Top 3 CRAZY ways people escaped DEATH | Part 3

today's top story is easily one of the most incredible true stories i have ever heard but before we get into today's stories if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you come to the right channel because that's all we do and we upload three four even five times every week so if that's of interest to you please secretly follow the like button into a grocery store and then ram the back of their heels with your cart also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's stories in 1983 23 year old tammy ashcroft was engaged to 34 year old richard sharp the couple had bonded over their shared love of sailing and generally they spent more time on the water than on land in october of that year a friend approached the couple and asked if they'd be willing to take their 44 foot yacht from tahiti to san diego though the trip would be over 4 000 miles long significantly longer than any one trip either of them had ever taken on the open water they both felt very confident in their seafaring abilities and so they agreed to do it the journey started out fine but at the two-week mark when they were just north of the equator they heard about a hurricane that could be making its way up to where they were going and so even though they anticipated it would kind of peter out and actually not even hit them they decided it was still in their best interest to try to sail completely away from the path of the storm to safer waters but over the next couple of days the storm only intensified and continued to change directions making it really hard to predict where safer waters was going to be and so tammy and richard kept desperately trying to get farther and farther away from the storm but it was like every time they would change course and get farther away the storm would speed up and change directions and still be coming straight for them and so finally it got to the point where tammy and richard realized they could not actually outpace the storm that they would have to weather it and so on the day it was going to hit them they donned their rain gear and they boarded up the windows and then they stood on the deck of their yacht looking out at the horizon as this category 4 hurricane is just barreling straight towards them tammy would go on to say that she never fully appreciated just how terrifying being in a hurricane is out at sea until she was in one she said it was a constant barrage of 50-foot waves that would literally launch the yacht it would become airborne then it would come crashing down and each time it landed she felt like the boat was gonna break in too and then as soon as it did slam down another wave would land on top of them and so it just felt like at any moment the ship was just going to be consumed by the ocean but tammy and richard were excellent sailors and richard was up in the cockpit and he was doing everything he could to keep the boat from not flipping over and after a little while he had figured out a way to kind of ride the waves in such a way that they would not get totally tossed each time and after a couple hours of just absolute chaos it started to seem like they had made it through the worst of the storm and that more than likely they were going to make it out of this thing relatively unharmed and so around this time as the storm was beginning to calm down richard is anchored in place in the cockpit he's a safety line attached to him to the ground so he's not going anywhere and tammy is just exhausted it was just so stressful being through the storm and richard noticed he says tammy i got this up here go down into the cabin and just try to get some rest and tammy was very grateful and she agreed she opened the doors to the cabin and she had made it all the way downstairs when she hears richard yell out from up in the cockpit oh my god before a rogue wave comes crashing into their boat head on flipping the boat backwards like a backflip on to the top so it's upside down in the water and tammy would say it felt like someone ripped the boat out from under her feet and then she came crashing down and smashed her head and was knocked unconscious when tammy woke up 27 hours later she was laying in the cabin against a chair and half on the ground and she opens her eyes and the cabin she's in is half submerged and everything inside of it has either been thrown on the ground or it's been broken there's papers there's tools i mean the place is just a disaster down there and she can tell the cabin is also slowly filling with water after the boat had backflipped and tammy had been knocked unconscious it continued to get thrown around by waves before miraculously landing upright tammy could barely remember what happened and she's totally overwhelmed by what she's seeing she's in shock and all she knows is she has to go up on deck to find richard and so she gets up and wades through the water she gets to the stairs she's yelling for richard she goes up on deck and she looked around and the boat was just ruined and she's yelling for richard she's looking around he's nowhere to be found and then she looks up at the cockpit where she last saw him and she can see his safety line that was attached to him keeping him anchored to the boat was now dangling off the back of the boat she ran to the back she looked and the safety harness had actually come undone it had been broken in the storm and richard was gone he had been swept into the ocean and he was not wearing a life jacket and tammy would say he had actually taken it off earlier in the storm and left it down in the cabin and then when the storm was raging again he was back up top anchored in place and just didn't think to go down and get it and they both were just not thinking about it it was just one of those things