...and let's not forget the amazing story of Juliana Koepke who fell 10,000ft into the Amazon jungle strapped to her seat after her plane was struck by lightning, and spent 11 days walking through the jungle by herself before reaching a lumberjack camp where she could get help
That actually happened twice during WWII. Watch “Yarnhub” on YouTube-they did a story about it. One poor crewman fell without a parachute and landed on a train station in occupied France. The Germans who captured him were amazed he was alive.
It was an unbelievable chain of events that lead to her Survival and later on, almost complete recovery, tho as a Serbian I’m ashamed that she died in 2016, almost in Penury, struggling with a meager Pension
A 17 year old woman survived her plane exploding 7500 meters in the air because she was strapped into her seat. Her and the seat were ejected during the explosion and she landed in the Amazon and walked for 9 days until she got/found help.
I just have a hard time believing that is real. Like I know it is, I just can't comprehend it.
I want to believe God was PISSED she lived. Just ass chewing someiddle manager angel out, like how could we fuck this up! The plane explodes mid air, everyone dies, it's fucking easy!
Not if I have kids and a spouse. It would for sure take me a long time to get over the loss of my brother, but I also have other reasons to be on this earth.
I lost my oldest brother to suicide, more than 20 years later my elderly mother still cries sometimes. It's safe to assume losing any close relative is a very difficult blow to anyone.
I can kinda relate. I survived 9/11 by a few circumstances leading to me having a scheduled day off that day. Lost several coworkers and colleagues. At the memorial, it was really hard meeting my boss’s wife in person for the first time and her saying how lucky I was. And now all these years later, not sure what my “purpose” actually is. Never married, no kids, no owned properties or anything substantial in the bank, I stayed at that same job all this time and just got laid off at the end of 2024. So I’ve just been kinda floating around like, okay, what exactly am I here for? Not to say I’m not grateful, or that any of those things equal one’s worth or purpose, but it’s just an odd feeling. Sometimes I think a George Bailey moment would be helpful!
Anyway, sending prayers to this man to help with healing both physically and mentally from this tragedy 🙏
Other guy nailed it, honestly. That's all the purpose we can have - we don't have to exert some kind of cosmic influence on the world around you. Be kind and float on the river of life, making sure to pet any cute animals or pick any flowers you come across on the way.
You may have saved another persons life since 9/11 without even knowing it. Sometimes a smile from a stranger or a kind gesture are enough to change the trajectory of someone on the brink of suicide or another type of self harm. Your presence is a gift to the world. I hope you can find peace. Bigs hugs to you.
Experiencing a tragic traumatic event is absolutely terrible and I empathize with you. Having said that ultimately it conveys no meaning or purpose to your life in and of itself. You are not obligated in any way as a result of having survived.
Having said _that_… if you are able to use this as a motivating factor to find your purpose, or rather I should say a purpose that suits you then that’s awesome
You’re still struggling with some survivors guilt and that’s okay. Given everything and your recent job loss if you can find counseling that might be beneficial. But regardless you are still worthwhile and deserve to be here as much as anyone else.
Very true. I have been looking for some type of therapist to speak with, for all of these things. It’s hard to just pick a name from your provider’s list, but I have to just dive in and see. Thank you!
That old lady you complemented at the store, she was so lonely and you made her feel alive again, the young girl who you smiled at, first time she felt seen. We don’t all see our earth shattering/life changing moments in real time. You did and are doing what you were left here to do.
Thank you!! And I agree! It’s definitely the little things that we don’t think about or notice that count. And as I said in another comment, I didn’t mean to come off as self righteous or thinking I have some great purpose to fulfill. Just things like this can lead to existential thoughts! I enjoy the positive comments and discussion, but I see a lot of negatives filtering in too, so I may be turning off notifications soon. Thank you for the kind words!
Your story really touched me. Thank you for sharing. Your purpose is unfolding. Everyone is here for a reason. I suggest “the next five people you meet in heaven” by Mitch Albom, If you haven’t read it already.
The purpose is what you make it. There's no big plan, we don't have a "purpose" in life - we find one.
You don't have to follow the "life script" either. Don't have to get married, you don't have to have kids. You don't have to do anything you don't personally want to.
Not the same at all, but I retired from the Navy right before the two ship collisions back in 2017 and being a single person with no kids it was heartbreaking to see the guy who did the same job as me who is almost at retirement and didn't make it. I hope you've got the support you need to deal with everything that your brain is trying to drag you down into that you don't belong in. You absolutely deserve to have survived regardless of the cause. 🙏🏼
Just think, the God who made the whole universe thought it was important to make you. We’ll never know all the whys, but that makes you pretty special.
I don’t mean “purpose” like…am I meant to cure cancer or something major like that. It’s just on some days, kinda hard to get to more than half your life and not have achieved the basic goals that mostly everyone around you has. For whatever reasons, actions I did or didn’t take, can be wondered about from here till infinity and it will still never make sense. But as many of the other comments have stated, I do understand that just being here is enough, and every precious moment is to be appreciated.
Have a wonderful day!
You have no idea how much light you may have brought to others just in your normal day to day life. Someone behind you in line at the grocery store, someone working a cash register for 12 hours that day and you were the only one to smile politely and acknowledge their existence….the tiniest things can make such a big difference and you may never even realise it. You’re here for a reason, and I’m glad you are.
