ALIVE! Survivor Nando Parrado on the Spirit of a True Survivor

Nando Parrado’s story is familiar. You’ve heard it, seen the films (Alive!, and Stranded!), read the books (also Alive!, and Parrado’s own account, Miracle in the Andes), but it bears repeating. It is simply that astonishing. On October 12, 1972, a Fairchild 571 twin-engine turboprop flown by the Uruguayan Air Force and bound for Santiago, Chile, crashed high in the Andes. Thirteen died in the crash, 16 in the weeks that followed, and finally, after two-and-a-half months, Parrado, Roberto Canessa, and Antonio Vizintín set out on an 11-day trek over 18,000-foot peaks and lived to tell the tale. Here, Parrado discusses the spirit of a true survivor. (See photos from NGA writer James Vlahos's first retracing of the Alive! Andes escape route here.) —Ryan Bradley

Your experience was so different from the rest of the survivors because your sister, your mother, your best friend all died in the plane crash…and what really struck me was that not only were you going through all this turmoil, but your father was as well. His entire family was gone.

He was going through some very bad times at home. When I came back, he told me “you know I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t concentrate” because when you lose all of your family in one second it’s different, you know? I came back and I had to sit with my father alone at a table and look forward and never look back.

Video: Hipster Guru Goes Survivalist

Teva, makers of active-sandals and sandal-like shoes, and clothing to go with your sandal-like-shoes for things like...I don't know...canyoneering, has found an unlikely spokesperson in Gavin McInnes. McInnes is best known for being the founder of Vice magazine, a publication centered around (in no particular order): skinny jeans, plaid, urban decay, punk rock, drug use, graffiti, neon. But our hat is off to Teva and McInnes, who, with this series of web videos called "The Naturist" upends the reality survival genre to create something entertaining and, at times, almost clever. Watch more at www.teva.com/naturist/

—Ryan Bradley

Video: Helicopter Pilot Makes Bold Landing to Rescue Stranded Climbers

While most of us struggle to parallel park our cars, Terry Mercer, the helicopter pilot in the video above, is landing his ride on a jagged rock pinnacle in order to save injured climbers. Mercer is a pilot for the Utah Department of Public Safety and has a combined 34 years of flying experience, including nine flying rescue missions in Utah.

Alone in the Wild Survival Experiment - Week 4

Here's the latest video dispatch from Alone in the Wild's Ed Wardle, now in week 4 of his solitary survival experiment. Ed found the perfect, breezy camp at Tin Cup Lake -- much better for avoiding the bears. Now it's time to build his new shelter.

On July 3rd, 2009 Ed Wardle was flown into the wild and left to survive alone. For three months he will have no contact from another human. He’ll be filming himself throughout the whole process and dropping off the video tapes each week to an isolated drop off area. Those tapes will then be picked up by the production crew and posted on the website daily. Each day is a new challenge with new risks. Will Ed survive? Follow Ed online at www.natgeotv.com/alone with live GPS tracking, as well as video, photo, and Twitter updates.

Alone in the Wild - Day 38: Ed Recalls Advice From Polar Explorer Rune Gjeldnes

Text by Annie Hay

Here's the latest from Ed Wardle, who voluntarily wound up in the Canadian Yukon, alone, unsupported, for three months for the National Geographic Channel's new TV show, Alone in the Wild. Currently just 38 days into his journey, the show is revolutionizing reality television. Gone are the days of waiting for the show to tell you what happens, now you can keep track on your own time. By logging onto the website before the show airs, viewers can follow his one-way tweets and see short videos he has made from the field.

Alone in the Wild: Survival Experiment or Psychological Trap?

On July 3, adventurer-filmmaker Ed Wardle was dropped off by floatplane on a remote lake in the Yukon and left alone. For 90 days. He is not a survival expert. He had never even seen a bear, let alone a hungry grizzly, which is how they were when he arrived. “It’s going to be huge physical challenge,” says the 37-year-old Scotsman. “But it's also going to be a big psychological adventure, too. An exploration of the wilderness within, if you will.” But don’t let the modesty fool you. Wardle is a two-time Everest summiteer. He also filmed hardcore Norwegian explorer Rune Gjeldnes's trek to the North Pole and grew up skinning rabbits on a farm in northeastern Scotland. “People are going to appreciate the reality of it, if they believe it,” says Wardle. “I don’t have a hotel room around the corner.”

Fully unsupported with just meager rations mainly of rice, oats, and two kinds of oil, Wardle will be completely on his own, filming his exploits for the forthcoming National Geographic Channel reality TV series Alone in the Wild. To diversify Wardle's filming capabilities, the crew developed two custom camera rigs: one that attaches to a pole in his backpack; the other, a “follow-me” camera that can be mounted to a tree to track Wardle’s movements.

