don't say that for self-aggrandisement but just to say that's where I was at in my life when I walked into that Utah canyon back in 2003.'

On Saturday, April 26, without telling anyone his plans, Ralston packed his hiking boots, a hydration system, his backpack, climbing equipment, and, notably, a pocket-sized utility tool, put his mountain bike in the back of his truck and drove almost five hours to a remote part of Utah.

According to retired National Parks Service ranger Steve Swanke, people call the tiny town of Moab the 'end of the world'. 'Well, imagine going to the end of the world and then travelling for two and a half hours more. That takes you to the Horseshoe Canyon trailhead where Aron Ralston began his journey. It's in the middle of nowhere.'

Ralston was only planning to go day hiking and maybe do some rappelling so he could explore the slot canyons. He'd taken a gallon of water with him - plenty for such a short trip. He'd be back in Aspen by nightfall.

In Boyle's characteristically slick and fast-paced film, we see Ralston, played by James Franco, cycling through the breathtaking landscape of red sand and shadows. He meets up with two girls out hiking and takes them swimming in an idyllic, tranquil pool hidden in one of the canyons.

But it is after he leaves the girls to continue his hike that disaster strikes. Ralston had left his bike and continued on foot into Bluejohn Canyon. According to online climbing discussion forum summitpost.org, the canyon requires technical rock and canyoneering skills to negotiate. But Ralston was more than capable.

'I was accustomed to being in far, far riskier environments,' he says. 'So I thought going into that canyon was a walk in the park - there were no avalanches, it was a beautiful day and I was essentially just walking.'

But suddenly, Ralston slipped and fell down the chasm, dislodging an 800lb (360kg) chockstone boulder, which is much harder than sandstone. It crushed his arm and left Ralston pinned against the canyon wall.

He made several futile attempts to chip away at the boulder with his utility knife - but it was already fairly blunt and this just made it worse. That first night, as darkness descended on the Utah canyonlands, Ralston realised just how alone he was.

'If you want someone to show up and help you if something bad happens, you'd better tell someone where you're going. And of course I wanted someone to know - but I'd made a choice and it was a choice I was going to have to live with.'

But living through this was going to be far from easy. Ralston says the boulder was crushing his wrist so tightly that everything up to his fingertips was numb. 'It's called compartment syndrome - when the nerves and blood vessels are pinched, so that the tissue goes into necrosis and dies,' he explains.

He began stabbing the blade of his knife into the dead skin of his thumb. Hisssssss. He could hear the air escaping from the decomposing digit.

'I realised early on that I was going to have to cut my arm off to get free but there was also resistance: I didn't want to do it,' he says. 'But by the second day I was already figuring out how I could do it, so in the film you see that progression: trying to cut into the arm like a saw, finding the tourniquet, then the realisation that the knife was too dull to get through the bone. That despair was followed by a kind of peace; a realisation that I was going to die there and there was nothing I could do. It was no longer up to me. All I could do was see it through to the end.'

After five and a half days inside the canyon, out of water, delirious and hallucinating, Ralston had an epiphany. 'I felt my bone bend and I realised I could use the boulder to break it. It was like fireworks going off - I was going to get out of there.'

Ralston managed to use his body weight to violently bend his arm until the boulder snapped his forearm. He then ingeniously used the attachment from his hydration pack - a bendy rubber hose that you use to suck water out of the pack - as a makeshift tourniquet, and began sawing and cutting through the remaining cartilage, skin and tendons with his multitool.

If reading about it is making you feel queasy you may find Boyle's movie too much to stomach. Each time Ralston's character attempts to sever a nerve, Boyle uses a loud metallic sound to emphasise the excruciating pain he feels. It fills the cinema and you're forced to look away.

But Ralston says Boyle has handled it perfectly. 'Severing the nerve severed a direct line to my brain. The central nervous system is right there. It's graphic, but I think it's appropriate,' he says. 'You couldn't show any less of it and still understand what I went though. Without having to belabour it, the actual amputation lasted over an hour. So I think three minutes on film is just right. It was actually very euphoric for me and audiences have cheered and clapped.

'In the film, Franco laughs maniacally because he's broken his bone and that's how it was. I had this huge grin on my face as I picked up that knife to start this horrific thing. It was traumatic but it was a blessing to be able to get out of there.'

