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00:00Warning. What you're about to see could be disturbing to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.
00:13Imagine surviving a coma, only to wake up at your own funeral.
00:19To the astonishment and terror of everyone there, Essie sits up out of her coffin and smiles.
00:26She tries to walk towards her own parents. They flee as though she's a ghost or a zombie.
00:32Or facing off against an apex predator and living to tell the tale.
00:37Suddenly he's slammed from the side. His mask is torn from his face.
00:41Then very quickly the shark goes in for another bite.
00:45How about free falling 7,000 feet and landing on the unlikeliest lifesaver?
00:50Fate has thrown her another curve ball.
00:53She has landed directly on top of a huge colony of fire ants.
00:59These fire ants attack and bite and sting Joan by the thousands.
01:04And the pain is relentless.
01:07These are the stories of near-death experiences so shocking.
01:11They're truly unbelievable.
01:26There are many ways to cheat death.
01:29Good luck. Great timing.
01:31Or something even more unbelievable that happens to one lovesick man in Russia.
01:39It's 2023 in Russia and a man only known as Arthur is heartbroken.
01:46And he's decided to drown his sorrows in a long, all-night pub crawl.
01:54At the end of the night, he wanders into a stranger's apartment on the 19th floor and ends up on
02:00the balcony.
02:01He then leans back and flips right over the railing.
02:11Street cameras capture this.
02:14A very fast blur zipping past the camera as he plummets towards the street.
02:22Debris shoots skyward as he buries himself into the top of an SUV.
02:28And you think to yourself, this is the end. This guy's done.
02:32Instead, they find something more surprising.
02:36Arthur is not only standing by his own willpower, but he's singing and he ends up singing in the ambulance
02:43all the way to the emergency room.
02:45First responders are all shocked. How did he survive a 200-foot fall?
02:49There are a surprising number of recorded cases of very drunken people surviving horrible accidents.
02:55Essentially, their bodies are so loose, they don't brace for impact, and sometimes they actually experience less trauma.
03:03Incredibly, he only has a concussion and some spinal compression fractures.
03:08He's extremely lucky that he landed on that car with enough force to be able to crumple it to make
03:14the SUV absorb the impact.
03:17He survived something that absolutely would have killed a more sober man.
03:25Surviving a 19-story fall seems impossible, yet it's a walk in the park compared to a high-altitude descent
03:32that is truly the stuff of nightmares.
03:40It's Christmas Eve, 1971, and Julianne Kopka, a German-Peruvian high school student, is flying with her mother in a
03:48rickety passenger plane over the jungles of Peru.
03:52The plane is packed for two reasons. One, it's the holidays, but perhaps more importantly, because the airline's other two
03:58aircraft have crashed recently, and this is the only one left functioning.
04:03The first 30 to 40 minutes of the flight are pretty uneventful, but when the plane heads into a severe
04:09thunderstorm, things go bad pretty quickly.
04:14Lightning strikes the wing of the plane. Sparks fly and crack.
04:19Julianne hears her mother say out loud, this is the end.
04:24As the engines fail, the plane begins to nosedive, and for Julianne, everything goes black.
04:34Suddenly, she is falling out of the sky, still attached to a bank of seats. The G-forces and the
04:39violent spinning cause her to pass out again.
04:48Julianne wakes up on the jungle floor, injured, very confused, but somehow still alive.
04:55She's suffered a massive concussion. When she tries to stand, she immediately passes out.
05:01Not to mention the fact she has a horrible, gaping wound, and she's losing blood.
05:05How she survived the landing is still a mystery, but one of the theories is the spinning of the row
05:11of seats acted kind of like a helicopter, where it provided enough lift just to slow her down, so when
05:18she hit the jungle, she wasn't killed on impact.
05:21The other theory that's positive is that the bottom of the seat that she was in took the majority of
05:26the impact, and as she continued to fall through the canopy and fall through the leaves and through the branches,
05:31that continued to slow down her descent until she ultimately hit the jungle floor.
