All language subtitles for The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd s03e07 Dodging Death.eng

[Dan narrating]

[whimsical music]

Imagine surviving a coma,

only to wake up at
your own funeral.

[whimsical music intensities]

- To the astonishment and
terror of everyone there,

Essie sits up out of
her coffin and smiles.

- She tries to walk
towards her own parents.

They flee as though she's
a ghost or a zombie.

- Or facing off against
an apex predator

and living to tell the tale.

- Suddenly he slammed
from the side.

His mask is torn from his face.

- Then very quickly, the shark
goes in for another bite.

[person screaming]

- How about free
falling 7,000 feet

and landing on the
unlikeliest lifesaver?

- Fate has thrown her
another curve ball.

She has landed directly on top

of a huge colony of fire ants.

- These fire ants attack
and bite and sting Joan

by the thousands, and
the pain is relentless.

- These are the stories
of near death experiences

so shocking, they're
truly unbelievable.

[suspenseful tune continues]

There are many ways
to cheat death.

Good luck, great timing,

or something even
more unbelievable

that happens to one
lovesick man in Russia.

- It's 2023 in Russia,

and a man only known as
Arthur is heartbroken

and he's decided to
drown his sorrows

in a long, all night pub crawl.

At the end of the night,

he wanders into a stranger's
apartment on the 19th floor

and ends up on the balcony.

He then leans back and flips
right over the railing.

[suspenseful tune]
[loud thud]

- Street cameras capture this.

A very fast blur
zipping past the camera

as he plummets
towards the street.

Debris shoots skyward
as he buries himself

into the top of an SUV,
[sirens waling]

and you think to
yourself, this is the end.

This guy's done.

- [Narrator] Instead, they
find something more surprising.

- Arthur is not only standing
by his own willpower,

but he's singing and he ends
up singing in the ambulance,

all the way to the
emergency room.

- [Narrator] First
responders are all shocked.

How did he survive
a 200 foot fall?

- There are a surprising
number of recorded cases

of very drunken people
surviving horrible accidents.

Essentially, their
bodies are so loose

they don't brace for impact

and sometimes they actually
experience less trauma.

- Incredibly, he
only has a concussion

and some spinal
compression fractures.

He's extremely lucky that
he landed on that car

with enough force to
be able to crumple it

to make the SUV
absorb the impact.

He survived something

that absolutely would've
killed a more sober man.

- Surviving a 19 story
fall seems impossible,

yet it's a walk in the park

compared to a high
altitude descent

that is truly the
stuff of nightmares.

[suspenseful tune]

- It is Christmas Eve,
1971 and Julianne Koka,

a German Peruvian
high school student

is flying with her mother
in a rickety passenger plane

over the jungles of Peru.

- The plane is packed
for two reasons.

One, it's the holidays, but
perhaps more importantly,

'cause the airlines other two
aircraft have crashed recently

and this is the only
one left functioning.

- The first 30 to 40
minutes of the flight

are pretty uneventful,

but when the plane heads
into a severe thunderstorm,

things go bad pretty quickly.

[suspenseful tune]
[thunder roaring]

- Lightning strikes
the wing of the plane,

sparks fly and crack.

Julianne hears her mother, say
out loud, "This is the end."

As the engines fail, the
plane begins to nose dive,

and for Julianne,
everything goes black.

[suspenseful tune continues]

- Suddenly she is
falling out of the sky,

still attached to
a bank of seats.

The G-forces and
the violent spinning

cause her to pass out again.

- [Narrator] Julianne wakes up
on the jungle floor, injured,

very confused, but
somehow still alive.

- She's suffered a
massive concussion.

When she tries to stand,
she immediately passes out.

- Not to mention the fact

she has a horrible gaping
wound and she's losing blood.

- How she survived the
landing is still a mystery,

but one of the theories is

the spinning of the row of seats

acted kind of like a helicopter,

where it provided enough
lift just to slow her down.

So when she hit the jungle,
she wasn't killed on impact.

