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From the depths of oceans to towering mountains, these incredible survival stories will leave you speechless. Join us as we explore the most remarkable tales of human endurance against all odds. From shipwreck survivors to plane crash miracles, these individuals faced death and somehow returned to tell their extraordinary stories.
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00:00Many people come up to me and say that had they been there, they surely would have died.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 20 mesmerizing and unbelievable stories of survival.
00:11There will never be a more powerful experience for me.
00:16Violet Jessup.
00:20God Almighty.
00:22Very few people survive one tragedy.
00:24Violet Jessup survived three.
00:26Jessup was a stewardess on the RMS Olympic when it collided with the HMS Hawk on September 20th, 1911.
00:32Despite great damage, no fatalities were suffered.
00:34However, it was only a portent of things to come.
00:37Just months later, Violet was chosen to serve aboard a little ship called the Titanic.
00:41Jessup helped non-English speakers get into lifeboats before boarding Lifeboat 16 herself and escaping the shipwreck.
00:47Fast forward four years to November 21st, 1916, and Jessup was aboard the Britannica when it hit a German sea mine and sank.
00:53Undeterred by her awful luck, Jessup returned to work and sailed around the world a couple of times before retiring and living to 83.
01:01I'll be goddamned.
01:02Harrison Ojegba Okene.
01:04Well, you're looking at videos shot by a Dutch diving company.
01:07It was hired to recover bodies from a submerged tugboat off Nigeria until this happened.
01:13You've probably seen the video of Harrison Okene's rescue, but maybe you don't know the full story behind it.
01:22Okene was working as a cook aboard the Nigerian tugboat Jaskin 4 when it capsized on May 26th, 2013.
01:29The boat sank nearly 100 feet into the water, killing 11 crew members.
01:33Luckily for Okene, he was able to find an air pocket inside the flooded engineer's office.
01:37The pocket kept Okene alive, but he was forced to sit in the pitch black silence and could do nothing but wait for rescue.
01:43Luckily, rescue came about 60 hours later, when South African divers found a disoriented Okene inside the ship.
01:49While he initially suffered from trauma, Okene recovered and trained to become a commercial diver.
01:53Today, making it 9 years, that I was involved with the East East, and today I find myself diving in the same company that came for the rescue in Nigeria.
02:05The South Diving Operation, and today I find myself working with them as a diver.
02:09Marcus Luttrell
02:10Marcus.
02:13Never end the fight.
02:15You may know the story of Marcus Luttrell from the movie Lone Survivor.
02:18He and three other Navy SEALs were tasked with capturing a Taliban leader in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, but they were ambushed in the process.
02:25The three other SEALs were killed during the brutal firefight that ensued, making Luttrell the lone survivor.
02:30During the skirmish, Luttrell suffered a number of broken bones, including a broken back, shrapnel wounds from grenades, and multiple gunshot wounds.
02:38Despite the horrific injuries, Luttrell managed to avoid his pursuers, and he was eventually found by a villager and rescued.
02:43He was ultimately awarded both the Navy Cross and the Purple Heart for his actions.
02:47And I flipped into, upside down, over backwards, into the river.
02:51And I remember my knees hit me in the face, and it knocked me out again.
02:54And I was kind of, I mean, I was a blobbering mess.
02:57Everything was broken.
02:59Los treinta y tres.
03:00Just before 10 p.m., Urzua emerged.
03:03After taking the lead for 70 days, he insisted on being the last one out.
03:08On August 5, 2010, the San Jose Mine in Chile experienced a catastrophic cave-in, burying 33 workers over 2,000 feet underground.
03:16The miners were stuck in total darkness, suffering humid conditions and temperatures that reached upwards of 86 degrees.
03:23For food, they were rationed, two spoonfuls of tuna, a sip of milk, and half a biscuit every 48 hours.
03:28And this is how they lived for 17 days.
03:31Contact with the miners was finally made on August 22, when a note was found attached to a drill, reading,
03:36We Are Well.
03:37Knowing they were alive, supplies were then sent down through narrow boreholes, and on October 13th, all 33 miners were rescued in a custom-built capsule, having survived 69 days underground.
03:46I want to take you right to Chile, where this was the scene all day yesterday.
03:50And this morning, all 33 miners, trapped nearly half a mile underground, are safe along with their six rescuers.
03:58Bethany Hamilton.
03:59And then, a hole came over and he was like, he was like, oh my god, and he just pushed me.
04:06Did you know you'd lost your arm at that point?
04:07Yeah, right away I knew.
04:0913-year-old Bethany Hamilton was surfing off Kauai, Hawaii on October 31st, 2003.
04:14Hamilton was floating on her surfboard with her arms dangling in the water when a tiger shark pounced and devoured most of her left arm.
04:21She remained calm as she was rushed to shore, but she was losing an extraordinary amount of blood.