Ralston says the process of amputating his arm meant he endured both the extremes of pain and absolute elation, because, he says, he knew that he was closer than he ever had been during his ordeal to being free. He describes the moment when he walked out of the canyon as being reborn, 'because I'd already accepted I was going to die'. Ralston used the small point-and-shoot camera he had with him to take a picture of the rock and his severed hand 'as a kind of "screw you, I'm outta here",' he says.

He then made a makeshift sling, and incredibly managed to rappel down a 60ft cliff face to the floor of the canyon. Ironically, this would have been the one and only technical aspect of his entire trip. And Ralston managed it after amputating his arm and being deprived of sleep for five days. Covered in blood, he began marching out of the canyon. A family out hiking found him and called the emergency services.

Captain Kyle Ekker of the Emery County Sheriff's Department said Ralston's family and friends had reported him missing the previous day. Although he hadn't told them where he was going, they were convinced he had gone hiking in that county. 'We started checking the southeast corner of the county and we were just lucky that we came across his truck at the trail head of Horseshoe Canyon.'

Steve Swanke was at work early that morning when he got a call saying a hiker was missing. 'We sensed a great deal of urgency. We threw resources at it real quickly. By 3pm that afternoon we had him located, accessed, and in the helicopter, down into the hospital and stabilised. I wasn't surprised he survived - he had a strong body, a strong mind, he was in his element and he was technically savvy. He also had a very strong will to live.'

Rescuers tried to keep Ralston awake for the 12-minute flight to the hospital in Moab. When they got there he stunned them by walking into the emergency room on his own.

Since the accident, Ralston has been back to Bluejohn Canyon 10 times - with friends, news crews and with the producers of 127 Hours. They even shot some of the film there.

Understandably, the road to recovery hasn't been easy. At first, Ralston was determined to carry on challenging himself. Using a special prosthetic arm, he tried ultrarunning (ridiculously

long running races) extreme mountaineering and whitewater rafting. And he was finally able to complete the challenge he'd set himself before his accident. But, Ralston claims, he began to adopt a sense of invincibility; that if the accident in Utah hadn't killed him, nothing could. 'I realised somewhere along the way that I was just headed back to that same spot in the canyon where my life was on the line,' he says.

In 2006, Ralston lost three friends to suicide and he says it was a wake-up call; he felt he'd been given a second chance. He wanted to put more time into the non-profit work he'd started, taking disabled veterans climbing; helping troubled youngsters; preserving Colorado's national forests and wilderness areas. But he also realised it was time to settle down.

'I'd fallen in love with a woman but she broke up with me and I was devastated. Six months later, I went into a suicidal depression from the break-up of the relationship, but I resolved to not do what my friends had done. And so I reached out for help,' he says. 'Then, in the early winter of 2007, I was at a pub in Aspen watching a friend's band play and I met this woman, Jessica. She bought me a beer, we started talking and the next day we went hiking.'

They married in August, 2009 and now live in Boulder, Colorado, with their young son, Leo. Ralston says his wife played a huge role in his healing. 'And that's where I'm finally at today - my life is about being with my family,' he says. 'This is what's important.'

At the end of the film, you see the real Aron Ralston together with Jessica and Leo, sitting on a sofa, with the canyon behind them.

Ralston says it's funny, but even though he didn't know them at the time, they're the reason he was able to get out of that canyon alive. 'We have these very fundamental desires for freedom, for love and for connection. And that's what got me out.'

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127 Hours: Aron Ralston's story of survival

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By the spring of 2003, Ralston still hadn't quite completed the challenge. And now the snows were starting to melt, he'd have to wait until the following winter to pick up where he left off. 'Those mountains contain some of the deadliest snowpack in the world,' Ralston says.

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I think that he is a very lucky person to have survived his deadly incident. He was flying over  a Volcano in Hawaii and the helicopter went down. He jumped out and went straight into the Volcano mouth. Just missing a huge pool of lava. He had to spend 2 nights in the Volcano before he was rescued. I'm surprised he didn't die of the heat. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/09/survival-stories_n_5042718.html

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I think that Marina Chapman is very lucky to be alive after being kidnapped by weeper capuchins in the Colombian jungle when she was 4 because monkeys and other wildlife can be very unpredictable and can get rowdy and dangerous at any moment.

