#to he abandoned her in the wilderness (untrue) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

novelconcepts · 3 years

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novel, just look at this https://www.instagram.com/p/CMILP2ZAjsw/?igshid=1ve4cwcbiy69y

mayhaps you could use this as a prompt sometime? 👀 (no pressure)

The greatest injustice in the world, Owen Sharma thinks, is in how many women he’s buried. How many loved ones--why are brilliant young women always punished?--he’s laid to rest. How many times he’s looked away for only a second, only to find they’ve slipped through his fingers.

The greatest injustice in the world, Owen thinks, is in how many times he’s stood over the graves of women who should have had so much more time. Women with new recipes untested, new cities left unexplored, new experiences permanently unlived. Rebecca Jessel will never practice law. Hannah Grose will never see Paris. Dani Clayton will never...

Dani will never...

He’s never even there. Maybe that’s the worst part of all--that he’s always just off-camera, always just this side of where he ought to be. At home, when Rebecca drowned; at the manor when his mother passed; looking at his shoes while Hannah...

And now: now, with no warning at all, the phone ringing in the middle of the night. The voice on the other end is almost unrecognizably flat. The voice on the other end, he thinks, will haunt his dreams for years to come.

“Come to Vermont.”

“Jamie?” She sounds wrong. Not simply too calm, not simply too level, but as though all the life has been wrung from her body. As though she’s calling him from another plane altogether, and Owen will later be embarrassed by his first awful thought: She’s dead. She’s calling me from her own grave. It’s Hannah all over again.

But of course nothing ever could be. Nothing could ever match Hannah, the impossibility of her that summer. The impossible, cruel way the universe had of pushing her nearly into his arms before letting that trapdoor fall open beneath his feet. Jamie isn’t dead; Jamie is breathing into the other end of the phone, as though straining to keep herself together. Which can only mean one thing.

He’s on the first flight. A bag with a few changes of clothes, a passport, a photo he is to this day unable to travel without. The plane juddering beneath him, his legs crammed into the small space, he presses his thumb to the smile beneath the plastic sheet.

Hannah, I don’t know how to do this again. He’s never quite known how to do it at all, how to be this person--and wasn’t that because of Jamie all along? Jamie, who had found Rebecca’s body and made all the appropriate calls, her expression stony as she’d explained to the police how they’d found her. Jamie, who had answered the phone that night, turning on her heel with eyes that suddenly took up half her face, apologizing as he’d never heard her do before. Jamie, who made arrangements for food and drink while he stood like a puncture wound in blue jeans staring at what was left of his mother’s estate.

Jamie, who stood beside him in front of a well, looking down even when he hadn’t been able to stomach it any longer. Jamie, always looking down into the face of cold reality.

He’s never quite where he needs to be when it happens, but Jamie is. Jamie has always been. She is almost unfairly good at it: standing tall, accepting the truth, holding them all up when they shatter.

And now, here she is: opening the door in cuffed jeans and a rumpled brown flannel shirt. Here she is, a few years older than Paris, looking at him like she’s never seen him before. Like the woman who called was someone else entirely. He thinks he sees a little of his mother in the blank distance of her eyes, and his heart cracks.

“What happened?”

She turns from him, gesturing for him to come in. The flat, which has every hallmark of home, is surprisingly warm. Surprisingly messy, too--there are clothes on the couch, most of them things he recognizes as Dani’s from the photos they’ve been mailing his way for years. The floor is covered with pots, lemongrass and tiny succulents and a large-leaved plant he doesn’t recognize standing proudly amid clods of dirt, a watering can, several crumpled packs of cigarettes.

She reaches for one of these now, taps out the final smoke into her palm, crunches the wrapping. “Want one?”

That voice again, that strange timbre--the accent a little less than he remembers, a little ironed-out by nearly fifteen years in this country, though that isn’t what works a shiver up his spine. It’s so flat. It’s so toneless. Jamie has been many things since he’s known her--angry, aggressive, cool, even violent--but never this detached.

He’s never seen her like this. He’s never thought to worry he ever would. Jamie has aways been the most stable of them, taking up the mantle when even he couldn’t carry it.

We, he thinks wearily, are the survivors. The witnesses. No one ever talks about what that’s like.

