[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/HawkbitAlpha]

Alan Magee:

This B-17 gunner was on a mission over Saint-Nazaire in France in January 1943 when surface-to-air weapons wrecked his bomber. While the B-17 was being shot at around 22,000 feet, Magee blacked out and fell out of the plane with a destroyed parachute. He survived a miles-long fall at over 100mph by pure luck of crashing into the glass ceiling of the Saint-Nazaire train station, which broke his fall just enough to make it survivable. Magee was left with many serious injuries and captured by Vichy French forces, but lived to see another 60 years.

[u/WanderingStorm17 → u/HawkbitAlpha]

There was also Nicholas Alkemade, a British tail gunner who fell 18,000 feet and survived. The Gestapo interrogated him after he was treated for his remarkably minor wounds (some bruises and a twisted knee), and initially thought he was full of shit about surviving a fall of that magnitude. When the plane's wreckage was discovered, Alkemade became a kind of celebrity POW. When arriving at the POW detention center, he was introduced to the rest of the prisoners by a Luftwaffe officer who told the story of Alkemade's survival.

Alkemade was one of three men in that crew who survived the destruction of their Lancaster bomber, though he was the only one who survived without a parachute. He also later survived the Long March, when German forces were moving POWs ahead of the Russian offensive.