05:38Julianne wanders the crash site, which is now littered with bodies, and she notices a corpse with ladies' shoes. It
05:45could possibly be her mother, but at this point, her thinking is so scattered, it's just hard for her to
05:50really absorb anything.
05:52Dazed or not, Julianne knows one thing.
05:55Julianne knows one thing. She has to find help.
05:57She remembers something that her father, a field biologist, once told her.
06:02Follow the water. Even the tiniest streams will lead to bigger streams, and those will lead to rivers, and that's
06:10where the people will be.
06:11She's trying to take in her surroundings, but she has no clue where to find water until she hears a
06:18unique call of a bird she knows called a crested chicken.
06:23And she remembers they live near rivers.
06:27Her path to the river is long and perilous, swarming with panthers, snakes, and other fearsome predators.
06:34But the biggest threat comes from a much smaller creature, now making a home out of the horrific gash in
06:40her arm, maggots.
06:42If maggots are appearing, that means that the tissue around the wound has died, gangrene potentially setting in, and that
06:49could be fatal.
06:50Despite her body breaking down, Julianne keeps moving, drawn by the one thing that cuts through the silence.
06:59For three days, she tracks the sound of the bird.
07:07And sure enough, it leads her to a stream.
07:11The stream offers a glimmer of hope, but with each passing day, doubt creeps in.
07:17A week has passed since her plane crashed, and occasionally she'll hear a plane hovering above her.
07:23She'll scream for search and rescue, but the jungle canopy is so thick that they don't hear her.
07:29Then, amid the endless hum of the jungle, a new sound emerges.
07:35She hears the sound of running water.
07:38She's found the river, just like her father told her she would.
07:43She's too weak to swim, so her only real option is to float down the river on logs or anything
07:49else that will carry her.
07:51While she's drifting down the river, there are crocodiles that see her floating.
07:55Luckily, they end up leaving her alone and letting her continue to drift on.
08:01Eventually, she comes across a small riverboat docked by a cabin, which gives her an idea.
08:08Julianne remembers, as a child, they had a dog that also had a wound that became infested with maggots.
08:12Her dad would grab some diesel fuel to clean all the maggots out.
08:16With the outboard motor fuel, she also does the same.
08:20And the maggots immediately rush to the surface and leave the wound.
08:25Exhausted and malnourished, Julianne passes out in the cabin, her first shelter since she fell from the sky ten days
08:33ago.
08:34When Julianne awakes, she's startled because she sees three lumber workers standing over her.
08:40They are completely shocked and terrified by her appearance.
08:43She is emaciated, she's filthy, and her eyes are blood red from the concussion.
08:50They scream and run away.
08:52It turns out there actually is a local legend about a water demon with big fiery red eyes.
08:59They think that she's coming to get them.
09:03Julianne convinces them that she's not a demon, but the survivor of a plane crash.
09:08And they take her to the neighboring town to get help.
09:11After spending 11 days in the jungle, Julianne finally reunites with her father.
09:17The voice in her head, which told her, follow the water and you'll find the people.
09:24By chance, famed film director Werner Herzog was supposed to be on that plane with Julianne, but he was bumped.
09:31Decades later, he returns with her to the jungle to retrace this incredible tale of survival.
09:39Rock climbing is full of risks, but sometimes the most terrifying part isn't the fall.
09:45Take, for instance, the experience of one man on Japan's Mount Futago in 2022.
09:57The climber shudders as a black blur shoots past him.
10:02That blur is a vicious Japanese black bear.
10:10There's a myriad of ways he could die.
10:12He's got no ropes.
10:14The bear could knock him off this cliff some 3,000 feet up, or he could slip as he tries
10:20to escape.
10:20There's also the unpleasant prospect of being mauled and killed by this female because Japanese black bear are notoriously aggressive.
10:36Black bears are an apex predator.
10:38They're a formidable animal.
10:39And to fight off a black bear, even on flat ground, is almost an impossible task.
10:46Imagine hanging off of a cliff.
10:48And to add to the peril, a bear can climb a mountain much faster than a person can.
