Why Do Some Survive? Sometimes, people experience incredible injuries which are so bad, the medical profession tells them they will never recover, or even die. Yet there are people who beat the odds and this just can’t be explained. One man was discovered in a vegetative state. Somehow, he had choked during the night while asleep. He was totally incapable of doing anything except lay there. Doctors told the family he would remain this way for the rest of his life. Two years later he revived. He has begun to walk and even entered college. While in the vegetative state he does remember some of the things which were said to him. One doctor says this proves the state he was in was not one of unconsciousness. Many doctors consider his recovery to be miraculous. One person who much was written about because he evaded death so many times was Grigori Rasputin, sometimes known as the mad monk. He just might be the person who had more attacks on his life than any other in history. Rasputin had become an advisor to the Czar of Russia and his wife became convinced Rasputin could save the life of their sick son. The man had survived being poisoned, stabbed, drowned, and shot. The poison had no effect, he recovered from being stabbed, he recovered from being thrown into the river wrapped in a cover, recovered the first time he was shot, but died later when he was shot in the temple. Sometimes you just have to wonder if Divine intervention had something to do with survival. That is how Travis Barker, the former drummer for Blink-182 must feel, and with good reason. In 2008, he was on a plane flying with some other people. He and one other person where the survivors of a horrible plane crash. A wheel came off the plane, it crashed into an embankment and burst into flames. The two survivors were badly burned. Today he is still alive but the other survivor is dead, but not from crash injuries. Why is it, there can be many people involved in an accident and people can die and/or get severely injured, all of which are in positions around someone who gets out without a scratch? I guess it can be chalked up to luck, or maybe it is more than that. Let’s examine one of the most famous cases of this kind. It has to do with the Titanic sinking. There was a nurse named Violet Jessop on the Titanic who survived the sinking. She then attained a position on the hospital ship HMHS Britannic. The ship exploded and some believe it was torpedoed. She jumped into the water and was rescued. She got a job as a nurse on the Olympic but it collided with another ship the Hawke. As a child she had been one of the few survivors of a tuberculosis attack. It certainly seems someone or something was looking out for her. Gary Busey, the famous actor was a known proponent of not wearing a motor cycle helmet. That was until a near fatal motorcycle accident he had in 1988. He managed to survive, but I bet he wears a helmet now. One of the people who nobody would have thought could survive his accident was Vesna Vulovic. She had been a flight attendant on JAT Flight 367. A bomb exploded on the plane. Ms. Vulovic got wedged into the plane as it fell and it dropped 33,000 feet. She was alive but had suffered broken bones and was unconscious. This was a small price to pay for such a fall. The fall was so severe it is listed as the longest fall a human ever made without a parachute and survived. This is so hard to even imagine. She was the only survivor of the crash. Sometimes, some stories seem impossible. Yes, the Vulovic story is one, but so is the story of a fisherman, who somehow was able to survive for 14 months lost at sea. He was on a small fishing boat and the motor failed and the boat was being sent out further into the ocean. Initially, he was with another fisherman, but eventually the other person died. After some time he drifted into an atoll, 7,000 miles from where he had started from. He saw a house and was able to barely communicate, but eventually returned to his home in Central America. When doctors don’t know how a person is getting better from what ails them, they usually say, whatever you are doing, keep doing it. I have heard this from many people and even once from my doctor. It just goes to show you the medical profession doesn’t have all the answers to every condition. While we know the placebo effect is real and does help some people, there are also other reasons people make incredible recoveries. One professor from a famous medical school says, miracles from heaven and other cures could be real. If you employ a shaman, and believe he can cure you and you get cured, is this because of the placebo effect or was he really able to cure you on his own? That is probably one of the key questions. I don’t think we will be able to answer it without getting more proficient in learning exactly how the brain works. We need to understand more. Perhaps some people have such a strong desire to live, it really helps them to survive in a situation where most of us would be dead. We have to learn if such a strong impulse really does make a difference in a life or death situation. Learning more about the human body and brain seems to be the path which eventually will answer these questions.
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