WILLIAM SHATNER: Deadly falls from incredible heights.
Lightning strikes packed with devastating power.
And lethal brain injuries that should mean
certain death.
(siren wailing)
How are some people able to beat the odds
and survive the impossible?
Is it blind luck?
A combination of instinct and quick thinking?
Or could it even be...
divine intervention?
Well, that is what we’ll try and find out.
♪ ♪
29-year-old engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi is walking to work...
...when a blinding flash,
brighter than the Sun, fills the sky.
He doesn’t know it yet,
but the world’s first atomic bomb
has just exploded over the city
with the force of 15,000 tons of TNT,
creating a massive shockwave...
...that disintegrates everything in its path.
MICHIO KAKU: Instinctively, Tsutomu Yamaguchi raced into a ditch
as an atomic fireball
began to pulverize almost everything in sight...
...like a gigantic hand from outer space coming down,
crushing everything,
blowing all structures away.
SHATNER: The bomb that exploded over Hiroshima
was the most destructive force ever unleashed in history.
80,000 people died instantly,
as temperatures approaching the surface of the Sun
vaporized their bodies
and bathed the city in lethal radiation.
But, astoundingly,
despite being less than two miles from ground zero,
Mr. Yamaguchi somehow survived.
KAKU: There is ash falling from the sky.
And he realizes that his eardrums have been shattered
and that he was burned
by the enormous amount of heat that came out of the blast.
He got a thousand times
the dose of radiation that we experience in one year
simply by walking on the surface of the Earth.
Anyone who was in that type of a radius
from, uh, an atomic bomb would experience
anywhere from 95% to 98% chance of dying
due to all the different dimensions of injury
that are possible.
SHATNER: Tsutomu Yamaguchi’s survival
of the nuclear devastation at Hiroshima
is almost impossible to fathom.
But what’s even more unbelievable is that,
just three days later,
on August 9, 1945,
he did it again.
Yamaguchi is from Nagasaki.
After being atomic bombed,
he wants to go back to meet his family.
So he gets on a train,
travels 186 miles from Hiroshima to Nagasaki.
And then, for a second time,
he sees this flash of light
coming from an atomic detonation--
the Nagasaki bomb.
And there’s a repeat of the tragedy.
SHATNER: More than 75,000 people died in the Nagasaki bombing.
Yet, once again,
Tsutomu Yamaguchi walked away
from a deadly nuclear blast with only minor injuries.
Even more incredibly,
despite being exposed to a lethal dose of radiation
for the second time in three days,
he lived an otherwise healthy life
before finally dying at the age of 93.
Those two quick doses of radiation,
within three days of each other,
um, is-is absolutely terrible.
Uh, you would think it would have...
destroyed his-his body, his internal organs.
But, somehow, this man had a system
that was able to withstand it.
And so it shows that there’s a lot more going on
with our bodies, and they’re capable
of a lot more than we may realize.
It just takes these extraordinary circumstances
to show us that.
From a medical perspective,
it defies all of the science that we know.
There has to be another facet,
like his will to live.
And, who knows, maybe that element of will
that can’t be quantified by science
had something to do with it.
SHATNER: Tsutomu Yamaguchi’s survival would appear to defy all logic,
which is perhaps why some people attribute it to fate.
RAMANI DURVASULA: When we’re thinking about survival,
fate and destiny are so interesting,
because they’re beliefs that have been held
by societies as long as we’ve had, sort of, recorded history.
We can look at the ancient Greeks,
where a lot of the philosophies were really about
the gods on Mount Olympus sort of rolling the dice
and determining the fates for the lowly humans underneath.
We could look at Hinduism,
where the concept of karma has often been sort of conflated
with a model of fate.
And I think that makes sense,
given how people who survive disasters of any kind
and really, by all odds, should have died,
it’s really a miracle
watching them walk out of these situations.
One of the systems of meaning
that those people will find themselves in is to say,
"There was a plan for me."
SHATNER: Is it really possible that Tsutomu Yamaguchi
was destined to withstand the bombings
at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Perhaps the answer can be found by examining another survivor
who overcame impossible odds not just twice
but an astonishing four times.
Deep within the bowels of the luxury liner RMS Titanic,
Arthur John Priest is shoveling coal
into the vessel’s massive boilers...
...when it strikes a 400-foot iceberg.
The hull rips open,
and Priest is plunged into darkness
as the boiler room instantly floods
with the icy waters of the North Atlantic.
