10 Astonishing Desert Survival Tales Alan Boyle January 16, 2014
Deserts—the hot, non-polar sort—are among the harshest places
on earth. The temperatures there can change from blisteringly hot to
freezing cold within a few hours. With sparse plant and animal life, and
by definition very little water, a desert can easily become a
graveyard. There are a dozen things that can kill you in the desert,
from scorpions to hypothermia and dehydration to Tusken raiders. The
people in this list took on some of the worst that nature can throw at
us and survived, demonstrating what sheer strength of will (and a little
luck) can achieve.
10 Victoria Grover
Things looked bad for Victoria Grover when she got stranded in the high
desert of Utah. It was April 2012 and the 59-year-old had been out
hiking, intending to walk around 10 kilometers (6 mi). Things turned
very bad very quickly when she broke her leg jumping down a small ledge.
She couldn’t walk, and instead had to shuffle around from a seated position.
Grover had no food, a problem made much worse by her Type 2 diabetes.
Night-time temperatures at that time of year can plunge below freezing.
She hadn’t told anyone where she was going. She was stuck in the Box
Death Hollow Wilderness, which isn’t a name to inspire confidence.
Luckily Grover had been on a survival course in the area—in 1972.
Something had stuck from that 40-year-old education, however. Grover
used her walking stick and a scarf to brace her leg. She slept during
the daytime, and stayed awake all night, huddled under a poncho to break
the wind. For the first two days she was able to gather firewood, but
her broken leg became too painful and she had to do without on her third
night. She was found on her fourth day suffering from hypothermia.
Grover came away with not just a survival story, but also a claim to fame. She was flown to hospital by the same pilot that had rescued Aron Ralston, the climber from the movie 127 Hours.
9 Mauro Prosperi
The Marathon des Sables is one of the world’s toughest endurance races.
Competitors run more than 250 kilometers (155 mi) across the Sahara in
under a week. Every person in the race faces the desert’s trademark
brutality, but none had it tougher than Mauro Prosperi. The Italian
policeman entered the race in 1994. Not long after the start, Prosperi
found himself in the middle of a sandstorm. For several hours he kept
his back to the wind, moving a short distance so he wouldn’t be buried.
When the sandstorm abated he continued—but he was going in the wrong direction. When he eventually realized he’d gone wrong he knew what he had to do.
He urinated in a bottle so he had something to drink later. He walked
in the morning and evening, and found shade during the midday heat. For
three days he sipped his bottle, and then another sandstorm hit. That
one lasted 12 hours.
He found an old Muslim shrine, which was home to a number of small
bats. He was able to capture two of them and drink their blood. Eating
flesh would’ve only worsened his dehydration. Yet it was there that
Prosperi gave up hope. He decided he should die in the shrine, where his
body might be found, rather than in out the open where it would be lost
forever. After writing a note to his wife with a piece of charcoal, he
cut his wrists, but his blood was too thick to run out and clotted
instantly.
This inability to kill himself renewed Prosperi’s desire to live, so
he set out again. For another five days he marched across the sands,
heading for a mountain range and the promise of water. He found an
oasis. Despite not having anything but his own waste for a week, he
resisted the desire to down as much as he could, as that would only
cause problems (such as hyponatremia). He drank small amounts, until he
was found by a family of nomads. They took him to the safety of a nearby
Algerian military base.
During his nine days of hell, Prosperi had ended up 300 kilometers
(186 mi) away from the correct route. He had lost 18 kg (40 lbs) of body
mass. He entered the race again four years later, but once again failed
to finish. This time, he stubbed his toe.
8 James Riley
For most people on this list, the solitude and isolation of the desert
was one of the biggest problems. For James Riley, a 19th century sea
captain, it was the inhabitants of the Sahara that made his situation as
bad as it could be. Riley was on a trading mission in August 1815 when
his ship ran aground on the coast of Morocco. He and his crew were
stranded without water, and with only salted pork to eat (which did no
good for their thirst).
Yet the Sahara of the 19th century was home to people that Riley
really didn’t want to meet—slavers. Some of his descriptions of the
locals maybe have been exaggerated. He said they had sharpened teeth for
eating human flesh, and bright red eyes. Yet after a short while on the
beach his biggest fear
was realized. A number of men from the local Sahrawi people found the
American sailors, and the dehydrated crew was taken into slavery.
