I Shouldn't Be Alive

[Zarathustra]

Every episode follows the same formula, but it's so powerful I can't stop watching it. Dramatic reenactments of real people who have almost died, recounted by the actual people who lived to tell the tale. This show reveals just how far human endurance can be stretched, the ability to endure extreme pain, hunger, thirst, exposure, and injury. Sometimes they have to endure it alone (for up to a week), sometimes they have to watch their 8-yr-old daughter almost die from dehydration in the desert. There have been bear attacks, canyon falls, plane crashes, marooned boats, etc. Each time, the people involved are pushed to the very edge of death, only to be saved by their own willpower and judgment--or lucky breaks. Usually, they end up getting rescued, but how this happens often has a lot to do with the steps they took to get out of their predicament alive.

After watching a woman with a broken pelvis and internal bleeding drag herself out of a canyon in sub-freezing temperatures (for 3 days, 2 nights), it made Thomas Covenant's compound fracture hike through the snow in The Power that Preserves seem a lot more realistic.

You can watch it on Animal Planet.

[Brinn]

After watching a woman with a broken pelvis and internal bleeding drag herself out of a canyon in sub-freezing temperatures (for 3 days, 2 nights), it made Thomas Covenant's compound fracture hike through the snow in The Power that Preserves seem a lot more realistic.

If you like this kind of stuff you'll love "Touching the Void" which is about an accident that occurred to two climbers in the Andes (i think). What these guys went through is beyond belief. The book by the same name was excellent as well.

[danlo]

Yes it was the Andes-great movie and book.

[Zarathustra]

Those damn Andes ... I just got through watching a rerun of a show that aired on the History Channel in October of this year called, I Am Alive: Surviving the Andes Plane Crash. It's the same event that the movie Alive was based on, where the survivors eat the dead and survive for 72 days before two of them hike out to civilization and get the rest rescued. An amazing tale. Truly the mother of all "I Shouldn't Be Alive" stories. 72 days, I just can't believe it. Amazing. What these people went through was just hell. The main guy who decided to hike out and get the others rescued was actually put out in the cold on the first night, because the others thought he was dead. Doctors now think that this is what preserved his brain and kept him from getting brain damage. He woke up from his coma three days later and eventually saved them all. Incredible.