- The other theory
that's posited is that

the bottom of the
seat that she was in

took the majority of the impact,

and as she continued to
fall through the canopy

and fall through the leaves
and through the branches

that continued to
slow down her descent

until she ultimately
hit the jungle floor.

- Julianne wanders
the crash site,

which is now
littered with bodies,

and she notices a
corpse with lady shoes.

It could possibly be her mother,

but at this point her
thinking is so scattered,

it's just hard for her to
really absorb anything.

- [Narrator] Dazed or not,
Julianne knows one thing.

She has to find help.

- She remembers something
that her father,

a field biologist once told her.

Follow the water.

Even the tiniest streams
will lead to bigger streams

and those will lead to rivers,

and that's where
the people will be.

- She's trying to take
in her surroundings,

but she has no clue
where to find water

until she hears a unique
call of a bird she knows

called a crested chicken,

and she remembers
they live near rivers.

- [Narrator] Her path to the
river is long and perilous,

swarming with panthers, snakes,

and other fearsome predators.

But the biggest threat comes
from a much smaller creature

now making a home out of the
horrific gash in her arm,

maggots.

- If maggots are appearing,

that means that the tissue
around the womb has died,

gangrene potentially setting
in, and that could be fatal.

- [Narrator] Despite
her body breaking down,

Julianne keeps moving,

drawn by the one thing that
cuts through the silence.

[birds chirping]

- For three days, she tracks
the sound of the bird,

and sure enough it
leads her to a stream.

- [Narrator] The stream
offers a glimmer of hope,

but with each passing
day doubt creeps in.

- A week has passed
since her plane crashed,

and occasionally she'll hear
a plane hovering above her.

She'll scream for
search and rescue,

but the jungle canopy is so
thick that they don't hear her.

- [Narrator] Then amid the
endless hum of the jungle,

a new sound emerges.

- She hears the sound
of running water.

She's found the river,

just like her father
told her she would.

She's too weak to swim,

so her only real option is to
float down the river on logs

or anything else
that will carry her.

- While she's drifting
down the river,

there are crocodiles
that see her floating.

Luckily they end up
leaving her alone

and letting her
continue to drift on.

- [Narrator] Eventually she
comes across a small riverboat

docked by a cabin,
which gives her an idea.

- Julianne remembers as a child,

they had a dog

that also had a wound that
became infested with maggots.

Her dad would grab
some diesel fuel

to clean all the maggots out.

With the outboard motor
fuel, she also does the same

and the maggots immediately
rushed to the surface

and leave the wound.

- [Narrator] Exhausted
and malnourished,

Julianne passes
out in the cabin,

her first shelter since she
fell from the sky 10 days ago.

- When Julianne awakes,

she's startled because she
sees three lumber workers

standing over her.

They're completely shocked and
terrified by her appearance.

She is emaciated, she's filthy,

and her eyes are blood
red from the concussion.

They scream and run away.

It turns out there
actually is a local legend

about a water demon
with big fiery red eyes.

They think that she's
coming to get them.

- [Narrator] Julianne convinces
them that she's not a demon,

but the survivor
of a plane crash,

and they take her to the
neighboring town to get help.

- After spending 11
days in the jungle,

Julianne finally
reunites with her father,

the voice in her
head, which told her,

follow the water and
you'll find the people.

- By chance, famed film
director Werner Hertzog

was supposed to be on
that plane with Julianne,

but he was bumped.

Decades later, he returns
with her to the jungle

to retrace this incredible
tale of survival.

- Rock climbing
is full of risks,

but sometimes the most
terrifying part isn't the fall.

Take for instance, the
experience of one man

on Japan's Mount Futago in 2022.

[suspenseful tune]

[climbers yelling]

- The climber shutters as a
black blur shoots past him.

That blur is a vicious
Japanese black bear.

[climber yelling]

There's a myriad of ways he
could die. He's got no ropes.

The bear could knock
him off this cliff,

some 3000 feet up, or he could
slip as he tries to escape.