Untrue. People talk about it. People who do useful things, like attend support groups, or get themselves to therapy. Henry does, sometimes--nursing seltzer, smiling ruefully at Owen over dinner. We think it’s the losing them that hurts the worst, until it happens, he’d said once. It isn’t. It’s the part where you have to keep waking up, dreaming for a split second each morning they’re still here.

Nearly fifteen years, and there hasn’t been a single morning Owen hasn’t thought absently of calling her up. Not one where he hasn’t thought, Been too long without her voice. Without her laugh. God, that woman’s laugh.

“Jamie...”

Her head comes up sharply, her eyes flashing--and then, like it was never there, the expression passes. She lights the cigarette with a steady hand, settles herself back on the rug with it clamped between her teeth. There’s soil smudged on her cheek, caked into her hair, and he wonders when last she showered.

“Jamie, do you want to talk about it?”

She doesn’t. He knows that. He remembers too well how she’d sat beside him on a sofa in 1987, passed him a bottle of wine in silence. How she’d said simply, covering all bases in two words, “Fuck it.”

It had been Dani, he remembers, who spoke of it first. Dani, looking paler than normal, looking shaken, saying firmly, “We should do something. We should do something for her.”

“Sit,” Jamie says without looking at him. She’s already getting back into it, he realizes--working her hands carefully back into a terra cotta pot, brushing the soil from spindly roots with loving care. It’s how she looked after Rebecca, brow furrowed, smoking and working in silence. There are problems that can’t be managed, he understands, and the only way someone like Jamie can tolerate that fact is to find new troubles to set right.

“Where is she, Jamie?” She’s not going to like this, he knows. He’d hate it, in her place. Had hated it, whenever someone dared speak Hannah’s name for those first few months. She’s going to hate him for it now.

But someone has to speak. Someone has to throw the line, lest she drift too far to come back. She called. There was a reason for it.

“Jamie. Where is she?”

She gives him nothing. Jets smoke, taps ash into an empty beer can, keeps her eyes on the work. This isn’t like after Rebecca, he can see--Jamie back then had been hard-edged, furious that she hadn’t gotten to Becca in time, but she’d at least been willing to hold conversation. More than willing. It had seemed to ground her, reflecting on the Peter Quint of it all, on the shame of not being able to help enough, on how to explain it to the kids.

Now, she sits with her back against the couch, her eyes not tracking the progress of her own hands. Owen, kneeling beside her, feels as though the room is waiting for something. Waiting for a knife to slide into the bubble she’s built, tearing it open to allow all that building water to rush in.

He changes tack. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Three days,” she says. Her face is scrunched with concentration, her fingers testing something he can’t track in the roots.

“Have you eaten?”

“’Course,” she says, gesturing recklessly with the cigarette at a stack of pizza boxes, several empty wine bottles, a dozen abandoned mugs. “All the food groups.”

“Slept?” He remembers that was the worst part, sleeping. Before it had all gone wrong, he’d gone to bed each night with a promise: Tomorrow, I’ll tell her. Tomorrow, I’ll finally do it.

After, he’d stayed up until dawn in the kitchen, kneading dough, testing wilder and wilder concoctions. Jamie would stumble in at three in the morning, still half-asleep, to find him shoving a bowl of batter under her nose.

Here. Try this. What does it need?

Cinnamon, she’d say gamely, though she’d clearly only been craving a glass of water. He’d slump against the table, head hanging between his arms.

She’d say it was divine as-is.

Yeah, well. She always did like to see that idiot grin.

“Jamie,” he says now, patiently. “Have you slept?”

She shrugs. He doesn’t need to walk down the hall to know the bed is likely sitting untouched, perfectly made--or, worse, exactly as she’d rolled out of it the last time. Exactly how she’d left it, when whatever had gone wrong had happened.

It’s so easy, leaving things.

It’s nearly impossible, setting them right again when the bigger problem can’t be fixed.

“Where is she, Jamie?” He hates himself. Hates pushing her. Hates the way her shoulders square a little tighter, her jaw clenching, her muddy fingers stretching to find an unopened pack of cigarettes to replace the one burned to nearly nothing between her lips. “Jamie. You called me.”

