00:00Okay, so we're about to get into one of the most unbelievable, true survival stories you will ever hear.
00:06Seriously, it's a story that starts with a fall from the sky, turns into this brutal journey through the Amazon,
00:11and in the end, it shows you the razor-thin line between pure dumb luck and having the right knowledge.
00:17I want you to just imagine this for a second.
00:20You are falling, 10,000 feet.
00:22You're still strapped to your airplane seat, and you're just plummeting through a violent thunderstorm.
00:27You look down, and all you can see is this endless sea of green jungle.
00:31It looks like a field of broccoli.
00:33The sound of the plane breaking apart is gone.
00:36Now it's just the howl of the wind.
00:38It's a question that sounds completely hypothetical, right?
00:42Almost like a riddle.
00:42But for one person, this was a terrifying reality.
00:47And what's so fascinating isn't just that someone survived, it's how they did it.
00:52And maybe even more important, it's who she was.
00:55She was just 17.
00:5817 years old, not some highly trained survivalist or a soldier, just a high school student named Julianne Kopka on
01:05her way home to celebrate Christmas.
01:07So after that fall, she wakes up.
01:09It's Christmas morning, 1971.
01:11She's still strapped into her seat, lying in the deep mud of the jungle floor.
01:15She's injured, she's completely disoriented, and she is totally, utterly alone.
01:22Search parties, by the way, had already given up.
01:23They just assumed there were no survivors.
01:25But for her, the real nightmare was actually just beginning.
01:29So how in the world did this even happen?
01:31To get that, we have to rewind a little bit, back to the flight itself, and see exactly how a
01:37routine trip turned into an absolute catastrophe.
01:39All right, so the date is December 24th, 1971.
01:44Landsaflight 508 is about 40 minutes into its trip over Peru.
01:48Everything's fine.
01:49But as it starts to descend, the pilots make a decision that turns out to be fatal.
01:53Instead of flying around this massive storm system, they fly directly into it.
01:58At 21,000 feet, lightning strikes the right wing, and within seconds, the wing just tears off.
02:04The whole plane starts to break apart, and all 92 people on board just start falling.
02:09And, you know, to understand why they'd fly into a storm like that, you have to know a little something
02:14about this airline.
02:15Lanza, well, they had a terrible reputation.
02:18It was so bad, in fact, that locals had this really dark joke.
02:22Lanza se lanza de panza, which basically means Lanza falls on its belly.
02:26Julianne's own father had begged her mother never to fly with them.
02:30But every other flight was booked solid for Christmas.
02:33They just, they had no other choice.
02:34And this right here just perfectly illustrates the problem.
02:37The plane itself was a Lockheed L-180 Electra.
02:41Now, this was an aircraft designed to fly over calm deserts.
02:44Its wings were really rigid, they weren't built to flex and handle the kind of severe turbulence you always get
02:49over the Andes Mountains.
02:50It was actually a plane that had already been taken out of service in the U.S. for a very
02:54good reason.
02:54So the big question, how did she survive the fall itself?
02:58I mean, it was this trifecta of almost impossible luck.
03:02First, these powerful updrafts from the storm actually pushed up against her, slowing her descent.
03:07Second, her whole row of seats started to spin, kind of like a helicopter blade or one of those maple
03:12seeds, you know?
03:13And that acted like a brake, slowing her fall even more.
03:16And finally, the incredibly dense canopy of the Amazon jungle acted like a natural, although very brutal, safety net.
03:23But here's the thing.
03:25Surviving the fall was just the first impossible feat.
03:27Now she's alone, she's injured on the jungle floor, and luck was just not going to be enough anymore.
03:32This is where knowledge completely took over.
03:35You see, Julianne wasn't just any teenager.
03:38Her parents were famous zoologists who actually ran a research station deep in the Amazon.
03:43She basically grew up there.
03:45And in that moment of chaos and pain, she remembered this crucial piece of advice from her father.
03:50If you're ever lost in the jungle, find water and follow it.
03:54That one simple rule, it became her lifeline.
03:57And so, this 11-day trek for survival began.
04:01It was a journey that would push the absolute limits of what a human being can endure.
04:06Just think about what she was dealing with as she started to walk.
04:09Her collarbone was broken.
04:11Her knee was badly sprained.
04:13One of her eyes was swollen, completely shut.
04:15And on top of that, she'd lost her glasses in the fall.
04:18So the world around her was just this green, blurry mess.
04:21And she had these deep, open gashes on her body, all just exposed to the humid, insect-filled air of
04:27the jungle.
04:28And food?
04:28Well, this was all she had.
04:30A small bag of candy she found in the wreckage.
04:33That's it.
04:33She rationed them so carefully because she knew they might be the only thing keeping her alive for days.
04:39Or, for all she knew, weeks.
04:41The days just sort of blurred into this waking nightmare.
04:44On day four, she finds something horrifying.
04:47Another row of seats with fellow passengers, all of whom had died on impact.
04:53By day nine, the last of the candy was gone and she realized, to her horror,
04:57that her arm wound was now infested with dozens of maggots.
05:01But still, she kept moving, she kept following the water, and eventually found a river large enough that she could
05:06just float in it,
05:07letting the current carry her weakened body.
05:09And then, on day 11, she saw it.
05:12A boat.
05:13This was it.
05:14This was the moment that could finally, finally mean her ordeal was over.
05:19But the path from just finding that boat to her actual rescue, well, it was anything but simple.
05:25So the boat was empty, but there was a small path leading away from it.
05:29Using her absolute last ounce of strength, she followed it and found a small, empty hut.
05:35Inside, she found a can of gasoline.
05:37And she remembered another lesson her parents had taught her about parasites.
05:41And she did something that's just unimaginable.
05:44She poured the gasoline into her maggot-infested wound.
05:47It was excruciatingly painful, but it was a life-saving move to clean it out.
05:52When the loggers who owned the hut came back hours later, they didn't see a teenage girl.
05:57They saw a ghost.
05:58She was covered in mud and blood, one eye swollen shut, the other a terrifying red from burst blood vessels.
06:04They literally thought she was a fearsome, mythological spirit from their local folklore.
06:09But then, she managed to speak.
06:12In Spanish, she explained who she was.
06:14The men were just stunned.
06:16Of course, they'd heard the news reports about the crash.
06:18Everyone was dead.
06:20What they were seeing, it was impossible.
06:22And this is the moment where the relief of being found just crashes into heartbreak.
06:27Her entire 11-day journey, she held onto this one hope.
06:31That her mother, who was sitting right next to her on the plane, had somehow survived too.
06:35But the loggers confirmed the awful news.
06:38Of the 92 people on board Flight 508, she was the only one.
06:43Julianne's story, as you can imagine, became a global phenomenon.
06:46A total miracle.
06:48But years later, a final haunting detail came to light.
06:51And it completely reframes the entire story.
06:53Because for years, investigators were haunted by this one single question.
06:57Was she truly the only person to survive the initial impact with the ground?
07:03The answer we now know was no.
07:05Investigations later revealed that as many as 14 other passengers had also survived the fall.
07:10They were injured, for sure.
07:11But they were alive on the jungle floor.
07:13And this, right here, is the ultimate haunting lesson of Julianne Kopka's story.
07:19The others survived the fall, but they stayed put.
07:23They waited for a rescue that was never going to come, and they perished there in the jungle.
07:29Julianne also survived the fall, but she didn't wait.
07:32She used her unique knowledge, that advice from her father, to create her own rescue.
07:37So in the end, it wasn't just the miracle of the fall that saved her life.
07:42It was the decision to get up and walk.
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