- There's also the
unpleasant prospect

of being mauled and
killed by this female,

because Japanese black bear
are notoriously aggressive.

- Black bears are
an apex predator.

They're a formidable animal,

and to fight off a black
bear even on flat ground

is almost an impossible task.

Imagine hanging off of a cliff

and to add to the peril,

a bear can climb a mountain
much faster than a person can.

- [Narrator] Just when he
thinks it can't get any worse,

an unexpected visitor shows up.

- In the middle of the mayhem,

he notices there's a little
bear cub in the distance.

This is by far the
worst case scenario

when it comes to bear attacks,

because 70% of people
that lose their lives

from bear attacks are
from a very angry mother

defending their cubs.
[climber yelling]

- Luckily, the climber
has a secret weapon.

He happens to know karate, so
when the bear lunges at him,

he actually throws some
powerful kicks and punches.

One of those kicks
lands hard enough

that it rattles her
and she retreats.

- When you add up
all the factors,

this guy is extremely lucky
to survive the situation.

- Completely out of
breath and panicked,

the climber finally makes
his way back up the mountain

knowing that today he
just barely survived

filming his own
death on a GoPro.

- Karate might come in
handy against angry bears

on a mountain, but it's not
going to save you underwater.

[suspenseful tune]

- By 22 years old,
Australian, Rodney Fox

is already a
spearfishing legend.

In 1963, he's determined to
hold onto his local title.

- He is free diving without
a tank, taking deep breaths,

and combing the reefs
off of Aldinga Beach

in search of exotic fish.

- [Narrator] What Rodney
doesn't realize is

that he is also being hunted.
[suspenseful tune]

- Suddenly he's
slammed from the side.

His spear gun is
knocked from his hand.

His mask is torn from his face.

His first thought is that he's
been struck by a submarine.

- Rodney isn't sure
what's happening,

but what he does know is that
he's moving through the water

faster than he's ever
moved in his life.

Rodney feels an intense pressure

from his hip to
above his shoulder,

and all the air just suddenly
expelled from his lungs.

Then very quickly, he realizes
that he's in the mouth

of a great white shark.
[suspenseful tune continues]

- He's weakened by
the loss of blood

and also the lack of air,

so he reaches for
his diver's knife

and begins jabbing the
shark near his eyes

and near his gills.

Incredibly, he actually feels
the shark letting him go.

- [Narrator] Most would
try to flee from the shark,

but quick thinking Rodney
goes on the offensive.

- Rodney rushes toward the shark

and bear hugs it,
wrapping his bloody arms

around its great
sand papery belly.

This is similar to a
tactic used by seals

when they're attacked
by great white sharks.

They crowd close
to its midsection

to stay away from
its deadly jaws.

- Now the shark wants
to get rid of Rodney,

so it shakes him off

and once free, Rodney is
going for the surface.

- He looks down as he's
kicking his way to the surface

and through the bloody
mirk of the water,

he can see the shark
is coming at him.

- The shark goes in
for another bite,

but to Rodney's surprise,
the shark doesn't bite him,

it goes for the bag of
fish that he has speared.

- [Narrator] This may
sound like a lucky break,

but the bag of fish is
still attached to him.

- Rodney's hands are too torn up

to trigger the release on
his bag of speared fish

attached to his dive belt.

So when the shark takes off,
Rodney is dragged by the bag

back down toward
the ocean floor.

By some last minute miracle,
the line snaps on its own

and Rodney is free to
swim toward the surface.

- Rodney breaks the surface
and begins to gulp air

and he sees that a boat
is bearing down on him

and it turns out that the blood

that is pouring out of Rodney,

has created essentially a
dye marker to locate him.

- [Narrator] As Rodney
is pulled onto the boat,

the only thing holding him
together is his wetsuit.

- He is in terrible condition.

There's this giant bite mark
going from his shoulder,

all the way down to his hip
and his organs are hanging out.

Every rib on the left side
of his body is cracked

and his lung is punctured.

