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It’s never easy to come to terms with your own mortality. In fact, many people decide to completely ignore the fact that they won’t live forever. After all, there's not much we can do about it! But if you happen to have an experience where you come close to losing your life, you’ll never ever take it for granted again.
Threads users have recently been sharing stories of people who miraculously survived life-threatening situations, so we’ve gathered some of the craziest ones below. We’ll warn you right now, pandas, that some of these tales are not easy to read. But we hope they’ll remind you just how resilient humans are and inspire you to live every day to the fullest!
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#1
John Thompson. 18 year old kid lost both arms in a farm machinery accident, walked home, and then dialed 911 with a pencil in his mouth.
Both arms were reattached.
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#2
In 1999, bank executive and skydiver Joan Murray survived a 14,500-foot fall, hitting the ground at 80 mph after her parachute malfunctioned, landing directly on a mound of fire ants. The over 200 fire ant stings forced a massive adrenaline rush, keeping her heart beating.
#3
Alison Botha. Neck slashed and disemboweled. Held her head on with one hand and her guts in with the other and managed to crawl to safety after she was stabbed over 60 times.
Claire Holman 5 days ago
I believe her first responder was a vet (as in animal doctor, not veteran), and they later married, after she'd recovered. I could be wrong, though.
#4
That airplane pilot that got sucked out the cockpit when the window blew out and was held onto by one of the stewards while the co pilot had to land the plane.
#5
This woman. She cut herself open with a kitchen knife, delivered her baby, was stiched back after evisceration by a local nurse with an ordinary sewing needle and cotton thread, then was drove to the nearest hospital, eight hours away. Both her and the baby survived.
#6
Mary Vincent.
15 years old. Hitched a ride with a stranger. He cut off her arms at the elbow and threw her over a 30 ft cliff.
She packed mud in her arms, somehow crawled her way up, and stumbled down the road with her arms up so she wouldn’t bleed out.
#7
I knocked over my granny’s favourite wee porcelain fisherman and snapped his fishing rod. Managed to get it glued together before she throttled me.
#8
1971, a 17 year old girl named Julianne Koepcke fell 3,000 ft strapped to an airplane seat into the Amazon jungle and survived. She walked out after 11 days by following a stream civilization.
#10
Timothy Ray Brown.
Timothy Ray Brown was cured of both HIV AND LEUKEMIA, by receiving donor tissue from a person with genetic resistance.
This has led to more successes, with a recent 7th saved with non resistant donor stem cells.
#11
Phineas Gage. Got an iron rod shot through his head but survived.
David Paterson 5 days ago
I'd upvote this more if I could. The famous/infamous tamping pole accident. Doctors initially couldn't understand how he could possibly survive with such a massive brain injury.
#13
Roy Sullivan Survived being struck by lightening 7 times in 7 separate incidents.
#14
The Colombian siblings who survived 40 days in the Amazon jungle after a plane crash. The youngest was 2 years old. The eldest was 13, if I'm not mistaken.
WindySwede 5 days ago
As I understand it they were not "city dweller", but had knowledge of the jungle?
#15
That orthopedic surgeon Dr Mary Neal whose kayak went over a waterfall and capsized, she was pinned under water with broken legs for 30 MINUTES (at least 8ft beneath the surface without oxygen) until her dead body became dislodged and was found down the river. She was resuscitated and miraculously suffered no brain damage. This was over 25 years ago and she continues to tell her story today.
#16
Sully & his crew and passengers from US Airways flight 1549. The miracle on the Hudson.
#17
The airline stewardess who fell out of a plane and survived.
__zoe_bennett
Vesna Voluvić — flight attendant who survived a fall over 33,000 feet.
#18
The first person to survive rabies (without a rabies shot), Jeanna Giese, in 2004. She was 15.
#20
José Salvador Alvarenga spent 14 months drifting on a small boat in the Pacific Ocean, finally arriving on Marshall Islands from Mexico.
