True stories of people who survived what should have killed them.
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.
In 1915 Antarctic pack ice crushed Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance. Her 28 men lived on drifting ice, sailed open boats to Elephant Island and sent six men about 800 miles for help. Every one of them came home. In 2022 the wreck was found 3,008 metres down. Listen to the narrated mystery podcast episode.
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.
On Diwali morning 2023, a Himalayan road tunnel in Uttarakhand caved in and trapped 41 workers. Giant drills broke. After 17 days, a team of rat-hole miners dug them out by hand. Listen to the narrated true crime podcast episode.