“Wouldn’t have,” she grumbles, “if I’d thought you’d talk this fucking much.”

Not true. He can see it in her, the shade not of the woman she’d been when they had met--hardy, rugged, a little grin around her mouth that said she’d make him regret it if he even considered pulling on her strings--but the one Dani had loved into being. We are all, he thinks, shaped by the love they give. Changes the molecules. Turns us from dough to something worth serving.

The woman he’d met, tempered by a past she never discussed, patience she couldn't quite get a handle on, wouldn’t want him to talk this much.

The woman she is now, the one who had sat in his restaurant watching Dani like she was written in the only language worth knowing, called for a reason.

“Jamie.”

“Stop.” She closes her eyes. Her hands are shaking too hard to work out another cigarette, too hard to urge the Bic to light.

“Where,” he asks gently. She’s shaking her head. When did so much silver slip into her hair? When did those lines crop up around her mouth? How long has it been, since he was where she needed him to be?

Didn’t need me. Not then. Had everything she needed, with Dani, but now--

“Jamie, where--”

“She’s gone.” Her eyes are blazing, her lips trembling. He has never, never seen this look on her face. This shattered, almost exultant misery is impossible to endure. She doesn’t look like Jamie now. She is only a collection of her worst fears made real. “She’s gone, Owen. She’s--”

She hunches into herself, a single crack splitting like a windscreen beneath a thrown rock. One foot lashes out sharply, sending a pot cartwheeling over onto its side.

“She’s fucking gone,” she repeats in a voice like a woman kicked in the stomach. She raises her eyes, red-rimmed, and almost smiles. “I fell asleep.”

Strange, he thinks as he shuffles across the rug to wrap his arms around her, the last thought that kicks out when they’re gone. Not I should have told her, not I should have been there, but: I was in the kitchen. Not I should have stopped her, not I should have been faster, but: I fell asleep. The should doesn’t matter anymore, once they’re gone. All that matters is what you did. Where you were. What you can never change.

“I fell asleep,” she repeats, and there’s nothing flat about her voice now. Even speaking of Rebecca, the Wingraves, Hannah, she’s never sounded half this shattered. “I fell asleep, Owen. I fell--”

He’s pressing his face against her shoulder, feeling unforgivably enormous draped this way over her slight frame. She folds double, rocking back and forth, one hand digging so hard into the other arm that he’ll be gently patching bloody gouges in an hour’s time. For now, he only sways with her, allowing the momentum of her grief to rock him back and forth, back and forth.

“She’s gone,” she says again. “She’s gone. She’s--”

He’ll stay a while--not quite feeling secure leaving her on her own, not quite willing to risk letting her slide back into this space. He’ll stay, helping her in the kitchen (She was better at it. Less likely to poison us, anyway.), and with the nightmare of making those phone calls (Her mum needs to know. Hated me, but still. And Judy O’Mara. And Henry. Fuck. The kids won’t even...). She won’t let him near the bedroom, won’t let him tuck her into that bed. The one and only time he’ll offer to help sift through Dani’s belongings, she’ll flex a fist around a bottle like she’s thinking of swinging it at him.

She won’t look at him when he steps into the bathroom to find the tub draining over the side onto the floor, either, the sink full of clean water. When he opens his mouth to question, she’ll reach past him, slap down the plunger, stride out of the room without a word.

Leave her whatever rituals she needs, he’ll think, remembering all those unnecessary three-a.m. cakes. Leave her whatever ghosts she can’t let go.

He’ll stay as long as she needs, he decides with her beginning to sob at last. He’s never quite been there, when it happens--never been able to look death in the eye as Jamie has. It’s the greatest injustice in the world, how many loved ones have gone on without him, leaving only stories in their wake.

He’s never where he needs to be, to stop it happening--but he can be here. For a little while, at least. He can hold her, and he can look down.

There is no justice, this time, in letting Jamie believe she needs to be strong enough to do it alone.

