Lorne Knight has died, and Ada Blackjack finds herself completely alone on Wrangel Island. She’s losing hope she’ll ever see her son Bennett again. But she’s determined to do whatever it takes to survive until the other members of her team return with a supply ship, even if it means confronting her biggest fear: polar bears.

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After one year on Wrangel Island, the five members of the expedition are alarmed to realize that the supply ship that was scheduled to relieve them won’t be coming. Winter has arrived early, the ocean is freezing over, and the ship won’t be able to make it through the ice. With dwindling food supplies, the team has to make a last-ditch effort to go in search of help. Now, Ada Blackjack finds herself alone with the expedition’s dying leader, Lorne Knight – and she must learn new survival skills if she has any hope of keeping him alive.

This is the story of how Ada Blackjack became the sole survivor of the Wrangel Island expedition.

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In 1921, an expedition set out from Alaska for a remote island high in the Arctic Circle. With them was a 23-year-old Inuit woman named Ada Blackjack, who had been hired by four white explorers to cook and sew. For Blackjack, it was her last chance to earn enough money to pay for her young son’s medical treatment. But she had never spent any time in the wilderness, and the harsh Arctic surroundings would push her to her limits.

This is the story of how Ada Blackjack became the sole survivor of the Wrangel Island expedition.

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Sara Vladic was 13 when she first heard about USS Indianapolis while watching a World War II documentary with her dad. In just one sentence, the film described how the ship delivered the bomb that ended the war and then sank. For Sara, that moment would spark a decades-long journey to discover the untold story of Indy and its crew.

Sara spent years interviewing the survivors for her own documentary Indianapolis: The Legacy, and the book Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man. Today, she joins host Mike Corey to discuss Captain McVay’s trial, the ship’s recovery and the role Jaws played in reviving interest in Indy’s story.

This is the story of the greatest sea disaster in U.S. naval history, and the courageous men who survived it.

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By sheer chance, an American bomber pilot on a routine test flight has spotted the survivors of U.S.S. Indianapolis, who have been floating in the middle of the Philippine Sea for over three days. But rescuing them will be easier said than done. The survivors are hundreds of miles from the nearest land, and the ocean waters are getting rough. To get the men out of the water as quickly as possible, some of the rescuers will have to put their own lives on the line.

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It’s been two days since U.S.S. Indianapolis sank, and the number of survivors is dwindling. They’re being picked off by sharks, and driven insane by sleep deprivation, dehydration, and saltwater poisoning. As they hope and pray for a rescue, they will encounter a new enemy that none of them could have imagined, even in their worst nightmares.

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The nine hundred men who survived the torpedo attack on the U.S.S. Indianapolis are either drifting in the sea, fighting strong currents and swells, or clinging to rafts. They’re at the mercy of the ocean, hundreds of miles from land, with dwindling supplies and no drinking water. And soon, they’ll have to confront a terrifying new challenge – shark attacks.

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In the final weeks of World War II, the Navy cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis was attacked and sunk by a Japanese submarine in the middle of the Philippine Sea. The nine hundred survivors found themselves stranded in the middle of the open ocean, many without rafts or life vests, wondering when – or if – help was coming.

This is the story of the greatest sea disaster in U.S. naval history, and the courageous men who survived it.

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After being taken hostage by members of the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the lives of four American climbers were never the same. And just one year later, the attack on the World Trade Center made the threat of terrorism more real for everyone. Mountaineer and author Greg Child interviewed all four climbers to tell their story in his book, Over the Edge. On this episode, he joins host Cassie De Pecol to describe the effect 9/11 had on the climbers, his own experiences climbing in Kyrgyzstan, and returning to the region with John Dickey and Jason Smith to face one of the men that had held them captive.

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When the Americans finally act out and decide to fight for their lives, they’re left alone in an inhospitable mountain rage full of rebel militants and a trigger happy army. Far more than just a rescue mission, the climbers have to cross miles of treacherous terrain in the black of night with hopes that they won’t be mistaken for an insurgent militia by the Kyrgyz army. And if they do make it back to civilization, will they be able to make it all the way back home to the US. And if they do will anyone believe their story?

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