"When USS Indianapolis was hit by Japanese torpedoes in the final weeks of WWII, hundreds of crewmen jumped into the water..."

"... to escape the burning ship. Surrounded by sharks, they waited for a response to their SOS. But no one had been sent to look for them."

"They were continually there, mostly feeding off the dead bodies. Thank goodness, there were lots of dead people floating in the area. But soon they came for the living, too.


"We were losing three or four each night and day.... You were constantly in fear because you'd see 'em all the time. Every few minutes you'd see their fins - a dozen to two dozen fins in the water. They would come up and bump you. I was bumped a few times - you never know when they are going to attack you....

"In that clear water you could see the sharks circling. Then every now and then, like lightning, one would come straight up and take a sailor and take him straight down. One came up and took the sailor next to me...."

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10-year-old girl catches a baby dropped from a second-story window.

The mother was tossing kids out of the window during a fire. The girl caught the newborn, but there were 2 other children, aged 2 and 3, and they "hit the ground and sustained minor injuries." I'm impressed with the 10-year-old, but apparently, the baby would have been just fine uncaught.

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"They threw this baby out the window because the girl was on fire and the fireman had to catch the baby."

From the news report of the building collapse in Philadelphia.

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"Heather Barnes, 20... was on a school trip and decided to do some early-morning coral collecting when her leg cramped..."

"... and the tide pulled her away from the reef, starting a 16-hour nightmare that would leave Barnes hallucinating from dehydration with severe sunburns, jellyfish stings and blisters."

At first Barnes thought it would be safer to try and stay in the same place, thinking that her group would soon notice her missing and send search and rescue crews after her. After two hours of idling and no sign of other life, she decided she would have to swim back herself....

'It's kind of strange because even when I didn't feel like I was strong enough, there was enough of me that still wanted to keep going. It didn't seem like a choice. I just - I had to keep going,' Barnes told....

Young women, swimming for their lives... it's a theme this week, along with the Chesapeake Bay Bridge plunger.

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The "eternity" of slow-motion falling in a car plunging 40 feet off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

What it felt like for the 22-year-old woman, Morgan Lake (whose name is nicely aquatic.) Her car was struck twice, and the second hit "propelled it upward 3½ feet to the top of the concrete Jersey wall."

The car straddled the wall for a time... then...  it tipped over, and she was falling for what “felt like eternity.” It seemed almost to be happening in slow motion, Lake said. The drop was estimated to have been 40 feet or more. Then the car hit the water, its windshield and the driver’s side window shattered.

The car filled with water, Lake said, and she “felt I was going to die.” She said she actually “started to drown.” But then, she said in a telephone interview late Sunday, “I got myself together,” and refused to drown. She told herself that she could save her own life, and she did.

It took an "eternity" to fall, and then this drowning process was also time-consuming. I'm picturing her sitting there, thinking okay, here I am drowning, I have to accept this. Then: This is getting dull, waiting for the end. What else is there to do here?

“I went from panic to calm,” she said. She proceeded in steps, first unbuckling her seat belt, then grabbing the window and getting out of the car.

She said it seemed to take a long time to reach the surface. 

Again: The long time line.

She gasped for air as many as five times. She looked around and...

There is time to observe and collect your thoughts.

... began to swim.

There is always more time. You might as well see it that way, like Morgan Lake, who survived. At some point, it won't be true, and you will disappear along with all the rules for living you've kept in your head.

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"A woman swam to safety in the Chesapeake Bay Friday night after her car plunged 40 feet off the Bay Bridge...."

"The 22-year-old woman... swam from her car to a bridge piling."

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"They went on to endure a violent rainsquall, stinging nettles that wrapped around their legs, and an agonizing five-hour wait..."

"... while John Franklin Riggs struggled against the tides and wicked currents in Tangier Sound to swim for help. There was also the sight of blue phosphorescent jellyfish, called sea combs, clinging to their hair and skin...."

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"Why Catastrophic Airline Crashes Have Become More Survivable."

"Over the many decades of commercial air travel, the airlines have learned more and more about why airplanes crash and how passengers survive."

Airplane manufacturers, for instance, are building passenger seats much stronger — they're able to withstand 16 Gs of force. So they don't rip off the floor and go flying through the cabin, injuring passengers, as they did years ago....

"A lot of effort was put into slowing down the spread of fire after a crash landing, making the materials in the interior of the cabin more fire resistant and also changing the materials such that they wouldn't emit very highly toxic fumes," [says Hans Weber, president of TECOP International].

People are doing a great job too:

After Flight 214 broke apart, flight attendants were able to quickly deploy the inflatable slides and get everyone off the plane before the fire erupted.

Credit to the flight attendants and to the passengers getting up and out of there. You'd never know, watching the crowds shuffling about in the airport and drinking and drowsing on board that ordinary people can move in such an efficient and coordinated manner.

Imminent death — as the old saying goes — concentrates the mind wonderfully.

Ah! What we could do if we faced a sudden stark threat, as our ancestors did in evolutionary times! We inherited the capacities they needed then, but we've got so little use for them these days. We go to action movies and ride roller coasters or paraglide to activate the antiquated bodily systems. It's not that we're nostalgic for danger, but built into our depths, there's a need for something that we — in no conscious sense — desire.

Still, if the moment comes, no matter how drunk or obese or debilitated you might be, you will get up out of that seat and — exactly when it's your turn, following the orders of the very flight attendant you may have complained to over nothing 10 minutes ago — plunge down that slide.

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5 men, trapped in a tree for 5 days, by 4 tigers.

Rescued!

Previously discussed here.

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5 men trapped in a tree by Sumatran tigers — and it might take days to find the tree in the jungle.

"The group was attacked on Thursday after they accidentally killed a tiger cub. One man died while the others managed to flee up some branches. The survivors alerted nearby villagers using mobile phones."

Villagers had tried to rescue the men on Thursday but retreated when they saw at least four large Sumatran tigers circling around the base of the tree....

The six men, all from Simpang Kiri village in Aceh Tamiang district, had ventured into the national park in search of rare incense wood.

"People keep entering the jungle to look for the wood because it's very expensive," the police chief said. "But that's the risk: there are many tigers and elephants in Gunung Leuser jungle."

Wikipedia says: "The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is a rare tiger subspecies that inhabits the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It was classified as critically endangered by IUCN in 2008 as the population was estimated at 441 to 679 individuals...The Sumatran tiger is the only surviving member of the Sunda Islands group of tigers that included the now extinct Bali tiger and Javan tiger."

What is the "rare incense wood"? The article doesn't say, but I suspect it's agarwood, about which Wikipedia says: "agarwood, also known as oud, oodh or agar, is a dark resinous heartwood that forms in Aquilaria and Gyrinops trees... when they become infected with a type of mould. Prior to infection, the heartwood is relatively light and pale coloured; however, as the infection progresses, the tree produces a dark aromatic resin in response to the attack, which results in a very dense, dark, resin embedded heartwood...."

UPDATE: Rescued after 5 days in the tree.

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