More great survivors

By admin • January 3, 2009

Joe Simpson: Conquered Siula Grande, dropped 100ft into an Ice Crevasse, crawled 3 days

Joe Simpson

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were the first to scale the west peak of the Siula Grande, in the Peruvian Andes. Disaster struck on the way down, and Yates was forced to let a badly wounded Simpson drop 100 feet into an ice crevasse. Simpson survived the fall and spent three days crawling back to base camp.

Truman Duncan: Cut in Two by a Train

Truman Duncan

Railroad switchman Truman Duncan fell off the front of a moving train car. He was swept underneath and cut in two. Despite losing both legs and a kidney, Duncan called the paramedics on his cell phone, survived a 45-minute wait, and then persevered through 23 surgeries.

Aron Ralston: Amputated his lower right Arm to Survive the Mountains

On May 2003, while Aron Ralston was on a canyoneering trip in Blue John Canyon (near Moab, Utah), a boulder fell and pinned his right forearm, crushing it.

After trying for five days to lift and break the boulder, desperation took him to great measures like carving his name, date of birth and date of death into the boulder, drinking his own urine because of lack of water and videotaping his last goodbyes to his family. Finally, a dehydrated and delirious Ralston decided to bow his arm against a chockstone and snap the radius and ulna bones.

Using the dull blade on his multiuse tool, he cut the soft tissue around the break. He then used the tool’s pliers to tear at the tougher tendons. After Ralston was rescued, his arm was retrieved by park authorities and removed from under the boulder. It was cremated and given to Ralston. He returned to the boulder and left the ashes there.

Robert Evans: Survived Being Hit by Car, Then Train Hours Later

Robert Evans

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He got two ambulance rides last night,” said the police. “It’s an extreme oddity that someone is hit by a car and a train on the same night. I can’t imagine that this has ever happened before in Boulder.” An early morning of September 2008, 46-year-old homeless man Robert Evans had a hit-and-run car accident, and while walking back from the hospital to his camp, he was knocked off a narrow railroad bridge into a creek by a train, surviving the second accident in seven hours. Police said Evans was hit by the railing of a stairway on the side of the train. The railroad bridge is only wide enough to accommodate the train tracks and is not intended for pedestrians or other traffic.

Mauro Prosperi: Survived 9 days in the Sahara Desert

Prosperi, a keen endurance runner, took part in the 1994 Marathon des Sables (Marathon of the Sands) in Morocco. Part way through the 6-day 233 kilometre event a sandstorm caused Prosperi to lose his way. He ended up disoriented and ran in the wrong direction, ultimately running several hundred kilometres into Algeria. After 36 hours he ran out of food and water. He survived by drinking his own urine and eating bats resident in an abandoned mosque and the occasional snake found in the desert.

Mauro Prosperi

Not wishing to die a long drawn out death, Prosperi attempted to commit suicide in the mosque by slitting his wrists with a pen knife he had with him. The attempt failed - lack of water had caused Prosperi’s blood to thicken and clotted the wound before he died.

After nine days alone in the desert he was found by a nomadic family and taken to an Algerian military camp and from there to a hospital. He was 186 miles off route, and reportedly had lost between 30 and 40 pounds (18 kg) in body weight.

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