Extreme Survival Tales 

Will be interesting to hear Danny's story when he eventually escapes from Simon's basement. Years of tortured, feverish writing while chained to the radiator. Drinking Radiator moonshine mixed with Beard Blaze oil and Rotting Turtle while cultivating mushrooms from the basement dirt to go with his Frey Bentoes pies and pot noodles.

"A view of Heaven from a seat in Hell." Wow!

7:00 - I was about to correct you when you said she was the only survivor of the crash but then you kinda corrected yourself a few sentences later when you mentioned her mother had also survived the crash, but died a few days later. Yeah, there was evidence that around a dozen ppl survived the crash, but because they stayed with the wreckage expecting to be rescued they ultimately died when no rescue came. Had she done the same instead of leaving to find a way out of the jungle it most likely would've been her fate to. Another tid bit for her survival - she ate what she saw the monkeys in the jungle eating. She knew if it was safe for them, it was safe for her.

Thanks for the tip about following a stream when lost in the wild.

Look into Aimo Koivunen. He accidentally overdosed on meth (Pervitin) when retreating from Soviet soldiers in the Continuation War, lost his weapons/compass, burned down his shelter while still inside, survived 2 mines and 2 weeks in Finnish winter wilderness alone while eating raw birds, eventually being found. It's an absolutely insane survival story.

I really, really liked this. Weirdly enjoyable stories of survival.

I'm certain this video could turn into a series in itself, and I would very much like that.

It’s not a survival thing… but two years ago I nearly died of starvation because my digestive system shut down (I have complex gastrointestinal disorders) and I couldn’t even keep water down. I was in hospital for two months, we started with an NJ tube (nose to intestine) but my body couldn’t cope, and I was getting sicker and sicker. After two weeks (and 3 tubes!) I ended up on TPN (a picc tube is fed in to the upper arm in to the heart and specialist liquid nutrients are pumped in slowly over several hours a day). At first I had to have a single bag for 48hrs, and then it was worked up to 12hrs. After a week I was well enough to try actual food again. Then I got sepsis! But thankfully recovered and just barely managed to stay out of ICU, thankfully the ward I was on was a specialist support ward with higher staff ratios anyways… Finally a few weeks later (having lost much more weight!) I was well enough to go home. Since then I have fought to keep things in. But it’s only a matter of time until it happens again really! Some weird things: when you are genuinely starving, you crave fats and sugars, I would probably have eaten pure butter! You also start to lose your brain power. It’s like things are confusing and sometimes too hard to think. But I had no idea how slow my mind had got until I was on TPN and suddenly felt myself again!

Simon: "I don't have some sort of giant, monster sized hands. Just regular sized hands" *nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, Say. No. More.*

The last story reminded me of something similar occurring near where I live a couple decades ago. A high school student went off the road and down an embankment. There was a search for him, but for some reason they didn’t think to look in the area he was in. This happened in early summer. He was discovered in autumn, after the brush died and his car was more easily visible. Apparently he survived the crash, but he was trapped in the car. They found evidence he survived for over a week before his body finally gave out

a really cool historical survival story is that of william bligh and his crew after the mutiny on the bounty. bligh (former captain of the bounty) and 18 others were put in a 23 foot lifeboat with only enough food and water for about a week and were nearly 4200 miles away from the nearest european settlement. bligh was an expert navigator and managed to get there in 47 days with only one casualty from an encounter with hostile natives in tofua, though some of the crew succumbed to sickness and weakness post-arrival. he wrote a book about it which goes into more detail.

The fact I’ve watched this channel for years and I still have videos I haven’t watched is truly impressive.

Once I got stuck in the San Francisco air port late at night for like 6 hours. The only food I could find was some nasty sushi place and a yoga room. The horrors...I could have died!

Please do a video on LIGO. The station that was built to detect gravitational waves!

Wish you would do a story about Leopold Engleitner. He survived four concentration camps, the war, and lived to be 107. Before his death in 2013 he was the oldest male survivor of the Holocaust. There is also Simone Liebster who was taken by the Germans when she was 9 years old. They are true survivors and didn't kill anyone like Hiroo Onoda.

The guy named his boat Napoleon Solo? He had to have been a “The Man From UNCLE” fan.

These stories are pretty amazing. The human will to survive can be undefeatable. I'd love to see more of these, please.

I am actually growing a moustache and a beard, so I think I will get some Beard Blaze stuff. Then I will BLAZE MY BEARD OUT!!!

What about Harrison Okene? He was a ships cook trapped 100 meters underwater in the Jascon 4 for 3 days and survived.

