Survival

This special five-part series is brought to you by Medical Mysteries, a Parcast Original. For more episodes like it, subscribe to Medical Mysteries on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today we’re discussing Reshma Begum, a seamstress in Bangladesh who was pulled out alive from the wreckage of a building…17 days after it collapsed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This special five-part series is brought to you by Medical Mysteries, a Parcast Original. For more episodes like it, subscribe to Medical Mysteries on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today we’re discussing Michael Benson, a cameraman who survived a helicopter crash, only to find himself stuck inside a volcano’s crater…for two days. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This special five-part series is brought to you by Medical Mysteries, a Parcast Original. For more episodes like it, subscribe to Medical Mysteries on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today we’re discussing José Salvador Alvarenga, a Salvadoran fisherman who spent over 13 months adrift at sea…and survived. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This special five-part series is brought to you by Medical Mysteries, a Parcast Original. For more episodes like it, subscribe to Medical Mysteries on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today we’re discussing Beck Weathers, a Texas pathologist who survived the disastrous 1996 blizzard on Mount Everest... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This special five-part series is brought to you by Medical Mysteries, a Parcast Original. For more episodes like it, subscribe to Medical Mysteries on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today we’re discussing the story of Anna Bågenholm, whose heart stopped in 1999 after she was trapped in a labyrinth of thick ice for nearly an hour and a half… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you enjoy the true stories told in Survival, check out this episode from our series Natural Disasters: By the late 1840s, with no end in sight to the potato famine gripping Ireland and no help coming from the British government, the Irish people were left with few options. Forced to choose between dire workhouses or leaving the country, there was no easy solution to ending their hunger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you enjoy the true stories told in Survival, check out this episode from our series Natural Disasters: In 1845, a fungus destroyed Ireland’s potato crops, leaving the Irish population without its main food source. The first months of the famine morphed into a bureaucratic nightmare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a leader in the Norwegian resistance against the Nazis in the 1940s, 25-year-old Jan Baalsrud endured frostbite, gangrene, snow blindness, and starvation while evading capture after his mission was compromised. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here’s one of our listeners’ most requested episodes of 2019: January 1847. Fed by the remains of their friends and family, the surviving members of the Forlorn Hope managed to get through the snow and reach civilization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here’s one of our listeners’ most requested episodes of 2019: Snowed in, and unable to get their wagons over the Sierra Nevadas, the Donner Party set up camp by Truckee Lake and waited for the winter of 1846 to pass. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here’s one of our listeners’ most requested episodes of 2019: On May 12, 1846, a wagon train set out toward the West Coast of North America. The trip should have taken four months. In the end, it dragged on for a year, exacerbated by bad weather and rapidly dwindling food stores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At 4 P.M. on June 30th, 2013, the Yarnell Hill wildfire in the Arizona mountains spiraled out of control. Brendan McDonough was separated from the rest of his crew, who had come face-to-face with a 3,000-degree firestorm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2011, Brendan McDonough joined an elite wildland firefighting crew called the Granite Mountain Hotshots. But no amount of training would prepare him for the horrific 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire that killed 19 members of his crew. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After Captain Charles Hall perished under mysterious circumstances in 1871, the crew of the Polaris faced a difficult question: should they continue their mission to the North Pole, or give up and turn tail for America? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1871, Captain Charles Hall left Brooklyn Harbor, New York with a ship, crew, and a mandate from the US Government: Journey farther North than anyone previously had and plant an American Flag on the North Pole. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With Kirill now gone to Finland, Boris and Andrei stayed behind to care for their mother. But when a Civil War finally broke out, they too would be forced to flee Russia. But unlike their older brother, their escape would be much more dangerous than they would have ever imagined. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before Russia was thrown into turmoil in 1917, a set of Romanov brothers spent their days focused on surviving palace politics. That is until one of the brothers, Kirill Vladimirovich, sensed that having a Romanov last name in Russia during WWI was becoming far too dangerous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the Rwandan genocide continued to rage, the Tutsis who had survived the initial violence found themselves in more danger than ever. As their killers adopted more sophisticated tactics, the survivors were forced to use increasingly elaborate strategies to make it through each day alive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Central Africa: In the spring of 1994, a paramilitary group called the “Interahamwe” set about exterminating the Tutsi people—and anyone who sympathized with them. The killing went on for 100 days. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After being taken prisoner in the Philippines in 1942, U.S. Marine Glenn “Mac” McDole spent 2 horrifying years in a prison camp on the island of Palawan. How would he escape? And how would the United States military react to the atrocities that he and the other prisoners lived through? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

December 14, 1944: Japanese soldiers massacre 139 of 150 American POWs. One of the eleven to survive is U.S. Marine Glenn “Mac” McDole—despite under the most horrifying conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For teenage surfer Jonathan Kathrein, another day at the beach turns into the fight for his life as he finds himself in the jaws of a gigantic Great White Shark. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On August 26th, 1998, sixteen-year-old Jonathan Kathrein and his best friend Sean set out for a final surf of the summer at Northern California's Bodega Bay. They did not realize that the waters they had chosen placed them right inside The Red Triangle, one of the most heavily shark infested areas in the world. Before the day was done, Jonathan would face a surfers worst nightmare: an up close and personal encounter with the ocean's greatest predator, the great white shark. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After Joe Simpson's climbing partner cut the rope they had used to lower the injured Joe down the Siula Grande mountain in Peru, Joe fell 150 into an icy crevasse. Now alone on the glacier with a broken leg, Joe must find the strength to pull himself out and traverse five miles back to basecamp; assuming basecamp is still there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Siula Grande is a 20,814 foot behemoth that sits along the Peruvian Andes, a challenging ascent for even the most experienced climber. In 1985, Joe Simpson and his climbing partner Simon Yates made the decision to be the first people to scale its West Face. During their descent, their plans went awry and Yates was faced with an impossible decision. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices