In this video, we're gonna look at three people who found themselves in horrifying and impossible situations, and the lengths they had to go to make it out or not. As always, viewer discretion is advised. [music] In 2022, the Grimes family wanted to do something different for Thanksgiving.
And because they were a big family, getting 18 people around a single dinner table wasn't easy. That year, they'd seen a five-day Thanksgiving cruise across the Gulf of Mexico to Cozumel, which is a small Mexican island, and decided that it looked like a great way to enjoy the holidays. They could all celebrate together, have a good time, and let someone else do the cooking for once.
So on the day before Thanksgiving, they boarded a cruise liner, the ship set off, and right away, they began to enjoy the shows, music, dancing, and a few drinks. One of the family, James Michael Grimes, found out that an air guitar competition was happening later that evening, and air guitar just happened to be James' party trick. Because the prize was a free drink, there was no way he could let it go to someone else.
So when it was his turn, he air soloed his way around the room with enough style and energy to impress the judges. This ended up winning him the free drink, and then afterward, he joined his family and partied some more. At about 11 PM that night, he needed to use the bathroom, so he told his sister where he was going, and headed for the washroom on the deck just outside.
Unfortunately, he never made it to the washroom. Instead, James passed out and fell overboard somewhere between heading out and opening the bathroom door. A little while later, he woke up floating in the ocean with the ship nowhere in sight.
Those first moments after waking up had to have been completely terrifying. There was no light or land in any direction, and he also had enough wherewithal to vaguely remember the route of the ship, and knew that he was way too far into the Gulf of Mexico to swim to land. This meant that his only hope was to tread water in the darkness and hope that someone noticed he was missing.
Incredibly, despite the circumstances, James was determined to survive. The first thing he had to do was just keep swimming. He was more scared of drowning than anything else, so he kept telling himself to keep going, terrified of what would happen if he stopped.
Sometimes, that was easier than others. One moment, he'd be as relaxed as he could, floating on the calm sea, and the next, he'd be pulled under the surface by a rip current. Thankfully, James was a construction worker and was used to working long hours of hard physical labor.
He might have been dragged under if he hadn't been as fit as he was. He also somehow managed to remain calm because he remembered hearing that panicking was the worst thing you could do if you were trapped at sea, and he managed to keep his cool by taking long deep breaths whenever he started to feel stressed. Slowly, the minutes turned to hours, and he managed to fill the time by focusing on things that would keep him alive.
He made up songs and sang them out loud, and thought about his nine-year-old daughter and how badly he wanted to see her again. After a few hours of floating, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his leg. Then another, and then another, and then looking down, he realized he drifted into a bloom of jellyfish, and they were stinging him all over his body.
James had to muster up all of his energy to swim through them, with each sting causing him excruciating pain. After a while, he managed to get clear, but it wasn't safe just yet. Then, he spotted a fin about 15 feet away, and he knew that the Gulf of Mexico was famous for its shark population.
He wasn't immediately sure it was a shark, but then he ducked his head under the water to look, and he could just make out that it was big, and it had a long, flat mouth. Then, faster than he thought was possible, the creature was on top of him, bumping into his leg. He immediately kicked as hard as he could and screamed and shouted, hoping to scare it away, and this either worked or it wasn't a shark, or just wasn't interested in him.
Either way, he breathed the sigh of relief when it turned and swam off. As the sun began rising on Thanksgiving Day, James realized how hungry and thirsty he was. He started to scan around to see if there was anything to eat or drink, but there was only sea water.
Then just up ahead, he spotted something in the water. He wasn't sure if it was a piece of wood or bamboo, but he reached out, took it, and chewed on it anyway. It tasted okay, and even though it probably had no nutritional value, it at least made him feel like he was eating something.
Afterward, he kept on floating, wondering when rescue might come. The night before, pretty quickly, his sister had started to get worried. When he didn't come back from the bathroom, she thought he might have gotten caught up in one of the other parties in the cruise.
But she was also sharing a cabin with him, and when he didn't return that night, she decided to tell cruise ship workers. The cruise liner immediately began a search and rescue operation, retracing its steps from the night before. They also contacted rescue services who let other vessels in the area know that somebody was overboard and to help look for them.
And it would take until the following evening for them to find him. At 8:25 on Thanksgiving night, James spotted a tanker in the distance. By then, he was sunburnt from the hot sun and shivering in the cold water.
He was also so weak and in so much pain from the sunburns, but he knew he had to keep swimming. Finally, when he got close to one of the ships, someone spotted him. They shouted out to their crewmates for help, and then they strapped a flashlight to a life preserver and threw it as close to him as they could.
