Surprising Survival Stories

Could you survive in these amazing

survival

situations? Let's talk about it. ♪ (theme music) ♪ - Good mythical morning! - I'm a survivor. Um, once recently, on a weekend, my wife went away with some of her friends, and I had to stay with my kids. - Oh. - Oh. - And I survived. - (chuckle) - And so do they. We both made it. - It was

surprising

ly difficult. - Hm. But we did. So I hope the story I just told you competes with the amazing

survival

stories

we're going to share with you, even though I know it doesn't. - You can identify with these people... - ...is what you're saying. - I can relate! - And I'm dressed in camouflage! - We are all survivors.

We spoke earlier this year in another episode about amazing

stories

of island survival. These are stories of survival off the island. - We're off the island now. - (laughing) Yeah, we're moving to... - ...the mainland, people. - But these are amazing. They are very amazing. May 26, 2013. A guy named Harrison Okene. He is a 29-year-old cook who works on a tugboat off the coast of Nigeria. - Pulling other boats. And cooking! -He's minding his own business... ...and doing his own business, shitting, in the ship's bathroom. -He's in the bathroom when he gets...-Okay! ...hit by a large wave, which causes the ship to sink.

And the boat sinks very suddenly, like 100 feet before anyone has a chance to react. He starts to see what's there... First he leaves the bathroom and goes into another little room. He begins to see water coming under the door. It's like, “Uh…” He knows what's going on. - The ship is upside down. - Can you imagine the panic? - Crazy! -And then what he does is think quickly, and he climbs on top of a mattress. I usually get under a bed when I panic. - Make a waterbed, Link. - (both gasp) This guy is... He made a waterbed!

And he's on the waterbed... Doesn't look like that's going to help. When you're sinking Well, he helped, because he was in a four-foot airbag for 62 hours. Now, there are a lot of things that happened during those 62 hours. Number one, all of his other crewmates died. Somewhere early in the process. What is the air situation? That is what I am not understanding. - The air situation. - How is he breathing? He is breathing the oxygen that is trapped. And because of the pressure at that depth, you get a lot more oxygen there. So 62 hours. - As if the boat was upside down... - Yes, it's an air bag. - All right, yeah. - It's like when you get into the jacuzzi - and there's an air pocket... - In your panties? ...and he makes you look like you have a lot of fat down here.

So you're like, - (spit) And it looks like you farted. - (laughing) - Yes, yes. - It's in the fat pocket... - ...in a bathing suit. - Why is Rhett pushing his pants? - Do you understand the logic now? - Now that you used that analogy... - ...I'm locked up. -So he's inside a pair of swimsuits...he's inside a swimsuit in a jacuzzi. - (laughing) - That's where this goes down. - I understand. -No, he's in this airbag. He is breathing your highly concentrated, highly oxygenated air. His other crewmates have died. He can hear them being eaten by fish and sharks. - Oh. - He has nothing to eat, except a... ...can of Coca-Cola.

This guy stretches that can of Coca-Cola for 62 hours. This is me finding the Sprite in the ice bath. It's like, "I can survive here now!" - Well, it's not that fun. - Oh. - (crew laughing offscreen) - Yeah. And then, this is what happens after 62 hours. (rescuer's voice) Alright, you should walk on the roof, okay? (Link) Diving rescuers? - (inaudible) - What is that? Well. - Okay, you found one, okay? - Is anyone alive! -He is alive! He is alive! -He is alive. It's okay, keep it there. keep it there Alright. Just keep it there, keep it calm, okay? - (Link) Whoops! - Hmm.

He's fine, just reassure him. Pat him on the shoulder. (Link) "Pat him on the shoulder. Give him a pat on the shoulder." -(Rhett) Look, there he is. - (Link) Okay. (Rhett) There's Harrison. It's like, "Oh, you're not a can of Coke." - "You are a man." - He looks a little disoriented. Now, I'm surprised the diver who rescued him didn't freak out. But I'm more surprised that he didn't freak out. Like, what did he think he was grabbing his hand from under him? Some creature in a black suit that... appears? - I mean, this guy's been through... ...a lot in those 62 hours.

And, you could see, the guy thought that he was just grabbing a dead body, and then he grabbed it again. - Yeah! - So the diver was going crazy. - That's crazy! And the reason the diver sounds like a chipmunk is because they put helium inside his breath mix. That's a small detail I learned during this process. - Well. Regardless, Harrison is now the official spokesperson for Coca-Cola. - That is not true. - And his new 62-hour Coca-Cola campaign. - (Link and the team laugh off screen) - Good, I have one. Mauro Prosperi is a Sicilian policeman and pentathlete.

And he ran...-That's a lot. -...in 1994, he ran in the... ...Marathon des Sables, or "say-bull", a 150-mile race through the Sahara desert, in Morocco. 150 miles through a desert... - Sign me up! - ...sounds crazy. It's so dangerous... - It's crazy. ...they make you sign a waiver saying where to send your body - when you die. - Hmm. I want to be cremated and put in the Cape Fear River. Alright, here's one of the rules. If a sandstorm comes up while he's running these 150 miles across the desert, he's supposed to sit down, cover his head, and wait.

Unless you want to win the race! - (laughing) That's right! -Mauro decides that he is going to keep running. - Hmm. Elegant. Because there was a sandstorm and he kept running. - Hmm. - And running. And running. - You can't see very well in a sandstorm. - No. - Six hours later... - For everything about Darude. - (Link and team laugh offscreen) - The sandstorm... - Darude gets into your eyes. - It is "the rudest" of sandstorms. - (laughing) - Six hours later, the storm calms down. Mauro, of course, is alone in the middle of the Sahara desert.