#fanfiction #ficlet #the haunting of bly manor #the haunting of bly manor spoilers #politely: you did ask for this #I take no responsibility for wounds inflicted #also this art is fucking heartbreaking and I always crave more when this artist does anything #so like. couldn’t resist. but it’s still not my fault

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writers-craft · 3 years

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I can see him out of the corner of my eye drinking from the running river. Is he god greeting me in a form my eyes can perceive him, or is he my mother reincarnated? My father is, or rather was, not a man capable of returning to this earth as something as strong as a stag; a cat who chases mice and roams the world all on his lonesome might be an animal more suitable for a man such as him, such as me. I shall keep my eyes open for a cat on my journey. Mother is more than capable of being such an animal, though anything as sturdy, anything so beautiful in nature has the ability to be her. She spent her life thinking reincarnation silly, unnatural at times, so she might laugh at the thought of deer being anything but creatures. If he is god, then, please, spare me—kill me now and allow my spirit to restart. I should love to become a cat, to wander the world so empty headed. In any case, I remain still as I await his judgement. His head lifts as he finishes his drink and he observes his surroundings. A bird cries in the very near distance, but it does not startle him in the same way it startles me. We lock eyes for a moment and I blink, then avert my eyes away. My father’s gun is at my hip with only one bullet gone from it, but I do not dare kill such a creature; my wooden bow, made from poor oak tied with a string that could snap at any use, proves meager in this moment. But, again, I do not wish to harm him. I do not wish to harm anything. That is why I shall return as a cat, or perhaps something even less grand in the animal kingdom, and why mother here has returned as a stag. I no longer think he is god.

A gunshot blows, and then another, and another, nearby. I jump slightly at the noise it makes. It is not my father’s gun nor am I bleeding out from my small and fragile body, but it does startle the stag enough he hurries back into the wilderness before I can even set my eyes on him again. The birds all flee to the air where it is safest; someone is heard shouting, yelling, and then laughing. Dog begins barking at their chaos, emerging from its resting place beneath a large bush, its ears perked up and tail twirled high to assure he is alert. He is a brown dog with white patches all around his fur. His personality is dull and very disobedient. Why he has followed me all this way is beyond my knowledge. I order him to settle; he does not listen until, finally, the culprit emerges from tangled branches and dog cowers back into his safety bush. All bark, no bite.

His tunic is stained red and blood drips from his hands. A fawn is hanging from his shoulder. I refuse to call him a man, but he might refer to himself as such. I see only a more extreme version of myself: a boy with too much power in this world. He is tall, much taller than I will ever be, and falsely beautiful. His gun is already aiming at me as I stumble for my bow. But if he wanted me dead, then I would be chasing mice by now.

“Calm down,” he says, slightly lowering his gun. Still, I hold onto my bow so tightly it might snap. The river’s voice is all that sings; the rest of nature is silent. “You know how to use that?” he asks, pointing with his gun at the bow in my hands. His voice is deep and full of heavy breath. I nod my head, despite my instinct to run from him. “What about that?” he asks, pointing at my father’s gun. Again, I lie and say that I do, but the only sort of hunting I am familiar with is fishing, and even at that I am poorly. My small form, my pale skin, my loose fitting clothing told anyone with sense, including me, I will die come winter. Then I shall become the cat I am always meant to become.

The fawn slips slightly from his shoulder and he lifts it back up with little difficulty. More blood seeps out of the animal and onto his clothing. He remains unbothered, both by me and by the dead being. The bow drops from my hands and onto the dirt. He glows like an angel might in the sunlight, but his beauty is untrue, false in the correct moments. He puts away his gun and offers me his hand. I take it and he lifts me to my feet. “And have you killed anyone yet?” he asks as I brush the dirt off my jeans.

My gaze turns to the bow abandoned on the ground. I see his face when I close my eyes. His laughter echoes in my thoughts when I try to sleep. In this moment, and many moments before, and I am certain many moments after, I am unable to find my words, so I nod again—I doubt this false image of light believes me, and I refuse to look at him to read his face.

His hand cups my shoulder hard, squeezes tightly, and I stumble slightly. “There’s a motel nearby—a bunch of us are staying there,” he tells me. I finally look up. The fawn is sliding down again; he lets me go to adjust his posture and rearrange it on his shoulder. He says his name is Freyr. The fawn is dinner. I am outnumbered ten to one, and his friends are just a call away. “You’re not a man of many words, are you?” he asks when I say nothing.

“I’m not a man at all.”