in a really chaotic situation that got overlooked and while tammy wanted to grieve the loss of her fiance it was like she couldn't her survival instincts were kicking in and she knew if she didn't act quickly to fix this situation she too would die and so she began robotically taking stock of the boat's condition and she saw the masts had broken clean off these sails were now dragging in the water the engine the radio the electronic navigation system the emergency position indicator device all of it was ruined and so all alone in the middle of the ocean with nothing in sight no ships no land no anything on a ruined ship that is gradually sinking after finding out your fiancee has been swept out to his death in the middle of a storm tammy managed to stay composed and she built a makeshift sail and began sailing the ship and she also began slowly pumping the water out of the cabin she went back into the cabin and she discovered some of the almanacs were still in there and she discovered there was a current that she thought she could get to and so using just a sex tent and a watch she manually navigated this broken down ship using this makeshift sail into this current and then for 41 days she survived on canned food and peanut butter and she sailed 1500 miles to hawaii and the whole time she's thinking to herself if my calculations are off that this is not the current i'm supposed to be in i will sail past hawaii out into the open water and i will run out of food and water and i will die but she didn't die because her calculations were spot on when tammy finally stepped foot on land in hawaii she was relieved that you know she had made it and that she was going to live but at the same time she had this flood of emotions where she was suddenly so sad about the loss of richard it was like she really hadn't had a chance to grieve his loss because that whole time after the accident she was focused on survival and although tammy would make a full recovery it would take her six years to learn how to read again because of the head injury she sustained when the boat capsized but when she did regain that skill she finally stopped and she wrote her and richard's story in a book called red sky in mourning that became an international bestseller and was converted into a movie called adrift growing up in southeastern australia ricky mcgee worked a variety of jobs including being a carpet salesman a prawn fisherman a nightclub doorman an electrician and a bailiff in 2006 when ricky was 35 he was offered yet another new job in a government department in western australia he accepted the job hopped in his car and began the long drive across the desert while on the extremely desolate buntine highway which is basically a road in the middle of the desert with nothing around no people no buildings nothing he's driving along and he sees a group of three men standing outside of their car and so ricky assumed they must have broken down so he pulls over to ask if they need help and they come up to him and they're so gracious that he stopped and they said we ran out of gas can we hop in with you and ride up to the next town and ricky says fine climb on in so the three men they get in this car and they take off and then after that ricky has no memory he thinks one of them drugged him by putting something in his drink which was sitting in the center console and was open but he doesn't know for sure ricky remembers waking up and he was in a camp and he sat up and he was unrestrained and he looks out in front of him and the three guys that had gotten in the car with him were sitting on rocks looking at him and one of them had a gun that he was aiming at ricky and so ricky's just looking around not really sure what's going on and one of them gets up and comes over and offers him water ricky takes a sip of the water because he's very thirsty and ricky believes the water was poisoned as well because shortly after taking a sip he passed out again when ricky regained consciousness a second time he couldn't move it was dark and he felt something tugging at his skin and as he's laying there he realizes there is black plastic right over his face he's been buried and then he realizes there is a dingo that is standing on his chest that has tugged the plastic away from his face because the dog is trying to take a bite out of ricky but the dog is the one that saved his life by creating an air pocket in the plastic ricky screamed at the dog the dog panicked and left out of the hole and ran away and ricky was able to work his finger up to this hole and pull it all the way open and push himself out of the plastic and he realized there wasn't much dirt or rocks that had been placed over him they probably thought he would just suffocate in the middle of the desert and no one's gonna find him anyways but here he is and so he stands up in his grave and he looks around and there's no sign of the three men his car is gone he realizes they also took all of his clothing even his shoes he's got no food he's got no water he's in the middle of the desert there's no roads there's no people there's no buildings there's nothing at this point confusion overtook ricky because he just could not make sense of what had just happened to him who were these three people why did they attack him did they just want to steal his car were they prepared to kill him to take his car he just he couldn't understand it and so there was some shade behind a little bush and he sat down in the shade and he just sat there for several hours thinking you know what am i gonna do but not being one to let pessimism crowd his psyche ricky decides if he's gonna survive he needs to get up and get moving after 10 days of just wandering through the desert and seeing nobody he came across this fairly large water hole and