Survival Facts

You can start a fire with ice.

9 out of 10 lightning strike victims survive!

The U.S. military's dried food rations can be re-hydrated with urine!

Sheep can survive for up to two weeks buried in snow drifts.

The Kangaroo Rat can last longer without water than a camel.

A person can live without food for about a month, but only about a week without water.

To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs. It will let you go instantly.

10 seconds is the amount of time until unconsciousness after the loss of blood supply to the brain.

An unprotected human can survive approximately 90 seconds of space vacuum exposure without permanent injury, as long as they exhale to prevent lung rupture.

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.

Ernest Hemingway survived two plane crashes in two days (1954), suffering a ruptured kidney, ruptured spleen, ruptured liver, crushed vertebra, and fractured skull. He also contracted anthrax and amoebic dysentery during his travels, and suffered from high blood pressure and liver disease later in life.

Mike the Headless Chicken lived for 18 months after a Colorado farmer swung an axe in 1945. The axe missed his jugular vein and left most of his brain stem and one ear intact. Farmer Lloyd Olsen kept him alive by feeding him with an eyedropper. Scientists at the University of Utah examined Mike and confirmed the story was real. Fruita, Colorado still holds a festival in his honor every May.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was on a business trip in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, when the first atomic bomb detonated three kilometers away. He was burned, blinded, and his eardrums ruptured. He spent the night in a shelter and caught the morning train home so he could get to work on time. His office was in Nagasaki. Three days later, he survived the second atomic blast.

The lungfish can live out of water for three years in a state of suspended animation.

Elephants are terrified of Bees and actually have a special, distinct vocalization for “Run away the Bees are angry”

Nicholas Alkemade, a pilot during World War 2, survived falling 18,000 feet after jumping from a burning Lancaster bomber.

In 1972, Vesna Vulović, a Serbian flight attendant, survived a fall of 33,330 feet when her plane exploded over Czechoslovakia. She held the Guinness World Record for the highest fall survived without a parachute until her death in 2016.

In the United States, survival rates for untreated venomous snakebites vary dramatically by species—copperhead bites have over 99% survival rate without antivenom, while eastern diamondback rattlesnake bites drop to 60-80%, and some species like black mambas are nearly 100% fatal without treatment.

More than 90% of shark attack victims survive.

A rat can fall from a five story building without injury.

A snail can enter dormancy for up to three years during drought conditions.

The LifeStraw is a portable water filtration device that allows users to drink directly from contaminated water sources, filtering out 99.9999% of bacteria and 99.9% of parasites without electricity, batteries, or moving parts.

A cockroach will live nine days without it's head, before it starves to death.

In 2005, a 12-year-old Ethiopian girl was kidnapped by seven men trying to force her into marriage. When police found her a week later, three lions were standing guard around her. The kidnappers were gone. The lions turned and walked back into the forest as the humans approached.