- It takes almost 500 stitches

to put Rodney back
together again,

but he survives and fights his
way back to a full recovery.

- Rodney's massive scar

becomes the stuff of
spearfishing legend.

Some say the encounter
inspired Peter Benchley

when he was writing
the book "Jaws".

- Now in his eighties,
Fox still chases sharks,

but with a camera and
from inside a cage.

- When it comes
to escaping death,

most managed to do it before
actually being buried.

But shockingly, there
are a few exceptions.

- In 1915 in South Carolina,

you had one of those incredibly
scorching hot summers.

30-year-old, Essie Dunbar
falls into a violent

epileptic seizure,
due to all the heat.

She passes out on the ground

and the local county
doctor, DK Briggs is called.

When Briggs arrives
to the scene,

Essie is completely motionless.

- After several failed
attempts to revive her,

DK Briggs announces the
sad news to Essie's family,

their beloved daughter is dead.

- The grief stricken Dunbar's
send word to Essie's sister,

but she lives in another town,

and unfortunately they
have to plan the funeral

for the next day because
of the excessive heat.

They can't leave a
body lying around.

- Her sister is devastated

and wants to come
home for the funeral,

which is gonna be incredibly
tight for her to make it.

Remember, the
automobile as we know it

still was not in existence,

so it was gonna take
her sister quite a while

to make it back to
the family home.

- Three ministers actually
preached at Essie's funeral

to try to elongate the service,

and yet, this still
isn't enough time

for her sister to arrive.

- By the time Essie's
sister makes it,

the funeral's over and
Essie has been buried.

Essie's sister is inconsolable.

She can't believe she's
missed the funeral.

So to finally calm her down,

the family decides
they will exhume Essie

so her sister can see
her one final time.

It's a little bit extreme
that they would even do that,

but unbelievably, the
groundskeepers of the cemetery,

they all agree and they decide
they will dig the coffin up.

- And when they open the coffin,

a dead body is not
what they find.

To the astonishment and terror
of everyone in the group,

Essie sits up out of her coffin,

looks at her sister and smiles.

- By some accounts, the
preachers actually faint

and fall into the grave.

Essie steps out of the coffin

and tries to walk
towards her own parents.

They flee as though she's
a ghost or a zombie.

- [Narrator] Essie's
rise seems like something

out of a horror movie,

but the real story
is far more chilling.

- A seizure is an electrical
storm in the brain,

so likely what happened is
that during her seizure,

that electrical activity
ended up stopping the heart.

So when the county doctor
pronounced her dead,

her heart actually was stopped.

This is a phenomenon
called ictal asystole.

And on top of that, when
people think of seizures,

they think of the whole
body violently jerking,

but there are tonic
seizures as well

where the whole body
is just fully stifF,

so that stiffening could
have mimicked rigor mortis

and tricked DK Briggs into
believing this patient was dead.

- Luckily, Essie is no zombie
and Essie's sister knows that.

Calmer heads prevail and
she's invited back home

and makes a full recovery.

- Essie goes on to live a
pretty normal and quiet life.

She works on her family's
farm until she passes away

in the year 1962.

A local newspaper
announces the service as,

"Final funeral for
South Carolina woman."

- Unbelievably, this
isn't the only time

someone is pronounced
dead a little prematurely.

[suspenseful tune]

- In 1754, Ewen McDonald
is a Scottish soldier

on leave and he
goes out to the pub.

A fight breaks out.

Suddenly someone
pulls out a knife

and things go from bad to worse.

- Ewen, who is a
trained soldier,

ends up with the
knife in his hands

and stuck in the neck of one
of the locals, Robert Parker,

who dies from the knife wound.

The locals want justice and
they're going to get it.

- Ewen is charged with
murder and convicted.

The judge sentences him
to death by hanging.

In addition, the judge
rules his body be donated

to a nearby medical school.

- That might seem like a strange
pronouncement by the judge,

but at this point in
time, it is very hard

to find good healthy bodies
for anatomical study.

So this is really a gift
to the medical students

and they're excited
to get this body.