He hums. He does not understand. “We’re burning bodies tonight,” he says as if it were an ordinary thing to say. The bombs fell and the air, though it remained clear and breathable, became poisoned—and the rest of humanity followed suit. People began to die; first, the sick and the elderly, and then everyone else started going. The children will be last, they say. The poison promises a slow, agonizing death. The only question is when will it occur, and will we join those burning bodies or will someone we love have the strength to bury us? “You don’t really want to be outside when we do.”

No, no I do not.

It has been three days since I left home. The scent of the stag’s perfume is what I remember most about her. When she started to smell, I gave her a few puffs of it each day—but soon even vanilla and roses could not mask the scent of her rotting flesh. The smell became too much, and I have little strength to give her a proper burial. Remaining residents and ransackers all alike prevented me from burning her out, like most have done. I refuse to have my final moments alone with her dragging her lifeless body down a dozen flights of stairs. Instead, I placed flowers near her painted feet, kissed her goodbye one last time, and left forever with father’s gun on my belt and as much food from our pantry my bag could carry. I remember when she was alive, she often yelled at me from our window to come up for dinner, or to grab my coat, or to come help her with the laundry, or to do something that seems so foreign now. I half expected her corpse to spring to life and do the same as crossed the street, but the window was closed, boarded up, quiet; she had already reached her next life.

I reach down to pick up the ugly bow, but he already has it in his possession by the time I stand upright again. He examines it with intrigue. And in this moment, the moment I relive with you now, I realize he can probably break it with his thumb and I would be powerless. It is an object I know little about, but I do not know what my reaction might be if it were to be destroyed in front of me. The fawn slips again, but he lifts it back into place with little attention to his action. And his eyes dart quickly to the gun at my hip.

“Word of advice,” he says—he tosses the bow back to me, but my hands fumble and it falls back again onto the ground. “Grab your gun next time.”

He watches me as I gather the little belongings I have. My bag is heaviest as it contains mostly food, toiletries, and a few crafted arrows made from bent sticks found along the way, though I doubt I will have much use for them. Again, I know little about archery and experience has only taught me such a lousy bow, no matter how much I put value to it, will have little power when I am in need of it most. Dog still remains hidden away, perhaps miles away by now, too cowardly to face his fears. I am not a coward, I know that much, but I am far from being brave.

Freyr leads me up a dirt path and onto an empty black road surrounded by only nature. I hear his friends shouting in the distance, and something aching resides in my stomach. Near us is a dirty white sign saying: “Motel,” with a simple drawing of a bed underneath and an arrow pointing left of us. I have to jog to keep up with him.

#trigger warning #tw #death #animal cruelty #animal abuse #my writing #writing #fiction #short story #story #creative writing #characters #writers craft #apocalyptic story

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michaeldriver · 5 years

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Understanding Anti-Semitism in America

“What’s a Jew?”

The question was loaded with more explosive force than the eight-year-old then—or later—could imagine. The fact that it was posed to his preacher-father in 1958 is telling in itself and the answer was more revealing than anyone could have foreseen at the time.

How it came to be that a Christian child forced to church thrice weekly was unfamiliar with the term “Jew” speaks loudly, if we listen, to what was being said and not said in church where “Hebrew” was the preferred designation for the ethnic background of God’s once favored people, the syrup of religion having drowned Jewness to please the palate of contemporary Christians who deigned to confront the identity of their own gods, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Even the “what” in the question indicated that the child had unconsciously absorbed the freight of background prejudice with Jews being objects presumably devoid of the humanity that would prompt “who” instead.

And the preacher-father’s answer, while unwittingly correcting one misapprehension, unknowingly pronounced another far more significant. “They’re people who don’t believe in Jesus,” he said. No elaboration was forthcoming, an ominous void as yet unrecognized. But lucky it was for the child who was thus provided the opportunity to explore the answer for himself amid what proved to be a minefield, not a blank slate. There was weighty significance in the lack of detail that rendered the preacher-father’s explanation stark and wholly unsatisfactory to the child who felt abandoned in a forest, the way forward obscured at every turn. And the deepest significance of all proved to be that apparently the pastor’s flock and the flocks of many pastors felt similarly disoriented and bereft of knowledge of the answer if they ever contemplated the question at all. These Christians, left to wander in the wilderness, became prey for every conceivable and inconceivable misapprehension imaginable and unimaginable with many shepherded by wolves who possess extensive fleecy wardrobes. The blood of innocents, both the unknowledgeable and the objects of false knowledge, would yet drip from their fangs.