Completely off course. What is the guy supposed to do? He just chose a direction and started walking. - Well. -Random direction, he starts walking. - 36 hours later... - Oh, that's a long time. ...he completely runs out of food and water. Now, I'm going to go ahead and spoil this for you. Ah, he survives. - Oh. But B, it was 10 days later. Dude survived in the Sahara desert, all alone with nothing more than a bottle of water for 10 days. -He is a Sicilian. -The first thing he started to do was...-...pee in the water bottle. - Uh huh. - And then drink that. - Oh, wow. - But that gets old after a while. - That happened early.

There's a kind of diminishing returns to peeing in your own water bottle. Trust me. - You mean it gets worse? -He gets more yellow. Look at it. - It's more yellow... ...and there's less and less. And then it turns like a yellow pudding. - (chuckling) He starts... (chuckling) - (crew groaning in disgust off screen) - (chuckling) - "Mm, all of a sudden I have... - ...a mirage of pudding in my water bottle ." -(sighs) he starts eating lizards and scorpions, which he doesn't recommend. very crunchy. Not much water in those. Then he finds an abandoned sanctuary, in the desert, he camps there. - Oh!

And he rips off the heads of 20 bats and starts drinking their blood. - Oh. Better than pudding. I don't know if he could do that. Well, you haven't been in this situation, man. Like, no ideas! I don't... next week, on this show, I don't want to have - rip the head off a bat. -Yes.-Like his faces...-Challenge to eat bat heads. His faces light up just above the screen. Let's start that. Then, after a total of 10 days, he meets a group of Berber nomads and...-Very elegant. - They say: "You're not even in... ...Morocco anymore.

You ran all the way to Algeria." - 186 miles off course. - (laughing) Oh, my God. - That's a long way for a person to walk. - Don't worry, though. He pulled ahead... ...and ran the race six more times after that, placing 12th in 2001. -Oh, 12th? OK that's fine. - Mauro! - Keep it up, man! don't give up-he Keep trying. You don't have to drink your urine every time. You could probably do better. Well, this one comes from Juliane Koepcke. On Christmas Eve 1971, he was 17 years old. He travels by plane over the Peruvian jungle. - Well. This is the Amazon jungle.

I guess we are in the same region of the world. The plane is stuck... - It's okay. ...by lightning, and then... The light is flashing, which means - maybe we're being struck by lightning. -Nartu Foty. The plane is struck by lightning. The plane breaks into several pieces. She lands on an island. There's a polar bear, and there's a group of people called The Others. Oh wait! - No. That's something else. She lands... The plane literally breaks apart, and she falls, in her seat, still stuck in the seat, strapped to the seat, two miles in the air and hits the rainforest canopy.

And somehow the seats that she's attached to...she's in this middle seat and she has...-...two seats on either side of her. - Do you protect her? She shields her a bit, and (stammering) she breaks her fall a bit and ends up hanging upside down on this seat. Of course, she is knocked out, but when she wakes up, all she has is a broken clavicle and some scratches. Incredible! She falls two miles from the sky. - Wow. -Now she has to figure out how... ...to get back to civilization. Now, her glasses came off during this.

Can you cere it? she (laughing) her Her glasses came off ....-Stupid glasses! - ...during this ordeal. And she lost a shoe. So she uses her remaining shoe to fight her way through the jungle. She had some experience in the jungle. Her parents were, like, researchers. So she knew a little: "I have to be careful with these snakes." So she had the snake shoe technique. She is feeling her way through the forest. She then she comes to a stream and she knows, this is smart, because she learned this, and you should always do this, go down the river.

She finds a stream, she heads downstream. 10 days later, the only thing she has lived on is the water she is drinking from the stream and some sweets she bought on the plane. -She used her shoe for everything? I imagine her drinking from the shoe. Using it like a snake. - Well... - Like, like a weapon. She doesn't say it, but I like to think so, Link. Yes, she drank exclusively from her shoe and she also ate candy from her shoe. - Good. -Anyway, 10 days after this, she finds a boat. Now, she has an infected arm, full of worms. -She's got a worm arm, people. - Yuck.

And she had seen her father pour gasoline on a dog's wound before to treat it. - Well. -Then she pours the gasoline from this can into her worm-arm, and 35 worms come out. - Yuck! - That's just a small detail. A small detail for you. Instead of getting on the boat, she said, "I didn't want to steal the boat," so she waited on the boat. And eventually the guys whose ship she was come back. They take her to civilization. This is an incredible test, as you can imagine. Almost two weeks. - 17 years old! - In fact, it is written.

Her story is cataloged in a book called "Deep Survival." It's an audiobook you can get on Audible by Laurence Gonzales. It covers her story in much more detail. Also many other amazing survival stories. And it also tells you what you can do to get out of some situations that... you may find yourself in. -Ah, because we haven't helped you... ...nothing more than her shoe and tearing off the heads of the bats. You should listen to that. And she's in luck, because she can get a 30-day trial using our link, audible.com/GMM. There are over 180,000 titles besides Laurence's book, so give any of those a listen, guys! - Yeah! - Link in the description. - Thank you for liking and commenting. - Do you know what time it is.

Hello my Name Is . I'm from Syria, and this is my favorite card, the 10 of Hearts. And it's time to spin... - (cards slide) - ...The Wheel of Mythic. Thanks to Audible for sponsoring this episode. Remember to go to audible.com/GMM for your free 30-day trial! Click on Good Mythical More, where we discuss two more amazing survival stories. Surprise! Survive! Click through. (syndicate) "Beatboxing Dolphins!" (making beatboxing and squealing noises) - (Rhett beatboxing) - He sounds like a monkey. But he is a dolphin. (chirp)