After marching weeks through the desert, the captors brought the
Americans to be sold. Riley came up with a plan—he told one of the
potential buyers that there was a man in a Moroccan town, Swearah, that
would pay handsomely to free Riley and his cohorts. The buyer, a man
named Hamet, agreed to take Riley there, but said he’d slit Riley’s
throat if the story was false.
The town was hundreds of miles away, and the slaves were forced to
drink camel urine to survive. They marched for a month, and Riley lost
more than half of his bodyweight. When they were a short distance
outside of the town Riley was forced to write a note to his “friend.” In
desperation he addressed it to “The French, English, Spanish or
American Consuls,” and briefly begged them to find someone to buy him
and his men.
Riley was, astonishingly, in luck. The English consul received the
note, negotiated a price, and bought the men’s freedom. Riley returned
to the United States and wrote a book about his story in 1817, which
went on to become highly popular.
7 William LaFever
When William LaFever needed to get from Boulder in Utah to Page in
Arizona, he decided to take the scenic route. LaFever was on his way to
collect a wire transfer from his father, and his family had expected him
to head there on public transport. The young autistic man had other
ideas, and decided to trek 144 kilometers (90 mi) along the Escalante
River with his dog.
The journey didn’t go as planned. LaFever ran out of food and the dog ran off.
The 28-year-old’s gear became too heavy and he abandoned it. Luckily he
had stayed close to the water, so had enough to drink. Nevertheless,
without food he would only last so long. He resorted to catching frogs,
and scavenging anything else that looked edible. He’d been gone for over
two weeks when his sister reported him as missing, and no one had any
idea where he’d disappeared to.
By sheer coincidence the county’s sheriff had recently completed a
course in finding missing autistic people. He knew they tended to be
attracted to water, and thought the river would be as good a place as
any to look. He arranged for a helicopter to fly its length and back
again, but without much hope—he described the area as “some of the most
unforgiving terrain you will find anywhere on Earth.”
Yet LaFever was in luck, and the helicopter spotted him as he lay in
the river, only barely able to wave at the crew. When he was found
LaFever was emaciated. He’d been in the desert for three weeks, and he
was too weak to crawl. He had spent the last few days sleeping on the
riverbank by night, and rolling into the water during the day to stay
cool. The sheriff’s department reported that 24 hours more and they
would have been too late.
6 The Nigerien Immigrants
The West African state of Niger is one of the world’s poorest. It is
also one of the world’s most sparse countries, as 80 percent of its land
is in the Sahara Desert. Food crises led charity Save the Children to
call it the worst place on Earth to be a mother. Every year, many
Nigeriens attempt to flee the country, hoping to find a better life
elsewhere. For most, this means turning to gangs of people smugglers to
get them to their destination, normally Libya or Algeria.
People that get into the business of illegally transporting the
desperate for cash tend not to be the nicest folk in existence. It’s not
uncommon for smugglers to abandon groups of migrants in the middle of
the world’s largest desert when things go wrong. This is effectively a
death sentence. In October 2013 a group of over 100 people headed for
Algeria were stranded when their truck ran out of gas. The smugglers
drove off in a second truck, promising to return with help. They didn’t
come back, and 92 people died. Over half of the victims were children.
One of the few people to make it out of the desert alive was a
14-year-old girl named Shafa. Problems began long before the immigrants
were abandoned. The truck Shafa was riding in broke down, and it took a
day to be repaired. Water ran out during that time, and it would be
another two days before they got any more. The drivers kept their water
for themselves. People died, and those left were crammed into the back
of the vehicle with over a dozen corpses.
Later the smugglers came upon Algerian security forces, and turned
back for fear of being caught. They drove the migrants back into Niger,
and water ran out again. Shortly afterwards the gas ran out in one
truck, and the drivers abandoned the immigrants altogether. Shafa was
with her mother and two sisters. They waited two days, without anything
to eat or drink, before they realized no one was coming back to get
them.