While the ace cameraman is not a survival sage, Wardle did cram before this ultimate wilderness test. Prior to departure he met with a bear behavior expert, a foraging specialist, and a First Nations elder. The psychologist he consulted called the plan “psychologically dangerous” and advised against being alone without human contact for such a long time. Wardle took note, but the prospects of "going bushy," a Canadian term used for folks who have been alone in the wilderness too long, is probably unavoidable. “I don’t know enough to understand if I should be afraid or not. It’s like diving into a beautiful lake, thinking about diving in for a swim, and someone coming up behind you saying, ‘It’s full of crocodiles.”

Watch the experiment unfold with video dispatches at channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/alone-in-the-wild/. Then tune in for the TV series on the National Geographic Channel starting on July 26 (see the schedule online). Wardle is also posting daily tweets and filing his GPS locations with a SPOT Satellite Messenger.

Deep Survival with Laurence GonzalesAnne Frank's Extraordinary Act of Survival

Anne’s  Great Act

How a young girl hiding in an attic, writing in her journal, transcended what it means to survive.

Text by Contributing Editor Laurence Gonzales, author of the books Everyday Survival and Deep Survival; Illustration by Marc Yankus

If she had lived, Anne Frank would have turned 80 this June. Hers was an extraordinary act of survival, in which the process of living was far more important than the outcome. Her Diary of a Young Girl, published after her death, reminds us that in some cases survival is not simply a matter of how long you live, but how well you live.

Frank’s birthday is a good time to contemplate what it means, really, to survive. The word is derived from the Latin supervivere, a combination of super (over) and vivere (to live). While the common translation of supervivere is “to outlive,” Frank’s diary suggests that supervivere means something infinitely richer. Her story describes survival as an act of grace under pressure—super-living, you could call it.

Continue reading this story >>

Missing Air France Flight 447 Search Unlikely to Produce LOST-Like Survivors

Text by Christian Camerota

The latest reports on Air France Flight 447 indicate the plane likely crashed as a result of severe turbulence, which spawned a series of irreparable mechanical failures (timesonline.co.uk).

Originally, many speculated lightning had played a role in the plane's disappearance from radio contact late Sunday night. However, the Airbus A330 sent a series of automated messages through a data link system to Paris central control that reported electrical malfunction. At the time, the plane was four hours into its trip from Rio De Janeiro to Paris and had encountered violent weather while passing through a tropical storm system. Not much more is known, since the power loss most likely occurred quickly and rendered the flight crew unable to send a distress signal.

The 228 passengers and crew aboard are feared dead, making this potentially the most deadly crash in Air France's history. This dubious distinction previously belonged to the ill-fated Concorde jet that crashed shortly after takeoff in July of 2000, killing all 109 aboard. 

Rescue efforts are underway, focusing largely on an area surrounding the small Fernando de Noronha archipelago, a chain of volcanic islands just over 200 miles northeast of the Brazilian coastline (guardian.co.uk). The search area was initially described as being three times the size of Europe but has since been narrowed.

Could there be a LOST-like scenario in which some passengers may have survived and made it to one of the 20 largely deserted islands in the Fernando de Noronha chain? If the weather was severe enough to bring down a plane with a solid safety record and that had been recently serviced, it is difficult to imagine any making it safely ashore. Even if this had occurred, the island chain is frequented by a variety of surfing and diving expeditions that probably would have already discovered any survivors. 

Both French and Brazilian planes and warships are helping with search efforts, and there is talk of using U.S. spy satellites to help locate the plane (montrealgazette.com). Unfortunately, the fact that no wreckage has yet been found, combined with the vastness of the search area, does not bode well for the fates of those aboard.

A list of the flight's passengers and their nationalities is available here.

Deep Survival: Lessons From an Oil RigWhy Dangerous Places Are More "Safe"

Text by Laurence Gonzales

Occasionally, I Iike to visit some place where the objective hazards appear so great that I can remind myself what paying attention really means. The way we behave in environments full of risk is pretty different from how we act in the safety of our world at home. For example, I once went out to an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and found what looked like the most hazardous environment I’d ever seen.

I traveled by boat from Galveston, Texas, leaving in the middle of the night and arriving at the base of the rig in the morning for the change of crew. A crane lowered something to us that looked like an oversize orange life ring, with rope webbed above it like a tent. I stood on the ring with several crew members, grabbed the rope, and was pulled 20 stories into the air and set down in the midst of the whirling, roaring machinery. The ride up there scared me half to death, but the business end of the oil rig was even worse.

Continue reading this story >>

Travel Tech: Stuck in a Blinding Snowstorm? New "Eyes-Free" Navigation App Sees For You

Two Google engineers have created a piece of software for the touch-screen T Mobile G1 that will help the blind, and, inadvertently, sighted adventure seekers as well. The software, known as an "eyes-free shell," can utilize the phone’s built-in compass and Google Maps to gauge the user’s position and then audibly relay the results. At this stage, the capabilities of the technology aren’t completely clear, but this could be a lifesaver for anyone who is lost and suffering from snow blindness or another form of temporary vision impairment. The application is available on Android Market.

More on this:

Bits New York Times Blog

The Android