#21
As a paramedic, the thing that immediately comes to mind for me is the one adult woman who survived the Miami condo collapse in 2021. iirc among her injuries was a shattered pelvis, lacerated liver, and ruptured bladder (I’m sure there were more). Any ONE of those injuries can kill you very quickly on their own, and she survived having all three at the same time. It blows my mind.
#22
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh of the Air India crash. Out of 242 passengers he survived alone.
Partypants 4 days ago
This flight was mostly children. I remember seeing the aftermath. Horrific, amazing anyone survived period.
#23
Jim LeBlanc.
The only human being to have been exposed to a vacuum and survive.
The saliva on his tongue started to boil before he was rescued.
David Paterson 5 days ago (edited)
Catastrophic space suit failure in an early vacuum test. They managed to repressurise the chamber in about a minute and a half. No long term damage.
#24
Thad Phillips. Was kidnapped and had both his legs snapped by his assailant because he liked “the sound” of cracking bones. Crawled down the stairs and called 911. Also all the women who are held captive and assaulted for years before getting rescued. I can’t even imagine!
#25
Chris Lemons- saturation diver. Survived 35 minutes without air at the bottom of the North Sea (300 ft deep) after losing comms and getting cut from his umbilical air supply. Hollywood made a movie about it (in addition to th documentary) with Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu.
#26
Judy Malinowski. Set on fire and survived long enough to testify at her own murder trial.
#27
That Russian doctor who performed his OWN appendectomy.
(Leonid Rogozov)
GenuineJen 4 days ago
"Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov... was a Russian general practitioner and surgeon who took part in the Sixth Soviet Antarctic Expedition at Novolazarevskaya Station from September 1960 to October 1962. He is best known for performing a surgery to remove his own appendix—an auto-appendectomy—after he began suffering from appendicitis while deployed there in April 1961. The incident, which occurred because Rogozov was the only medical professional among his entire team." –Wikipedia
#28
Clint Malarchuk was an NHL Goaltender who got a skate to the neck, cutting his jugular during a game against St Louis. Blood was squirting 6 feet in front of him. Luckily, the team Equipment Manager was an ex Vietnam medic and pinched his Jugular off until he got to the hospital saving his life. If he would have been on the other end of the ice he would have bleed out. He also survived a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. His story is insane
#29
Women every single day in a world run by men.
#30
Charla Nash. 200lb chimpanzee tore off her face, nose, lips, eyelids, and hands.
#31
Michael Moylan was shot in the head by his wife while sleeping & not only did he survive but he didn’t know he was shot until he got to a hospital & they found the bullet. He asked his wife to drive him to the hospital because he had a bad headache.
#32
I think some of the most astonishing cases are people who fell into frozen lakes and were able to be resuscitated after being rescued hours later. Technically drowning and being unable to breathe for that long is 100% fatal, but the cold, in rare cases, can slow the metabolism and prevent brain death long enough for the person to rescued and warmed. It's led to the phrase "you aren't dead unless you're warm and dead."
David Paterson 5 days ago
The smaller the child and the faster the reheating the less the damage.
#33
A man in india climbed a pole and grabbed a transformer in an attempt to end his life. He was knocked off and fell but survived. Turns out, his skin has a high electrical resistance which makes him incredibly unique. He performs now, routinely running 10-20x the current needed a kill a human through his body.
David Paterson 5 days ago
The Stan Lee series "superhumans" episode 1. Rajmohan Nair of Kollam, India.
#34
Ann Fowler Hodges was the first known individual documented to have survived being hit by a meteorite. No case since has been documented where the victim survived.
#35
I have a friend who lost at Russian roulette. He was pronounced dead. Several hours later while in a body bag, in the fridge he woke up. Starting yelling and pounding on the door. He has lots of physical challenges but he is alive and mostly well.
#36
Jean Hilliard froze solid in someone's front yard. Was revived.
#37
In July 1978, Soviet physicist Anatoli Bugorski survived an impossible accident when his head was struck by a high-energy proton beam in a particle accelerator. While repairing the U-70 synchrotron, safety systems failed, causing a 76 GeV beam to pass through his skull, leaving him with permanent facial paralysis, deafness, and occasional seizures, but allowing him to live a normal life.