Forward fifty years and another question, this one posed as a fretful observation by an elderly Jewish woman, a friendly acquaintance of the boy then grown to secular manhood calloused by the ravages of doubt and discovery correct and incorrect, true and untrue. Her worry, citing Bernie Madoff, was what people would think of Jews after the disclosure of his criminality. While aware of Madoff’s schemes, the boy-turned-man had not connected them to Jewishness and, despite personally disliking hoodies, countered her observation with esteem then accorded Mark Zuckerberg. In the parlance of the time, the old Jewish woman was clueless, there being no such reason for anxiety. But so, too, the olding man was clueless, having long since experienced Jews as strange but no stranger than the people of his childly, since abandoned affiliation, their lives, rituals, culture and beliefs no more or less absurd.

What, then? And what of the blood thereafter?

The answer echoes from the void of silence that followed the preacher-father’s response and its predicate religious reference because it is the same thoughtlessness absorbed by countless sheep in whatever pew they occupy hearing no understanding of themselves let alone others of whom they come through blind fear to suspect something sinister until they themselves are overtaken by the same. The plea of ignorance is no excuse because though ignorance may seem benign, it is not; ignorance at root is the manifestation of ignore and where there is no consideration of truth falseness will seep and eventually saturate with imponderable weight and density. By then the antidote of internal query is either subsumed by the environmental mass of many allowed to sprout and grow in the absence of truth or its cries are too faint to hear against the din. This applies to both observers and the objects of their purview which is why the old Jewish lady did not understand and feared what others, the majority impaneled as judges, did not know and therefore did not understand.

The preacher-father did not elaborate because he neither knew nor understood; the same with all the pastors of all the churches and all the sheep of all their flocks combined in ignorance. Into the gigantic vacuum was thus permitted to flood the vilest falsities masquerading as answers to questions that most would never ask but who were anyway provided lies to be believed, worse, acted upon. There being no monolithic flock and no single shepherd, thereby lacking many voices of pastors, many voices having become pastors by default, though many also by design, numerous lies were spread, some inconsequential, some stale, some putrid while rotting in place but many enough malevolent and active. Note the multiplicity, the profusion of mindless religious iteration at base the fault.

All the while a real answer for the child’s question is at hand, one that should appeal to both secular and religious perspectives. It comes from an activist sage who happened to be a practicing Hindu. Mahatma Gandhi also claimed Islam as his religion and said he was Christian, as well, “I am Jew.”

in the public domain by Michael Driver (no rights reserved)

#history #culture #antisemitism #violence #religion

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survival0001-blog · 5 years

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10 Amazing True Survival Stories Too Incredible To Be Real

New Post has been published on https://outdoorsurvivalqia.com/awesome/10-amazing-true-survival-stories-too-incredible-to-be-real/

10 Amazing True Survival Stories Too Incredible To Be Real

These true survival narratives will leave you in awe of the unbelievable human spirit and sheer will to survive whatever the odds.

RELATED: A Story of Personal Survival | Survival Lessons From The Field

In this article :P TAGEND

Ricky Megee Joe Simpson and Simon Yates Aron Ralston Mauro Prosperi Douglas Mawson Marina Chapman Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight Andes Plane Crash Survivors Sully Sullenberger and the Crew and Passengers of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 The Chilean Miners

True Survival Stories: Narratives of Surviving the Impossible

1. Ricky Megee

We’ve watched survival movies you wouldn’t suppose possible in real life until you come across well-documented true survival stories from random people.

In 2006, employees in a cattle station in one of the most remote the sectors of Australia came upon a man named Ricky Megee. He claimed to have been stranded in the Australian outback for 70 days.

Megee said the last thing he recollected was his vehicle breaking down during his cross-country drive. There is some speculation that he was the victim of a violent assault during which he was perhaps medication. When he gained consciousness, he realise his demise.

For over two months, Megee survived on only frogs, serpents, lizards, and the water he found in a nearby dam. He lost over half his body weight upon rescue.