But unfortunately, the waves kept pushing it back every time James tried to reach it, and he was clearly losing strength. After a few attempts, one of the guys in the boat yelled to him that the Coast Guard was on its way and to keep treading water. It would only take another 15 minutes for a helicopter to appear.
It shone its spotlight in the water but kept missing James, so he pulled off his socks, pants, and boxers, and then waved them above his head. When the spotlight finally caught sight of him, he thought he could even hear one of the Coast Guard shout, "Gotcha! " before they winched themselves down into the ocean beside him.
The Coast Guard then threw a rescue sling around James who just collapsed into it with every bit of his strength gone. He might have only been seconds away from drowning. He was then airlifted to the hospital and treated for hypothermia, and to this day, James swears that he wasn't drunk and has no idea why he passed out, or how he ended up in the ocean.
Apparently, despite the ordeal, he's keen to go on another cruise but has promised to stay at least 10 feet from the guardrails. If you've ever wondered what it's like at the South Pole, there is actually a way you can visit. The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has between 50 and 200 people living there at any time, ranging from scientists doing research, to engineers, operations and support staff who keep the center running.
A few tourists also fly in during the summer to experience the raw beauty of what is possibly the most remote place on Earth. The best way to get to and from the site is by booking a seat on a specially designed aircraft from New Zealand or Chile. These flights only run in the summer between November and February, and only when the weather allows it.
And if you do manage to get there, generally, visitors can only stay for a few hours on clear days before flying back while the weather permits. The staff that man the station spend the whole year on site, usually on a one-year contract, and brave the worst of the summer and winter months. In addition to the extreme cold, the Antarctic winter is one long night, or six months of near total darkness.
The lack of light and the extreme cold also make it too dangerous to fly there in winter, so if there's a problem, it's up to the overwinter staff to fix it. As you might imagine, when living somewhere so remote and challenging, there's no shortage of injuries. But because the population is so low, and the people working there are trained to be as careful as possible, they rarely need more than one medic on standby in case something happens.
The station's medical officer is usually a tough and experienced physician, and in the 1998-1999 season, that post was filled by Dr Jerri Nielsen. Jerri, like other doctors at the station before her, had extensive experience. After graduating from the Medical College of Ohio, she worked in several hospitals, building a reputation as an excellent emergency room doctor.
Then, after a painful divorce, she needed a change of scenery and somewhere she could escape from it all and get past the heartbreak. When she saw a wanted ad for a new medical officer at the South Pole Research Station, she couldn't imagine a more exciting place for a new beginning. She would even call Antarctica a blank slate in which you could write your soul.
After arriving, summer on the ice came and went, and it was pretty uneventful. An injury here, a little sickness there, and then in February 1999, she watched the last plane until November take off, and prepared for the long winter months ahead. As part of this preparation, Jerri thought it was vital to ensure that she was healthy before checking anyone else.
There were people in the base that knew how to give first aid, but she knew that if she was ever too sick to do her job, there was a serious problem, especially in winter. About a month after the last plane took to the air, Jerri was performing a routine self-examination when she found a small lump in her breast. She wasn't exactly sure what it was, but she knew it wasn't there the last time she checked.
Obviously, she had to find out what it was, but unfortunately, although the station's medical center is well equipped, anything non-invasive like a mammogram wasn't an option. There were scientists at the station who might be able to check what the lump was if she could get to it, but there wasn't anyone with any training in doing that sort of procedure. Even Jerri wasn't all that experienced in that specific procedure.
Her specialty was emergency services, a role which was perfect for the Antarctic Station most of the time, but not something like this. She decided to ask for advice from colleagues in the U. S.
via emails and teleconferences, and after lengthy discussions, they could only come up with one solution. Experienced or not, the only person there with the skill to do that sort of surgery was Jerri. She would have to perform a biopsy on herself.
So she assembled a small team from other medically trained personnel and began practicing by extracting cells from inside raw chicken using a hypodermic syringe. When she felt confident enough, Jerri got her medical crew together and broke out the biopsy kit she'd brought with her. Inside were two needles and two syringes.
One was a 25 gauge, which was a small and thin needle she'd need later in the procedure, and the other was a bigger 22 gauge needle, half a millimeter across. She attached it to one of the syringes and then filled it with the sedative, lidocaine. While the team checked her vitals, she jabbed the needle into her right breast a few times, pumping a little of the anesthetic to deaden the region around the lump as best as she could.