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Marina Chapman tells riveting story exclusively with The Mail On Sunday

She was abandoned aged four in South American rainforest by kidnappers

Mrs Chapman copied monkeys' eating habits and learned to climb trees

A monkey cured her stomach pain by encouraging her drink from a river

It is an amazing - some might say unbelievable - tale: how a Yorkshire housewife spent five years as a young child being raised by monkeys in the Colombian jungle. Yet experts have found no evidence that Marina Chapman's story is a fantasy - and now she has told it for the first time, in riveting detail.

In a new book, exclusively serialised by The Mail on Sunday from today, Mrs Chapman reveals how a colony of capuchins taught her how to survive after she was abandoned in the rainforest by kidnappers who botched her abduction. She copied the monkeys' eating habits and high-pitched cries and even learned to climb trees, though she slept in a hollowed-out tree trunk at night.

Mrs Chapman's story - which has echoes of the Tarzan tales - began in the Fifties when she was drugged and abducted from her Colombian home at the age of four. Here, she recalls the moment her young life was torn apart, and the 'human' kindness of the apes who saved her . . .

Playing on the vegetable patch at the end of our garden at my home in Colombia, I was in my own special place, my little world where I loved to spend my days. It was 1954, or at least I now think it was. Lost in my activity, I was oblivious to others and everything happened so quickly that fateful day.

One minute I was squatting on the bare earth, playing, preoccupied. The next, I saw the flash of a black hand and white cloth, which covered my face. As I jerked in surprise and terror, there was the sharp smell of a chemical. My last thought as I began to slip into unconsciousness was a simple one: I was going to die.

I don't know how long it was before the faintest sensations of consciousness began to return. I heard the noise of an engine. I rea-lised I was in the back of a truck. And I wasn't alone. I could hear crying and whimpering and anguished sobs. There were other children in the truck - terrified children, just like me. I slipped back into unconsciousness.

I had no sense of how much time might have passed when I woke next. The ground around me seemed to be shaking, and I realised I was being carried by an adult. Another man was running with us.

We plunged on further into the depths of the forests until the man hauled me roughly off his shoulder and dumped me on the ground. Dazed, I tried to scramble up and see who had carried me, but all I could see were two pairs of long legs running away and soon they were lost in the gloom. I had no idea where I was, why I was there or when someone would rescue me. The darkness deepened and the eerie night sounds of the jungle were terrifying.

I was nearly five years old, helpless, abandoned and so frightened of being alone. How could I possibly survive?

It was the searing heat of the sun that woke me, and I opened my eyes to the realisation of where I lay. This was the jungle.

Memories of the previous evening came rushing into my head. I stumbled to my feet and began searching for a way to escape. But where to go?

As I span around, I saw only trees, trees and more trees. I trailed disconsolately around, crying and wondering why my mother had not come to find me. As the daylight faded to dusk I knew I would have to spend the night amid the jungle beasts.

The next day, I was wakened by the pain in my stomach. I was hungry and I needed to find something to eat. I curled up on the ground in despair. I wanted to die. I then dozed off and when I woke I opened one eye, and what I saw almost stopped me from opening it any further. I had company. In fact, I was surrounded.

At a distance of several paces were monkeys staring at me. After a short time, one of the monkeys left the circle and approached me. Afraid, I shrank back into a ball, trying to make myself as tiny as possible.

He reached out a wrinkly brown hand and with one firm push, rolled me over on to my side. I quivered on the soil, tensed for the second blow that was surely coming.

But it didn't - the monkey had lost interest. He had now returned to the circle, squatted back on his hind legs and resumed watching me, along with all the others.

YOU ONLY HAVE TO MEET HER TO KNOW THAT IT IS TRUE

Then they all seemed to want to inspect me. They had been chattering to one another and some had come to check me over.

They began to prod and push me, grabbing at my filthy dress and digging around in my hair. I pleaded, sobbing: 'Get off me! Go away!' But I had to wait, cowering and whimpering, until they'd finished their inspection.

Yet I was mesmerised. There was something about the way they seemed to enjoy oneanother's company that made them feel like a family. And whatever else the monkeys were doing, they seemed to be constantly feeding. I needed to do that too, or I would die.