Check out the Geo TV video below via AwKahoot to find out more about Ricky Megee’s survival narrative :P TAGEND

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2. Joe Simpson and Simon Yates

Together with Joe Simpson, Simon Yates climbed Siula Grande in 1985, via the hitherto unclimbed west face. On the descent, Simpson fell through a cornice, breaking his right leg and heel.

To continue descending, Yates then utilized ropes to lower Simpson down the mountain in stages. While descending in the night in bad weather, Yates lowered Simpson over an unseen cliff edge.

This meant that he was hanging over a deep fissure with only Simpson’s hold on the rope to prevent him falling. To avoid falling off the mountain himself, Yates cut the rope.

Simpson thus fell approximately 50 feet into the fissure. He survived the autumn, unbeknownst to Yates, who presumed he died.

Simpson managed to climb out of the crevasse and reached base camp four days later. Some mountaineers were very critical of Yates’ decision to cut the rope on his partner.

Yates argued that he could not rely upon an army of people to help since they were far on the mountain flank with a raging cyclone in progress.

Despite this decision, his rescue try contributed significantly to saving Simpson’s life. Simpson has always vehemently defended Yates, saying he would have done it himself given the same position.( via Wikipedia)

Watch Today’s interviews with Simpson and Yates below for their true survival narratives in this video by the World Expeditions :P TAGEND

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3. Aron Ralston

In 2003, a young climber named Aron Ralston set out to conquer Bluejohn Canyon in Utah. When an 800 -pound boulder changed, Ralston observed himself trapped against the canyon wall with his hand crushed under the boulder.

After six days of what he calls” sleep-deprived, meandering thinks ,” Ralston built the difficult decision to use his multitool to amputate his own limb and free himself. He then repelled to safety.

Ralston’s story inspired the movie 127 Hours. Learn more about his survival narrative in the video below by TLC via Sirtoppim :P TAGEND

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4. Mauro Prosperi

In 2014, an Italian athlete named Mauro Prosperi set out to complete the Marathon des Sables — a brutal six-day run in the Sahara desert. By day four, he was making good time in the race( he was in fourth place) and had begun to fall in love with the desert landscape.

Prosperi’s luck changed when he found himself in the middle of an eight-hour sandstorm that left him disoriented, lost, and alone.

With just a few furnishes and MREs on hand, and after trying and failing to catch the attention of two pas aircrafts, Prosperi survived for 10 days by drinking his own distilled urine and eating bats.

Learn more about his amazing survival tale by watching the video by 20 th Century Fox below :P TAGEND

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5. Douglas Mawson

Douglas Mawson is now an Australian hero due to his historic Antarctic exploration mission in the early 20 th century. According to Cracked.com :P TAGEND

On December 14, 1912, Mawson and his two colleagues, Belgrave Ninnis and Xavier Mertz, were returning to base after successfully not dying for a few days … when Ninnis fell into a fissure, dragging their sledge, their renders, and most of their puppies down with him. They were around 310 miles from home.

Eventually, Mertz died from cold and exhaustion, leaving Mawson to soldier on alone … Then, unbelievably( or perhaps entirely believably ), Mawson’s sledge get wedged in the snow.

He also fell into a crevasse, where he” dangled helplessly above the abyss, with his sledge behind him edging towards the lip .”

After pulling himself up from a frozen grave and surviving 32 days in the harshest environment on countries around the world, Mawson ultimately reached his hut.

He was then told that he would have to wait 10 more months in Antarctica. The ship meant to take him back home had sailed off only a few hours earlier, believing him dead.

Learn more about Mawson’s journey and survival in the video below by Today I Found Out :P TAGEND

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RELATED: Man Survives Yukon Winter in Camper Van

6. Marina Chapman

Of all the true survival stories here, Marina Chapman’s story might be the most unique and unbelievable. True survival narratives in the wilderness don’t get any more amazing than this.

Though there is some speculation that her survival tale may be untrue or embellished, Chapman states she was kidnapped from her Colombian village. At four years old, she was then abandoned in the jungle.

Unable to fend for herself, she began to follow a group of capuchin monkeys. She said, they “raised” her rescue by hunters around age 10.