04:25Hamilton miraculously made it to shore and was rushed to the hospital.
04:28And in a divine twist of fate, she was operated on by the same doctor who was scheduled to perform her father's knee surgery that very morning.
04:34Hamilton had lost about 60% of her blood and was in hypovolemic shock, but she managed to survive and was back on the water just one month later.
04:41So Bethany survived the vicious attack, but most believed her hopes and dreams for her superstar surfing career were gone.
04:48But Bethany was back on her board four weeks later.
04:52Mauro Prosperi
04:55In Marabut, I ate a lot of pipistrelli.
04:57During my journey, I ate animals crudely, like the serpent, the top of the desert, these things here.
05:06Italian police officer and experienced marathon runner Mauro Prosperi became famous for his incredible survival story during the 1994 Marathon de Sablesse, a grueling ultramarathon across the Sahara Desert.
05:18During a fierce sandstorm, Prosperi became disoriented and ran off course.
05:21Now stranded and alone in the middle of the Sahara, Prosperi survived by eating various insects, consuming his own urine and drinking the blood of bats that he found in an abandoned shrine.
05:30At one point Prosperi even attempted to take his own life, but he was so dehydrated that this proved impossible.
05:36Luckily, a nomadic family found him and took him to safety on the ninth day.
05:40And despite some lasting physical damage, Prosperi lived to tell the tale.
05:43I remember Simon grabbing my shoulders and holding me.
06:01British mountaineer Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, were descending the Ciola Grande when Simpson slipped and fell, suffering a horrific compound fracture that made movement impossible.
06:18Yates lowered Simpson using ropes, but in the worsening conditions he accidentally dangled Simpson over a crevice.
06:24Being dragged toward the drop himself, Yates made the decision to cut Simpson free.
06:29Over the next three days, Simpson dragged his way out of the crevice and across miles of rocky terrain, often hallucinating and barely conscious.
06:36He miraculously made it back to base camp and just as Yates was leaving, Simpson never blamed Yates for his decision, repeatedly defended him in the press and called him a hero for even attempting to save him.
06:45He, you know, thanked me for, for trying to get him down the mountain for all that I'd done up to the point where I'd cut the rope, you know, and he said, you know, and he said to me, I'd have, I'd have done the same.
07:06Vishwaj Kumar Ramesh.
07:07Local police are now saying at least one passenger on board the Air India flight survived incredibly.
07:14In June of 2025, an Air India flight out of Ahmedabad quickly turned fatal when it collided with a building mere moments after takeoff.
07:22The plane had been carrying 242 people and the crash took 241 lives, leaving one man, Vishwaj Kumar Ramesh, as the sole survivor.
07:31Ramesh, who was traveling with his brother, was able to push himself out of the rubble and exit the wreckage through the craft's emergency door,
07:37saving his own life.
07:38His survival is nothing short of miraculous, only having suffered minor injuries despite the immense impact of the disaster.
07:44The survivor is a British man and he's now at a local hospital, a senior police officer shared with Reuters.
07:51He had been traveling with his brother, but does not know if his brother survived.
07:56The Essex Survivors.
07:57I will tell you of the Essex.
07:59I believe you will be disappointed.
08:01With every word I say, it will be true.
08:03One of the most famous sea-based survival stories concerns the Essex, a whaling ship that was rammed by a massive sperm whale on November 20, 1820.
08:11The ship sank and survivors crammed into three lifeboats.
08:14Stuck on the open ocean, the boats drifted for three months under the brutal Pacific sun.
08:19Men died of starvation and dehydration, and the survivors consumed their flesh.
08:22And on one fateful day, a lottery was held to decide who would be shot and killed to feed the others,
08:27with 17-year-old Owen Coffin drawing the short straw.
08:30Rescue finally came in February when the lifeboats were found by passing ships.
08:34Of the 20 men that boarded the lifeboats, only eight survived.
08:37Their story inspiring Herman Melville to write a little book called Moby Dick.
08:41The drama's done.
08:43All are departed away.
08:46The great shroud of the sea rolls over the Pequod, her crew, and Moby Dick.
08:53I only am escaped, alone, to tell thee.
08:59The Donner Party.
09:00Someone cut the flesh from the arms and legs of Patrick Dolan.
09:06They roasted the meat and ate it, averting their faces from each other and weeping.
09:12It wasn't an easy feat, and surely wasn't easy on the feat back in the day when pioneers were seeking better lives.
09:17In May 1846, James F. Reed and George Donner led a group of Americans by wagon train to California.
09:24Hoping to reach the state before snowfall, they took a new route and reported shortcut called the Hastings Cutoff,
09:29despite it being ill-advised by others.
09:31Though it should have been an easy route, the Donner-Reed Party ultimately found themselves snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains
09:37during the winter of 1846 to 1847.