A group of survivors began to walk through the desert to try and find
some help. One of Shafa’s sisters died, and her body was buried. Not
long after, Shafa’s other sister died, then her mother. Shafa buried
them both herself. She had been in the desert for three days, without
anything to eat or drink, and had given up hope of getting out alive
when a car stopped to help her. Shafa was given some food and water, and
eventually returned to her village. She is the last surviving member of
her nuclear family, and is now living with an aunt.
5 Robert Bogucki
Robert Bogucki was a fireman from Alaska with an itch to discover his
spiritual side in the wilderness. While Alaska’s not short of the sort
of terrain that can bring a person closer to nature, Bogucki opted for a
very different environment—Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. Aside from
the packs of dingoes that regularly rip livestock to death, the desert
is home to the desert death adder. In case “Great Sandy Desert” hadn’t
tipped you off, the Australians don’t always name things ironically, so a
death adder is definitely a safety issue.
Bogucki set off on July 11, 1999, with the intention of cycling and
trekking several hundred miles across the outback. Fifteen days later a
group of tourists found his bike abandoned on a trail, alongside
footprints trailing into the wilderness. The discovery triggered a
massive search operation, but police found no trace
of Bogucki. After 12 days they guessed he’d either hitchhiked his way
back to civilization or died, and called off the operation.
The missing fireman’s parents weren’t happy to give up on him,
however, and hired their own private trackers. Bogucki was eventually
found by a news team in a helicopter, 43 days after he’d set off. The
crew that found the Alaskan wanderer had to leave their photographer behind to make room to fly Bogucki out, and get another chopper to pick their man up later.
Bogucki had survived by drinking muddy water and eating flowers. He
had lost 20 kilograms (44 lb), but was otherwise in surprisingly good
condition. The doctor that treated him said he had nothing worse than a
few scratches, a far cry from the sunburn and blistering she would have
expected.
The number of days missing—43—is significant: The highly religious Bogucki had long harbored
a desire to test his faith, as Jesus did, with 40 days alone in the
wilderness. Because of this, many Australians believe Bogucki
deliberately got himself lost. Police described the man as
“irresponsible,” and there were calls for him to pay for a portion of
the cost of his rescue. Bogucki claimed he’d successfully “scratched the
itch” that led to his adventure. Since the total cost to find him was
around US$72,000, that may be the most expensive itch in history.
4 Ed Rosenthal
Ed Rosenthal has the distinction of being the only person on this list to have written a book of poetry
inspired by his time stranded in the desert. His story began with what
was supposed to be a short hike, a trail of 6.5 kilometers (4 mi) he’d
done plenty of times before. Yet he neglected to bring much water, and
then he simply got carried away. He took a turn into one canyon, then
off into another, miles away from his original course. “I don’t know why
I did it,” he said at a press conference afterwards.
Rosenthal ended up in a place he didn’t know, with nothing to drink.
He tried his own urine, but couldn’t stand it. He sucked moisture from a
plant but found it too tiring.
After a few days he gave up, and began writing a will on his hat. He
wrote messages to his family, described the type of funeral he would
like, and even began a poem. Then he turned to God, prayed for rain, and
got it. His Jewish faith was reignited with a passion. “My conclusion
is that God is real. Really.”
He’d tried signaling with his foil blanket, and lit fires at night
with flares. No one came. On the sixth day he was slumped in a canyon,
not expecting to last another day. Luckily, he was spotted by a rescue
helicopter. “I’ve never been so happy to see anybody,” he said
afterward. A couple of days in hospital brought him back to health, and
also to a decision to give up hiking.
3 The Tragedy At Kufra
Many of the people on this list pulled through (barely) because they did
everything they could to keep themselves alive for as long as possible.
Noel St Malo Juul, a World War 2 flight mechanic with the South African
Air Force, was part of a group that did almost everything they shouldn’t have. He survived out of luck more than anything else.
Juul was part of a crew of 12 airmen spread across three aircraft on a
routine patrol from their station in Kufra in the Libyan desert. After
spending several hours on their preplanned route and getting back to
base, they decided to continue flying as they still had some fuel left.
Their first mistake was to take no notice of the direction in which they
were headed, and eventually they had to make a forced landing when one aircraft began running low on fuel.