These areas where Priest was working
and the other firemen are working,
they’re below the waterline.
They’re the most vulnerable.
(men shouting)
The water’s gonna come in at a very fast rate of flooding.
The chances of survival are very slim.
COYNE: Somehow, with the ship damaged,
breaking apart...
...he still managed to get from below deck and escape.
And, guys in his role,
a lot of ’em didn’t get to make it onto the life rafts.
So, he gets in the water
and survives 28-degree water temperatures,
these ungodly, uh, below freezing water temperatures.
BARNETTE: Available information indicates
that Arthur John Priest swam up to 30 minutes
before safely boarding a lifeboat.
So, seems like a pretty remarkable feat to survive,
given the tragic loss of life involved with the Titanic.
SHATNER: Surviving the Titanic is incredible enough.
But what’s truly remarkable about Arthur John Priest
is the fact that, over the next five years,
he endured three more catastrophic shipwrecks.
Priest survived four sinkings between 1912 and 1917.
He not only survived the Titanic,
but then he was also involved in the sinking of the Alcantara,
1916.
He next moved on to the Britannic,
which also sank in the later part of the year.
His last ship that he served upon was another hospital ship,
the Donegal...
...which was torpedoed by a German U-boat
in the English Channel in 1917.
For Mr. Priest to survive all four of these shipwrecks,
it seems like something was looking out for him.
Because it definitely defies the odds.
Luck, serendipity, whatever it is,
I think our bodies and minds can take us very, very far,
but, at a certain point, you just got to...
you really got to hope for the best.
Are some people destined to cheat death?
Certain stories definitely make you wonder
whether it’s possible.
However, there are those who believe
that some stories of survival are not due to fate
but rather, the remarkable healing power
of the human body.
SHATNER: A 25-year-old foreman named Phineas Gage
is overseeing construction on a railroad line
from Rutland to Burlington.
Suddenly, an explosive charge
set to blast away rock detonates without warning.
In the violent eruption, Phineas Gage is struck
by a three-and-a-half-foot iron rod.
The 13-pound projectile spears Gage straight through his head,
entering below his jaw and exiting
out the top of his skull.
COYNE: A nice big chunk of metal
took part of the brain with it and blew out part of his skull.
His coworkers come up and they just had
to put him on a horse, bounce him down the road
and take him not to a hospital but to a hotel,
’cause that’s where the nearest doctor was.
SHATNER: But when the doctor
begins his examination,
he is astonished to find that Phineas Gage
is still alive.
In some ways, Phineas Gage is a strange story of resilience.
Remarkably, not only did he survive in the minutes and hours
right after the tamping rod went through his head,
he was just sort of talking like he was normal.
COYNE: 999 out of a thousand
other brains would have just shut down.
But even though his brain and his skull
was severely damaged,
he never loses consciousness the whole time.
And he manages to live,
and live a fairly normal rest of his life.
That’s why the curious case of Phineas Gage is so unique
it’s still talked about to this day.
SHATNER: By all accounts,
having an iron rod blasted through one’s head
should result in certain death.
So how was it possible that Phineas Gage not only lived
but remained conscious through the ordeal?
Well, according to medical experts,
it may have had something to do
with the brain’s remarkable ability
to rewire itself.
This case was what started the fascination
with understanding the different parts of the brain.
It’s possible that there was some matter
that shot out from the brain.
The interesting part is,
none of the stuff that was extruded
was critical enough to his function
to stop him from surviving.
DURVASULA: When Phineas Gage endured this accident,
it showed us that the brain is very neuroplastic.
And by that, I mean the brain does grow back.
So when there’s injury, that neuroplasticity
means that the brain will attempt,
to the best of its ability, to engage in some form of "repair."
SHATNER: Is it possible that Phineas Gage’s brain
was somehow able to rewire itself and keep him alive
after an iron rod tore through his skull?
Perhaps.
But some medical experts believe that he was only able to survive
because there was another factor at work: sheer luck.
And as proof, they point to the case of a woman
who also suffered a nearly fatal brain injury.
After a long day’s work, research chemist Andrea Scott
heads to her car to drive home.
But when she approaches the vehicle...
...three men emerge from the darkness to rob her.
As Andrea struggles for her life,
two gunshots ring out in the night.
(gunshots)
SCOTT: I remember
being on the ground
and just getting up off the ground...