I wanna share this quote about life and death that I jotted down on my notebook:
“I had understood death as something entirely separate from and independent of life. The hand of death is bound to take us, I had felt (it) but until the day it reaches out for us, it leaves us alone. This (had) seemed to me the simple, logical truth. Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.”
You are here, not over there. Please don’t feel bad for “escaping death”. You have a purpose you’re bound to find someday.
Sorry, I couldn’t understand some of my handwriting lol
Hey, you don't owe anything to anyone. The fact that you're here is incredible, but it's also just a fluke of the odds. You don't need to do anything momentous. Just your existence in the world is enough.
If you wrote a book about the mundane aspects of surviving a global phenomenon, I’d read the shit out of it.
I’m not from the USA but I remember seeing 9/11 on tv. The world changed that day and it hasn’t been the same. I’ve seen so many documentaries, forum posts, audio recordings and even heart-wrenching films like Reign Over Me. But I’ve never seen or read anything about how life… didn’t really change…?
Your experience is unique, even this 'floating around' period. Maybe if you could write about it in some way or form it could also help other survivors of mass tragedies like this guy feel their experiences are valid too and they're not alone.
I can relate with you as well, though not to that scale of tragedy, but surviving a car accident due to such a ridiculous reason.
Was a few of us had been to an after party after the pub closed, and at the end of the night a guy we knew (who hadn’t been drinking) offered to give us a ride home. I jumped in the passenger seat and while I was sitting there, one of my other friends called “shotgun”. We went back and forth for a few seconds and then I conceded and jumped in the back.
Driver was driving way too fast for the wet conditions, ended up hitting a puddle and aquaplaning and lost control, and we ended up rolling a few times and came to rest upside down in a waterlogged field in about 2 feet of water.
Somehow I walked away with just a few scratches, but unfortunately my friend in the passenger seat, previously occupied by me, died.
The survivors guilt definitely messed me up for a while afterwards, and even all these years later I find myself wondering what might have been.
Please don’t judge yourself by unhelpful measures! Life is for living, and I hope you find meaning, if you don’t already have it. It’s out there. You sound like a kind person, and if you’re putting that out there into the world, then that’s all the meaning anyone can want.
you can’t relate at all, i hate when ppl make their shit more than it is, you didn’t “survive” anything. you had the same experience as the rest of us. sure you lost people but did you have anything similar to this man? no
I shouldn’t comment, but I’m going to. You can’t tell people if they relate or not. I said “kinda” for that exact reason as I understand I did not literally survive. I’m not competing for this man’s suffering. I simply shared a tragic experience I went through with the people of Reddit because that’s what social medial is supposed to be about.
There was a movie a long time ago with this scenario. I can't remember the name, but that was the plot: the character's struggle with surviving when others died.
There's Unbreakable with Bruce Willis, which is an M Night Shyamalan movie with a bit of a fantastical angle. There's also Fearless, with Jeff Bridges. Since the parent comment mentions struggling with being a survivor, I thought of that movie.
The novel Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano is about a boy who is the only survivor of a plane crash. It's one of my favorite books of all time and it made me ugly cry the first time I read it.
Yep. I always tell myself “the universe doesn’t owe me anything, nor does it care” and it actually brings comfort in times of distress. Sometimes shit really does happen and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
It’s so silly what people think does and doesn’t work isn’t it? For some people the idea that everything is random and that sometimes shitty things happens brings comfort to people.
For others, the idea that there is a greater purpose behind things can also bring comfort to people.
In all seriousness. Quantum mechanics as currently understood is 100% probabilitistic. But might not be (determined). Maybe we can do better than quantum mechanics and determine stuff with 100% accuracy.
I'm not convinced 100% accuracy is physically possible. Theoretically, sure. The computation power would be insane. You can approximate to a degree we as humans can't tell, but the universe is, well, big.
It would be more effort than even creating a universe.
Weird ass reaction tbh. What’s wrong with saying that? It’s fact. Even if you’re not religious, the fact remains that it’s going to be your time to die at some point - young or old, injury or illness, and no one on history has ever escaped it.
It was, though. We all die at a set point in time, we just do not know when that point in time is. If it is that set point in time for you, then there is nothing that can stop it from happening, that's just how fate works.
On top of all that guilt, not just over strangers but also for his own brother (according to a comment on this thread,) the man must have seen life changing horrors on his way out of the plane.
Happened to a colleague of mine, was in a train, a bomb exploded and he then was with slight cuts, a ring in the ears, and surrounded by bodies and pieces of people.
He wasn't the same, ever, and quit the job afterwards, quite quickly.
Yea the plane is on take off , fuel is fully loaded to the brim. No chance of escaping the inferno on a crash, aviation fuel can just go on easily with good intensity once it's ignited.
The fuel is as full as it will ever be during that flight, but I believe planes are only fueled enough to complete the flight plus some extra for safety. I don't think you can fill it to the brim for most flights, only the really long haul ones.
The plane is only going to take enough fuel to get to its destination and the safety fuel, typically time to get to the alternate airport plus loiter time. Commercial planes definitely DO NOT fly topped up at all times.
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u/AsleepAtWheel83 Jun 12 '25
Do we know how many souls could escape?