After spending a night sleeping under the stars, the crew sent one
plane out to fly 30 minutes in a number of directions. They expected to
find their base or be rescued fairly quickly, so drank 75 liters (20
gal) of water between them on their first day. Their airborne scout
didn’t have any luck finding local landmarks and they ran out of petrol
completely. By the third day they had used up all water and became
desperate for liquid. They broke open their compasses and consumed the
alcohol inside—a bad move, since it was methanol and highly toxic.
To gain some relief from the heat, the men decided to spray
themselves with their aircrafts’ fire extinguishers. They got relief for
a few seconds, then developed extremely painful open wounds across
their skin from the blasts. The next day people started dying. The first
man to go shot himself because he couldn’t stand the pain in his
stomach caused by the alcohol he’d consumed. Another five people had
died by the next morning, and they continued to succumb to dehydration
and the effects of their injuries one by one.
A rescue aircraft finally spotted the downed planes after eight days.
Juul was the only person left alive, though barely. After the incident
the Air Force made sweeping changes to its rules for desert flight,
including a requirement to include survival instructions in aircraft.
The graves of the dead airmen, the wreckage of one aircraft, and even
some of their rations are still in the desert today. A nephew of one of
the men found the items in 2001, but the Libyan government declared them
to be antiquities that should be left in place.
2 Hank Morello
Arizona resident Henry “Hank” Morello took a wrong turn shortly after he
left his favorite restaurant in early 2011. When he realized he’d gone
astray he tried to turn around, but ended up sliding his car into a ravine.
This would be bad enough for anyone, but Morello was 84 and didn’t have
any water. Luckily it was February, so temperatures weren’t going to
get as high as they do during an Arizona summer. Unfortunately, it also
meant that average lows were going to hover just above freezing.
He couldn’t get a phone signal before his battery died, and he fell
over when he tried to leave his car. He decided to stick with the
vehicle, as it would be easier for rescuers to spot. It didn’t take long
for him to become thirsty, so he went for the only available liquid—his
car’s windshield fluid. Morello was stuck there for five days. Drawing
on his Catholic faith, Morello prayed to St. Anthony, who is the patron
saint of lost things.
After five days the car was found by a group of hikers. Morello was
in a surprisingly good condition, though he personally doubted he would
last another night in the cold. He was lucky, given that windshield
fluid contains methanol. Drinking that particular poison turned out a
lot better for him than it did for the airmen from Kufra. After the
event, one toxicologist said he would normally expect someone that drank
windscreen wiper fluid to get sick and even go blind within a few days.
Making sure to have some water in your trunk before you set out is a
much better solution.
1 Ricky Gilmore
Things didn’t go well for Ricky Gilmore, a 49-year-old man from New
Mexico, when he tried to hitchhike to a nearby town for liquor. At first
all was well—a couple picked him up, then dropped him back off again.
Gilmore offered to cook them steaks as a thank you, but the couple
suggested going out for a joyride first. Then they asked Gilmore to
share his alcohol. When Gilmore declined, you could argue the couple
overreacted just a teensy bit.
The young man in the car grabbed Gilmore by his legs and threw him out,
miles from anywhere, in the middle of the desert. While that’s bad
enough, Gilmore was paraplegic, having lost use of his legs in a car
accident a few years earlier. The couple had dropped off Gilmore’s
wheelchair at his house before their “joyride.” Gilmore was left with
little choice but to use his arms to drag himself across the desert
floor.
Over three days Gilmore crawled as best he could. In total he made it
6.5 kilometers (4 mi), all without food or water. Two cars spotted him,
honked, and drove on (because some human beings are apparently awful
beyond words). On the third day a driver decided that maybe he should
stop to see if the person lying on the side of the road in the middle of
the desert might need some sort of assistance.
The assistance Gilmore needed was urgent medical attention. He was
hypothermic, his kidneys were starting to fail, and his clothes were in
tatters. The skin on his legs and buttocks was “shredded,” his wrist was
sprained, his kidneys were close to failure and he had a blood infection. He needed to spend more than a week in hospital, so on top of everything else his steak had probably gone bad.
After 19 years, he decided that now was the right time to put his hitchhiking days behind him.
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