Then she took the other needle and syringe, and plunged it in, piercing skin and connective tissue until she could feel the resistance from the small tumor. She then jabbed the lump and pulled back on the plunger to extract as much material as possible, which was then sent off to be analyzed. Unfortunately, when the sample returned from the lab, it was the worst news she could have possibly gotten, which was that it was inconclusive.
Their equipment was too old to say whether she had cancer or not, so she contacted the U. S. again for more help and a new plan.
It didn't take long to come up with one, but they knew that landing a plane at that time of year was too dangerous. However, they had done emergency drops in the past. Although it was too dark and too cold to land, a pilot could still fly to the South Pole and follow the ring of fires that staff had lit outside the station.
Once spotted, they drop the supplies down on parachutes. So on July 11th, a U. S.
military aircraft flew out of Christchurch, New Zealand with better testing equipment and medical supplies, including chemotherapy drugs. Once the cargo was recovered, a new test was done, and it turned out that she needed the medication after all. Jerri had an aggressive form of breast cancer, and she still had months to go before she could reach a hospital.
The U. S. government immediately started to work out how to get her home early, but the best they could do was in the beginning of October.
In the meantime, Jerri returned to her small medical team and taught them how to administer chemotherapy so she could begin treatment while waiting to fly out. It was a tough time, but Jerri refused to stop working, patching up hip injuries and prescribing antibiotics until the rescue planes landed. Finally, in October, when the weather improved, Jerri and the scientist with the hip injury were flown out of the station on October 15th.
After she returned to the U. S. , she began treatment, including multiple surgeries and a mastectomy.
For 10 years, the cancer went into remission, and Jerri spent that time lecturing about her ordeal all over the world, including back at the Antarctic Station, and in a memoir. Tragically, in 2005, her cancer returned with a vengeance, spreading throughout her body, and sadly, she passed away on June 24th, 2009. Mount Nebo is a small community, roughly 11 miles west of Brisbane, Australia.
The area is home to just over 400 people, and with such a small population, the thin scattering of buildings is almost invisible on a map. The woods surrounding it, on the other hand, are over 40 miles long at their longest, and 12 miles wide, and follow the contours of the D'Aguilar Mountain Range which borders farmland and many communities on the northern end of Brisbane. It was in this beautiful green landscape on the 15th of September in 2019 that 54-year-old Neil Parker chose to go hiking as he often did.
He was a founding member, an experienced guide of the local bushwalker club, who had covered this route many times before. And not only that, he was a member of the Australian State Emergency Service, which is a group of different support agencies, covering everything from fires, floods, earthquakes, motor vehicle accidents, maritime rescue, and helicopter search and rescue, which he had done for years at that point. To describe Neil as prepared would have been an understatement.
He would normally have been the one coming to people's rescue if not for a simple twist of fate. Along Neil's route, about 40 minutes off the last major trail, and an hour and 40 into the whole trek, was a small waterfall along Cabbage Tree Creek, cascading down a shale cliff. This cliff is shaped like a row of shelves or a ladder, and the shale made for an easy climb, and it was a common part of Neil's route.
Approaching it, he tucked his walking poles into his bag, and began the ascent once more, looking forward to the beautiful view from the top, when something moved under his hand. The lichen along the rocks had begun to dry out in the Australian spring, and its roots had weakened. Frantically, Neil reached out, trying to grab ahold of another ledge, and briefly managed to do so, before his momentum ripped the stone from his hand, and he tumbled down from a height of 6 meters or 20 feet.
He slammed into another ledge on his left side, flipping end over end before landing in about a meter of water at the bottom of the falls. Thankfully, Mount Nebo isn't especially large and neither are its waterways, so Neil wasn't in great danger of drowning. But as the moment passed and he came to rest on the shore of the creek, he knew he was in a terrible situation.
Neil's left leg had broken just above the ankle during the fall and was so badly damaged that the foot was only attached by soft limb tissue. His left arm was also broken above the wrist, leaving a whole side of his body physically useless and preventing him from using a crutch to walk. He knew he needed help badly, but the mountain valley left him with no cell signal to speak of.
Worse still, when he tried to put the phone back in his pocket with one hand, it slipped away and was lost in the creek. On top of all of that, Neil had enough experience as a hiker and rescuer to know that no one was going to find him there, even if they knew he was missing. And right at that moment, no one even knew that he was missing.
Maybe a degree of complacency had caught up with him or maybe he'd simply gone hiking here so often that he didn't want to be a bother, telling people over and over again. But either way, no one knew he was there that day. To add insult to injury, the emergency beacon he would have normally had with him, which would have gotten him rescued immediately, had been left at his ex-wife's house during their separation.
