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Surviving against the odds

SMALL PRINT: A CANADIAN woman who managed to survive 49 days in the Nevada wilderness was found alive by hunters last week

Una Mullally's picture
Una Mullally
Tue May 10 2011 - 01:00

SMALL PRINT:A CANADIAN woman who managed to survive 49 days in the Nevada wilderness was found alive by hunters last week. Her husband is still missing and the unravelling tale must go down as one of the most remarkable tales of survival . . . next to these...

1. The 16 survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571

Seventy-two days after a flight carrying the Old Christians rugby team from Montevideo crashed in the Andes, rescuers saved the 16 remaining survivors after two of the passengers, Roberto Canessa and Nando Parrado, reached a Chilean horseman after trekking for 10 days to find help. They survived by eating parts of those who had initially died in the crash.

2. Joe Simpson

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Stuck on a cliff of ice on the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985, the two mountaineers were facing death when Yates cut the rope that tied them together, causing Simpson to fall 100 ft. Yates descended the next day, believing Simpson was dead but he had survived, and after three days without food or water, he crawled the five miles back to camp. Their exploits formed the book and film Touching The Void.

3. Tom Crean

Crean has several astounding feats of endurance to choose from, the pinnacle of which was probably during the three-year Terra Nova Antarctic expedition led by Robert Scott beginning in 1911, when the Kerryman hiked 56km on his own across ice to reach help for two stricken companions.

4. Kiki Joachin

The seven-year-old Haitian boy was trapped with his sister Sabrina under the rubble of their home in Port-au-Prince for eight days without food or water after the massive earthquake last year. The image of the boy being rescued with his arms outstretched became one of the most enduring of the disaster.

5. The five Komodo divers

In 2008, a group of five European divers were swept away in strong currents off Bali. Tying themselves together to conserve energy after 12 hours adrift in shark-infested waters, they washed up on Rinca Island where they had to fight off a Komodo dragon and spend three days without water while one scaled a 600 ft cliff to get help.