A 46-year-old Russian man was recently rescued after spending 67 days drifting through the icy waters of the Russian Far East in an inflatable raft.

On August 9, Mikhail Pichugin, his 49-year-old brother Sergey, and his 15-year-old nephew Ilya set out for Sakhalin Island from the far eastern Khabarovsk region in an inflatable raft. A few days later, their families announced their disappearance, and a search and rescue operation was mounted using planes and helicopters. All efforts to locate the inflatable boat failed, and with each passing day, hopes of finding any of the three men alive faded. By September, the chances of finding the boat had plummeted towards zero, but on Monday, October 14, the inflatable boat was spotted in the Sea of Okhotsk, about 1,000km (670 miles) from where it had set off 67 days prior. Miraculously, one of the three men was still alive.

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Four siblings, aged 13, 9, 5, and 1, miraculously survived a plane crash in one of the most remote areas of Colombia, and then 40 days alone in the Amazon jungle.

On May 1st, 2023, a small Cessna 206 airplane en route to San Jose de Guaviare suffered an engine failure and crashed deep in one of Colombia’s most remote and dangerous regions. Three adults, including the pilot, died in the crash, but the four children on board miraculously survived. However, they were stranded with little to no supplies, in a jungle filled with dangerous snakes, spiders, and mosquitoes, where members of the ex-Farc military group are still active. For 40 days, thousands of volunteers searched for the siblings, and the hope of them being found alive kept millions of Colombians on the tip of their feet. Last week, the miracle everyone was waiting for materialized – the children were found alive and well in a jungle clearing.

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A Vietnamese man had to be rescued by a Thai fishing boat after attempting to cross the Andaman Sea in an inflatable boat in order to search for his wife.

On Wednesday, March 23rd, the Royal Thai Navy received a report from the captain of a fishing trawler about a small inflatable boat they had spotted in the Andaman Sea, about 80 kilometers from the shore. Apparently, there was a man inside with some luggage, an almost empty tank of drinking water and some instant noodles. The man didn’t speak Thai or English, and fearing that he could get himself killed, the fishing boat decided to tow him and his boat back to safety.

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Two university pals from the UK who wanted to do something inspirational and epic decided to spend three weeks in a Malaysian jungle, naked and without food, to “show that it can be done”. They quit 16 days into their adventure after one of them cut his hand with a machete.

26-year-old Daniel Olifi, a financial tech worker, and James Moynihan, a 27-year-old cruise ship entertainer, wanted to see if they could survive in a harsh jungle with only minimal supplies, no food and a couple of large leaves covering their private parts. Their plan was to spend three weeks camping in the Kuantan rainforest, in Malaysia, but the challenge quickly proved much harder than they had anticipated. Within hours of setting up camp, last October, they almost ran out of water and while they eventually overcame that problem, they still had to endure swarms of mosquitoes, hypothermia and severe hunger. They eventually had to call it quits after 16 days, after Daniel cut his hand with a machete and his wound started smelling like rotten flesh.

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Lisa Theris, a 25-year-old radiology student from Louisville, was reported missing on July 23rd, and was believed to have gotten lost in the Alabama wilderness, after running away from the two men that she was with. Just one everyone had nearly given up hope that she was still alive, Lisa was spotted by the side of a rural road in Bullock County, by a woman who initially mistook her for a deer.

Judy Garner told police that was driving along Highway 82 in Bullock County, on Saturday, when she saw something moving in a bush, and thought it was a wild animal, probably a deer. The curious woman pulled her car over and went to investigate, only instead of an animal, she found a naked woman covered in scratches and insect bites. Her hair was matted, there was dirt embedded deep beneath her nails, and she looked like she had been living in the wild for a long time. The young girl told Garner that she had survived on berries and muddy water, and was so scared that she begged her not to leave her side.

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Despite its tiny size, the brown thornbill is quite capable of protecting itself in the wild. Its survival strategy is simple yet effective – it scares other birds away by ‘crying hawk’!

It seems that most birds use certain calls to warn their kin of impending danger, especially when hawks and other birds of prey are approaching. The thornbill is not only aware of this fact, but can reproduce the danger signals of several species, including the much larger pied currawong. Predators are fooled by the false alarm, and the thornbill earns its chicks a few extra seconds to escape.

The thornbill’s talent for mimicry was discovered by researchers from the Australian National University (ANU). “I am amazed that such a tiny bird can mimic so many species, some much bigger than itself. It’s very cunning,” said one of the researchers, Dr. Branislav Igic.

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The ‘Survival Condo Project’ is a luxury bunker complex located in a missile silo 15 storeys below ground level in Kansas. It is designed to help the rich survive any disaster – including health pandemics, weather calamities, or nuclear terror attacks – without having to relinquish opulence and style.

The missile silo was originally built in the 1960s by the US Army Corps of Engineers for the Atlas F missile. Its 9-foot thick walls, built out of epoxy-hardened concrete, are capable of withstanding a direct nuclear attack. The dome structure that covers the silo can also tolerate winds of over 500 mph.

Recently, the silo was purchased by real estate developer Larry Hall, who has been in the business of building advanced survival condos since 2008. He claims that the dwellings his company builds can make it possible to lead an uninterrupted life of luxury underground.

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Spike TV recently announced it’s working on a reality series called “Last Family on Earth” which will feature survivalists competing to show how resourceful they can be in various extreme situations. The winning family will receive a bunker in an undisclosed location, to improve their chances of surviving Armageddon.

The calendar of the ancient Mayan civilization predicts the world will end in December of 2012, and with rumors of an impending zombie apocalypse and news stories about crazy cannibals spurring up in the last few weeks, some people are finding it hard not to succumb to the paranoia. So I guess the Spike television network couldn’t have picked a better time to announce their upcoming reality show, Last Family on Earth, in which several families of convinced survivalists will complete to win an actual underground bunker.

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Nature has always been about the ‘survival of the fittest’, but sometimes even the fittest cannot survive its harsh conditions. What happened with David Austin is a classic example of how merciless the outdoors can truly be. He had embarked upon a year-long survival challenge in the Scottish wilderness, but was found dead within a month.

The 29-year-old from Derby was on a mission inspired by English adventurer Bear Grylls. Sadly however, his body was discovered on December 31st by a track worker in a remote mountain hut located in Corrour, Highland Perthshire. The condition in which the body was found suggests that it had been lying there for several weeks, unnoticed. According to post mortem reports, the most plausible cause for death was hypothermia.

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