10:55Just when he thinks it can't get any worse, an unexpected visitor shows up.
11:01In the middle of the mayhem, he notices there's a little bear cub in the distance.
11:05This is by far the worst case scenario when it comes to bear attacks because 70% of people that
11:11lose their lives from bear attacks are from a very angry mother defending their cubs.
11:17Luckily, the climber has a secret weapon.
11:20He happens to know karate.
11:21So when the bear lunges at him, he actually throws some powerful kicks and punches.
11:28One of those kicks lands hard enough that it rattles her.
11:35And she retreats.
11:40When you add up all the factors, this guy is extremely lucky to survive the situation.
11:47Completely out of breath and panicked, the climber finally makes his way back up the mountain.
11:53Knowing that today, he just barely survived filming his own death on a GoPro.
12:02Karate might come in handy against angry bears on a mountain.
12:06But it's not going to save you underwater.
12:10By 22 years old, Australian Rodney Fox is already a spearfishing legend.
12:14In 1963, he's determined to hold on to his local title.
12:18He is free diving without a tank, taking deep breaths and combing the reefs off of Aldinga Beach in search
12:26of exotic fish.
12:28What Rodney doesn't realize is that he is also being hunted.
12:35Suddenly, he's slammed from the side.
12:37His spear gun is knocked from his hand.
12:39His mask is torn from his face.
12:42His first thought is that he's been struck by a submarine.
12:46Rodney isn't sure what's happening.
12:48But what he does know is that he's moving through the water faster than he's ever moved in his life.
12:54Rodney feels an intense pressure from his hip to above his shoulder.
12:58And all the air is just suddenly expelled from his lungs.
13:02Then very quickly, he realizes that he's in the mouth of a great white shark.
13:10He's weakened by the loss of blood and also the lack of air.
13:13So he reaches for his diver's knife and begins jabbing the shark near his eyes and near his gills.
13:19Incredibly, he actually feels the shark letting him go.
13:22Most would try to flee from the shark.
13:25But quick thinking Rodney goes on the offensive.
13:28Rodney rushes toward the shark and bear hugs it, wrapping his bloody arms around its great sandpapery belly.
13:37This is similar to a tactic used by seals when they're attacked by great white sharks.
13:43They crowd close to its midsection to stay away from its deadly jaws.
13:48Now the shark wants to get rid of Rodney.
13:51So it shakes him off.
13:52And once free, Rodney is going for the surface.
13:57He looks down as he's kicking his way to the surface.
13:59And through the bloody murk of the water, he can see the shark is coming at him.
14:04The shark goes in for another bite.
14:07But to Rodney's surprise, the shark doesn't bite him.
14:10It goes for the bag of fish that he has speared.
14:13This may sound like a lucky break, but the bag of fish is still attached to him.
14:19Rodney's hands are too torn up to trigger the release on his bag of speared fish attached to his dive
14:26belt.
14:27So when the shark takes off, Rodney is dragged by the bag back down toward the ocean floor.
14:33By some last-minute miracle, the line snaps on its own.
14:38And Rodney is free to swim toward the surface.
14:43Rodney breaks the surface and begins to gulp air.
14:46And he sees that a boat is bearing down on him.
14:49And it turns out that the blood that is pouring out of Rodney has created essentially a dye marker to
14:54locate him.
14:55As Rodney is pulled onto the boat, the only thing holding him together is his wetsuit.
15:00He is in terrible condition.
15:02There's this giant bite mark going from his shoulder all the way down to his hip.
15:07And his organs are hanging out.
15:10Every rib on the left side of his body is cracked and his lung is punctured.
15:16It takes almost 500 stitches to put Rodney back together again.
15:21But he survives and fights his way back to a full recovery.
15:26Rodney's massive scar becomes the stuff of spearfishing legend.
15:29Some say the encounter inspired Peter Benchley when he was writing the book Jaws.
15:34Now in his 80s, Fox still chases sharks, but with a camera and from inside a cage.
