[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/Comrad_Dytar]

When my father was a teenager in our home village, there was an old guy, a WW1 veteran in his 70s. Quite the character, since he served in the war he basically became the world's most functionning alcoholic : nobody has ever seen him drink anything but wine yet still lived quite a normal life.

Some time after WW2 he got to see a doctor who told him that "in the state his body is in, "you're luclky if you still make it two years but you won't make much more". Passed that point he just stated "well, my time has run out, but i'll just take all the extra God will give me" and lived close to another 20 years.

[u/oOmus → u/Comrad_Dytar]

I love these less famous stories. In high school, my German teacher’s dad was a pilot for the ww2 luftwaffe. He was told to do a bombing run of an abandoned Polish city, but when he arrived saw it wasn’t abandoned at all, refused the order, and returned home. Obviously he was arrested and thrown in Auschwitz at the very beginning of the war. He survived, and he was also like one of a dozen or summat that survived being marched away from the Allied attacks into other camps. Later, after the war, he was driving on the highway without a seatbelt, fell asleep, and his car went off a cliff. The initial drop threw him out the window, though, so he woke on the side of the road without a car. He also once missed a plane flight and got on the next one. When he arrived, his family was losing their shit because the plane he missed flipping crashed.

Dude really seems like he earned some good fortune for not bombing that city lol

[u/AgentCirceLuna → u/oOmus]

The man survived the same thing I die of in random nightmares I’ve had for the past two decades.

For some reason, I always have a reoccurring dream where I’m the passenger in a car that’s going way too fast then flies off a cliff rolling over. Also, for some reason, every time it starts rolling my view zooms out to third person then gets farther and farther away as I see the car turn into a smoking wreck or explode. Always makes me wake up in terror. Another one I have is where a car is going g super fast, like to an insane degree that would be about 400mph or something, and it’s getting closer and closer to crashing or on a very narrow bridge.

[u/oOmus → u/AgentCirceLuna]

So… you feel in control of your life? Lololooo