- It's execution day and Ewen
is brought up to the gallows.

He's desperately trying to
stop this from happening.

He's shoving and pushing

and he tries to knock the
hangman off his ladder.

It's all to no avail.

The noose is tightened,

the lever is pulled, and
Ewen is hung from the neck

until a medical
professional on the scene

officially declares him dead.

- [Narrator] Ewen's
body is brought

to the dissection theater

to carry out the second part
of his sentence, the autopsy.

- The surgeon is excited to
get underway with this job.

He sharpens his
tools, gets dressed,

and when he enters the
dissection theater,

he is met with the
shock of his life.

- Sitting up on the table
is a very frightened,

very much alive, Ewen McDonald,

and he is panicking,
begging, pleading for help.

- Luckily for him, he's
in the right place.

There is a doctor and you
think that this doctor

would come to his
aid and heal him.

He's still alive.
[suspenseful tune]

- [Narrator] But
this medical miracle

isn't enough for the
doctor to change his plans.

- Instead of saving Ewen,

this surgeon grabs a mallet

and knocks Ewen upside the head,

finishing the hangman's job.

This surgeon is super excited

to get this dissection underway

and when he sees a living Ewen,

he is not gonna let
that come between him

and his dissection.

- In perhaps a stunning
example of karmic retribution,

years later, the same
surgeon would die

from a kick to the head
delivered by his own horse.

No word on whether he donated
his own body to science.

- We've seen death avoided
thanks to freak physics,

a sheer will to live, and even
slipping the hangman's noose.

But sometimes, the best
way to beat the reaper

is with a little help
from Mother Nature.

[suspenseful tune]

- The Empire State
Building in New York City

was once the world's
tallest building

and there have been
numerous instances

of desperate people using
the building's height

to jump off and end it all.

1979, one of these
despondent people is

29-year-old, Elvita Adams.

- It's a cold, windy
night on December 2nd

and Elvita walks
the observation deck

on the building's 86th floor.

When she's confident that
there's no one close enough

to stop her, she quickly
scales the eight foot fence

and jumps off.
[suspenseful tune]

- Now, just as she leaps,
a massive gust of wind

comes along and pushes her
back towards the building.

- [Narrator] Instead of falling
86 stories to the ground,

she falls only one,

landing on a narrow
ledge on the 85th floor.

- She's stunned, she's
in tremendous pain,

and really not sure what's
happened, how she got there.

- Wind moving a body this way

is not something that a
small breeze is gonna do,

it takes like 60 to 70
mile per hour wind gust,

and it turns out that the
higher you go in altitude,

the faster the wind becomes

because there's less
friction with the ground

and all the stuff on the ground.

And in New York City, you
have these tall skyscrapers,

and as the wind
funnels through them

going from a wide area
to a more narrow area,

that increases the wind speed.

- What's really
astonishing about this is

the timing of this gust of wind.

It had to be coming from
exactly the right angle

at exactly the right time
to save Elvita's life.

- A night supervisor
named George Rice

spots Elvita on the ledge.

Incredibly, with
the help of others,

he's able to get Elvita
safely inside the building

without anybody falling.

Elvita is taken to
Bellevue Hospital

with a fractured pelvis,

but otherwise, unharmed,

all thanks to that
miraculous gust of wind.

- One miracle might
make you a believer

in divine intervention,

but our next lucky protagonist

has his guardian angel
working overtime.

- It's a pretty cool
January day in the year 1962

in Croatia.

You have 32-year-old
music teacher, Fran Salak

riding on the train.

Then suddenly and
without warning,

Fran hears this sound of just
crushing and grinding metal

and sees gravel just
shooting past the window.

The train has jumped the track

and is now careening into the
icy water that is below them.

- The frigid water
rushes into the train

and by the time Fran
realizes what's happening,

he's got a broken arm and
some brutal hypothermia,

but somehow Fran is able
to swim his way to help

and is plucked from the
river before it kills him.