15:43When it comes to escaping death, most manage to do it before actually being buried.
15:48But shockingly, there are a few exceptions.
15:53In 1915 in South Carolina, you had one of those incredibly scorching hot summers.
16:0030-year-old Essie Dunbar falls into a violent epileptic seizure due to all the heat.
16:07She passes out on the ground and the local county doctor, D.K. Briggs, is called.
16:12When Briggs arrives to the scene, Essie is completely motionless.
16:17After several failed attempts to revive her, D.K. Briggs announces the sad news to Essie's family.
16:24Their beloved daughter is dead.
16:27The grief-stricken Dunbars send word to Essie's sister, but she lives in another town.
16:33And unfortunately, they have to plan the funeral for the next day because of the excessive heat.
16:38They can't leave a body lying around.
16:40Her sister is devastated and wants to come home for the funeral, which is going to be incredibly tight for
16:46her to make it.
16:48Remember, the automobile as we know it still was not in existence.
16:52So it was going to take her sister quite a while to make it back to the family home.
16:58Three ministers actually preach at Essie's funeral to try to elongate the service.
17:02And yet, there still isn't enough time for her sister to arrive.
17:05By the time Essie's sister makes it, the funeral's over.
17:10And Essie has been buried.
17:13Essie's sister is inconsolable.
17:15She can't believe she's missed the funeral.
17:18So to finally calm her down, the family decides they will exhume Essie so her sister can see her one
17:27final time.
17:28It's a little bit extreme that they would even do that.
17:31But unbelievably, the groundskeepers of the cemetery, they all agree.
17:37And they decide they will dig the coffin up.
17:42And when they open the coffin, a dead body is not what they find.
17:48To the astonishment and terror of everyone in the group, Essie sits up out of her coffin, looks at her
17:55sister, and smiles.
17:58By some accounts, the preachers actually faint and fall into the grave.
18:03Essie steps out of the coffin and tries to walk towards her own parents.
18:07They flee as though she's a ghost or a zombie.
18:11Essie's rise seems like something out of a horror movie.
18:14But the real story is far more chilling.
18:17A seizure is an electrical storm in the brain.
18:22So likely what happened is that during her seizure, that electrical activity ended up stopping the heart.
18:30So when the county doctor pronounced her dead, her heart actually was stopped.
18:35This is a phenomenon called ictal asystole.
18:40And on top of that, when people think of seizures, they think of the whole body violently jerking.
18:45But there are tonic seizures as well, where the whole body is just fully stiff.
18:51So that stiffening could have mimicked rigor mortis and tricked DK Briggs into believing this patient was dead.
19:00Luckily, Essie is no zombie, and Essie's sister knows that.
19:04Calmer heads prevail, and she's invited back home and makes a full recovery.
19:11Essie goes on to live a pretty normal and quiet life.
19:13She works on her family's farm until she passes away in the year 1962.
19:19A local newspaper announces the service as final funeral for a South Carolina woman.
19:26Unbelievably, this isn't the only time someone is pronounced dead a little prematurely.
19:34In 1754, Ewan MacDonald is a Scottish soldier on leave, and he goes out to the pub.
19:41A fight breaks out.
19:43Suddenly, someone pulls out a knife, and things go from bad to worse.
19:48Ewan, who is a trained soldier, ends up with the knife in his hands and stuck in the neck of
19:54one of the locals, Robert Parker, who dies from the knife wound.
19:58The locals want justice, and they're going to get it.
20:02Ewan is charged with murder and convicted.
20:05The judge sentences him to death by hanging.
20:09In addition, the judge rules his body be donated to a nearby medical school.
20:16That might seem like a strange pronouncement by the judge, but at this point in time, it is very hard
20:22to find good, healthy bodies for anatomical study.
20:25So this is really a gift to the medical students, and they're excited to get this body.
20:32It's execution day, and Ewan is brought up to the gallows.
20:37He's desperately trying to stop this from happening.
20:40He's shoving and pushing, and he tries to knock the hangman off his ladder.
