How I survived a plane crash | Hacker News Reader

How I survived a plane crash

bbc.co.uk

194 pointsfelixchan63 comments

I learned a lot about life in the rainforest, that it wasn't too dangerous. It's not the green hell that the world always thinks.

If by Peruvian Rainforest she means Peruvian Amazon, I fathom how anyone wouldn't think of it as a green hell. Thousands of people have died simply from travelling through it.

What an ordeal, though.

Well, her statement seems more reasonable in context:

> Before the crash, I had spent a year and a half with my parents on their research station only 30 miles away. I learned a lot about life in the rainforest, that it wasn't too dangerous.

Arguably, the biggest dangers of the Amazon forrest are malaria-carrying mosquitoes, poisonous snakes, spiders and scorpions, and lack of access to drinkable water and edible food. Since she had lived in a research station, she was probably vaccinated and knew how to mitigate the other risks (e.g. there is plenty of edible food, you just need to know how to identify it).

All in all, it seems a better deal than getting stranded in the Andes, the Sahara or the African savannahs.

Is it just me or is the most incredible part that she survived the impact? I'd be curious to understand how she fell from that high and didn't die from the immediate impact or wounds sustained from that, such as broken limbs that would have rendered her immobile. I imagine she probably just hit a ton of tree branches which softened the impact considerably. The odds of that seem tiny, but then again it could just be survivorship bias.

Her mother is said to have also survived the crash. Only to die a few days later in the forest.

According to wikipedia, "It was later discovered that as many as 14 other passengers also survived the initial fall from the disintegrated plane but were unable to seek help and died while awaiting rescue."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LANSA_Flight_508

Wow, that's insane. I'm surprised they never made a movie about this.

They did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Hope

Well, it is a documentary film. But a very, very good one. Herzog's films usually are.

"Herzog was inspired to make this film as he narrowly avoided taking the same flight while he was location scouting for Aguirre, Wrath of God. His reservation was canceled due to a last minute change in itinerary."

Wow. What are the odds?

She wasn't so lucky not to break anything, but also amazing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87

Not really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87#2009_report

Wikipedia is not the best source... Check out this analysis (in czech) with a map of the wreckage (proving that it was spread over large area)

http://technet.idnes.cz/serial-teroristicky-utok-nad-cssr-pr...

It also says that FDR and CVR were analysed in Amsterdam by dutch and american experts. So they are probably pretty sure in which altitude were they flying.

It also includes chemical composition of the bomb that brought it down.

Well, they did crash into a rain forest that was so dense she couldn't even see the planes she heard above searching for the wreckage. I imagine crashing over something like that has to be one of the safest places it can happen (not counting the survival rates post-crash).

That's what I believed too, that trees would help breaking your fall, right ? Until, one fine day, I was construction workers emptying a 20 floor building for demolition, basically throwing furniture out the window. Uhmm, thick wood doors get impaled on tree branches.

Also, parachutists know to avoid landing in trees at all costs. So nope, trees don't help at all.

Maybe the type of tree makes a difference? A lot of trees we plant in North American cities have fairly rigid branches all the way to the top, and the foliage is relatively thin. I don't know what kind of trees grow in Peruvian rainforests, but I wouldn't be surprised if the branches were softer and covered with much thicker foliage, like human-sized leaves you could just slide off of.

If you were a passenger on an aircraft carrying 10+ passengers involved in a fatal accident in the 1970s, you had about a 1 in 4 chance of surviving [1]. Note that this includes accidents during taxiing, initial climb, and final descent (about 70% of airplane fatalities).

[1] http://planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm

Wings of Hope is a Herzog documentary that tells this story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Hope

I came here to mention exactly this. I can't believe how the article misses this fact, even when it includes pictures of her return to the crash site that were actually taken during the filming of Herzog's documentary. For all of HNers interested in this story, the documentary is highly recommendable if you like Herzog's deeply psychoanalytical take when he portrays real life characters and situations.

Other curious fact: Werner Herzog was supposed to take this flight. He missed it.

Haven't seen the Herzog documentary, but I remember seeing this story dramatized in a (West) German movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071845

I was maybe 8 or 9 when it was shown on Japanese TV. Amazed it didn't scare me away from air travel for life.

There's actually a pretty gigantic list of sole survivors from plane crashes. Lot of stories here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sole_survivors_of_airli...

How you could also survive a free fall: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/safety/4...

It would be interesting to have seat numbers of survivors.

Popular Mechanics did an analysis of seat location's impact on survivability based on NTSB reports: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/safety/4...

There's relatively little data, though, since commercial airliners don't crash that often.

The saddest part about this whole story is that it seems if she had searched for her mother she might have saved her. It was probably worse finding out she was still alive after the crash.

No, there's no way she'd be able to save her. She could not carry her on the 9 day journey.

Could've said goodbye though

Yeah, but as far as I can understand they could have been on very remote locations. How do you even search for someone in an unknown, dark, dense forest ?