Now 17 other passengers
are not so lucky.

- [Narrator] But this is not

the angel of death's
last swing at Fran,

not by a long shot.

- In 1963, Fran takes his
first ever plane ride.

This has be an exciting
moment for 'em.

But not long after takeoff,
something terrible happens.

- Mid-flight, the door is
ripped off the fuselage.

A flight attendant and Fran
are sucked out along with it.

- If you're sucked
out of a plane,

the odds of your survival
are pretty much next to zero.

- 19 people aboard the plane

will die when the plane crashes,

but Fran somehow
survives this event

because as he falls to earth,
he lands in a haystack.

- [Narrator] After recovering,

Fran welcomes an uneventful
life for the next three years

until a routine trip
takes an unexpected turn.

- Fran's on a bus that
slams into an embankment

and slides into
another cold river.

- Once again, he's able to
free himself from the bus,

swim away from the wreckage
through the SU river

and makes it to safety.

- [Narrator] Fran is
done taking chances

with public transportation,

so he saves up and
buys himself a car.

- In the early 1970s,

not one but two of
Fran's cars catch fire,

nearly killing him each time.

This is not the guy
you wanna carpool with.

- [Narrator] A more cautious
Fran spends the next 20 years

or so with his feet
solidly on the ground,

but even that's
not without risk.

- One day he's just walking
the streets near his home

and a bus jumps a curb

and then hits him
on the sidewalk.

Fran figures, look,
death is gonna follow me

no matter where I go, so I may
as well do whatever I want.

So he decides to take
a mountain vacation,

which requires him
driving up a winding,

perilous mountain road.

- [Narrator] You can probably
guess how this is going to go.

- Halfway through the trip,

a semi-truck emerges
from Fran's blind spot,

hits his car and knocks him
off the side of this road,

plummeting 300 feet.

Somehow Fran is able to
eject himself from the car

and hang onto a tree
before being rescued.

- Now, as reporters
dig into the story

of Fran's unlucky streak, he
becomes kind of a folk hero

and no big surprise, he
really loves the attention.

And Fran's quick to point
out that after four divorces,

he's unlucky in love too.

- [Narrator] But the
un-luckiest man in the world,

does have a happy ending.

- Well, in 2003, Fran's
luck changes for the better.

He wins 900,000
euros in the lottery.

- [Narrator] The
lucky streak continues

when a major snack company
asks Fran to do a commercial

after his lottery win.

- It's a very lucrative
endorsement deal,

but Fran turns it down.

Why?

Because it requires
him flying on a plane

and Fran Salak is done
with planes, with trains,

with buses, and probably
with automobiles.

- [Narrator] Fran,
however, is still willing

to take some risks.

- Despite having had
four previous divorces,

He decides, you know what?

I'm feeling it right now.

Lemme go ahead and just
propose to my girlfriend,

which he does.

I mean, when the
opportunity strikes,

you have to take
advantage of it, right?

- After living to
the ripe age of 87,

Fran gives much of his lucky
fortune to friends and family.

- They say, "If you
love what you do,

you'll never work a
day in your life",

but as one unlucky
lobsterman finds out,

it's tough to love your job
when it tries to kill you.

[suspenseful tune]

- 40 miles south of
Montauk, New York,

lobsterman, John
Aldridge is hard at work

on the deck of his work
boat, the Anna Mary.

His partner, Anthony Sazinski

and another crew member are
snoozing away in the cabin

while they make the long
crawl to their traps.

- John is on the deck
prepping the big tanks

that are gonna hold the lobsters
that they're gonna pull in.

He's filling one
with cold water,

which will keep
the lobsters alive.

He goes to the second tank

and it's blocked by a
couple big chests of ice,

about 200 pounds each.

He thinks for a moment he
should wake up his buddy

who's sleeping downstairs,

and he decides to
do it on his own.

- [Narrator] This may prove to
be one of the worst decisions

of John's life.

- John thrusts his
weight against it.

He gives a heave and
the handle breaks.