#38
I just saw one today, a child fell through the ice and was submerged for 177 minutes, was 7 degrees when pulled out of the ice. Neuro damage, of course but kid is walking n talking 3 months later.
GenuineJen 4 days ago (edited)
There is a PubMed article about an 8-year-old boy in Pennsylvania, US, who was submerged for 147-177 minutes. His body temp was 7°C (45°F) when he was retrieved. After 59 days in hospital the boy was discharged and after 6 months body function was intact, but limited. Not sure if it's the same one, but similar if not the same. Link follows.
#39
The guys from the Uruguayan Flight 571 crash. Truly incredible story. The movie Society of the Snow on Netflix is worth a watch.
#40
Death: Velma Thomas, a woman from Virginia was clinically dead for 17 hours. She woke up as they were preparing to take her organs.
#41
Nikola Tesla liked to stick his head in strong electromagnetic fields and, for several months in 1895-96, did so regularly with the X-ray discharge from a Crookes tube. He maintained that it made him smarter. But in fact he became increasingly deranged and delusional after 1896, and basically never worked productively again. One of Tesla's many, many deranged ideas was to secretly bombard classes of "defective" children with strong high frequency EMF to "quicken" their minds. This was in 1912.
#42
Henry Hall, the Eddystone Lighthouse keeper, during a fire accidentally ingested 200g of liquified lead and survived for six days, he was so well that the doctor thought he faked it, but they found the solidified lead inside of him during the autopsy (the slab is now in a museum).
#43
Roy Benavidez was shot multiple times, stabbed, and declared dead only to spit on the medic to show he was alive.
Tina Girard 4 days ago (edited)
Probably should add that he was a Medal of Honor receipient from Vietnam and this specific event was when he was wounded in action - shot 37 times, had shrapnel injuries and was bayoneted
#44
Also Joe Simpson who survived the rope being cut by his climbing partner (Touching the Void)
Leslie B 4 days ago
From Wikipedia "In 1985, Simpson and his climbing partner Simon Yates made a first ascent of the previously unclimbed west face of Siula Grande (6,344 m) in the Cordillera Huayhuash of the Peruvian Andes. On the descent, Simpson broke his right leg in a fall. Yates attempted to rescue Simpson by roping the pair together, with Yates lowering Simpson as far down the mountain as their rope would allow, before descending himself, and repeating the process. However, as weather conditions deteriorated and visibility diminished, he unknowingly lowered Simpson over a cliff edge. Simpson could not climb up the rope, and it was impossible for Yates to pull him up due to his own precarious position. To avoid being pulled off the mountain himself, Yates was forced to cut the rope. Simpson, however, succeeded in rescuing himself and survived."
#45
William Rankin is the only known person to survive a fall through a cumulonimbus cloud.
David Paterson 5 days ago
Wasn't there a woman hang gliding champion who also survived a similar fall? The updraft from the storm took her so high that she lost consciousness, only regaining it part way through the fall.
#46
A child from Texas was diagnosed with DIPG and is the only one that I’ve read about surviving it.
Claire Holman 5 days ago
Rare & aggressive brain tumour, typically considered incurable, in case anyone else was wondering.
#47
Jeanne Calment reached 122 years old when she was an active smoker even beyond 100 years old...normally smokers have a shorter lifespan yet she's the oldest documented person ever lived...
David Paterson 5 days ago (edited)
It is possible that she had taken on her older sister's identity early on in order to evade death duty taxation. Even so, she would have been over 110 years old.
#48
Loren Schauers, an American man, had a hemicorporectomy in 2019 after a traumatic forklift accident.
#49
Wenceslao Moguel Herrera. He was “executed” by fring squad of nine rifleman and lastly shot in the head by an officer. He refused to die, and kept living.
What do you think ?
Multa Nocte (she/her/86 47) 4 days ago
Some very interesting stories, many of which were poorly written.
Multa Nocte (she/her/86 47) 4 days ago
Some very interesting stories, many of which were poorly written.
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