"I had nightmares for a long time, for years, and of course the grief about my mother's death and that of the other people came back again and again. The thought Why was I the only survivor? haunts me. It always will." A quote from her in 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliane_Koepcke

How would you get your orientation to know where the other bit of the aircraft was? It's enough of a challenge simply not to walk around in circles when you're isolated.

In the article it says she finds other victims of the crash, still strapped in their seats.

> I found a small creek and walked in the water because I knew it was safer.

Would not have guessed that.

This reminds me of an insanely compelling and moving plane crash survival documentary featuring commentary from survivors streaming on Netflix, a must see..

http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Stranded_I_ve_Come_from_a_Pl...

seems HN has finally become reddit.

what does this have anything to do with hacking, startups, or even computers.

What startup isn't like a plane crash at some point or another? ;)

It's interesting to hackers...?

I usually defend submissions and discussions like these, but this? This is rather indefensible.

Was a brilliant read. But, while it might not technically go against the HN submission guidelines, I don't think this article belongs here.

Your tone! You forgot to capitalize the letters of every sentence. You're contributing to the redditness!

Seems like the fate of any popular news aggregator is to aggregate things of general interest, no matter how well-targeted it begins.

The facts I got from the HN-discussion are very enlightening and interesting; also it was a good read. Very ok for me to see this on the frontpage.

A great classic story of survival. I can't get enough of these. Makes me glad to have the life that I do. No matter what silly hardships I think I have, I can just be glad I never had to deal with a horrific situation like this.

I recommend checking out the series "I Shouldn't Be Alive". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Shouldnt_Be_Alive

Looking through the episode list, I'm surprised that Juliane's story isn't in there.

Great, another horror story to add to my "this is why I abhor air travel" bank. I know the statistics show that planes are very safe, but it's hard to reconcile the numbers with grisly accounts like these.

Surely you can find grisly accounts relating to any mode of transportation you care to name. There's nothing uniquely grisly about air travel accidents.

In motor vehicle accidents, you don't have time to think about what is going to happen. As a plane is in a freefall, there's at least a good 30 seconds before ground collision. Having that time to think about how your life is about to end seems grisly to me.

You might struggle for days or weeks before succumbing to your injuries after a car accident. Again, there's nothing particularly bad about airplane accidents, except for the part where they're much more rare and thus much more newsworthy.

Take-off and landing, which account for only 2% of flight time, are responsible for about 40% of fatal crashes. If we include taxiing, final approach, and and initial climb this is 70% of fatal crashes for 6% of flight time [1].

Not much time there to contemplate your fate.

[1] http://planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm

Grisly accounts involving cars aren't news. They happen too often.

Not comparable unless you're the pilot, really ...

I think the statistic that was interesting to the GGP was absolute likelihood of death, not likelihood that you will contribute to your death by incompetence. In that case, it's irrelevant whether you're the pilot/driver.

I don't want to get into a thing here, but many times I've been on the road and avoided accidents, sometimes serious ones, by driving intelligently. Almost all of the wrecks or near-really-bad-wrecks I see occur when both parties are not paying enough attention or don't know how to respond to the crisis.

Couldn't infrared have been used to detect where the living humans were after the plane had crashed?

Sad outcome for the mother. :(

This particular crash was in 1971 in the middle of the Peruvian rainforest. I'm not sure when portable infrared cameras became available, but I doubt they were widely had around this time, and doesn't seem like it crashed near any major cities with air force bases nearby, so while the technology may have existed, I wouldn't be surprised if they were too expensive to just keep lying around waiting to be used.

Counting the rich wildlife of such forests along with high density of trees, would spotting a human in all that noise even possible?

I think you will find infrared was advance enough by 1971. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared#History_of_infrared_sc...

If they could afford to fly search planes overhead I can't see cost being the issue that prevented them from doing the search more efficiently.

> I think you will find infrared was advance enough by 1971

It was not. The link you posted says that only film infrared was available then, and that would not be helpful for searching in a jungle.

And even in 1978 the best they could do was a resolution of 64x64 which isn't enough to identify a human from an animal.

"... The pain was intense as the maggots tried to get further into the wound. I pulled out about 30 maggots and was very proud of myself. I decided to spend the night there. ..."

Should have eaten the maggots, lots of protein.

And maggots are actually good for an open wound, they keep it clean. Atleast that's what I heard a Veterinarian say.

Depends on the species of maggot. The good ones only eat dead flesh, effectively cleaning the wound. The bad ones eat everything.

How do you tell the difference?

You wait..

She was probably talking about Bott Flies. They're parasitic insects that live in the healthy flesh of the victim. I say they were Bott's because she had worked to get them out of an infected animal before.

I wonder if she was able to overcome, after all these years, the fear of flying after surviving a crash. Long lasting deep trauma, for sure.

So, no time traveling vortex then. No polar bears. Got it.

epic story. Sounded like she was level headed and calm about the ordeal and that helped her to survive (in addition to her experience with the rainforest).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com