20:44It's all to no avail.
20:46The noose is tightened, the lever is pulled, and Ewan is hung from the neck until a medical professional on
20:55the scene officially declares him dead.
20:59Ewan's body is brought to the dissection theater to carry out the second part of his sentence, the autopsy.
21:06The surgeon is excited to get underway with this job.
21:09He sharpens his tools, gets dressed, and when he enters the dissection theater, he is met with the shock of
21:16his life.
21:20Sitting up on the table is a very frightened, very much alive Ewan McDonald.
21:26And he is panicking, begging, pleading for help.
21:30Luckily for him, he's in the right place.
21:32There is a doctor, and you'd think that this doctor would come to his aid and heal him.
21:38He's still alive.
21:40But this medical miracle isn't enough for the doctor to change his plans.
21:47Instead of saving Ewan, this surgeon grabs a mallet and knocks Ewan upside the head, finishing the hangman's job.
21:57This surgeon is super excited to get this dissection underway.
22:01And when he sees a living Ewan, he's not going to let that come between him and his dissection.
22:08In perhaps a stunning example of karmic retribution, years later, the same surgeon would die from a kick to the
22:14head, delivered by his own horse.
22:17No word on whether he donated his own body to science.
22:23We've seen death avoided thanks to freak physics, a sheer will to live, and even slipping the hangman's noose.
22:30But sometimes, the best way to beat the reaper is with a little help from Mother Nature.
22:38The Empire State Building in New York City was once the world's tallest building.
22:43And there have been numerous instances of desperate people using the building's height to jump off and end it all.
22:511979, one of these despondent people is 29-year-old Elvita Adams.
22:58It's a cold, windy night on December 2nd, and Elvita walks the observation deck on the building's 86th floor.
23:05When she's confident that there's no one close enough to stop her, she quickly scales the eight-foot fence and
23:11jumps off.
23:15Now, just as she leaps, a massive gust of wind comes along and pushes her back towards the building.
23:24Instead of falling 86 stories to the ground, she falls only one, landing on a narrow ledge on the 85th
23:31floor.
23:33She's stunned, she's in tremendous pain, and really not sure what's happened, how she got there.
23:37Wind moving a body this way is not something that a small breeze is going to do.
23:43It takes like 60 to 70-mile-per-hour wind gusts.
23:47And it turns out that the higher you go in altitude, the faster the wind becomes because there's less friction
23:52with the ground and all the stuff on the ground.
23:55And in New York City, you have these tall skyscrapers.
23:57And as the wind funnels through them, going from a wide area to a more narrow area, that increases the
24:04wind speed.
24:05What's really astonishing about this is the timing of this gust of wind.
24:10It had to be coming from exactly the right angle at exactly the right time to save Elvita's life.
24:17A night supervisor named George Rice spots Elvita on the ledge.
24:22Incredibly, with the help of others, he's able to get Elvita safely inside the building without anybody falling.
24:27Elvita is taken to Bellevue Hospital with a fractured pelvis, but otherwise unharmed.
24:32All thanks to that miraculous gust of wind.
24:38One miracle might make you a believer in divine intervention.
24:41But our next lucky protagonist has his guardian angel working overtime.
24:49It's a pretty cool January day in the year 1962 in Croatia.
24:52You have 32-year-old music teacher, Fran Selak, riding on the train.
24:57Then suddenly, and without warning, Fran hears this sound of just crushing and grinding metal and sees gravel just shooting
25:05past the window.
25:07The train has jumped the track and is now careening into the icy water that is below them.
25:14The frigid water rushes into the train.
25:18And by the time Fran realizes what's happening, he's got a broken arm and some brutal hypothermia.
25:25But somehow, Fran is able to swim his way to help and is plucked from the river before it kills
25:30him.
25:33Now, 17 other passengers are not so lucky.
25:36But this is not the angel of death's last swing at Fran.
25:40Not by a long shot.
25:43In 1963, Fran takes his first ever plane ride.
25:47This has got to be an exciting moment for him.