He goes head over heels
[water splashing]

into open water.

He is tossed by the prop wash

as he tries to scream
to his partner,

but the loud diesel
engines just drown him out.

[suspenseful tune]

Alone in the open ocean at
night with no life jacket,

no flares, no radio.

John knows there's hardly
a chance of survival.

- John is wearing big,
bright green boots

that go almost up to his thigh,

and they're so huge,

his friends call him his
Herman Munster boots.

And first thing you're supposed
to do in this situation

is to kick off your work boots

'cause in most cases they
will drag you underwater.

But John notices that they
seem to be keeping him afloat,

so he carefully
takes off his boots

and turns them upside down,
drops them down into the water,

capturing air, and he
sticks one under each arm

and now he's improvised
a flotation system.

[suspenseful tune continues]

- [Narrator] Hours later, John's
friend and partner Anthony

wakes up on the Anna Mary and
makes a disturbing discovery.

- He comes up on the
deck, nobody's there,

and the boat is just roaring
forward on autopilot.

- Anthony sees the deck lid
to the lobster hold is open.

He scrambles and
ducks his head inside,

worried his friend fell
into the tank and drowned,

but the tank is full
of water and no John.

When Anthony spots the
broken cooler handle,

he realizes John must have
rolled out the back of the boat.

Critical question
though, is when?

- Anthony immediately
puts out a frantic call

to the coast guards

and to the rest of the
captains in the area.

They estimate John fell into
the water around 11:00 PM

and what they do is create
this giant search grid.

- In addition to
the Coast Guard,

nearly every private
boat in the Montauk area

has stowed their fishing
gear and headed out

to see if they can
help with the search.

- The biggest problem,

John fell in the water
at 3:30 AM not 11:00 PM

so they're all searching 30
miles in the wrong direction.

- [Narrator] Meanwhile,
John is doing

whatever he can to stay alive,

but several hours in
he's running on empty.

His only hope is to find
the buoy of a lobster trap

and use it to stay afloat.

- The ocean has a really
big swell that day,

so every time a
swell comes along,

it kind of lifts him up

and it gives him a
higher vantage point

and at one point he spots
a larger lobster buoy

that's floating in the water
that's called a high flyer.

He figures, if I
can grab onto it,

it'll give me an extra
chance of survival.

- [Narrator] As John
holds on for dear life,

one persistent search
volunteer questions Anthony

in more detail.

- They go over the minute
details of the deck

and the condition he found
it in and they figure it out.

One of the tanks was
full of cold water

and John would
not have done that

until they were really
close to their traps.

They realize now that John
probably went in the water

a lot later than they
initially thought.

- [Narrator] With the clock
reset, the search narrows

and a Coast Guard helicopter
races to find John.

- John Aldridge is clutching
onto this buoy for dear life.

He's been in the
water for 12 hours.

He's running outta steam. He's
thinking maybe this is it.

But then above him, he
starts to hear the blades

of a helicopter getting
louder and louder and louder,

and he's screaming and he
starts waving his green boots

in the air frantically
to get its attention.

- The Coast Guard spots
this tiny speck in the sea.

It's John Aldridge hugging
that big orange lobster float.

When John's brought
into the chopper,

the pilot yells to
him over the noise,

"You got some will to live.

We've been looking for
you for nine hours."

And John yells back,

"Well, I've been looking
for you for 12 hours."

- John and Anthony
still own the Anna Mary.

They still hunt lobster
in the deep ocean

and John still wears his big,
ridiculous lifesaving boots.

- For people that love
a death defying thrill,

few sensations beat
skydiving or paragliding.

The professionals may
make it look easy,

but when things go wrong,
they go wrong fast.

- Kevin Philip is a
professional paraglider

and in 2022, he's
soaring thousands of feet

above this beautiful
terrain in Spain.

- This is a routine
flight for him,

but little does he know,

he's about to be in
a fight for his life.

- As he's paragliding along,

a massive updraft causes
a lot of turbulence

and starts to twist his chute

and he gets tangled
in the cords.