Startled by a siren shriek from above me, I looked up to see a small monkey swooping from one tree to a smaller one nearby, from which hung banana-like bunches of fruit.

The fruits looked unripe, about the size of my finger, and were an unappetising shade of green. As the monkey dropped a bunch in his haste to grab a handful, I snatched them up from the forest floor.

I watched a nearby monkey who was feasting on the contents and copied him. I looked around to find a stick and had soon snagged another small bunch for myself. I had found company and felt my spirits lifting just a little.

Soon I had spent my third night in the jungle with the monkeys. There were more of my new companions than I'd first seen - looking back now, perhaps 30.

They slept high up in the canopy, while I had to be content with curling up on the bare earth far beneath them, between two shrubs.

Just knowing they were there made me feel a little safer. As the night came rushing down, the sound of them calling to one another gave me comfort.

Figs seemed to be prized over any other foodstuff, and a monkey with figs was a monkey who was hounded.

But life in the jungle during those first days wasn't just about feeding or grooming. It was also about survival. To my new family, this meant having territory, and defending it.

The first time I saw the monkeys fight with intruders, I was terrified. One minute they were playing, the next there was the crash and clatter of breaking branches as they massed in the canopy.

The sound of the violence above me was petrifying, the noise of their screams as they fought so intense and horrific that I hid under a bush, clamping my hands over my ears.

When they came down again, I was shocked by the sight of the blood around many of their mouths. I was in a dangerous place, but when I thought about how the monkeys had treated me, I decided they must have accepted that I posed no threat.

What I remember most clearly from that time is the feeling of incredible loneliness.

Day after day passed, and still there was no sign of my parents. There was no sign of anyone.

My hope of rescue was fading as fast as the flower pattern on my dress. I imitated the noises the monkeys made for my own amusement, though probably also for the comfort of hearing the sound of my own voice.

But I soon realised that sometimes a monkey - or several monkeys - would respond. So I practised the sounds that they made, desperate for a reaction. If there was an immediate danger their call would be even higher - a sharp, high-pitched scream, which was usually accompanied by the slapping of hands on the ground.

They would then scamper up to the safety of the canopy, leaving me scared and panicky, trying to find a safe place on the ground. All the time I was growing filthier and filthier, and found myself scratching more and more. Like the monkeys, I became home for all manner of little creatures. Not only was my skin growing drier and scalier, I was also soon crawling with fleas.

I suppose it was inevitable that I would fall ill and when I did I was sure I was going to die - but it marked a turning point in my relationship with my monkey family, after which I was truly one of them.

The pain was overwhelming, causing me to clutch my stomach and whimper. The day before, I had eaten tamarind, one of my favourite choices, but even as I'd tasted it, I'd known it wasn't the usual tamarind.

As I writhed, I saw that sympathy might be at hand. Though my vision swam, I could see Grandpa monkey. I'd called him that simply because that's what he looked like, with the same sprinklings of white fur that triggered a distant memory of the few old people I'd encountered in my former life.

He jumped down from the tree he most liked to sit in and approached me. He squeezed my arm firmly, then began shaking me slightly, shoving me, as if determined to herd me somewhere else. He was purposeful, and I half-crawled, half-stumbled into the foliage, in the direction his repeated shovings wanted me to go.

And then suddenly, I was falling - tumbling over and over, down a mossy, rocky bank, which was running with cool water. I ended up in a little basin below.

But Grandpa monkey seemed intent on putting my head under, keeping a tight grip on my hair. Was he trying to drown me? Or trying to make me drink the water?

I struggled, heaving myself away from him and slapping the surface of the pool, splashing him, and as I did so he yanked my face up and looked me straight in the eyes. As I looked back at him, I could see something I hadn't before. His expression was completely calm, rather than angry, agitated or hostile. Perhaps he was trying to tell me something.

In that instant I trusted him. The look in his eyes and the calmness in his movements made me realise he was trying to help me.

I did as he seemed to want. I went under and drank in great mouthfuls of muddy water, feeling it force its way up my nose.

Grandpa monkey let go of me. I scrambled out and collapsed face-down on the ground. I began coughing again and then vomiting - great heaving gouts of acid liquid that burned my throat.

