Pezzullo Ralph - The U.S. Navy SEAL guide to survival heroes and their stories

The U.S. Navy SEAL
Guide to

Survival heroes and Their Stories

Learn the survival techniques and
strategies of americas
elite warriors

Don Mann

and Ralph Pezzullo

Skyhorse Publishing

Candiru fish

Maggots

Juliane Koepcke

On Christmas Eve 1971, a quiet seventeen-year-old high school senior named Juliane Koepcke and her mother boarded LANSA airline Flight 508 from Lima, Peru, to the Amazon jungle city of Pucallpa. She was on her way to meet her father, who ran a research station in the jungle. Twenty-five minutes into the flight, the Lockheed Electra turboprop ran into bad weather. We ran into heavy clouds and the plane started shaking, Juliane recalled. Then, to our right, we saw a bright flash and the plane went into a nose dive.

Accident investigators later determined that one the of the planes fuel tanks was struck by a bolt of lightning. Christmas presents were flying around the cabin and I could hear people screaming, Juliane said. The plane then broke into pieces, and Juliane passed out. When she gained consciousness, she was still strapped to her seat and alive despite the fact that she had fallen two miles into the jungle canopy.

Maybe it was the fact that I was still attached to a whole row of seats, she explained later. I was rotating much like a helicopter and that might have slowed the fall. Also, the place I landed had very thick foliage and that might have lessened the impact. The other ninety-one people aboard Flight 508 died.

Julianes injuries were relatively minorshe had a broken collarbone, her right eye was swollen shut, she had a concussion, plus she had large gashes on her arms and legs. But she had lost her eyeglasses, and she was alone deep in the Amazon jungle with the thick canopy above her preventing her from signaling for help. Juliane had no food, no tools, no compass, no map, and no means to make a fire. Just herself, surrounded by thousands of species, including some of the most venomous creatures on earth.

But Juliane didnt give up. Instead, she searched through the planes wreckage, grabbed a few pieces of candy and cake, and started walking through the jungle. She had visited her fathers jungle research station before and knew that if she followed water downstream it would likely lead to some form of civilization. The day after the crash, she found a creek and started to follow it downstream. When the creek ran into a larger body of water, she followed that. When the vegetation on the river bank grew too thick, she waded knee-deep through the piranha and candiru-infested water (the murderous candiru fish swims up its victims urethra and feasts on the internal organs). The going was tough.

I had a cut in my arm, and after a few days I could feel that there was something in it, Juliane remembered. I took a look in the hole and saw that a fly had laid her eggs in the hole. It was full of maggots. I was afraid I would lose my arm.

Farther downstream she discovered more wreckage of the plane. I found another row of victims, with three dead women strapped in. They had landed head-first and the impact must have been so hard that they were buried two feet into the ground.

But she still didnt give up. Instead, she continued to fight her way through snarls of vegetation, swarms of insects, and leeches. She drank the river water, foraged for whatever scraps of food she could find, and waded through streams infested with crocodiles, piranhas, and devil rays. Sometimes I would see a crocodile on the bank and it would start into the water towards me, but I was not afraid, she said. I knew that crocodiles dont tend to attack humans.

Starved and exhausted, after ten days of trekking through the jungle Juliane came upon a small boat and a hut. She stayed there, and the next day was discovered by a group of Peruvian lumberjacks. They loaded her into their canoe and paddled seven hours to the nearest town, where a local pilot flew her to a hospital for treatment. Doctors discovered more than fifty maggots in her arm.

She went on to earn a PhD in zoology and now works at the Zoological Center in Munich, Germany. Her survival story remains one of the most amazing feats of human endurance Ive ever heard.

Juliane Koepcke, who claims that she isnt a spiritual person, has said that she looks at logical reasons for why she survived. Others who have found themselves in similarly harrowing survival situations, however, have attributed their ability to come out alive to other factors.

Frank Smyth

Take British explorer Frank Smyth. In 1933, he almost reached the summit of Mount Everest, which would have made him the first person
to do so. The situation was horrendous: freezing temperatures, powerful winds, and blinding, swirling snow. While the rest of his hiking party fell back, Smyth continued to press ahead, coming within 1,000 feet of his goal.

Later, writing in his diary, Smyth remembered how at one point during the ascent, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a slab of Kendel Mint Cake, broke it in half, and turned to give the other half to a companion. But there was no one there. All the time that I was climbing alone, I had a strong feeling that I was accompanied by a second person, he wrote. The feeling was so strong that it completely eliminated all loneliness I might otherwise have felt.

The Third Man Syndrome

This is an example of what is known as The Third Man Syndrome. Also described as the Third Man Factor, it refers to documented cases where an unseen presence or spirit has provided comfort and support in a traumatic situation. In recent years, well-known adventurers such as climber Reinhold Messner and polar explorers Peter Hillary and Ann Bancroft have reported having experiencing this phenomenon. In 2009, John G. Geiger wrote a book called The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible (Weinstein Books), which documents many examples.

Sir Ernest Shackleton

One of my greatest sources of inspiration is Sir Ernest Shackleton, the legendary Anglo-Irish explorer. I cant tell you how many times Ive thought back to his incredible story, his fortitude, and his never-give-in attitude. He once said, Never for me the lowered banner, never the last endeavor.

Shackletons Antarctic expedition of 1914during which he and his crew endeavored to cross the continent from sea to seaultimately failed, but the story of how he and the men with him fought against incredible odds won them many accolades and honors.

After their ship Endurance became trapped in ice, Shackleton and his men were forced to make a grueling journey across ice floes, then in lifeboats to Elephant Island, where for six months the main group subsisted on seal meat and blubber.

Shackleton took five men around the island to the north and then across 800 miles of treacherous ocean to South Georgia Island. He then hiked and climbed with two others for thirty-six hours across the islands uncharted interior to a whaling station, with another three months to go before he could safely reach the crew back on Elephant Island. Shackleton later wrote: I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.