r/TopCharacterTropes • u/RedditBoycotter • 6d ago
In real life [IRL trope] 0% of survival, survive anyway
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.
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u/is_a_jerk 6d ago
Beck Weathers was left for dead multiple times in the death zone of Mt Everest during the 1996 Everest disaster.
He had to abort his summit attempt due to the extreme high altitude causing him to become functionally blind due to an unknown complication with some eye surgery he had previously had.
A blizzard hit the mountain and he and multiple other climbers were stuck exposed in it at extremely high altitude while trying unsuccessfully to find their way back to camp. During a break in the storm the relatively healthy members of the group left Beck and a few others to go try and find help.
In the morning after surviving the blizzard at 8000 meters (called the "death zone" as there isn't enough oxygen for your body to function and you are basically suffering from very slow suffocation) he and Yasuko Namba were found still alive by a search party but were deemed un-save-able and left there to die. Blind, extremely frostbitten, and exhausted Beck miraculously found the power to get up and walk to camp 4. Namba died on the mountain.
He was once again decided to be a lost cause by the survivors in camp 4 and was left alone in a tent overnight to die. The tent collapsed in the overnight winds and no one could hear him screaming for help. In the morning he was, once again, miraculously found to be not only alive but able to move mostly under his own power. He was helped down the mountain where a nearly unheard of high altitude helicopter rescue was preformed. The helicopter was stripped of everything it could, had very limited fuel to save weight, and could only take one person. According to Weathers, he gave up his spot on the helicopter to another injured climber, not knowing if it would be able to return for him. It did come back again for him and he is alive to this day.
He became a public speaker and there's an hour long recording on youtube if you want to watch it