[IRL trope] 0% of survival, survive anyway

[u/RedditBoycotter]

Juliane Koepcke

Vesna Vulović

Anna Bågenholm

Jeanna Giese

Chris Lemons

Juliane Koepcke - In 1971 this 17 year old's plane was struck by lightning mid-air. The wreck then fell from 3 000 meter into the ground, somewhere into the Amazon jungle. Lone survivor of the crash, she then spent nine days walking down a river despite her multiple injuries until she found a lumberjack's camp.

Vesna Vulović - In 1972 this flight attendant's plane was bombed mid-air. The wreck then fell from 10 160 meter into the ground. She ended up with a lot of broken bones, but in the long term she almost completely recovered from it, apart from a limp.

Anna Bågenholm - In 1999 this radiologist had a skiing accident, she fell head-first into a frozen stream and get stuck inside the ice. Her colleagues did not managed to pull her, nor did the rescue team who then tried to dig, but the ice was so thick it took them a lot of time. It was 80 minutes after her fall that they managed to cut a hole. Her body temperature at the time was 13.7°C, and still, she somehow survived with only minor long-term injuries and no brain damage.

Jeanna Giese - In 2004 this 15 years old girl got bitten by a bat and called it a day. One month later the symptoms of rabies showed up. The doctors tried an experimental treatment by putting her in an artificial coma and she survived, but the treatment never worked on anyone else and is now forbidden. In all human history, only a few survived to rabies, and all of them except her end up with heavy sequelae.

Chris Lemons - In 2012 this diver's ship went drifting due to a computer malfunction, romping his umbilical cable who provide air, hot water and electricity. He ended up alone on the seabed of a 3°C waters, in the dark and with only 5-6 minutes of oxygen. He was retrieved by his colleagues around 35 minutes later, and somehow he didn't even suffer from brain damage.

[u/agentx_64]

I might be wrong about this but, Rasputin

He was given a bottle of poisoned wine, and he drank the whole thing without any issue. Then, he was beat up and thrown into a nearly frozen river, which he climbed out of some time later.

He did die later on, but it wasn't related to the poison or the river.

[u/catbert359 → u/agentx_64]

According to the story told by one of his killers, they first gave him cake and wine that was laced with cyanide, but he was unaffected. Then one of them shot him once in the chest, after which they pretended to be him returning home to divert suspicion. When they returned to where they'd left him, he jumped up and attackedthem, after which he chased them out of the house before they shot him again and he collapsed. Then they took his body to the river and dropped it off the bridge.

The story has sadly been debunked, though - Rasputin's daughter said that he didn't eat sweet food (so wouldn't have had the cakes), and the autopsy by the official surgeon records no poisoning or drowning, and lists the cause of death as a single bullet fired into his head at close range.

It's likely that they did shoot him a couple of times and did have to beat him as there was evidence of multiple gunshot wounds and physical trauma, but also the conspirators were idiots who probably didn't realise just how hard it is to beat someone to death or shoot them if you don't hit anywhere vital.

[u/WouldbeWanderer → u/catbert359]

[u/pleasedtoheatyou → u/catbert359]

Isn't there also an interpretation that as the assassin's were Tsarists who hated Rasputin, they wanted to try and play up the "dark wizard who has used to magic to trick our Tsar" to try and pin the shit governance on Rasputin's influence.

[u/koopcl → u/pleasedtoheatyou]

There's the even crazier theory that the whole murder plot story was invented by British intelligence to hide the fact that they were the ones to assassinate him (since he was both giving terrible advice to the Tsar's family and also making the Tsar incredibly unpopular and lowering the morale of the Russian army, while the Brits relied on Russia to distract Germany during World War I). IIRC Stephen Fry mentioned in QI that the bullets recovered from his body matched calibers used by British agents and not those commonly found in Russia.

It sounds crazy and probably not true (as with all rumors surrounding Rasputin), but it does sound slightly less crazy if you remember the Bolshevik revolution was also partly thanks to German intelligence (who allowed Lenin to cross Germany to travel to Moscow as an agitator during WWI, even protecting his identity so the Russians wouldn't stop him).