he decided you know what i have a better chance of surviving if i just wait here until someone comes and rescues me than if i just keep walking through the desert where i'm bound to just eventually die and so he makes a makeshift shelter next to this waterhole and he begins to wait after almost a week of being at the spot ricky had still not had a single thing to eat since this whole ordeal began and so he's sitting there his stomach is in knots he's in so much pain he's starving and just then a lizard happened to run across in front of him and without even thinking he just reached out and grabbed it and took a bite out of it and it was like all of the sudden this primal side of him was unleashed and suddenly he had no issues eating anything that moved in the desert for weeks ricky stayed at the spot drinking from the water hole and eating lizards frogs leeches snakes grasshoppers caterpillars basically anything that moved anywhere in the desert he would chase it down and he would eat it in fact he developed an affinity for certain frogs over others and he said in terms of eating leeches that they were okay but you needed to eat them really really quickly otherwise they would attach to the insides of your mouth ricky also ate plants but he would even say he had no idea what was harmful and what was okay to eat he just ate what tasted good and got really lucky but as much as ricky was eating it wasn't enough he was slowly losing his battle with the desert and he was starving to death and so ricky believed he didn't have enough time to just continue to wait at this particular spot he needed to go out and find help and so he left that water hole and began stumbling through the desert all over again but he was so weak he only lasted for a couple of days before he found another water hole and he stopped there and he built yet another shelter this time believing it would become his tomb over the next couple of days wild dogs began coming to his camp and circling his camp it was like they knew he was about to die soon or they at least knew he was weak enough they could probably overpower him soon at night ricky had to barricade the door of a shelter because the dogs would get aggressive and they'd come up to the door and try to paw their way inside on the 70th day of his ordeal ricky believed he was probably within a day or two of passing away and so he put a cross on the outside of his shelter believing that would be his tomb and at least this way someone might notice it and find his body and then hopefully let his family know what happened to him but on the 71st day when ricky happened to be standing outside of his shelter two ranch hands happened to be way off the road in the outback and were looking in his direction and they saw him and when they went over to him they said he looked like a walking skeleton and ricky practically collapsed as soon as he saw help had finally arrived the ranch hands evacuated ricky from the desert and brought him to a hospital where he weighed less than 100 pounds at the beginning of his ordeal he weighed over 230 pounds despite filing a report with the police about the three men who attacked him they were never caught ricky checked himself out of the hospital after six days and made a full recovery he ended up writing a book about his experience and he now works construction in dubai by 1985 the remote and extremely dangerous west face of the ciula grande in the peruvian andes was still unclimbed but in 1985 two very ambitious climbers 25 year old joe simpson and 21 year old simon yates decided they were going to be the first to conquer it and by all accounts they seemed up for the job having already conquered numerous difficult scottish ice cliffs as well as a number of large mountain faces in the alps so in early june of that year the pair flew to peru and they arrived at the base camp that was nearest to the seu la grande but it was still five miles away so they couldn't actually see what they were going to be climbing yet on june 5th when the weather was good enough the pair left camp and worked their way around the huge lake across the glacier to the base of this cliff they're about to climb and when they saw it for the first time they couldn't believe how steep and dangerous it looked but over the next three days they managed to make it up this cliff despite a blizzard hitting them halfway through and they reached the summit to them this was a crowning achievement they had done it they had written their names in the history books but in reality the thing that people would remember them for was not for reaching the top of ciula grande it was for what happened when they started going down because of how steep this mountain was and because of the blizzard that was not going away it was actually getting worse the descent was going to be much more challenging than the ascent so shortly after 10 a.m on june 8th joe and simon left the summit and began very carefully making their way down the mountain at 11am disaster struck when joe lost his footing and fell to the bottom of an ice cliff and shattered his leg initially they both assumed this was a death sentence for joe because there's no way he can actually climb down the mountain now and certainly simon can't actually carry him down the mountain they were so high up and it's so steep there's just no way but simon wanted to at least try to save his friend so he climbed down to him he gave him some mild painkillers that he had and then he attached his rope to joe and then simon anchored himself in the snow and he began lowering joe down the mountain all 300 feet of his rope and when he would stop joe at the other end would anchor himself in the snow with his ice picks and then simon would climb down to joe and he'd repeat the process over and over and