25:49But not long after takeoff, something terrible happens.
25:52Mid-flight, the door is ripped off the fuselage.
25:57A flight attendant and Fran are sucked out along with it.
26:02If you're sucked out of a plane, the odds of your survival are pretty much next to zero.
26:10Nineteen people aboard the plane will die when the plane crashes.
26:15But Fran somehow survives this event because, as he falls to Earth, he lands in a haystack.
26:22After recovering, Fran welcomes an uneventful life for the next three years.
26:27Until a routine trip takes an unexpected turn.
26:31Fran's on a bus that slams into an embankment and slides into another cold river.
26:39Once again, he's able to free himself from the bus, swim away from the wreckage through the icy river, and
26:45makes it to safety.
26:47Fran is done taking chances with public transportation.
26:50So he saves up and buys himself a car.
26:53In the early 1970s, not one but two of Fran's cars catch fire, nearly killing him each time.
27:02This is not the guy you want to carpool with.
27:05A more cautious Fran spends the next 20 years or so with his feet solidly on the ground.
27:11But even that's not without risk.
27:14One day, he's just walking the streets near his home, and a bus jumps a curb and then hits it
27:20on the sidewalk.
27:23Fran figures, look, death is gonna follow me no matter where I go, so I may as well do whatever
27:28I want.
27:29So he decides to take a mountain vacation, which requires him driving up a winding, perilous mountain road.
27:39You can probably guess how this is going to go.
27:43Halfway through the trip, a semi-truck emerges from Fran's blind spot,
27:48hits his car, and knocks him off the side of this road, plummeting 300 feet.
27:56Somehow, Fran is able to eject himself from the car and hang onto a tree before being rescued.
28:03Now, as reporters dig into the story of Fran's unlucky streak, he becomes kind of a folk hero.
28:08And no big surprise, he really loves the attention.
28:12Now, Fran's quick to point out that after four divorces, he's unlucky in love too.
28:16But the unluckiest man in the world does have a happy ending.
28:20Well, in 2003, Fran's luck changes for the better.
28:24He wins 900,000 euros in the lottery.
28:29The lucky streak continues when a major snack company asks Fran to do a commercial after his lottery win.
28:35It's a very lucrative endorsement deal.
28:38But Fran turns it down.
28:40Why? Because it requires him flying on a plane.
28:45And Fran Selleck is done with planes, with trains, with buses, and probably with automobiles.
28:54Fran, however, is still willing to take some risks.
28:59Despite having had four previous divorces, he decides, you know what?
29:03I'm feeling it right now. Let me go ahead and just propose to my girlfriend, which he does.
29:07I mean, when the opportunity strikes, you have to take advantage of it, right?
29:15After living to the ripe age of 87, Fran gives much of his lucky fortune to friends and family.
29:23They say if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life.
29:28But as one unlucky lobsterman finds out, it's tough to love your job when it tries to kill you.
29:4140 miles south of Montauk, New York,
29:45lobsterman John Aldrich is hard at work on the deck of his workboat, the Anna Mary.
29:49His partner, Anthony Sosinski, and another crew member are snoozing away in the cabin
29:54while they make the long crawl to their traps.
29:57John is on the deck prepping the big tanks that are going to hold the lobsters that they're going to
30:01pull in.
30:01He's filling one with cold water, which will keep the lobsters alive.
30:05He goes to the second tank, and it's blocked by a couple big chests of ice, about 200 pounds each.
30:11He thinks for a moment he should wake up his buddy who's sleeping downstairs, but he decides to do it
30:16on his own.
30:17This may prove to be one of the worst decisions of John's life.
30:21John thrusts his weight against it.
30:23He gives a heave, and the handle breaks.
30:27He goes head over heels into open water.
30:32He is tossed by the prop wash as he tries to scream to his partner.
30:38But the loud diesel engines just drown him out.
30:47Alone in the open ocean at night, with no life jacket, no flares, no radio, John knows there's hardly a
30:54chance of survival.
