5 Most Incredible Rescue Cases in History (8 photos)

People have wandered around Antarctica, gotten lost in the open ocean, and fallen from a height of 10 kilometers. And somehow they survived.





The heroes of the post are ordinary people who got into trouble. By all indications, they should have died. But fate decreed otherwise.

Douglas Mawson: walked 500 km across Antarctica in 56 days. Almost half the way covered alone



Polar explorer Mawson and two partners were returning to base after a long trek. On the way, a disaster happened: one of the team members, along with the team, fell into a crevice and died. Most of the provisions disappeared along with him.

Because of this, Mawson and his friend had to eat dogs and pull the sleds themselves. A few weeks later, the polar explorer's colleague died and Mawson was left alone and wrote in his diary:

I'm afraid my song is sung. But I will not give up until the end.

And he went, despite the strong wind and frost of -20 ° C. On the way he fell into a crevasse, but managed to climb out and still made it to the base. Six members of the expedition were waiting for him there - together with them Mawson lived there for 10 months waiting for the ship that would take him from Antarctica.

Aron Lee Ralston: spent 4 days in the mountains without food and water, pinned by a huge boulder





Ralston was a seasoned climber and extreme sportsman. During another ascent in the American state of Utah, a 300 kg stone fell on him and pinned Aron's arm. There was no communication in the mountains - a flask of water and food was enough for one day. And he lay there for four days, then despaired and tried to pull his hand out from under the boulder. But only broke it. Then he realized that he had nothing to lose and amputated his hand with a knife. After that, he got out and trudged down the mountain. Along the way, he met a group of tourists - they helped stop the bleeding and called rescuers.

Evan Muntzi: lay under the rubble for a month after the earthquake in Haiti



In 2010, a terrible earthquake happened in Haiti, more than 200 thousand people died. Muntsi was selling rice at the market at the time when the tremors began, the roof of the building collapsed and buried our hero. He was considered dead and the search was soon stopped. But Muntsi turned out to be incredibly resilient: he breathed air through cracks in the concrete slabs, drank rainwater and chewed rice, which he sold. A month later, he was found - barely alive, with the onset of gangrene, but conscious. So the doctors were able to revive the guy.

Jose Salvador Albarengo: spent 14 months in the ocean without fresh water



Jose was a fisherman and together with a friend sailed from the coast of Mexico. On the way, the boat's engine broke down and the men were carried away into the Pacific Ocean. Jose's friend died of exhaustion, but he decided not to give up. He ate fish, drank the blood of turtles, and when they could not be caught, he was content with his urine. Rain was a real holiday for him: the fisherman collected water and it was enough for several days. Jose expected that a month or two would pass and he would be found - but the forced journey lasted 14.5 months. And only after that the fisherman's boat washed up on the Marshall Islands. Later it was calculated that he spent 439 days in the ocean and covered more than 10,000 km. Many considered this an ordinary newspaper "duck", but Mexican authorities confirmed the disappearance of the fishermen in 2012.

Vesna Vulovic: fell from a height of 10 kilometers and survived



Her story is the most incredible. The girl worked as a flight attendant and in January 1972 she was flying on board a DC-9-32 from Stockholm to Belgrade. A bomb installed in the fuselage went off in the sky over Czechoslovakia. Later, there was a version that it was the work of the Croatian far-right group "Ustasha", but this was not officially confirmed.

Due to the explosion, the plane fell to pieces, and Vesna remained in the fuselage fragment and rushed to the ground from a height of 10,000 meters. Vulovic immediately lost consciousness from decompression, but did not die. When doctors examined her case, they found out that the girl had low blood pressure, because of which she did not die from the depressurization of the plane.

And the fuselage fragment fell on a slope and the impact was softened by snow-covered tree crowns.

I ran out into the street and saw the debris falling, while the neighbors were already running along the road and screaming in fear that a plane had crashed somewhere... I also ran, and suddenly from the forest, to my left, I heard a woman's voice. I ran even faster, led by this voice. It was getting dark, it was snowing, it was slippery. I crawled on all fours to where I heard the voice. Two women's legs were visible from under the plane wreckage. I bent down and saw a blonde who was not only alive, but also had the strength to scream. With great difficulty, I freed her from the metal debris, trying to move her as little as possible. When the ambulance arrived, we put the girl on a stretcher and handed her over to specialists, - said forester Bruno Honke.



In the hospital, Vesna was diagnosed with an intracranial hemorrhage, severe pelvic trauma, three fractured vertebrae, and memory loss. When she came to and was able to talk, it turned out that she could not say anything about the crash:

I have retrograde amnesia. I do not remember what happened a moment before the accident and more than twenty days after. They say that one day I will be able to remember. Now, of course, I take it much easier. When I read about a plane crash, I ask myself: was I really on that plane? - she reported seven years after the accident.

She was able to walk normally a year later, but she limped for the rest of her life. She never fully remembered the incident. After some time, Vesna got married, but due to the injuries she received, she could not get pregnant and filed for divorce after 15 years of marriage.



Vulović died alone, in her Belgrade apartment. She almost lived to be 67. And in her last interviews, she said that she did not consider her survival a miracle:

I would have been lucky if I had not been on that plane at all.