09:40Their food slowly became scarce, which meant that some of the pioneers turned to cannibalism.
09:44In the end, only 48 of the 87 members of the party survived to tell this riveting tale.
09:49Alone among the survivors, Lewis Kiesberg spoke openly of eating human flesh,
09:54and was reviled as a man-eater and ghoul.
09:57Hugh Glass.
09:58What do we do?
09:59Run right now.
10:01What about Hawk?
10:02You don't have a problem no more.
10:04We can't just leave him here.
10:05This American frontiersman lived a life with high tolerance for pain.
10:09In 1823, Hugh Glass was on a fur trading venture with dozens of men when he encountered a grizzly bear that started his journey of agony.
10:16He killed the bear, but at a price of multiple flesh lacerations and a broken leg that the rest of the expedition consider him a goner.
10:23Glass was promised a proper burial after his death when the leader of the expedition asked for two volunteers to stay behind,
10:29but he was instead deserted and betrayed.
10:31Glass then took a rain check on the burial and crawled his way to the nearest camp.
10:34It took six weeks, but he managed to survive by consuming berries and preventing gangrene by letting maggots eat his infected flesh.
10:41I ain't afraid to die anymore.
10:45I've done it already.
10:47Beck Weathers.
10:48There is competition between every person in this mountain.
10:52Those that tread Mount Everest have two goals in mind,
10:55and they are reaching the summit and staying alive to tell the tale.
10:58On May 10, 1996, 49-year-old Beck Weathers was suffering from health problems during his climb to the summit.
11:04After going almost entirely blind, he stopped his ascent and was waiting for his guide when a massive blizzard struck.
11:10Throughout his time on the mountain, he slipped in and out of consciousness,
11:12was separated from the group, spent multiple hours in the sub-zero temperatures,
11:16and was left for dead on numerous occasions.
11:18Though he managed to walk down to camp and survive these extreme conditions,
11:22Weathers didn't come out unscathed, as he ended up losing his nose and amputating most of his left hand and his right arm.
11:27Well, you were truly a blessed man, I think.
11:30Perhaps there was a guardian angel watching over you that night.
11:34Well, I think there must have been.
11:36Brad Cavanaugh and Deborah Scaling-Kylie.
11:39And it was the most eerie sensation.
11:43And I noticed these, like, torpedo-shaped bodies.
11:46And I thought, fish!
11:47And then, all of a sudden, one came really close,
11:50and I realized it was, like, hundreds of sharks.
11:54They were everywhere.
11:54What started off as a simple sailboat delivery from Maine to Florida
11:58quickly turned into an absolute nightmare after bad weather shipwrecked a crew of five in October of 1982.
12:04Sailor Deborah Scaling-Kylie was hired to crew a sailing yacht named the Trashman
12:09when the heavy rain and winds of a sudden storm unexpectedly hit,
12:12and things went from bad to worse.
12:14After the boat sinks, the crew members begin to lose their minds and their wills.
12:18Meanwhile, sharks, dehydration, and infection from injuries threaten their lives.
12:21Five days later, only Kylie and Brad Cavanaugh remained alive.
12:24Barely.
12:25And they're rescued by a Soviet cargo ship that just happens to be passing by.
12:29And so we said the Lord's Prayer in Psalm 23,
12:33and then we just gently pushed her body overboard.
12:38And we decided then that we would just go back to sleep
12:42so that if the sharks attacked her, we wouldn't have to see it.
12:47And so that's what we did.
12:48Phineas Gage.
12:49The case of Phineas Gage is one of the great medical curiosities of all time.
12:53On September 13, 1848, Phineas Gage was in charge of blasting rocks for railroads
12:58when he accidentally aligned his face with the blast hole after being distracted by his workers.
13:03This allowed for the over three-foot tamping iron to shoot through his face and out through his head.
13:08Even after the debilitating accident that should have easily killed him,
13:11Gage was conscious and remained as such throughout his grueling recovery.
13:14And although he did physically recover, Gage was left emotionally unstable,
13:18which sparked discussions of personality changes linked to the damage of the frontal lobe.
13:22He seemed fine.
13:23And physically, yes, he was.
13:26But his injury resulted in a complete change to his personality.
13:30So much so that friends that knew him started referring to him as no longer Gage.
13:36Aaron Ralston.
13:36It was absolutely the greatest feeling to be given the chance to get out of here.
13:45Looking down canyon, I knew I had a hell of a trip left.
13:51But at least I was not going to die right here.
13:57In this story, the impractical becomes practical, even if it means shedding some blood.
14:01In April 2003, Ralston went on an ordinary hike through Blue John Canyon.
14:05After a boulder unexpectedly dislodged while he was descending,
14:09his right hand was crushed against the canyon wall.
14:11For five days, he struggled to set himself free,
14:13all while slowly eating away at what little food he had
14:16and even drinking his urine when he ran out of water.
