In 2001, on a subzero night in Alberta Canada, 13-month-old Erika got out of the bed she was sharing with her mother, opened the unlocked back door, and wandered out into the freezing night. At some point, she fell into the snow and laid there for an unknown amount of time. Erika’s mother didn’t realize she was missing from the bed until 3.00 AM. Amazingly, she quickly spotted the toddler lying face down in the snow.
When the paramedics arrived, they began reviving Erika’s cold, blue body. However, a problem arose when they could not insert a needle into her frozen skin, nor could they insert a breathing tube in her mouth as it was full of ice. Luckily, their persistence paid off, and they managed to stick an IV in her leg and had success fitting the breathing tube.
Once at the hospital, Erika was covered with a warming blanket that heated her body from the outside. Astonishingly, her heart, which had stopped beating for two hours, began beating again. Erika beat all the odds and survived one of the deadliest scenarios.
In an apartment in the Bronx in 2017, two-year-old Audrianna had become used to sitting on a windowsill, playing on her tablet. The window, of course, was always locked. One day, things took a turn for the worse when Isabella, her 17-year-old cousin came to visit.
While the girls were playing in the room, Isabella opened the window to amplify the pattering sound of rain outside. Then, she left the room briefly to grab some pizza from the kitchen, only to hear a loud bang, and a scream from Audrianna, who had just fallen out the five-story high window onto an awning below. The awning cushioned her landing and the toddler was fine (apart from a bruise on her arm). However, if this awning hadn’t been there, the toddler’s crash would have been fatal.
In 2017, a ten-year-old from Florida sat on the shore of a lake in Orange County. However, Juliana’s relaxing excursion quickly came to a halt when her leg was grabbed by a 2.7-meter alligator. At first, the girl punched the beast in the face, but her attempt to get it to loosen its grip did not work. Then, she remembered a tip she had learned at Gatorland, an alligator theme park. She jammed her fingers into the animal’s nose and waited for it to run out of air, so it had to open its mouth.
After the gator let her go, the girl managed to get away. Her family took her to the hospital where she received several stitches for the deep puncture wounds in her legs. Other than that, she was fine. Luckily Juliana remained calm in this situation, otherwise, the end result was certain death.
After a 12-year-old girl gave birth in a Bronx apartment in 1991, she wanted to get rid of her newborn baby. However, instead of bringing him to a safe drop-off point, the mother threw the baby down the trash chute. The infant fell four stories and landed in the rubbish below.
Around 9.45 AM, two hours later, the maintenance men were about to turn on the compactor when they heard a noise coming from the dumpster. Instead of ignoring it and turning on the compactor, which would have instantly killed the baby, the men decided to call the police.
When a policeman came to check the scene, he crawled into the small opening of the trash compactor, where he found the baby alive under a pile of papers. The baby was rushed to the hospital and treated for hypothermia. He had defied all odds by avoiding injury in the fall and escaping the crushing blows of the trash compactor.
In 2014, a 16-year-old boy survived something that no one else on the standard flight to Hawaii probably could. Instead of buying a ticket, the boy decided to jump over the fence surrounding the airport and run to the wheel well of the plane. While security cameras recorded his antics, nobody was there in person to stop him. After climbing into the wheel well, he endured the five-hour-long flight to paradise.
Somehow, he managed to make it to Hawaii alive, overcoming subzero temperatures at oxygen-depleted heights. He supposedly became unconscious during takeoff, only to wake up an hour after the plane landed. He completely astonished the ground crew when he emerged and was taken into the custody of welfare services.
In most cases, when somebody is trapped in freezing conditions with little oxygen, they pass away after just a few minutes. This teenager must have fallen into a hibernative state, cooling his body and preserving his nervous system. Furthermore, he even managed not to be crushed by the landing gear folding back into the plane or fall out when the plane landed. The boy avoided federal charges and became one of the few survivors to ever overcome a wheel well flight.
In 2008, a thundering tornado stormed through Castalian Springs, Tennessee, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. As rescuers scoured the area, they found three corpses, all of which had been thrown hundreds of feet from their homes, and had become entangled in tree branches. At 1.30 AM, 4 hours after the search for survivors had begun, one of the rescuers found a doll lying face down in the mud. On closer inspection, the doll was alive and was an 11-month-old baby.
Baby Kyson was picked up by the strong winds and flung hundreds of yards away from his flattened home, along with his 23-year-old mother who did not survive. After his body was picked up, he was wrapped in a coat and sat shivering, a blank stare across his face. Finally, he started to cry, which was a huge relief for the rescue team. Upon closer inspection, he was healthy and practically unscathed. His loving grandparents took him in, and he was lucky to survive such a destructive storm.
Source: listverse
Images: depositphotos