...trying to leave that place.
I was shaking,
I was extremely cold,
I think my whole body was in a shock.
I had no idea that I was shot.
I had no idea what bad shape I was in.
(siren wailing)
SHATNER: Paramedics rush Andrea to the hospital.
Incredibly, she’s conscious
and aware of her surroundings for the entire ride.
It’s only after she arrives at the ER
that Andrea learns the extent of her injuries.
SCOTT: When I was in the ER,
doctors told me I was shot twice to the back of my head.
I remember lots of doctors and lots of nurses
working really hard to get me stable.
People did not believe I would survive.
SHATNER: Not only did Andrea Scott survive
being shot in the head twice, she was able to walk
out of the hospital after only eight days,
with minor injuries.
But how?
COYNE: There’s a lot of amazing things about Mrs. Scott’s story.
The bullets, of course,
after being shot at point-blank range, in her head,
traveled through the brain into the neck,
and there are so many important blood vessels.
Your carotid arteries, your jugular veins,
the artery that supplies blood to your brain
that travels up your spine.
All right there, all within a few inches.
And somehow, missed all of those.
She did have a lot of healing to go through.
Part of her face was paralyzed for a while,
she still gets severe headaches, but even after all that,
she healed up almost 100%.
Extraordinary tale of survival.
SCOTT: Doctors told my husband
that it was a miracle,
that they don’t know how it’s possible
that I didn’t end up dead.
Statistically, I shouldn’t be alive today.
BROWN: The chances of surviving a bullet wound to the brain,
it’s less than 0.1%.
We are absolutely talking about the difference of millimeters.
That’s what makes this truly a remarkable case
that shows we haven’t figured out everything
about blows to the brain.
If our brains have the ability to endure catastrophic injury,
is it possible that our bodies possess other,
even more extraordinary survival capabilities?
Perhaps the answer can be found by examining the story of a man
who was struck by lightning not once, not twice,
but seven times, and lived.
SHATNER: Park ranger Roy Sullivan is driving south
along Skyline Drive when suddenly,
a bolt of lightning strikes him
through the open window of his truck.
FRIEDMAN: Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning
driving along a mountain road.
He wasn’t hurt that much.
He was lucky.
Lightning can cause all kinds of damage to a person.
It can injure one’s nerves,
it can cause headaches that last, uh,
for many, many months, if not years.
And of course, a lightning strike can be fatal.
SHATNER: The blast burned off Roy’s hair
and left a black burn mark on his ranger hat.
One out of every ten people struck by lightning dies.
Those who survive often suffer debilitating, lifelong injuries.
But somehow, Roy Sullivan
walked away relatively unscathed.
Though what’s even more remarkable
is that between 1942 and 1977,
Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning on six more occasions
and survived each and every time.
FRIEDMAN: Roy Sullivan was in the Guinness Book of Records
for having been the person who was hit the most
in his lifetime by lightning.
He was dubbed the Human Lightning Rod,
Spark Ranger and Lightning Man.
There are a number of factors that increased
Sullivan’s odds of being struck.
He was outdoors,
not only on tops of mountains but on lookout towers,
moving around a lot in open spaces.
But the fact that he was hit seven times
and didn’t die is incredible.
SHATNER: Lightning is one of the most devastating forces on Earth.
A single bolt can carry more than 100 million volts
of electricity
and is five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
So how was Roy Sullivan able to survive
such destructive power seven times?
Well, according to some experts, it might have been because
certain people’s bodies are more resistant
to being electrocuted.
The human body is not the greatest conductor
for electricity, but in these cases,
maybe there are compounds in their bloodstream that do
increase their ability to generate energy or hold energy.
For example, someone who has
a higher degree of iron in their bloodstream
could potentially conduct lightning a little bit better.
SHATNER: Is it possible that Roy Sullivan
possessed some physical or genetic trait
that allowed him to both attract lightning
and withstand surges of electricity
that could otherwise kill a normal human?
Perhaps a clue can be found by examining another person
who was struck by lightning multiple times
and lived to tell about it.
After a long day of competition,
bull rider Carl Mize is about to head home
when he grabs the door handle of his truck
and is instantly hit by a powerful bolt of lightning.
Right when it happened, I knew I was struck by lightning.
The-the flash of the light and the shock, you know,
that went through my arm and through my body.
It knocked me back four or five foot on my tail end.
