Survivors - True Stories

On June 17th, 1816, L'Écho, L'Argus, La Loire and La Méduse set sail for Saint-Louis in Senegal. This expedition was to take possession of the colonies that France had before the Revolution. It was led by an incompetent aristocrat : Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys. La Méduse, an 150-ft long frigate, carried 395 people, mostly soldiers and sailors. On board were stocks of food for the colony, two longboats with a capacity of 100 passengers each, canoes and a skiff. The expedition, however, was a total disaster...

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The South Pole, what an adventure ! In 1911, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen was the first to reach it. A few years later, the Irishman Ernest Shackleton decided to cross the Antarctic continent from end to end, from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea : 1800 miles on his dogsled...

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Many of those sentenced to death over the years were executed by hanging. For a long time, it was considered a safe way to carry out capital punishment, since it causes a rupture of the cervical vertebrae, an inability to breathe and finally death, all, usually, in an instant. Few people survive it. Anne Greene is one of them, and she owes her life to a few simple medical procedures, far from any divine intervention...

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At the beginning of the 20th century, numerous adventurers set out to conquer the poles. They wanted to be the first to discover this or that island, to claim it in the name of their country. Some expeditions were better prepared than others, and many lost their lives in the dreaded Arctic ice. One of the least hospitable Arctic islands is Wrangel, off the coast of Siberia. In 1926, a temperature of - 57°C was recorded there. A real challenge for extreme adventurers (ant that's quite the understatement).

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Britain practiced the death penalty by hanging for a long time. It's a quick and clean way to deliver justice. It is also effective. It is indeed rare that the condemned person survives strangulation by the weight of his own body. But it happened to John Lee... three times in a row. It’s strange, very strange, the case of the man who could not be hanged...

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On October 1st 1769, Isabel Godin des Odonais left her Peruvian hacienda and went deep into the jungle. She was to join her husband in Guyana, whom she had not seen him for twenty years. The expedition had 41 members, including 31 native porters to carry the sixty boxes of luggage through the jungle. The aim was to reach the Amazon, where Doña Isabel's husband had chartered a boat. It was a 1500 mile journey through the jungle, using 18th-century methods. It would be a calamity.

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On July 21st, 1969, man walked on the Moon. It was the space age, but sometimes, space exploration turned into a disaster. In 1970, the Apollo 13 mission flew to our satellite but never reached its goal: an explosion forced the astronauts to change their plans and return to Earth as quickly as possible. It was a matter of life and death...

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The Australian bush is a terribly inhospitable place. Driving through it, why not, but getting lost without food and water is far less appealing. Yet that's what happened to a 35-year-old Australian man who survived 71 days of wandering through this terribly arid desert after being assaulted. He ate locusts and leeches -- it was a matter of life and death.

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Japan and the United States ar at war. To force a Japanese resistance, the Americans choose to use atomic weapons. They drop an atom bomb named Little Boy on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, then a second bomb, Fat Man on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The temperature at the centre of the explosion that razed Hiroshima rose to 300,000°C. The number of people killed by the blast, the heat and the subsequent fire storms is difficult to determine, approximations range from 110,000 to 250,000 dead. Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived both attacks.

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A human body immersed in water that’s frozen at the surface can survive for about 10 minutes. The freezing cold water quickly absorbs body heat, and the metabolism can only resist this thermal shock for a short time. And yet, young Jimmy Tontlewicz, who was declared dead after a 20-minute immersion in the icy waters of Lake Michigan, is alive and well today. It was his body that fought for him: it was, after all, a matter of life and death...

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