During her time in the jungle, Chapman took shelter in trees and lived off of wild berries and bananas. After her rescue, Chapman says she was sold to a brothel and lived as a street urchin.

She was also enslaved by a mafia family before finally adopted around age 14.

Do you think her survival narrative is true? Check out the video by Buzz Sourse below :P TAGEND

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7. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight

Between 2003 and 2004, Ariel Castro kidnapped these three young women in Cleveland. They expended the next ten years captive in his home.

They suffered harsh living conditions, starvation, and physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. One of them( Amanda Berry) was even impregnated by Castro and dedicated birth to a daughter during her captivity.

In 2013, Berry’s young daughter “ve noticed that” her father’s car was not in the driveway and alerted her mom. Acting fast, Berry grabbed the child and ran out into the street, crying for help.

She called 911 from a neighbor’s telephone, and the three women were finally rescued. These women’s story is a true evidence to how much a human being can withstand and just how strong the will to live is.

Watch this interview by BBC Newsnight with two of the kidnapping survivors below :P TAGEND

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8. Andes Plane Crash Survivors

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was a chartered flight carrying 45 people, including a rugby union team. With them also were their friends, household, and associates.

The plane crashed in the Andes on 13 October 1972, in an incident known as the Andes flight disaster. In the Hispanic world and South America, it is also known as the Miracle in the Andes( El Milagro de los Andes ).

More than a quarter of the passengers died in the crash and several others rapidly succumbed to cold and injury. Of the 27 who were alive a few days after the accident, another eight died because of an avalanche that swept over their shelter in the wreckage.

Rescue came for the last 16 survivors on 23 December 1972, more than two months after the accident. The survivors had little food and no source of heat in the harsh conditions at over 3,600 metres( 11,800 ft) altitude.

Faced with starvation and radio news reports that search and rescue stopped, the survivors fed on the dead passengers preserved in the snow.

Rescuers did not learn of the survivors until 72 days after the crash when passengers Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, after a 10 -day trek across the Andes, discovered Chilean arriero Sergio Catalan.

He then, devoted them food and alerted the authorities to the existence of the other survivors.( via Wikipedia)

Watch this video documentary about the Andes Plane Crash by History Channel via ro7477 :P TAGEND

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9. Sully Sullenberger and the Crew and Passengers of U.S. Airways Flight 1549

On January 15, 2009, U.S. Airways flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia airport in New York, heading for Charlotte, North Carolina. After just a few minutes, the plane struck a flock of geese, causing both engines to fail.

In an act of gallantry, quick reasoning, and exceptional airmanship, the pilot, “Sully” Sullenberger alerted air traffic control that he would be landing the plane on the Hudson River.

And he did just that, saving the lives of his entire crew and all 150 passengers on board the plane.

Learn more about the historic flight in the video below by AIRBOYD :P TAGEND

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10. The Chilean Miners

The 2010 Copiapo mining accident, also known then as the” Chilean mining accident”, began in the afternoon of Thursday, 5 August 2010 as a significant cave-in at the distressed 121 -year-old San Jose copper-gold mine.

The interred humen, who became known as” Los 33″ (” The 33″ ), procured themselves trapped 700 meters( 2,300 ft) underground and about 5 kilometers( 3 mi) from the mine’s entrance via spiraling underground service ramps.

The mixed crew of experienced miners and technical support personnel, with less experience working underground, survived for a record 69 days deep underground before their rescue.( via Wikipedia)

The video below by CBS tells the astounding tale of the Chilean miners’ survival and rescue :P TAGEND

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It’s truly amazing what human beings are capable of under pressure. We don’t truly know what we’re able to withstand or how far we’re willing to go to survive until we’re in a situation where we don’t have a choice.

Do you have an inspiring #survival tale to share? Tell us about it use the hashtag #truesurvival!

— Survival Life (@ SurvivalLF) April 12, 2016

The truth is, most of us will never be in these kinds of survival situation, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare. By learning from these inspirational tales of survival, we attain ourselves better survivalists. Try to learn some sea, dessert, or jungle survival abilities before you find yourself in a survival situation.

Do you have other unbelievable survival tales to share? Do share it with us in the comments segment below!

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Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on June 28, 2018, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.