And, uh, I just jumped up and tried to brush the mud off,
and-and got in my truck and, uh, left.
SHATNER: Aside from some achy muscles,
Carl was left uninjured by the experience.
And like most people, he wasn’t worried about
this happening again, because he believed the old adage
that "lightning never strikes twice."
But between 1994 and 2006,
Carl was struck by lightning
an astonishing five more times.
MIZE: For 39 years, I’ve worked at the University of Oklahoma
in the electrical department in the utility shop.
And we take care of all the high-voltage electricity.
So I often think there’s got to be something
that, you know, attracts lightning to me,
’cause it’s just unheard of to be struck that many times.
SHATNER: After each incident, doctors who examined Carl
were shocked to discover that his injuries were minor.
None of his internal organs suffered the kind
of significant damage normally seen
in victims of lightning strikes.
There’s not a whole lot of people
that get struck by lightning, so doctors
really treat you as a guinea pig.
They actually had a man come down
that was an electrical engineer
to measure the DC voltage in my body.
A common person has six volts DC to run your body.
Whenever they tested me, I had 1.7, uh, DC volts in my body.
I’m more, uh, conductive than a-an average person.
And it makes me wonder, and even the doctors have wondered, too,
could have that been what’s kept me alive?
The notion that some individuals are born with an X factor
that allows them to avoid death is fascinating.
But what about stories of beating the odds
that are beyond scientific explanation?
For example, there are cases of people
who fell from such incredible heights
that their survival seemed to defy the laws of physics.
SHATNER: 47 stories above the ground,
brothers Alcides and Edgar Moreno
step onto a hanging platform to wash windows.
But when they start working...
...disaster strikes.
SHATNER: Edgar plunges 472 feet onto a fence, dying instantly.
But as emergency responders arrive on the scene,
they approach the wreckage of the scaffolding
and are shocked to discover that Alcides is still alive.
GLENN ASAEDA: Mr. Moreno actually fell
with the scaffolding and landed
onto some garbage cans in the alleyway.
Our rescue paramedics,
they thought that it was gonna be a recovery.
But when they got to him,
he opened his eyes and took a breath.
SHATNER: Alcides was rushed to the hospital for surgery.
Several of his vertebrae had been crushed,
and his skull was fractured, causing his brain to swell.
He was given 24 pints of blood
and put into a drug-induced coma,
undergoing 15 more surgeries.
But on January 24, a mere seven weeks after his accident,
Alcides was discharged from the hospital.
COYNE: Any fall from greater than one and a half times your own height
is considered potentially deadly.
So for someone to fall from this great a height and live,
you know, a productive life is absolutely fascinating.
SHATNER: Statistically, falling from a height
greater than 40 feet is almost always fatal.
So how did Alcides Moreno survive a fall
from more than ten times that high?
HAMILTON: It’s not the falling that kills you,
it’s the stopping.
And so, if there is a tree, bushes,
wreckage that’s between you and what you hit,
those factors contribute to survival.
And so, the main factor that caused Alcides Moreno
to survive is that platform that he was on.
He held onto that all the way down.
He didn’t fall directly 47 stories
without anything cushioning his fall.
SHATNER: Is it possible that being on top of the platform
broke Alcides Moreno’s fall just enough for him
to withstand a 470-foot plunge?
Perhaps the answer can be found by examining
the story of a woman who survived
the highest fall in history.
Six miles over the country of Czechoslovakia,
JAT Airlines Flight 367
is en route to Belgrade, Yugoslavia,
when a bomb detonates on board.
There are 28 people on, including crew and passengers.
(people screaming)
The plane breaks apart into three different parts--
the nose, the middle section, and the tail--
and it falls about 33,000 feet
into a tiny little village called Srbská Kamenice.
SHATNER: The plane’s wreckage
slams into the ground at 150 miles per hour.
27 of the 28 people on the plane die on impact.
But against all odds,
one person survives the fiery crash:
flight attendant Vesna Vulovic.
COYNE: When the rescuers come,
the plane is in all kinds of pieces
all over the mountainside, but here’s her,
in the wreckage, survived, all ten fingers and toes.
HAMILTON: She’s wedged in the fuselage, her head is sticking out,
and there is another dead crew member on top of her.
She has all sorts of broken bones,
just terrible injuries, and a lot of bleeding.
She’s hospitalized and she did not wake up, really,
until about three weeks later when her parents came to visit.
