Top 10 Worst Survival Stories

July 29, 2007 7:13 PM

Ok, so this is a long shot, but I am dying to find out: Looking for a magazine article about the "Top 10 Worst Survival Stories".

A few years ago, I was traveling in Switzerland and read this article while I was in a hostel in Interlaken. It was an outdoor enthusiast mag, in english, title of the article was something like "Top 10 Worst Survival Stories of All Time". It included Earnest Shackleton's expedition, the "Alive" and "Touching the Void" stories, as well as some other pretty incredible tales. I keep telling people about some of the stories, but my memory is fading and I want to get all the details again.

I have tried to find it before using some article search engines, but haven't had any luck. If I can't find the article itself, I'd like to at least try to identify some of the stories it contained. One was a river rafter lost for weeks with half of his body broken, one was a guy lost in the Alaskan wilderness for months, another was someone supposedly off on a weeks long hike, but who fell down a ravine just a few miles after heading out, so the search party totally overshot looking for him and gave him up for dead.

Help me fill in the blanks!

posted by Hackworth to media & arts (9 comments total)

Could it be The 10 Worst Adventure Disasters from the Oct 2005 issue of Outside Magazine?
posted by iconomy at 8:07 PM on July 29, 2007

It seems like I've seen Outside run something like this.

Might it be this one?
posted by altcountryman at 8:11 PM on July 29, 2007

Huh, I was going to post the same thing. I googled: top ten survival stories. First hit, great article.
posted by saucysault at 8:17 PM on July 29, 2007

Oh ho! Could it be the September 2004 issue of Outside? I opened it to read about Aron Ralston and bought it because of the story about the trapper who in the mid-1800s was attacked by a grizzly, left for dead by his compatriots, and over six months crawled the 100 miles through the Montana wilderness back to Fort Kiowa, the nearest indicator of American-European civilization. Dang it was crazy.
posted by schroedinger at 8:20 PM on July 29, 2007

Hmm, those are probably not the articles, since I was on this trip in 2002, but those are still a damn fine read, thanks!
posted by Hackworth at 8:55 PM on July 29, 2007

What month in 2002?
posted by iconomy at 9:04 PM on July 29, 2007

I was on vacation from september till october of that year.
posted by Hackworth at 9:11 PM on July 29, 2007

If you are ok with something other than that article but other survival stories, than Discovery Channel has a series titled "I Shouldn't Be Alive".

They are currently airing it here (in India) and I am a big fan of this series. They had some amazing stories about a group of four friends who got lost from a yatch or something..ended up in a raft adrift into the ocean, afflicted with some strange thing on one girl's legs (shark bite or something - I caught it midway). She dies on the raft and they just drop her in the ocean to prevent infecting the rest. Then one of the remaining guy goes mad or something and just jumps in the ocean and drowns. A guy & gal finally are rescued by a cargo ship after many days.
They had other stories about Chris Moon's survival from the Khmer Rogue and then the one about a set of teenage guys out on some hiking trip in desert and after searching for water for days, one of them dies just when they have sighted a river and about to get water for him.

Sort of a derail that, my comment, ..but amazing amazing mind-boggling survivor stories which never fail me to put my own life in perspective and brood on its insignificance and frailty.
posted by forwebsites at 5:56 AM on July 30, 2007

I saw that episode. Five people were sailing to Miami, they were hired to deliver the yacht and I think the woman that survived was much more experienced than the rest of the crew and had misgivings about their capability before they set off. They got caught in a storm & the yacht sank. They managed to get in the life raft, but for some reason had no emergency beacon or food or anything remotely useful.
TWO of the men went bonkers. The first one was most shocking to me, he announced he was going to walk to the car park & get his car, and he just "walked off" out of the life raft. I think the second one just crawled over the side. Both of the dead men had drunk sea water and were hallucinating wildly.
The woman that died had a nasty infection in her leg, which was badly lacerated during the sinking. She was in a relationship with one of men that died, IIRC.

Ah, here is a brief account of what happened: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0111/profile.html
It doesn't mention the car delusion, which was probably the thing that stuck in my mind strongest.
posted by goshling at 7:47 PM on July 31, 2007