Life is unpredictable. Tomorrow may play out like every other day or your life or maybe a meteor falls from the sky and crushes your house right before you win the lottery then get attacked by a tiger on the way to collect your prize. We mostly get by hoping that things are predictable and happen the way they usually happen. But some twists and turns and events seem to defy all odds and they happen all the time. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, and sometimes both.
No one’s going to say any disaster that claims lives is a good thing, but when something terrible happens and just a single person survives, it can still be amazing.
10. George H. W. Bush Survived a Brush with Execution and Cannibalism
George Herbert Walker Bush was President of the United States from 1989 until 1993. A former military man, he’s maybe even more famous today for being the father of the other President Bush. But if you go back far enough in his career, you’ll see that he was the sole survivor of an absolutely harrowing, horror-movie-level event in World War Two.
Bush was a pilot in WWII. He joined the Navy when he was 18 after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Two years later he was flying a mission over Japan on September 2, 1944. His plane was hit and Bush had to eject.
The other servicemen jumped first and as Bush went, he was caught in the wind and slammed into the plane’s tail where he cut his head open. He deployed his parachute and landed in the water but he was alone.
He inflated a life raft and paddled away from the Japanese island he’d just attacked and was rescued by a submarine. A lucky break on his part, but the story isn’t over. There were nine servicemen sent on that mission besides Bush and none of them made it back.
One man with Bush went down with the plane. The other’s parachute didn’t deploy. From the planes that accompanied him and were also hit, the men who parachuted to the island were captured by the Japanese. Years later the scope of what happened to them was fully revealed when the Japanese soldiers were tried for war crimes.
The Americans were beaten and tortured and ultimately executed by beheading. Some of them were then cut up and eaten by their captors with evidence that their livers and thighs were eaten for medicinal reasons because it was “good for the stomach.”
9. George Lamson Was the Only Survivor of a 1985 Plane Crash
There are many smaller aircraft crashes per year than we ever hear about and most are not fatal. In over 1,200 accidents reported in 2021 there were 376 fatalities. It’s rare that a large passenger jet crashes but when it does it usually represents a horrible loss of life that can be well over 100. On very rare occasions, there will also be survivors.
In 1985, 17-year-old George Lamson was on a flight with 70 other people that took off from Reno and crashed soon after. Lamson was the only passenger on board who survived. His body was thrown from the plane on impact. He lost his father in the crash and most of us can only imagine what he must have thought in the time since it happened.
In his unique position, Lamson has tried, in the ensuing years, to be a support for others like him. He has reached out to every sole survivor of a plane crash that has happened since his accident of which there have been 14.
Lamson says he and other survivors often feel a lot of complex emotions of which guilt is only one and it’s very hard to describe or talk about with people who are on the outside looking in. He says he feels pressure to do something big with his life because he survived and that people unintentionally make it worse by telling him, and other survivors, that they’re miracles and lucky and must have a purpose.
8. Vesna Vulovi? Survived the Highest Fall in History
Vesna Vulovi? holds one of the most unusual records in the world. Not only is she the sole survivor of Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367 which exploded mid-flight in 1972, she also holds the record for surviving the highest fall ever without a parachute. Not the sort of record you’d want to challenge.
Vulovi? fell from 33,330 feet when the plane came apart into three pieces. She was a flight attendant at the time of the disaster, which was caused by a briefcase bomb going off in the baggage compartment. It was only through a series of miraculous coincidences that she could survive at all.
The plane was torn into segments and Vulovi? was at the rear with the refreshment cart. As the fuselage tore apart, many passengers were sucked out but Vulovi? was pinned by the cart which held her in place.
The tail section that housed Vulovi? crashed into a snowy hill but the impact didn’t kill her. Vulovi? was almost rejected for the job entirely because she suffered from low blood pressure. Flight attendants have to pass a medical exam so Vulovi? cheated by drinking coffee to boost her blood pressure ahead of time.
When she was pinned and the cabin depressurized, it’s believed that Vulovi? passed out because of her low blood pressure. After the incident, she had no memory of what happened so losing consciousness is entirely plausible. As a result, the force of the impact was less traumatic on her heart than it would have been for someone with normal blood pressure, which ended up preventing a heart attack.
She didn’t walk away unscathed and suffered serious injuries including a few days in a coma and several months recuperating from many broken bones in hospital.
Ironically, Vulovi? wasn’t even supposed to be on the flight, the airline had mistaken her for another flight attendant with the same name.
7. Juliane Koepcke Survived A Crash in the Amazon
In yet another remarkable case of plane crash survival, Juliane Koepcke survived the crash and escaped from the Amazon rainforest afterward. She was just 17 flying with her mother and over 80 others, when lightning struck their plane. After the plane went into a nosedive she found herself, still in her seat, but alone and outside, two miles above the earth. She was sucked from the plane and fell.
When she awoke the next day, she was in a dense jungle. The trees and her seat had broken her fall, though she had sustained injuries. No one else was there.
