5 Amazing People Who Emerged the Sole Survivors of Horrific Disasters

They did not choose to be known this way: as the ones that lived when everyone around them perished. But theirs are fascinating stories that deserve to be told. They tell us about the courage it takes to beat the odds and get on with the business of living. Let us meet some of the amazing people who looked death in the eye. And lived to tell the tale.

Ada Blackjack – Tailor- turned-adventurer

Dubbed ‘the female Robinson Crusoe’, Ada Blackjack was the unlikely – and only – survivor of an Arctic expedition in 1921. The Inupiat seamstress from Alaska joined the expedition as a tailor for survival gear for the 4-member team during their time on Wrangel Island. Instead of the mundane chores she was expected to handle, she found herself fighting off polar bears and making herself hand-stitched parkas with reindeer skin after the remaining members of the ill-fated adventure succumbed to the cold and malnutrition. She was rescued after two years of being stranded on the island north of Siberia, along with the ship’s cat, Vic. She returned to Alaska to do what she had always wanted to do: take care of her sick son. It was to raise money for his treatment that she had agreed to go on the perilous expedition. Sadly, she did not get the money she was promised but went on to bravely lead her life even though it was full of hardships, till her death at the age of 85.

Juliane Koepcke – Survived a plane crash and ten days alone in the Peruvian Amazon

It was Christmas Eve, 1971 and 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke was eager to get home. She had graduated high school in Lima just the day before and looked forward to joining her ornithologist parents at the research station near the jungles where they had lived for the past 20 years. She boarded a flight with her mother and shortly before they were scheduled to land, the flight was struck by lightning. Juliane, still strapped into her seat, fell almost 2 miles down into the Amazon jungle and walked along river beds for ten days with a wound in her arm festering with maggots before she was rescued. Having spent time with her parents in the rainforest before, she had had some knowledge about the ways of the jungle – a fact that helped her survive crocodiles, piranhas and deadly snakes in her eleven-day ordeal. She boarded a flight again the very next year when she moved to Germany to continue her education.

Vesna Vulovic – Holds a Guinness World Record for longest fall without a parachute

It is a record Vesna Vulovic may have been happier to not merit, because it fell upon her when the Yugoslav Airlines flight she was an attendant on, exploded in mid-air, on its way from Copenhagen to Belgrade in 1972. She was the sole survivor among 28 passengers and crew members. Her miraculous escape happened because she was trapped into the fuselage by a food cart when an explosion split the DC-9 aircraft in 2, hurling everyone else into the freezing air and the mountain slopes below. Her own fall was broken by trees and snow and though it took a year for her to be on her feet again, she went on to live a relatively normal life till her death in 2016. She said in an interview later that the accident had not left her scared of flying and she had, in fact, wanted to return to her old job. Unfortunately, her employers did not agree. She continued with the airline in an administrative capacity. And that is not all that is fascinating about her story. She was not even supposed to be on the flight that day! It was another flight attendant named Vesna who was to be on the roster for the day.  An administrative slip-up changed the course of her life forever.

Marcus Luttrell – Utilizes his time and efforts to help others like himself

US Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrel was the sole survivor from among 20 men, all part of Operation Red Wings, launched to capture Taliban leader Ahmad Shah in Afghanistan in 2005. He remembers how the men let off a group of goat herders who had discovered their hiding place. Soon after, they were caught in gunfire that left every one of his teammates dead. Marcus Luttrell has no idea how he survived the relentless volley of gunshots. “That’s one of the things about being a sole survivor,” he said in an interview. “You really don’t know why.” He was neither superior to the other men in his skills nor was he completely spared of the bullets. He just managed, somehow, to crawl to safety. And stay alive. After hiding in a nearby village for a week, where the villagers shielded him and tended to his wounds, he was rescued and sent home. He was later awarded the Navy Cross and Purple Heart for his bravery in the face of death. Marcus Luttrel now spearheads a campaign called the Lone Survivor Foundation, through which he seeks to support combat veterans returning from conflict situations. He does not question why he survived; he is just thankful for it.

Bahia Bakari – The Miracle Girl

In 2009, 12-year-old Bahia Bakari was on Yemenia Airways Flight 626, on her way to the island of Comoros with her mother for her summer vacation when the ill-fated plane crashed into the depths of the Indian Ocean. Bahia’s mother, along with 151 others who were on the flight, was lost to the choppy seas. The schoolgirl from Paris clung onto a floating piece of debris from the wreckage for 9 hours before being rescued by a sailor on a private ship that had been on its way to join the rescue efforts. Dubbed ‘the miracle girl’ by the press, Bahia Bakari remembers that when she first found herself plunging into the sea, her thoughts had been quite removed from reality. She feared the scolding she would get from her mother later, for not wearing her seat belt tightly enough or perhaps leaning too far to look out the window. It was only days later while recovering in the hospital that she came to understand the gravity of the tragedy she had survived.

The survivors – especially sole survivors – of tragic accidents are often seen to suffer from survivor’s guilt, PTSD, loneliness and an overwhelming inability to cope with the question, ‘why me?’. But it is a true testament to their extraordinary courage that they manage to take the second chance handed to them and live full and meaningful lives.