Juliane Koepcke

This is a true story. I was astonished and I'm still.

Woke up in exquisite pain, hundreds or thousands of pictures ran through her mind like 200kmh. Vague impression from the airplane crash, the feeling of plummeted from thousand miles high, the chaos of cabin conditions....the trembling plane, people cried and scream, some prayed for hope, there were horrified, luggage begins to trembling down.. Captain and crew trying their best to prepare for emergency landing...it was havoc... she went unconscious state again.

"It was Christmas Eve 1971 and everyone was eager to get home, we were angry because the plane was seven hours late." said Juliane

Julianne Kopcke, 17, German Peruvian, the only survivor of LANSA Flight 508 airplane crash.

When she finally awoke to her senses again, miraculously, she found herself strapped in aircraft seat (yes it was plummeted our of aircraft), thanks to super-destructible airline seatbelt (now we learnt the importancy of the seatbelt). She knew she survived through the airplane crash. Struck by lightning through heavy thunderstorm, the plane failed to land eventually as it exploded into pieces, she blew out to the sky and later plummeted from few thousands feets high into the land of Amazon Rainforest.

Being plummeted and splashed down like a free ball she suffered from broken collarbone, deep cuts on her calf, severe concussions and swollen shuts eyes. As if just woke up from deep sleep however pains she has to endured, she unbuckled it and sit up to walk. There were corpses everywhere, laying grossly, total 94 passengers. Her first intention was to search for her mother but unavail, her last memory was they clutched with each other before crashes filled with extremely frights of death. Heavy explosion blew her out from cabin without parachute as well as other passengers. She later found other passengers clung onto seat with heads burried into ground on her way out. 

Covered with thick canopy of forest with no other contacts for help, her survival instinct was to reach civilization as soon as possible. Brought with her was few candies and food she could grab in hand, she begins her journey of death defying.

Ever thought of what beneath this renown rain forest? Nearly half of the animal population in the world can be found in this mysterious jungle, populated by insects, arachnids, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals. Some popular one are Anaconda which can grow up to 21 feets long, Piranaha, a river fish has powerful jaw and razor - like triangular teeth that can shred flesh from bone in a matter of seconds. Jaguar, excellent hunter, speedy and intelligent, Poison Arrow Frog, Very small in size, but poisonous enough as to kill up to 100 people, Black Caiman, The largest predator in the Amazon river, it has no enemies other than man and can eat from piranha, capybara and giant river otters to humans. It's a home to many strangest looking, largest and smallest, loudest and quietest, more dangerous and least frightening animals on Earth.

Though she has to bear with pains, frights and unknown hope, based on her past experience, follow the stream might be the source to reach for help. One of the biggest factor that she could survived through the venomous, giant, strong and dangerous of animals infestated in this jungle was the surviving principal her father ever thaught. She is not a blonde bombshell, she was on her way to obtain the zoologist degree and her parents are renown Germany biologist. Matter of fact, she was at the site located 30 miles away for an ecology study with her parents a week before the crash. Amazon Rainforest is not new and strange to her.

She found a creek after a day of trekking and begins her journey all by herself through the dark, quiet and yet unveil dangers it can be. Through the ten days of trekking in the water (it's the safest to travel), hardly able to close her eyes without fears. cold. She was lucky however as she never met any revolts animals from the land or water, although at times she needs to cross the knee high river which potentially the human shredding machine fishes and giant Caiman could have break her into pieces within second. Nope. Her journey was quite safe other than her deep cuts were infected with 35 maggots.

On the nine days of adventures, she finally come across a boat and lumberman who aided her and they travel hours to seek for help from the local authority. No one recounted the conditions of other stranded passengers most probably might be gone, she saw a flock of vultures straying above the sky for carrions.

So what actually had happened to other passengers whom crash to the Amazon Rainforest? No, I didn't come across any elaboration on that throughout my research. I reckoned, most of them would have been too injured to move on and die of overbleeding, or starvation. They were not as lucky as the airplane survivor as I recounted in 'Andes Crash'.  

My assumption of these two different airplane crashes was one crashed at thick cushion of snow caped mountain, of course the doubling landing reduces the impact of plummeting and buffer the concussions to passengers. Wherease the other impact badly due to explosion and crashing to the hardcore land at once, these victims make no difference from those jump off the building, however at unimaginary heights. It was sad to learn this tragedy but these are risks we have to undertake with no mercy.

”	I had nightmares for a long time, for years, and of course the grief about my mother's death and that of the other people came back again and again. The thought Why was I the only survivor? haunts me. It always will.	”
—Juliane Koepcke, 2010 "What if you're Juliane Koepcke, the only airplane crash survivor, what would you do?" I don't have an answer. Do you?