30:57John is wearing big bright green boots that go almost up to his thigh, and they're so huge, his friends
31:02call them his Herman Munster boots.
31:04And first thing you're supposed to do in this situation is to kick off your work boots, because in most
31:08cases they will drag you underwater.
31:10But John notices that they seem to be keeping him afloat.
31:14So he carefully takes off his boots, and turns them upside down, drops them down into the water, capturing air.
31:19And he sticks one under each arm, and now he's improvised a flotation system.
31:30Hours later, John's friend and partner Anthony wakes up on the animary and makes a disturbing discovery.
31:38He comes up on the deck, nobody's there, and the boat is just roaring forward on autopilot.
31:45Anthony sees the deck lid to the lobster hold is open.
31:48He scrambles and ducks his head inside, worried his friend fell into the tank and drowned.
31:54But the tank is full of water, and no John.
31:58When Anthony spots the broken cooler handle, he realizes John must have rolled out the back of the boat.
32:05Critical question, though, is when.
32:12Anthony immediately puts out a frantic call to the Coast Guards and to the rest of the captains in the
32:16area.
32:17They estimate John fell into the water around 11 p.m., and what they do is create this giant search
32:24grid.
32:24In addition to the Coast Guard, nearly every private boat in the Montauk area has stowed their fishing gear
32:29and headed out to see if they can help with the search.
32:31The biggest problem, John fell in the water at 3.30 a.m., not 11 p.m.
32:38So they're all searching 30 miles in the wrong direction.
32:45Meanwhile, John is doing whatever he can to stay alive, but several hours in, he's running on empty.
32:51His only hope is to find the buoy of a lobster trap and use it to stay afloat.
32:59The ocean has a really big swell that day, so every time a swell comes along, it kind of lifts
33:03him up,
33:05and it gives him a higher vantage point.
33:07And at one point, he spots a larger lobster buoy that's floating in the water that's called a high flyer.
33:12He figures if I can grab onto it, it'll give me an extra chance of survival.
33:17As John holds on for dear life, one persistent search volunteer questions Anthony in more detail.
33:24They go over the minute details of the deck and the condition he found it in, and they figure it
33:29out.
33:30One of the tanks was full of cold water, and John would not have done that until they were really
33:34close to their traps.
33:35They realize now that John probably went in the water a lot later than they initially thought.
33:40With the clock reset, the search narrows, and a Coast Guard helicopter races to find John.
33:47John Aldridge is clutching onto this buoy for dear life.
33:52He's been in the water for 12 hours.
33:55He's running out of steam.
33:56He's thinking, maybe this is it.
33:59But then, above him, he starts to hear the blades of a helicopter getting louder and louder and louder.
34:06And he's screaming, and he starts waving his green boots in the air frantically to get its attention.
34:11The Coast Guard spots this tiny speck in the sea.
34:14It's John Aldridge, hugging that big orange lobster float.
34:20When John's brought into the chopper, the pilot yells to him over the noise,
34:24You got some will to live.
34:26We've been looking for you for nine hours.
34:28And John yells back,
34:30Well, I've been looking for you for 12 hours.
34:35John and Anthony still own the animary.
34:38They still hunt lobster in the deep ocean.
34:40And John still wears his big, ridiculous, life-saving boots.
34:51For people that love a death-defying thrill, few sensations beat skydiving or paragliding.
34:57The professionals may make it look easy.
35:00But when things go wrong, they go wrong fast.
35:06Kevin Phillip is a professional paraglider.
35:09And in 2022, he's soaring thousands of feet above his beautiful terrain in Spain.
35:15This is a routine flight for him.
35:17But little does he know, he's about to be in a fight for his life.
35:22As he's paragliding along, a massive updraft causes a lot of turbulence.
35:27And starts to twist his chute.
35:30And he gets tangled in the corpse.
35:32He's now suddenly in freefall.
35:35And he's speeding towards the ground at about 80 to 100 miles an hour.
35:39He has an emergency parachute.
35:41But as you can see in the video, when he tries to deploy it, it doesn't open.