MY 'MONKEY MUMMY', BY HER DAUGHTER

The purging worked. Gradually, I felt able to make my way slowly back towards our territory. Grandpa monkey, seeming satisfied with his efforts, turned and scuttled off ahead of me, back to his tree. From that point on, Grandpa monkey's attitude changed completely. Where once he'd been indifferent and then wary, he now felt like both my protector and my friend.

At the time, I didn't give them names - I had no such concept - but now, when I look back, I remember them as individuals and so have given them names.

There was Grandpa, of course, energetic Spot, gentle, loving Brownie, and timid White-Tip, one of the little ones, who seemed to love me and who would often jump on to my back, throw her arms around my neck and enjoy being carried.

Perhaps my favourite - aside from Grandpa - was Mia. She was affectionate, but unlike him she was also shy. I first won her round when I got cross about the way she was sometimes bullied and I would use my size to stop some of the more aggressive young monkeys from poking her and pushing her around.

Now I felt more accepted, I became determined to learn how to climb to the top of the tree canopy, to join my monkey family in their natural domain. Day after day, I would try to climb the shorter, slimmer trees. I fell often but I didn't let my failures deter me.

I grew stronger, the muscles in my arms and legs developing and becoming sinewy, while the skin on my hands and feet, elbows, knees and ankles was dry and leathery.

I will remember the day I reached the canopy for the rest of my life. The view was breathtaking - literally. The rush of cool air up there was such a shock to me that it made me gasp.

The monkeys were, of course, indifferent, showing no interest in the fact that I was suddenly up there with them. But I couldn't have been more excited. So here was where they most liked to be. I had now become fully part of their world.

There were few moments that the monkeys didn't spend together, whether grooming or playing or communicating in some other way. Now I could go where they went, communicate with them and play.

I was just happy to be one of them, to feel included. There were still nights when I was overcome by what I'd lost and wept for hours. But as the months rolled by, curled up in my little ball, in a hollowed-out piece of tree trunk, with the comforting, familiar sound of the monkeys up above me, I was gradually turning into one of them.

Time had no meaning to me, but I can't think I had been in the jungle for more than three years when memories of my earlier life came clamouring back.

I had started to explore and was rewarded one day by the discovery of a territory that belonged to a whole new species. I could see three huts - large and circular, with roofs made from long grass. The sight of them created a sort of yearning in my heart. I had forgotten so much. I could see people - a family. A human family. And I was human, too.

From then on my life became focused. Though I'd scamper back to my monkey troop at around nightfall, most of my waking hours were now spent at the camp. I would carefully climb up into a tree close to the perimeter and spend hours, a silent wraith, just looking on. I would gaze at tantalising scenes: children playing, fires lit, all the family together. How wonderful it would be, I thought, to be one of those cherished children.

One day I stepped out from the scrubby undergrowth and planted my feet on the beaten sandy earth of the camp. Beside a water butt was a woman, a mother of a newborn baby. My heart leapt at the sight of her. What an intense thing it is, this human need to be loved. It's one of the most profound things that make social animals social - monkeys too.

But as she looked into my eyes, all I could see in hers was fear. She began stumbling in panic, shouting at me, and as I tried to make myself as small and submissive as I could, a well-built man came running from one of the huts.

He wore a fabric headband with a pair of feathers - one was a vivid, gorgeous blue, the other a deep green, and brightly coloured jewellery made from beads. He also had two stripes - one red and beneath it one black - daubed across his cheeks.

Now it was my turn to be terrified, because he placed a strong hand on one of my shoulders, while his other hand grasped my face and pulled it forwards.

While my heart thumped in my chest, he opened my mouth to inspect my teeth. The job done, he simply shooed me away. I was devastated. I tried begging to him, making gestures to convey my wish for food and shelter.

But my voice and actions were those of a monkey, not a child. He took not the slightest notice and I slunk away into the jungle once more, feeling wretched.

I learned a valuable lesson that day - and an enduring one. Family is found anywhere you are loved and cared for. And I'd been so disloyal to the monkeys. I realised I must put all thoughts of humans firmly out of my mind.

The monkeys, not the humans, were my family.

The Girl With No Name by Marina Chapman with Vanessa James and Lynne Barrett-Lee is published by Mainstream Publishing, priced at £12.99.