And while the normal mental image many people have of Australia is of a wide-open savannah, Mount Nebo is anything but. The tree cover is so dense in most places that even where trails and streams are marked, they're often completely invisible beneath the canopy. Having been a part of rescue teams before, he knew how hard it would be for them to see him where he was.
So, the one and only way Neil was going to be found was to do it himself. He was going to have to crawl. Knowing this, and knowing there weren't any more chances he could afford to take or resources he could squander, he pulled out his first aid kit and used his walking sticks to make a splint, and reset his shattered ankle by hand.
Then he tied it in place with bandages and put his left arm in a sling. He could only hope that these shattered bones hadn't caused serious internal bleeding. Even so, the process to do so would have been agonizing under the best circumstances, but Neil was forced to do this with only one working hand and some over-the-counter painkillers.
The best chance he had of being found was a part of the trail roughly two miles away, where he knew some of the locals liked to jog for exercise. Neil could only hope that someone would be there, but to get there, he would have to undertake the hardest challenge of his entire life. Ingeniously though, Neil tied his broken leg with a length of bandage to the still-working elbow of his broken arm in such a way that he could pull his arm forward and lift his foot off the ground, effectively hog-tying the left side of his body.
This saved him from having to drag his broken foot along the ground, which ran the risk of further damage, but also meant he would need to lift the weight of his leg and carry it every time he crawled. For some very rough math, let's say Neil could pull himself between 5 and 10 centimeters, or 2 to 4 inches at a time, with just his right arm and leg, given that the ground is uneven. That averages out to about 40,000 repetitions.
Consider still that the general rule for hiking over rough terrain is that every step takes two steps, because you have to constantly go around objects, up and down hills, and so forth, and that Neil would have to do all of this in excruciating pain. So in total, that's a minimum of 84,000 repetitions or far more as he lost strength and made less progress as time went on. All with only the food and water that he had on him for a short 3-hour hike.
This ended up being so great an effort that he needed to stop and rest every 1 to 1. 5 meters, or every 3. 5 feet to catch his breath.
Neil made his way inch by inch down the mountainside, following the side of the creek, out of Sunday, and then into Monday. That first evening, he saw a rescue helicopter fly overhead, and it became clear just how hard a time they would have seeing him where he was. Exhausted, Neil spent the night huddled under an emergency thermal blanket he brought with him, and rationed the little bit of food he had, which was a little more than a handful of nuts, a trail bar, and some candy.
Finally, on Monday morning, when Neil failed to arrive at work, a series of phone calls began. His employer called Neil's ex-wife who further called other members of Neil's family, his sisters, friends, and so forth. No one had seen him.
But Neil's journey had only just begun, and he spent the entirety of Monday continuing to crawl down the mountain. His progress, measuring in hours, what he could have previously walked in just a few minutes. As Neil pushed himself, the thought that kept him going was his son.
They hadn't spoken in years, and he wasn't ready to leave things off like that. Neil had to make things right, and he wasn't ready to give up and wither away on a mountainside. On Monday afternoon, one of Neil's friends received a concerned phone call, and when asked if he knew where he was, that friend remembered Neil mentioning a hike earlier in the week.
Finally, there was some indication of where he was, and Neil's own bushwalker club sprang into action alongside his family. Dozens of people who knew him and had spent years hiking with him set out into the wilderness in search teams, and word passed to those he worked with in the emergency services. That night, Neil found a clearing farther down the creek and slept out in the open, hoping that someone would see him this time.
When he awoke, the pain, hunger, and exhaustion crept up on him from the full two days of effort, and he lay there, recovering for some time. But then, thankfully, around 10:30 that morning, the whirring of a helicopter approached. Shocked back into action, Neil did his best to be seen this time, picking up the reflective foil blanket and waving it with his good arm, before, finally, the helicopter came closer and closer, and he saw that it was a Queensland Government Air Rescue helicopter.
Moments later, a search and rescue technician rappelled down to see him. They stabilized Neil's injuries as best as they could and loaded him into a rescue basket. By the end of the day, he was admitted to a hospital in Brisbane in good spirits and talking to reporters, and reunited with his family and friends.
He fully intended to return to hiking, but said he likely won't return to extreme stuff, even if it's in his nature to be adventurous. Hello everyone. My name is Sean, and welcome to Scary Interesting.
I'm still deciding on whether or not this will be a permanent series, but in the meantime, if you have a story suggestion that you think will fit this series, feel free to send it to the email in the description. We also have a Scary Interesting Discord which I will link in the description. Thank you all so much for watching, and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.