Juliane’s parents were zoologists, and she’d spent years with them in the Amazon already. Using the knowledge she’d gained from life in the jungle she survived ten days as she searched for help. Her wounds became infected with maggots and she eventually found a boat and sucked out the fuel and put it on the wound to kill the parasites.
The next day locals found her and treated her wounds, and she was reunited with her father. She still runs the research station her parents founded.
6. A 12-Year-Old Who Couldn’t Swim was the Only Survivor of a 2009 Crash at Sea
It has to be terrifying to crash anywhere at any time, but imagine crashing at sea, when you’re 12 years old, and you can’t swim. That happened to Bahia Bakari, and she was the only survivor of Yemenia Flight 626 that saw 152 others perish.
After the plane went down, Bakari had to hold on to the wreckage for 11 hours to stay alive. The crash was blamed on pilot error and airline negligence which resulted in years’ worth of lawsuits. The trial only began in 2022 despite the crash happening in 2009.
5. Harrison Okene Survived 72 Hours in an Air Pocket
How long could you survive at the bottom of the ocean? If you’re Harrison Okene, the answer is three days. Three days he survived in an air pocket, trapped in an upside-down, sunken tugboat.
Eleven others died when the tugboat suddenly capsized while towing an oil tanker. Okene had been in the bathroom at the time and got out, found some tools, and got into an air pocket as the boat went down. He had only a bottle of Coke to sustain him as the vessel sank to 100 feet. When divers went in to recover the dead, none expected to find a survivor. The event was recorded on camera and became a viral video as few believed it was possible.
4. Whitney Cerak Survived a Crash But Was Mistaken For Someone Else
There’s no nice way to spin this story, the whole thing is messed up. In 2006, Laura VanRyn and Whitney Cerak were in a horrible car crash with several other students. The college students were friends and looked quite a bit alike. Enough that, in the chaos, Cerak, who survived, was mistaken for VanRyn, who did not.
Cerak, the only survivor, was taken to hospital with serious injuries. So serious that when VanRyn’s family was called, they could not tell that it was not their daughter they were visiting. Meanwhile, Cerak’s family were told their daughter had died. They had a funeral and mourned her. Neither family had any idea the girls were mistaken for each other.
When Cerak awoke from her coma, the mistake was discovered and while her family got to feel relief, VanRyn’s family had to deal with realizing not only had they lost her daughter, but she’d already had a funeral as someone else.
3. John Capes Was The Only Survivor of a Sunken WWII Submarine
When the HMS Perseus hit a mine in 1941, it sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean with a crew of 59. But the sub was also carrying two passengers, one of whom was John Capes. Capes was only hitching a ride when disaster struck and the submarine sank. Depth gauges read 270 feet but they were off by 100. The vessel sat at 170 feet below and, with a handful of injured men, Capes prepared to use an escape hatch from a sealed compartment where they had no choice. Their re-breathers were only good for 100 feet but they didn’t have a lot of options.
Capes and the others flooded the hatch and escaped. He forced himself to rise slowly, trying to avoid the bends. When he finally broke the surface he was only, no one else had made it. He swam to a nearby island where locals discovered him and, because the islands were occupied by Germans and Italians, kept him hidden for an entire year and a half.
For the rest of his life, his story was met with doubt. British officials thought he was a total liar and even made a note on his record. They didn’t believe the Perseus was where he said it was nor that he could survive rising from that depth. But in 1997, after Capes had passed away, divers found the wreck, and every detail was exactly as Capes had described.
2. An Escaped Crocodile Caused a Panic on a Plane
Avoiding crocodiles is just good sense. They’re dangerous and you should stay out of their territory. That said, if someone brings one on an airplane you may have a problem. That’s what happened on a British plane in 2010 which led to a crash that claimed 20 lives.
Someone had smuggled the crocodile on board in their luggage and it escaped mid-flight. This caused an understandable panic. The passengers all ran which caused the plane’s balance to shift as they piled to one side. The pilot could not regain control and they crashed with only one survivor who relayed the story. Word is the crocodile survived too, only to have someone kill it on the ground.
1. Huang Yu Survived the First Airplane Hijacking
You may not know the name Huang Yu but he holds a true place of infamy in the annals of survival. Yu was a survivor of the first plane hijacking in history. In fact, he’s the only person who has ever survived a hijacking, and that sounds remarkable if we stop explaining the details there. The problem is that Yu was also the hijacker.
Yu and four other men hijacked a plane in 1948 because it was transporting gold. The flight was only 20 minutes from Hong Kong to Macau so the men needed to be fast. They set about robbing the plane at gunpoint but the crew and some passengers fought back. In the melee, people were shot and the plane took a nosedive into a river. Yu snagged a life jacket as the plane crashed before being thrown clear. The 27 others on board died.
Later, when being questioned by police, Yu could not provide a believable story about why he was on the plane. He even confessed at one point but thanks to jurisdictional problems and Yu claiming the confession was a joke, he was never actually convicted.