To order your copy at £11.49 with free p&p, call the Mail Book Shop on 0844 472 4157 or visit mailbookshop.co.uk

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Kidnapped, dumped in the jungle and raised by monkeys: The story of a little girl wrenched from her family and brought up in the wild who only revealed her tale 50 years later as a Bradford housewife

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Marina Chapman tells riveting story exclusively with The Mail On Sunday She was abandoned aged four in South American rainforest by kidnappers Mrs Chapman copied monkeys' eating habits and learned to climb trees A monkey cured her stomach pain by encouraging her drink from a river It is an amazing - some might say unbelievable - tale: how a Yorkshire housewife spent five years as a young child being raised by monkeys in the Colombian jungle.

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I think that this was an incredible story. What happened to her in Montana that day out hiking was unbelievable. The fact she was able to keep herself together after suffering such terrible injuries, like the way the bear had smashed her jaw all the way through the back of her head was something totally amazing. It made think about the will to live, and how strong it is in people. I also was amazed at how clever the surgeons were who operated on her. Especially when I read about how they put 24 tiny nails in the bones of her eyes!!! I also thought she showed great courage at 71 and returned to the place she loved the most.

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Upgrade your skills with our online Wilderness First Aid Basics class! Learn to conquer common problems and handle emergencies with grace. Start it instantly, complete it at your own pace, access it forever. Sign up now!

I had rented an old trailer up in Babb, Montana, just east of Glacier National Park, for the third year in a row. My brother has a summer fishing cabin just a quarter of a mile away. Every morning I'd take long walks around the pine-fringed lake with my two little Havanese dogs, Angus and Shamus. They were my best friends.

Maybe I should have known something was wrong when the bigger dog, Angus, didn't want to go. He normally loved our walks. But I ignored it and forced him out anyway, thinking he'd change his mind on the way. I clipped my phone holster to my waist, and strapped my bear spray and police whistle to my belt.

The dirt road around the lake offered little shade, so at the top of a nearby hill with a clearing, I took off my jacket and tied it around my waist. The morning was eerily quiet; no birds were chirping. Still, I saw nothing, so I kept walking. I had made it 100 feet down the hill when I heard a snap.

The two cubs that bumbled out onto the road were the cutest things I'd ever seen. The full-sized momma grizzly bear lumbering behind them was not. She stopped when she saw me, not more than a telephone pole's length away. She reared up onto her hind legs, must have been 8 feet tall. Her roar echoed throughout the valley as she dropped down to chase after me at a speed I didn't think possible. "So this is how it ends," I thought as I started to run.

My brother had warned me about what to do should I encounter a bear. You're supposed to spray it from the ground up so that the mist gets up its nose, he'd said. If that doesn't work, crouch over, make yourself as tiny as possible with your knees to your chest and head down. Play dead and hope it loses interest. When you're actually running from a bear, I can assure you, all that goes right out the window.

I sprinted for the brush near where they'd come out and dove in. My tiny dogs were jumping 3 feet in the air to stop her. She struck at them, then came for me. I couldn't reach my spray. I tried to take one last look at the beautiful, peaceful area I loved, but the bear blocked my view. I bent over, covering my face with my arms, cowering for my life, praying I could be quiet enough to make her magically disappear.

Her claws cut through my arm first, tearing it down away from my neck, the searing pain distracting me from what happened next. I thought she was scraping my scalp with her claws, but they tell me she bit my skull three times. My head was ducked down toward my body, my eyes shut tight against this nightmare. I didn't look at her. "Never make eye contact with a bear," my brother had told me. She pulled me out of the brush and raked her claws over my abdomen all the way up to my neck, trying to get at my organs. Before I blacked out, the only emotion I felt was anger. I was mad. Because I thought I was going to die, and I didn't want to die.

They tell me she missed my carotid artery by the width of one hair. They tell me I lived because her cubs wandered off and she went to find them.

A dog's bark brought me back to consciousness. Only one dog. I knew immediately that Angus was dead. My arm hurt, and I thought there might be something wrong with my head, but I just got up and unleashed my remaining dog. He took off toward home. It was 7:10 in the morning, and I thought, "This will be easy. I'll just call for help."

But my phone holster was empty. I'd put on the holster but forgotten the phone. I was alone.