35:46The closer Kevin gets to the ground, the less likely the chute will be able to stop him.
35:50People on the ground, including his own mother, are watching.
35:53And it's absolute mayhem in the air.
35:55He's spinning around as he's falling.
35:58His main chute is twisting and spinning around him.
36:02And it just seems like he keeps falling and falling toward his death.
36:07In a situation like this, time slows down.
36:10He has seconds at this point to figure something out.
36:15Somehow he's able to keep his composure.
36:18And he ends up dragging his reserve chute back.
36:22And untangles it from the main chute.
36:27With less than one second left, he's able to pop the chute.
36:30And it's just enough time to break his fall.
36:34Incredibly, Kevin not only cheats death, he manages to land without any injury.
36:41Ah!
36:42Oh, my God!
36:45But what could possibly save you if your reserve chute does not deploy?
36:50For one woman, the answer is totally unbelievable.
36:55It's September 1999, and 47-year-old adrenaline junkie Joan Murray is standing at the open door of a Cessna
37:05airplane at 14,500 feet, with the wind roaring past her ears.
37:12When a light illuminates, she takes the leap that she's taken so many times before.
37:18It's Joan's 36th skydive of the year.
37:22She knows that there's always risks associated with skydiving, but that's why she's doing it.
37:28When Joan gets down to 3,000 feet and pulls her ripcord, she braces herself for the jolt of her
37:34chute deploying.
37:37But there's no jolt, and her chute doesn't deploy.
37:41And as she screams past 2,000 feet, she pulls the ripcord on her reserve chute.
37:46But just like last time, something's not right.
37:51She looks up and sees that the lines of her chute are all twisted and tangled, and that causes the
37:57chute to not be able to open fully.
37:59There's a little bit of resistance, but it's not nearly enough to slow her down for a safe landing.
38:04With less than 700 feet to the ground and no sign of slowing, Joan has only enough time to contemplate
38:10how hard she's going to land.
38:13If a person drops from a height of 48 feet, the chances of survival are like 50%.
38:19But at 700 feet, oh, it's about 100%. Fatal.
38:28Her landing is brutal, to say the least.
38:33By some miracle, Joan wakes up on the ground.
38:38She tastes the blood in her mouth, but otherwise she can't move.
38:42But there's another thing that's happening that's strange.
38:45She feels these sharp, stinging pains all over her body.
38:48And she's wondering, what is this? Is this nerve damage?
38:51Do I have a spinal injury? And the pain is relentless.
38:56What Joan can't realize yet is that fate has thrown her another curve ball.
39:01After two failed parachutes, she has landed directly on top of a huge colony of fire ants.
39:09The ants are stinging Joan, and they inject a painful venom.
39:15While this may seem like insult to already very severe injury, the ant bites are actually keeping her alive.
39:22A massive blunt force impact, like Joan just experienced, can stop the heart all on its own.
39:30But these red ant stings have the byproduct of increasing the adrenaline in the body, which keeps the heart beating.
39:39These fire ants attack and bite and sting Joan by the thousands.
39:45Each bite triggers an adrenaline spike that keeps her heart beating until first responders find her and rush her to
39:52the hospital.
39:54The probability of this is wild. If Joan had landed just five feet in either direction, she would have missed
40:01the ant colony and would already be dead.
40:03She has several shattered bones, 17 missing teeth, and she requires 20 corrective surgeries.
40:13It takes two years, but Joan survives to make a full recovery.
40:20And thanks to a little help from thousands of cranky territorial red ants, Joan goes on to complete one more
40:27skydive.
40:28Whether it's being buried alive, stranded at sea, or stuck with a defective parachute,
40:33these are the tales of dodging death, so mind-boggling that they are truly unbelievable.
40:39WI-C-E-N-E-V-A-B-L-E-V-A-B-L-O-S-T-L-E-V
40:39-A-B-I-V-A-B-L-E-V-A-B-L-O-S-T-R-F-E-A-B
40:39-L-E-V-A-B-L.
40:39You
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