14:18With no one aware of his whereabouts, Ralston ultimately did the unthinkable.
14:22Using a multi-tool, he amputated his right arm with a dull blade,
14:25which took about an hour.
14:27It may have been a slow and painful process,
14:29but it turned out to be a decision that saved his life.
14:31And then, boom.
14:32And I wasn't even attached anymore.
14:34And I fell down like this.
14:36And I was free.
14:41Jose Salvador Alvarengo.
14:43It's the kind of unbelievable story they make movies about.
14:47A man in a boat has washed up on the remote Marshall Islands in the North Pacific.
14:51He claims he'd been drifting on the open ocean for 13 months
14:55and used his wits and a knife to survive.
14:58In November 2012, two fishermen, Jose Salvador Alvarengo and Ezequiel Cordoba,
15:03departed from the coast of Mexico to do some deep-sea fishing,
15:06but they were thrown off course after a violent storm.
15:08Losing the will to survive, Cordoba stopped eating and died,
15:11leaving Alvarengo to consider taking his own life for many months.
15:15Surviving on things like seabirds, turtles, fish, and his own urine,
15:18it was on the 438th day of his voyage that Alvarengo finally spotted an island
15:22to which he swam and from which he was ultimately rescued.
15:25It's estimated that he traveled about 6,000 miles during his 438 days at sea.
15:29He's now clean-shaven and got a haircut, but still seems dazed.
15:33When given the opportunity, he only said he was grateful.
15:36On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes,
15:57stranding the survivors at over 11,000 feet in the freezing mountains.
16:00They made shelter in the fuselage,
16:02with temperatures outside often dropping to negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
16:05Eventually confronted with starvation, they eventually ate the flesh of the deceased,
16:10following a pact to honor each other and share their bodies if they died.
16:13And on day 16, an avalanche struck, killing eight of the survivors
16:16and forcing the rest to dig themselves out.
16:19Knowing that rescue wasn't coming,
16:20two men climbed a mountain and walked for 10 days to reach safety,
16:24eventually finding a group of Chilean herdsmen.
16:26Helicopters rescued the 14 other survivors.
16:28Their ordeal finally over after 72 grueling days.
16:32It's magnificent.
16:35It's God.
16:42And it'll carry us over every stone, I swear.
16:47I swear it to you.
16:49I swear it to you.
16:52On December 24, 1971, 17-year-old Giuliani Cupke was flying over the Peruvian rainforest when her plane was struck by lightning and broke apart in midair.
17:20Still strapped to her seat, Cupke fell over 10,000 feet and miraculously survived the crash with nothing but a broken collarbone, deep cuts, and an eye injury.
17:28Alone in the jungle, she relied on survival skills learned from her biologist parents.
17:32And for the next 11 days, she followed a stream and survived on candy and river water.
17:36Cupke eventually encountered some local loggers who helped her get the necessary medical attention.
17:40She was the sole survivor of the 91 people on board.
17:43Overwhelmed by bliss, her heart stands still for an entire minute.
17:48And she knows that a boat will come, slowly and softly, to carry her away, to rescue her at last.
17:57Ernest Shackleton
17:57Although built to maneuver through ice, the ship known as the Endurance found herself lodged in the ice of the Weddell Sea.
18:14Her skipper, Ernest Shackleton, and his crew converted the icebound vessel into a winter camp.
18:18However, as spring arrived, the hull began giving away and the ship sank, leaving the crew to set up camp on the drifting ice.
18:24Shackleton led his men from ice flow to ice flow with the hopes of arriving to safety at Paulette Island.
18:29But a month into his journey and just 60 miles from the island, the ice broke, forcing the men into lifeboats.
18:33Just days later, the adventure came to an end at Elephant Island for a total of 497 days at sea.
18:39They were suit-grimed because of living over blubber stoves for so long.
18:46Their clothes were filthy. Their hair was uncut.
18:49They were like men returning from the dead.
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19:08We told you the unbelievable story of air crash survivor Yuliana Kupke.
19:25Now it's time for that of flight attendant Vesna Vulovic.
19:28In January 1972, Vulovic was on a plane when a bomb exploded while they were in midair.
19:33Though Vesna fell over 33,000 feet, she has no recollection of the landing.
19:38It did leave her with a fractured skull, broken legs, and broken vertebrae that left her temporarily paralyzed.
19:43As well as with the Guinness Book of Records title for the survival of the highest fall without a parachute.
19:48Following the fall, Vulovic was in a coma for 27 days and only discovered upon waking up that she was the sole survivor of the crash.
19:55It's incredible to think that someone survived such a great fall, and rightly she's celebrated as being one of the most remarkable human beings that's ever lived.
20:05Do you know any other fascinating stories of this kind? Let us know about them in the comments below.
20:09Phineas miraculously survived.
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