over again lowering joe 300 feet at a time this went on for hours and hours and hours just back-breaking work for simon and joe meanwhile as an excruciating pain from his broken leg and to make matters worse the storm had gotten so bad that the visibility between simon and joe was zero so as simon is lowering joe he can't see what he's lowering joe on to but they had no other choice that was the only way they could get him down and so at 5 pm that night simon accidentally lowers joe over a cliff and joe as soon as he's hanging off the edge all of his weight is on the rope and suddenly the rope is flying out of simon's hands and he manages to self-arrest and stop him from careening over the edge but now simon is the only thing holding joe from tumbling to his death and simon is being slowly drugged down the mountain he can't anchor himself in and so they're in the middle of this inhospitable environment in the middle of the night a storm is raging it's freezing cold they can't communicate with each other they can't hear each other or see each other and simon is just hoping that joe is going to be able to grab onto something and kind of take his weight off the rope otherwise this is going to end badly for both of them but unfortunately the cliff was at an angle so joe was dangling off of it and he couldn't touch the wall he had nothing to grab onto he was just dangling in the air and so as simon tries to move the rope to try to signal to joe to take your weight off the rope joe is trying to climb up the rope but his hands are starting to get frostbit he's weak he's in pain he can't do anything about it so for the next two and a half hours simon is desperately trying to regain an anchor in the snow but every second that goes by he's getting pulled farther and farther and farther down the mountain he can't see how close he is to the edge he knows he's getting close and so finally at 7 30 pm with no other option he pulls out a knife and he cuts the rope as soon as the rope was cut simon fell backwards he was safe nothing was pulling him off the cliff any longer but he knew he had just sent joe to his death except joe didn't die when that rope was cut he fell 150 feet and smashed into the ground except what he hit was a thin sheet of ice that broke from its weight and he fell another 80 feet into this massive ice crevasse joe was knocked unconscious from the fall but when he woke up he was laying on his side he opened his eyes and he looked around and he couldn't believe he was alive and he's looking around he doesn't know where he is it's totally dark he turns on his headlamp and he realizes he's fallen into an ice crevasse and he looks down and he's on this little ledge that's overlooking a much much deeper fall he looks down and this ice crevasse seems to just go on infinitely into this black chasm and he realizes when he fell had he fallen a foot over that's where he would have gone so it's a miracle he's alive but now he's trapped in the middle of an ice crevasse 80 feet down he can't go down and he can't go up at the time joe didn't know if simon had fallen off the cliff with him or if he had cut the rope but the rope was still attached to his waist and it fed up and out of the ice crevasse and so he grabbed it and pulled on it until it all came tumbling back down and he saw it was frayed and so sure enough simon had cut the rope now even though joe wasn't mad at simon for the decision he made because he understood it was the right one joe still became very emotional when he saw this he felt so alone he was so sad and for a little while he just kind of freaked out and screamed and yelled and really just didn't know what he was gonna do and then after that he sat down knowing he wasn't getting out of here and that he was gonna die a slow horrible painful death joe remembers reaching up and turning off his headlamp which retrospectively he thought was kind of goofy because he's just realized he's about to die inside of this crevasse and he's saving batteries but with the light off he's sitting on the ledge and he hears all the sounds that are coming from inside of this crevasse it was this awful grinding sound like a moaning sound and he said it was so terrifying sitting in the darkness listening to the sound that he reached up and turned his light back on just for comfort back up on the mountain simon was devastated he felt like he had just killed his friend and even though he understood why he did it and understood it was probably the right decision it didn't change the fact that he felt incredibly guilty about it and so that night he didn't even move from the position he was he dug a little snow cave and he laid down and eventually fell asleep the next morning when he got up he began moving his way down the mountain and he finally rounded the area where joe had been hanging off of that cliff and he got a chance to look down and see where joe might have wound up and to his horror he's looking down and he sees this massive opening to a crevasse that seemed almost bottomless and now this confirms that joe definitely has died because he fell in there but nonetheless simon goes down and goes to the edge of the crevasse and yells into joe he's screaming for him to call out if he's still alive but after a while he never heard anything from joe and with a heavy heart simon turned around and started heading back to base camp a little while after simon had left joe finally woke up he had been asleep when simon was yelling down for him and so joe wakes up he's looking around he can't believe this wasn't a bad dream he starts yelling for simon because he doesn't know what else to do but after a while he realized simon's not going to come down here to get me he cut the rope he thinks i'm dead already at this point joe decides he needs to