All stories
Every account published so far. Ordinary people, extraordinary circumstances. More in the newsletter archive.
Thirty hours in the dark
Buried in separate pockets of a collapsed Nairobi building, a tailor and a shopkeeper could not see each other. They talked until rescuers reached them.
Found alive between islands
Luka Rahan, 18, drifted 41 days from Bougainville before Kiribati fishermen found him alone and severely dehydrated between Tarawa and Maiana.
Still Standing on Mount Colden
On an ice-glazed slide above the Trap Dike, a 60-year-old climber had seven feet to safety — and a fall below that could kill him.
Pinned below the tide line
A jetty boulder shifted and trapped Joe Little below the high-tide line. His Bluetooth earbuds were still connected.
Nineteen hours in the Cumberland woods
A 2-year-old walked away from her rural Virginia home shortly after 6 p.m. and was missing overnight before searchers found her alive in nearby woods.
When Tai Tam stopped answering
After Tai Tam was holed by a whale in the South Pacific, four sailors fought to keep her afloat before an overnight rescue.
He kept shouting at the lights
Trapped 225 metres inside a flooded Nepal hydropower tunnel, Lu Haitao saw rescuers' lights for ten days. They never heard him.
Cut off at Lost Boy Beach
Three tourists entered an isolated Oregon cove for a photo, and when the tide cut off the only exit, rescuers had to reach them by rope through pounding surf.
Two feet wide, eight feet down
A foundation wall gave way on a contractor eight feet down in a two-foot trench in Liberty, Missouri. Getting him out took four careful hours.