A plane falls out of a storm. An Arctic island cuts off five people. A small boat drifts for more than a year. Almost everyone around them was lost. These are the people who came back.
In 1921 an Iñupiaq seamstress went to Wrangel Island with four young men to claim it for the British Empire. Three walked onto the sea ice and were never seen again. The fourth died in her care. When a ship came two years later, she told the rescuers: “There is nobody here but me.”
He went back to his dormitory for a small name stamp, and stepped onto the road at 8:15 in Hiroshima. Three days later, bandaged, he was telling his boss about it in Nagasaki when the second flash came.
Christmas Eve, 1971. Lightning tore apart a plane over the Peruvian Amazon. A 17-year-old girl woke up on the forest floor under a row of seats, alone, with one sandal and a bag of sweets. Of 92 people aboard, she was the only one who would live. Listen to the narrated true crime podcast episode.
A two-day shark-fishing trip off Mexico turned into 438 days adrift across the Pacific. His young crewmate died at sea. Ships passed him by. Then a wild-haired man with a knife walked out of the surf on a tiny atoll. Listen to the narrated true crime podcast episode.