As I struggled to walk, waves of nausea washed over me, and I kept getting dizzy. I wobbled and inched my way forward. I heard or felt this gloomp, whoomp, gloomp sound coming from my head. I didn't know or care what it was. I had one mission. Get home, get help.

I was blowing my whistle, but I was running out of air. I was yelling for help, but it was so windy no one could hear me. I was going into shock. I had to sit down. No one was coming for me; I was alone.

I sat waiting, hoping against hope that someone would drive by. It took three and a half hours. At 11:40 a.m., a big truck rumbled by, driven by a schoolteacher taking some students on a fishing trip. I called out, "Do you think you could come over here and give me a hand?"

They stopped and scrambled toward me, rushing me into the truck and calling 911. In the middle of that, my sister-in-law came by, frantically asking them if they'd seen a dog. When she recognized me, she got in the truck with me and covered me with her shirt, then lay over me to keep me warm. We met the EMTs about 6 miles from where I was attacked, and the ambulance took me 40 minutes to Browning hospital. My eyes had swollen shut. It felt like paint was seeping down a wall, but the wall was my eyes and the paint was pain.

When they cut my clothes off, I felt like a piece of meat on a slab, exposed and raw. They gave me four pints of blood and immediately airlifted me to Kalispell Regional Medical Center. I went through seven and a half hours of surgery that first time, and had three subsequent operations in the coming days. They never actually told me what they were repairing, and I never asked.

Months later, at a wound check, they told me the bear had ripped all my muscles in the back of my neck. That she had ripped off one of my ears, and they had to sew it back on. The bear had smashed my jaw all the way back through my head, had crushed the bones under my eyelids.

I survived a fractured nose, several deep lacerations on the back of my neck, three bites to my head, and long, deep cuts through my torso. I lay in the hospital for three weeks, half in intensive care, the other half in rehab. The bones in my eyes required more than 24 tiny nails to piece them back together. I only regained sight in one eye; the other is permanently shut-the nerves in my right eyelid are crushed and non-responsive, meaning it will not open on its own.

I'm not upset about my injuries, just grateful to be alive. The alternative was death. The worst part about this entire adventure was the loss of my beloved dog Angus. My brother's neighbor found him and buried him on my brother's land for me, but I just cannot bring myself to go visit. It's too painful. The bear broke up my family.

As soon as I got out of the hospital, I went back to my trailer. No bear is going to deter me from living the life I love. I'm not afraid and I don't stay indoors. As soon as I was able, I was out hiking again-only I go with a partner and always keep the bear spray in my hand. I still go to the lake every year. Shamus comes with me, but he spends his walks now looking for his lost brother.

Key Skills: Survive a Grizzly Scare

1. Don't panic. In a low voice, announce your presence and back away slowly. Don't run: Flight will trigger a bear's prey drive and they can sprint up to 30 mph. If the bear huffs or growls at you-his way of expressing aggression-speak louder and wave your arms.

2. Stand your ground. Most bear charges are bluffs. If you have bear spray (you should, and it should be within reach) and the bear is approaching within 20 yards, spray a low cloud that envelops the charging bruin. Get upwind of the bear if you can, but bear spray leaves the can at around 70 mph, so the spray remains effective at close range.

3. Get aggressive. If the bear approaches within 10 yards, aim slightly above his head to direct short bursts of spray into his eyes mouth, and nose. Now's a good time for that war cry, too.

4. Play dead. Is he still coming? Time to convince him you're not a threat. Put your hands behind your neck and lay belly down to protect vital organs and nerves. Remain still while waiting for the bear to leave the area-he may return if he notices renewed movement.

5. Avoid getting eaten. Most grizzly attacks are reactions to fear or attempts to protect young. But if the bear begins to feed, it's time to fight. Gouge at the sensitive spots like his face, nose, and eyes. Get primal. This is the fight of your life.

-Corey Buhay

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Patricia Miller (as told to Darlena Cunha)

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Upgrade your skills with our online Wilderness First Aid Basics class! Learn to conquer common problems and handle emergencies with grace. Start it instantly, complete it at your own pace, access it forever. Sign up now! I had rented an old trailer up in Babb, Montana, just east of Glacier National Park, for the third year in a row.