20 Survival Stories That Put Human Endurance in Another Light

One shoe was missing. Her glasses were gone, her collarbone was broken, and the rainforest canopy hid almost everything beyond a few feet. Juliane Koepcke was only 17 when LANSA Flight 508 broke apart during a storm over Peru on December 24, 1971. Still fastened to a row of seats, she fell roughly two miles into the Amazon and awoke on the forest floor as the flight’s only survivor. Panic might have sent her wandering in circles, but childhood lessons offered a direction.