Definitely should do more episodes on this topic! There could be a dozen 15 minute videos of amazing survival stories. The guy who survived in a sunken boat for 3 days. The British SAS operator that had to walk out of Iraq to Syria in the Gulf War. Thousands of amazing tales of human endurance.

Yeah, well, once I received full fat soy milk in my half-decaf caramel mocha-frappa-chino instead of lo-fat. I ,too, have suffered. Any film producers are welcome to contact me regarding my journey.

You might want to look into the story of LT COL William Rankin, The Man Who Rode the Thunder. He ejected from an F-8 Crusader at an altitude of 47,000 feet over a thunderstorm and was caught in it, taking some 40 minutes to descend through a storm, observing lightning only feet away from him, being tossed by updrafts above his parachute, and exposed to extremes of cold and low pressure. I have his book and it is a well documented event.

I'm just here for more Simon Whistler lol love you man.

Love extraordinary tales of survival. This video makes me think of that show "I Survived"... The stories are amazing, captivating. It's truly amazing what we as humans are capable of overcoming even in the trying of circumstances. Love it.

More of these PLEASE

More of these, please, Simon!

I remember watching the Werner Herzog documentary about Juliane Koepcke. I can honestly say this is the only documentary I've ever watched with my mouth wide open in amazement for nearly its entire duration.

The Juliane Koepcke story was local lore where I grew up, good to see that story here.

Was just googling to find what I'd get my husband for Father's day. Somthing considerate, playful, and useful to my husband. This video came on the tv and I stopped my search. Beard Blaze. Perfect. Simon coming through to save the day again.

Sitting in the mountains with a beautiful view and Simon vids playing in the background 👌🍻👍

I love how Business Blaze is starting to leak into Simon's other channels

1:55 - Chapter 1 - Steven callahan 5:30 - Chapter 2 - Juliane Koepcke 8:25 - Chapter 3 - Hiroo onoda 12:05 - Chapter 4 - Angela hernandez

These were great. Thanks Simon.

There's also the survival of Tony Bullimore in the upturned hull of his yacht in the freezing Southern Ocean.

So I apply the beard oil... and then light it up for maximum beard blazing?

That was thoroughly enjoyable

I can always support a sponser that the creator/narrater is clearly worthy of.

Check out Joe Simpson, author of Touching The Void. Badly broke his leg on a mountaineering trip. While his partner single handly lower him off the mountain, Simpson became trapped suspended over a huge glacier crevasse ... Utterly gripping book! Both Simpson and his partner, Yeats survived!

when you dont have a beard but Simon sells you on a bottle with the mere term "glorious"

Imagine living in the jungle for 30 years fighting a war that over for nearly that whole time, then returning to your home to find things like anime, jpop, close political ties to the enemy country you were aposed to 30 years before and that it had been nuked twice by that same country.

I can't wait to try your beard stuff. Great video, keep it up!

The confluence of events in the Hiroo Onoda story is utterly unimaginable.

Congrats on the new product launch!

Ayyy thanks Simon!

Very interesting video thank you very much for doing it good

Please look into Peter Bird(UK), the Father of modern ocean rowing , the first man to row solo across the pacific ( USA to Australia), the longest time at sea solo, the longest distance rowed solo by a human at the time , sadly lost at sea on an attempt to cross from Russia through the sea of japan to America . An absolute legend, father, friend and my uncle. In those days they just had an idea and dream of adventure , built a boat and went off into the blue; no satnav ,no internet , no weather updates, just the occasional radio contact. True Adventurers

Great video. Like survival stories.

We should start calling you baby hands Simon

History lover and love how you explain it Ty

I was trapped for 9 years. It was almost unbearable. When I was rescued, I was a broken man, surviving off of beer and porn. I was finally rescued by a divorce...

4:08 Oh they probably saw him, they just had a schedule to keep or just plain ignored him like a housecat. If walking in the middle of nowhere don't expect a car to pick up hitchhikers these days either.