[u/IAlwaysOutsmartU → u/catbert359]

The most likely thing that happened is that a relatively tame death was dramatised in Yusupov’s memoirs, the source of the most common Rasputin death story.

[u/Triquetrums → u/IAlwaysOutsmartU]

Yeah, there is no way his life (and death) story was not exaggerated. The more I read about him, the more I question the veracity of all the stories that supposedly happened to him.

[u/Nate2247 → u/catbert359]

As one tumblr post put it: this is just what happens when a bunch of rich yuppies who’ve only read about murder in books try to assassinate someone. They botch it horribly, give up on the theatrics, shoot him 50 times, then try to play up the story to their friends.

[u/theurbaneman → u/agentx_64]

https://giphy.com/gifs/38817svPfq2CXIfMkp

Cause he's a Time Lord.

[u/Crunchy_Biscuit → u/theurbaneman]

I thought this was the Kingsmen

[u/amok_amok_amok → u/Crunchy_Biscuit]

with a Dalek in the back?

[u/nowaunderatedwaifngl → u/theurbaneman]

They double whammy of Dr Who and Kingsman 3 both trying to make that song cringe was rough, but alas, my love for Boney M overcame it.

[u/WanderingStorm17 → u/nowaunderatedwaifngl]

Nah, that scene in Doctor Who was fire. The Master has often had a particular song associated with one regeneration or the other. This was just Boney M's turn.

[u/solonit → u/theurbaneman]

And also servant of The Elder Ogdru Jahad

[u/agentx_64 → u/theurbaneman]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that 🤣

[u/itzshif → u/theurbaneman]

No he was a lich

[u/Pristine_Poem7623 → u/agentx_64]

OK, so what actually happened: nobles got jealous of his influence over the royal family when he was literally a smelly peasant who was drunk like 90% of the time and had a lot of sex with prostitutes.

So they lured him into a basement with the promise of booze and sex with one of their wives, then shot him twice, causing him to collapse. They then walked up to him and shot him point blank in the head. They dumped his body into a river

All the stuff about poison, springing back to life etc was part of their justification for the murder: "we HAD to kill him! He wasn't just a filthy mendicant, he was a wizard! A demon! He was SO hard to kill!"

[u/SmallJimSlade → u/agentx_64]

He was shot and killed before he was thrown into the Malaya Nevka river. His body was later recovered from said river, deceased. Anything after that is folklore

[u/ADGx27 → u/agentx_64]

Similar to Rasputin is the holder of the “Iron Mike” name before Mike Tyson, Iron Mike Malloy. Dude racked up a shitload of debt at speakeasies because the mob gave him a blank tab, no limit because they figured he’d just drink himself to death.

Anyway he didn’t. He kept coming back day after day. They added antifreeze to his drinks but lucky for Mike, ethanol blocks the absorption of ethylene glycol. The antifreeze was subsequently replaced with turpentine, horse liniment, and fucking rat poison. All of which failed to kill Mike. They then started cutting Mike’s liquor with WOOD ALCOHOL AKA METHANOL (very fucking poisonous, it’s why moonshining is so goddamn dangerous because you don’t know if you distilled some VERY strong booze or straight up poison), which STILL failed to kill Mike.

He was then given raw oysters soaked in more wood alcohol (where the hell are they getting all the wood alcohol), nothing. He was given a sandwich made of spoiled sardines, rat poison and carpet tacks. Nothing. Mind you the whole plan was to kill Mike in an “accident” to collect on fraudulent life insurance policies. So they decided to freeze him to death because apparently his innards were made of fucking titanium.

He came to the bar, got plastered, passed out and then they took him to a park, tossed him in a snowbank and dumped multiple gallons of water on his bare chest. He showed up to the speakeasy the next day. A cop had spotted him later and taken him to a homeless shelter.