try to climb out of the crevasse even with a broken leg and so he gets himself in position he gets his ice picks and he starts making his way up this ice wall but he can't put any weight on his broken leg and he keeps falling down and he's realizing i can't climb this i probably couldn't climb this with two good legs let alone with this broken one and so joe had two choices he could wait on the ledge and hope to be rescued but by his calculations it was unlikely someone was gonna come out here and rescue him anytime soon because simon is gonna say he's dead so wait on the ledge and probably die a slow painful death or he can go down deeper into the crevasse which he has no idea where it goes and hopes somewhere down in that black void there's an opening that leads back out to the outside of the mountain so he made his choice screwed an anchor into the ice put his rope through it he tested it to make sure it would hold his weight he looked down into the void one last time and knew that as soon as he stepped off of this ledge he could not come back up again this was a one-way trip and if he made it to the bottom of his 300-foot rope and he didn't find a ledge or a tunnel or something to put his feet on he would slip off and fall to his death on purpose he did not put a knot at the end of his rope because he figured either i'll find a way out or i won't but at least it'll be quick down he went about 80 feet into this pitch black crevasse he has no idea what's down there and he gets to a point where the walls kind of come together and he was able to squeeze through it and he realized once he got through that point it was like the center of an hourglass where below it it kind of opened up and as soon as he pushed through he could actually see to the ground he saw flat ground and there was light shining on it which meant there was a hole leading out into the mountains somewhere down there and so he went all the way down he touched the bottom it was solid ground he disconnected from his rope and he climbed his way up this incline to where the sun was coming in which was this hole that led right back out onto the mountain and sure enough he crawled out and tumbled out and the sun is shining on him and he remembers just laying on the mountain looking at the sun and laughing he couldn't believe it but after the initial relief of not dying wore off he realized he was not out of the woods yet he still needed to climb down the rest of the mountain and there wasn't that much left to climb he was towards the bottom and it wasn't that steep but after that he would need to navigate five miles back to base camp but over several delirious painful miserable days he managed to crawl all the way back to base camp and he got there right as simon was packing up the tent and getting ready to leave he could not believe he saw joe alive joe said simon just swore he just endlessly swore he was cussing he couldn't even speak he didn't understand it was like he's looking at a ghost but after that kind of crazy initial interaction simon just gave joe a big hug and joe and simon just cried and held each other joe underwent six surgical operations to repair the damage done to his leg and doctors would tell him that you're never gonna climb again and you're probably gonna struggle with walking for the rest of your life but after two years of intense rehabilitation joe was not only walking just fine he was mountain climbing as for simon he managed to leave the mountain without any serious physical injury but he carried with him an enormous sense of guilt that he still carries today joe consistently says simon made the right decision in every interview he does he always makes sure to say simon is not at fault it was an impossible situation he made the right call joe wrote a book about the experience called touching the void and it sold millions of copies worldwide and has since been adapted into a major motion picture as for joe and simon apparently they've drifted apart over the years but they still consider each other friends so that's going to do it guys if you found the secret in today's episode let us know in the comments what it is and where you found it if you're the first to do that we'll pin you at the top of the comment section if you enjoyed today's video and you haven't done this already please secretly follow the like button into a grocery store and then ram the back of their heels with your grocery cart also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly three four even five video uploads if you want to get in touch with me you can direct message me on instagram or on twitter my username for both platforms is the same it's john ballen416 i also have a ton of content over on tick tock where my username is mr ballen if you have a story suggestion please submit it to our subreddit just called mr ballin it's linked in the description below so whether i see you on twitter instagram tick tock reddit youtube or some combination just know that i really appreciate your support and until next time that's gonna do it see ya

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 4,422,374

Keywords: survival, scary story, scary, scary stories, true, true stories, true crime, crime, unsolved mystery, mystery, mysterious, strange, dark, spooky, spoopy, terrifying, survive, desert, hurricane, cyclone, hawaii, tragedy, missing person, missing people, survived, I shouldn't be alive, near death, near death experience, nope, scary af, lost at sea, sea, ocean, storm, big storm, con, scam, scammers, andes, mountains, mountain climbing, touching the void, mountain, Mount Everest, big mountain, blizzard, snow, oof

Id: yPE84ZJBJWk

Length: 25min 5sec (1505 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020

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