After a while, she wanted to return to work.
She did not have a fear of flying.
She had no memory of the crash or the aftermath.
Essentially, her memory was greeting passengers
and then seeing her parents later on in the hospital.
SHATNER: According to The Guinness Book of World Records,
Vesna Vulovic plummeted more than six miles,
making her fall the highest anyone has survived
in recorded history.
But what’s even more extraordinary
is that she wasn’t wearing a seat belt
when the plane exploded at 33,000 feet.
HAMILTON: Vesna Vulovic was not in her seat.
It’s a surprise, honestly,
that she wasn’t killed immediately
from the explosion or thrown out of the aircraft
like all of the other passengers and crew.
COYNE: Some people say, "Oh, she was in the back of the plane,
"the angle, maybe when she hit it went
like a skier would land, down at an angle, not all at once."
And maybe it did, but it just seems very extraordinary
that all these things could come together to have one survivor.
The fact that someone can live through a fall from 33,000 feet
seems to defy all logic.
But maybe we have to accept that science
doesn’t have all the answers when it comes to understanding
why some individuals survive the impossible.
Like the stories of people who believe
they escaped certain death with the help of a higher power.
SHATNER: 2,400 feet below ground,
dozens of miners toil in the sweltering darkness
of the San José copper mine.
Suddenly, the Earth above them shifts
and dislodges a boulder the size of a 45-story building.
The massive boulder comes crashing down,
causing the mine shaft to collapse,
and blocking the ramp that leads up to the surface.
ARONSON: There were 33 men in the mine
at the time of the accident.
On the surface, they knew that there had been
a terrible accident.
But it was not clear
what that meant for the men down below.
ROMERO: The outside world had no idea
if they were alive or dead.
People were really on edge,
they were watching this around the world on television.
It’s really something that-that people
were following very, very closely.
SHATNER: Search and rescue teams
quickly began to drill into the rock
to try and free the miners, but progress was slow.
For days, the world watched in suspense
as rescuers desperately continued
to drill in search of the miners.
ROMERO: There was a lot of concern
about their individual health conditions.
One of these guys had an ulcer that was really bad.
One of them was a diabetic.
So there were really desperate efforts
on the part of the Chilean authorities to find them.
ARONSON: It was nearly impossible to find the men,
because nobody can see through the Earth.
And the maps were outdated.
And that meant, as one of the drillers said,
"We’re drilling blind."
Finally, after 17 long days,
one of the rescuers’ drills uncovered evidence that,
incredibly, the miners were still alive.
The miners had found some red paint
so that when the drill came down through,
they could paint on the drill to show
that "We are alive."
ROMERO: In the drill, they sent a note out
that said in Spanish,
"Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33."
"We are okay in the refuge, the 33 of us."
(cheering)
And that really just changed everything.
SHATNER: Rescuers sent down small packages
of desperately needed supplies through the narrow hole
leading to the miners.
They also sent down
a small digital camera.
The video paints a harrowing portrait
of the conditions the miners had been trapped in
for the previous 17 days.
Somehow, the men had survived on only a week’s worth
of food and water.
ROMERO: These miners were trapped almost half a mile underground,
with a few cans of tuna fish.
They had to resort to drinking water
that was used for industrial purposes.
Also, they created a-a system
in which they had a democratic vote,
you know, one man, one vote.
And the majority, if they decided on something,
that was the way that they were gonna go.
(speaking Spanish)
DURVASULA: Without knowing it, the Chilean miners
walked into one of the most important
survival strategies there is, which is
creating a sense of collectivism,
and leaving each of them feeling less alone
with this nightmare that they were in.
SHATNER: After discovering the miners were alive,
rescuers estimated that it would take months
to drill through half a mile of solid rock
and reach the trapped men.
So here you are now, August 20, August 22,
and the drill operators said to the team up on top,
"We will be able to get them out by Christmas."
So, you are going to have to tell the men
that you’re going to have to be down
in that mine
for three more months.
To combat their feelings of helplessness,
the trapped miners turned to their last remaining refuge:
their faith.
ROMERO: One of the things that really struck me
about why they were able to make it, uh, for so long,
was their religious beliefs.
They really felt like prayer was one of their strategies
to help them make it through this.
BROWN: Literature documents
that faith is a significant factor in survivability.
Sometimes it’s individual faith,
sometimes it is faith of a community.
The hard part is, there is no science
that we have that absolutely defines it,
but faith has real tangible results for many people.
