Quotes About Survival

Surviving shipwrecks and pirates, Serrão and several companions arrived at Ternate

Santiago washed ashore before breaking up.

As soon as they had abandoned ship, Santiago broke up, and the storm carried away all her life-sustaining provisions

wine, hardtack, and water, to say nothing of the freshly caught sea elephants.

all the men aboard ship survived, but once they had given thanks to the Lord

sparing their lives, they grasped the desperate situation they now faced.

The storm had stranded the castaways about seventy miles from the rest of the fleet, without food or wood or fresh water

in freezing weather. They were cold and exhausted; soon they would be starving.

The castaways spent eight days in more or less the same area, disoriented, dispirited, waiting for pieces of the wreck

Magellan's crew, confined aboard their ships, relied on worm-eaten biscuits

the castaways evolved a plan. They would drag the planks over the mountains until they reached the river

only 67 ships and ten thousand men survived, and many of those survivors perished as they tried to return to Spain.

could provide abundant food, and their thick, glossy, silvery-gray pelts a sorely needed source of warmth in these frigid latitudes.

stranding the six seamen on the little island. They passed a wretched night

They had settled next to the creatures to find shelter from the violent storm and enough warmth to sustain them through the night.

whose lives depended on the food acquired in the Canaries.

Seafaring is the most suitable occupation they can find to sustain themselves

Humanity is under siege.

The Rules of Life. The first rule we came up with was: Be here now. It's a good survival rule. It means to pay attention and keep an up-to-date mental model. The second rule was: Everything takes eight times as long as it's supposed to. That was the friction rule, which travelers in the wilderness will do well to heed.

In the immediate aftermath of the crash, a young police officer named Pat McCann, who happened to be training at the airport that day, saw a man who had managed to get the upper half of his body through his window before the lower half was incinerated inside the plane.

He listened to a fire fighter tell of a woman he had found strapped into her seat, screaming. When he cut the seat belt, she fell apart. She was being held together by the seat belt. She died at his feet.

Finally, I will never forget stopping near a lovely young girl still strapped to her seat, breathing slightly. Her blouse was white, her slacks were blue. At the end of the trousers were two snow-white ankle bones where her feet used to be. I had never seen the whiteness of bones that are freshly exposed like that.

He saw at least a dozen people still in their seats. Their clothes were torn or blown or burned from their bodies, "completely naked in front, missing limbs, missing faces, some breathing, some moaning, and others just deader than a door nail.

Emotion is an instinctive response aimed at self-preservation.