- He's now suddenly in free fall

and he's speeding
towards the ground

at about 80 to
100 miles an hour.

- He has an emergency parachute,

but as you can see in the video,

when he tries to deploy
it, it doesn't open.

- [Narrator] The closer
Kevin gets to the ground,

the less likely the chute
will be able to stop him.

- People on the ground,
including his own mother,

are watching at its
absolute mayhem in the air.

He's spinning around
as he's falling.

His main shoot is twisting
and spinning around him,

and it just seems
like he keeps falling

and falling toward his death.
[suspenseful tune]

- In a situation like
this, time slows down.

He has seconds at this point
to figure something out.

- Somehow he's able
to keep his composure

and he ends up dragging
his reserve chute back

and untangles it
from the main chute.

With less than one second left,

he's able to pop the chute

and it's just enough
time to break his fall.

- [Narrator] Incredibly,
Kevin, not only cheats death,

he manages to land
without any injury.

- [Kevin] Ah, oh my God.

- But what could
possibly save you

if your reserve shoot
does not deploy?

For one woman, the answer
is totally unbelievable.

- It's September, 1999

and 47-year-old
adrenaline junkie,

Joan Murray, is standing
at the open door

of a Cessna airplane
at 14,500 feet

with the wind roaring
past her ears.

- When a light illuminates,

she takes the leap that she's
taken so many times before.

It's Joan's 36
skydive of the year.

She knows that
there's always risks

associated with skydiving,

but that's why she's doing it.

- [Narrator] When Joan
gets down to 3000 feet

and pulls her rip cord,
she braces herself

for the jolt of her
shoot deploying.

- But there is no jolt and
her chute doesn't deploy.

- And as she screams
past 2000 feet,

she pulls the ripcord
on her reserve shoot.

But just like last time,
something's not right.

She looks up and sees that
the lines of her chute

are all twisted and tangled,

and that causes the chute to
not be able to open fully.

There's a little
bit of resistance,

but it is not nearly enough

to slow her down
for a safe landing.

- [Narrator] With less
than 700 feet to the ground

and no sign of slowing,

Joan has only enough
time to contemplate

how hard she's going to land.
[suspenseful tune]

- If a person drops from
a height of 48 feet,

the chances of
survival are like 50%.

But at 700 feet, oh,
it's about 100% fatal.

[suspenseful tune]

- Her landing is brutal,
to say the least.

- By some miracle, Joan
wakes up on the ground.

She tastes the
blood in her mouth,

but otherwise she can't move.

But there's another thing
that's happening that's strange.

She feels these sharp, stinky
pains all over her body

and she's wondering,
what is this?

Is this nerve damage?

Do I have a spinal injury?

And the pain is relentless.

- What Joan can't realize yet

is that fate has thrown
her another curve ball.

After two failed parachutes,

she has landed directly
on top of a huge colony

of fire ants.

The ants are stinging Joan and
they inject a painful venom.

- [Narrator] While this
may seem like insult

to already very severe injury,

the ant bites are actually
keeping her alive.

- A massive blunt force impact
like Joan just experienced

can stop the heart
all on its own,

but these red ants
stings have the byproduct

of increasing the
adrenaline in the body,

which keeps the heart beating.

These fire ants attack
and bite and sting Joan

by the thousands.

- [Narrator] Each bite
triggers an adrenaline spike

that keeps her heart beating

until first responders find her

and rush her to the hospital.

- The probability
of this is wild.

If Joan had landed just five
feet in either direction,

she would've missed
the ant colony

and would already be dead.

- She has several shattered
bones, 17 missing teeth,

and she requires 20
corrective surgeries.

It takes two years,

but Joan survives to
make a full recovery.

- And thanks to a little help
from thousands of cranky,

territorial red ants.

Joan goes on to complete
one more skydive.

Whether it's being buried
alive, stranded at sea,

or stuck with a
defective parachute,

these are the tales
of dodging death.

So mind-boggling that they
are truly unbelievable.

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