DURVASULA: For the Chilean miners,
many of them were men of faith
as part of their day-to-day lives.
So praying together, having that collective energy,
was just enough hope to keep a person going for another day.
SHATNER: After 69 days,
the rescuers finally created
a hole big enough to extract the miners.
Then, as the world waited with bated breath...
(cheering, applause)
...the men were brought up one by one.
And astonishingly,
all 33 miners made it out alive.
(cheering, laughter)
But perhaps what’s even more incredible
is that they were rescued two months sooner
than everyone expected.
And the miners firmly believed
that this unexpected turn of events
showed that a higher power had intervened on their behalf.
ROMERO: The power of prayer played a crucial role
in allowing these 33 miners to make it.
It’s even been said that God was the 34th miner.
Um, several of the men who were trapped down there said that.
They really felt like their belief in God
was why they were rescued.
When faced with a life-or-death scenario,
some people choose to appeal to a higher power
to help them survive.
But there are others who react much differently.
When pushed to the limit, they tap into abilities
they didn’t even know they had.
SHATNER: Here, in this protected reserve
in the shadow of Mount Kilauea,
tech industry executive Dewey Gaedcke
heads out for an evening hike.
But as he walks through the 523-square-mile park,
he becomes lost.
And when he’s unable to find the road
where he parked his car,
Dewey’s hike transforms into a grueling fight for survival.
Clouds came over and covered up the moon,
so it got darker, it got windier...
...and I completely missed the road.
And that’s what really messed me up.
I expected only an hour and a half hike,
so I really wasn’t well prepared.
I brought a flashlight,
a digital video camera, tennis shoes, and that was it.
SHATNER: Miles from his car and hopelessly lost
within a 330,000-acre maze of razor-sharp lava rocks,
Dewey quickly realizes that if he’s to have
any hope of rescue,
he first needs to keep himself alive.
GAEDCKE: I was exhausted, I was stressed,
I had a cut that looked like it might be getting infected.
So I was worried about gangrene.
I hadn’t brought water, uh, so I was already starting
to get a little bit dehydrated after being out there that long.
I walked all night.
Well, it’s some very late hour.
I’m dehydrated and I’m lost.
I’m not a survival expert,
but I’ve always been insanely curious,
and friends have called me MacGyver since high school.
I’m good at studying things,
and, uh, I’m good at figuring out
how different pieces can be used together.
In the morning, I built a debris shelter,
so I-I had something to sleep in at night.
And I had built rain catches,
so I’d woken up with plenty of fresh water.
I talked to my camera every day, leaving messages for my kids.
I just want to say to my little girls,
I love you guys so much.
And I’m doing my best to get home to see you.
My primary hope of getting rescued was from the sky,
so I had already broken the mirror off
of my video camera and was using that to try to reflect the sun
to signal that I’m in an emergency.
At that point, I was actually starting
to feel fairly confident I was very likely to get rescued.
And then I heard a helicopter.
SHATNER: On his fifth day of being stranded and alone,
a commercial tour helicopter found and rescued Dewey.
After his rescue, local officials informed Dewey
that no one had ever survived
more than three days lost in the park.
So, how did a tech industry executive
with no survival experience manage to endure five?
Well, according to experts, it was primarily
because of Dewey’s ability to remain calm
and focus on solutions in the face of adversity.
Well, I just finished my, uh, second-generation rain catch.
DURVASULA: When a person is in a survival situation,
one of the questions is whether a person is able
to tap into something in their mind
that they didn’t know they had.
There are people who have a mix
of resilience, adaptability, knowledge,
an ability to sort of center and stay calm and focused.
COYNE: Some of the more common attributes
of survivors is people that don’t focus
on all the terrible things that are going on around them.
They automatically assume everything’s gonna be okay.
GAEDCKE: There were multiple times where I was scared,
but I don’t believe I ever panicked.
In retrospect, looking back,
I can really see how impactful it was and how necessary it was.
So this experience taught me that not only
could I function well, I could actually use
my emotions to serve me under pressure.
And I didn’t know I was capable of that.
Are we fascinated by stories of individuals
who cheat death because we believe, or maybe we hope,
that we could survive under similar circumstances?
Of course, the only way to find out
is to actually be thrust into a perilous situation ourselves.
So, perhaps it’s better for us that the reason
why some people live through the impossible
remains... unexplained.
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