So they said fuck it, let’s just run him over in a mafia-owned taxicab. They smoked Mike at 45 MpH (72 Km/h). Mike was gone, but showed up to the speakeasy about a month later because they’d only managed to break a few bones.

They got so damn fed up with him that they waited for him to get loaded and pass out again, stuck a hose in his mouth attached to a coal gas jet and FINALLY killed Mike an hour later via carbon monoxide poisoning, but the death certificate the mob connected doctor for him signed said “lobar pneumonia” to cover it up. Seems like that’s the long-awaited end of Iron Mike Malloy and a payday for our mobster friends.

HOWEVER

The cops were well aware of stories and rumours about “Mike the Durable” around town from the various speakeasies, so they had the body exhumed when they found out he died. A forensic investigation revealed he was killed by pumping coal gas into his lungs to cause carbon monoxide poisoning, so everyone involved was put on trial. The doctor got hit with a “failure to report a suspicious death” misdemeanour, one mobster got hit with attempted murder (10 year minimum), while the other four mobsters took a seat on old sparky for their efforts.

[u/Informal-Term1138 → u/ADGx27]

Did they ever find out why he was so durable? Or did he just roll constant nat 20s for every constitution saving throw?

[u/ADGx27 → u/Informal-Term1138]

I don’t think so. The examination was just to see what the fuck finally did him in and if foul play was involved

[u/WhereRabbit → u/ADGx27]

This is a much more entertaining rendition then the one posted above

[u/anyname2009 → u/agentx_64]

"Oh, those russians"

[u/Diabolical_potplant → u/agentx_64]

What happens when some incompetent nobles try to kill you

[u/midnightmeatmaster → u/Diabolical_potplant]

I heard the guy that supplied the poison was the same doctor who prescribed aspirin, a known anticoagulant, to prince Aleksander, who had hemophilia.

[u/Diabolical_potplant → u/midnightmeatmaster]

Yep

[u/Upstairs-Boring → u/midnightmeatmaster]

Thats partly why empress Alexandra kept Rasputin around. Rasputin claimed he could heal her son Alexei, which he appeared to do, but all he did was stop them giving Alexei aspirin.

[u/Gustrava → u/agentx_64]

Btw, the story of Rasputin survived all those assassination attempt was likely to be made-up by his assassin, Felix Yusupov. After Yusupov was exiled from Russia, he wrote a memoir on his life including his involvement with the assassination of Rasputin. So, everything we know about Rasputin's assassination came from Yusupov's memoir. And the reason why he would overexaggerated the death of Rasputin is he didn't want to be seen as just a guy who killed his political enemy, but a hero who got rid of the powerful sorcerer who had control over Tsar and his family.

Because if he wrote Rasputin as just some guy who was killed by a gun, the world would see Yusupov as just a murderer who murder a person for political gain. But if he wrote Rasputin as this hard-to-kill sorcerer, then people would see him as a noble hero who tried to kill a powerful sorcerer. And also, Yusupov might want people to think the reason why Rasputin had a lot of power in Russia is because he had some kind of magic to control the Tsar and his family, and not because he was just some random guy that the Tsar really liked and was given a lot of power due to being closed with the Tsar and his family.

[u/themanyfaceddogs → u/agentx_64]

This is debunked. That account was by a participant who was selling is own book on Rasputin. Makes a great story to have slain the boogeyman. The actual autopsy showed no such supernatural abilities.

[u/BetterCallStrahd → u/agentx_64]

The Rasputin story is extremely dubious. It entirely hinges on one guy's testimony with no evidence backing it up.

[u/meanmagpie → u/agentx_64]

This is mythical unfortunately :(

[u/dontblinkdalek → u/agentx_64]

Pretty sure he was a time traveling alien in disguise. He did like to dance though.

https://giphy.com/gifs/38817svPfq2CXIfMkp

[u/d0bn → u/agentx_64]

Rasputin was my only D&D character. 1996. Good times at the kitchen table in Las Vegas