My vote(s) would be for two stories that surpass anything in this video except the girl who fell in a piece of an exploded airplane and survived. It doesn't get much crazier than that. There's another story of a woman who survived a passenger jet explosion in Europe, including a fall of like 30000 feet in the tail section of a 747. Anyway, for those with, shall we say, an appetite for the extreme, look no farther than the book _Alive_ by Piers Paul Read. It's the harrowing and, uh really gut-churning story about how some members of a Latin American soccer team survived a plane crash at extreme altitude in the Andes mountains (think desolate, like the North Pole, like Antarctica, like Mt Everest) by cannibalizing the bodies of those on the team who didn't survive the crash. Had to read it in college about thirty years ago and regretted it ever since. According to that book the least palatable parts of the human body are the brain and the genitals. Point taken. Ugh. But my vote for number 1 unbelievable survival tale comes from a book I read as a teenager about bears. There was a story in it about an American Indian man who went to hunt a bear for food. He shot the bear once with a very powerful rifle. He approached the bear, which appeared to be dead, and put his rifle down before making absolutely sure of that. Well the bear wasn't quite dead, and when the Indian stuck his knife in the bear intending to gut and skin it, the bear came alive and swatted him once in the head. This bear was later weighed at over 300 pounds and that one blow stripped the flesh and skin off the man's face and torso such that his facial skin and musculature was hanging down his chest like a bib. He was also blind. The bear died shortly thereafter. This man, utterly blind and bleeding like crazy and probably also in an unbelievable amount of pain, crawled sightless on his hands and knees through the woods for like ten miles before someone finally found him and took him to the hospital. He survived, extremely disfigured and almost completely blind in one eye but vision in the other was preserved and he eventually went back to living the same sort of wilderness life he'd led before his injury. That's what you call a serious will for survival.

12:45 how is anything going to get jettisoned with all the windows intact??? Hmm 🤔 💭 😂 gotcha

Quality video! The story of the 30 year war is incredible! If there's any more interesting detail I'd enjoy a full length video on that

I don’t want to be that guy but koepcka’s story of growing up in South America as a child of German immigrants in the mid 20th century kinda raised some red flags as to why a German scientist moved to Peru in 1947 …

Omg love everything about you simon

You'd have to have tiny hands to make the bottle look big though Simon!

Gobsmackedly amazing stories of survival, beats Bear Grylies's TV shows anyday!

I literally just watched the first two stories from MrBallen, Trippy. Nice.

Amazing stories

Great video, please do a sequel 👍

More of theeeeeaeeee

An "Electra" knocked out of the sky by lightning......irony, anyone?

An advert i pledge to never skip.

Oh, congratz on Beard Blaze!

Minor mistake but at 9:36 but you said the "war had been over since October" even though Hirohito announced surrender in August and it officially ended in September

Good video 👍

Very good!

Can we get a reality TV show where Simon and Vladmir Putin team up to survive in the wilderness.

My beard smells like rotten 🐢

40 years in hiding and someone found him in four days 😂😂😂

A suggestion for another video: The discovery of cosmic rays from space. Incidentally, I can't use your beard oils (I'm a girl).

This brings back memories of Sam o’ Nella

Hi . Look at the Nayarit fishermans (México) 9 months adrift. Saling (surviving) in a small boat trough south pacific Solomon islands.

Thank you

I was hoping for the guy that collapsed on the top part of Everest. Other climbers coming down thought he was dead and left him (not that anyone could have carried him down). The guy turned up in camp in the middle of the night. He'd gotten back up and did it under his own power. (Covered in the book, "Into Thin Air".)

The drinking urine thing somehow was fairly common between dehydrated soldiers during the Greeco Turkish War..

Have you heard of José Salvador Alvarenga, a Salvadoran fisherman who was found on the Marshall Islands after spending 14 months adrift in a fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean, he was blown off course by a storm that lasted five days in mexico and was found alive more than a year and 6,700 miles later

More survival stories, please.

Yeah, well one time my internet went out for 4 hours.

Lol no one with any form of respect will count Marcos’s pardon.

if i was stuck out in a hostile land i would like to bring Ray Mears!....

As far as my feet will carry me is a good book.

What’s the one thing you need to survive in the wild? Rotting Turtle of course

Wouldn't giant hands make the bottle seem smaller though? I think you got that backwards Simon. Lol

I live just south of Portland and I have family in Lancaster...

And Mr. Hiroo Onoda ended his days a revered hero in the extensive Japanese community in Brazil.

8:34 ah yes, that guy

These are some side projects that I don't wish to participate in. This was great. Thank you!

I don’t have a beard but I did check out your website, pretty fresh website I like the layout and UI

i wonder if Hiro got 30 years of back pay

Developed campground.....BAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA

Maybe a part 2 including Dieter Dengler?

Uh oh, now your a competitor to all those shaving companies that sponsored you in the past.

I figured she had brain injuries when you mentioned she broke out the driver's side window. Since in the pictures of the jeep, the roof had been ripped almost off and it would have been easier to climb out the top.

The guy the movie 127 hours is based on should receive a mention! Crazy story that one is.

"The airline had a horrible reputation for safety"..... But it was struck by lightning? I don't think safety guidelines can help with that one.

The Survival Story that inspired Moby Dick, is truly terrifying! Look that one up! Cheers all!

Thank God i had my Beard Blaze on me when that Honey Badger attacked me

I can't believe Aron Ralston is not on this list Simon...part 2 lol