The Best Survival Show on TV

Last Sunday on Discovery channel I watched the best survival show I have ever seen, called “I shouldn’t be alive.” I saw two different stories, one of them was a story of a family of three, husband, wife, and young baby stuck in the snow in the middle of nowhere. While driving to a funeral, the family decided to take a direct route through Nevada. On the way a massive snow storm hit them, and they found themselves stuck in the snow, on a road in the middle of a national park. Instead of staying in the car, and waiting for a search and rescue mission to find them, the couple decided to walk across the snow in search for a suspected road. After a 12 hour walk, and two days without food, the couple realized they were walking in the wrong direction.

Due to extremely cold temperature, the mother’s feet literally froze, and she was unable to walk one step. The father found a small cave where he told his wife to wait there for him and take care of the baby, while he left them to search for help. The father walked through the night back to the truck, rested there, and then kept on walking without rest, reaching the point of hallucination, when suddenly he found a truck on a snow covered road. With whatever energy he had left, he ran and yelled after it, and fortunately the truck driver saw him and took him home.

Soon after the father found help, the mother and baby were recovered from the cave. After being hospitalized, the toes of the mother and father had to be amputated, due the extreme temperatures they were exposed to. The baby suffered no injuries, since he was kept in a sleeping bag the whole time nice and warm.

What amazed me most was how much both parents sacrificed to keep the baby alive. At one point the baby stopped crying and both parents feared he was dead, the mother remarked “If my baby would have died, I would have given up trying to find a way out… my only concern was the baby,” to which the husband agreed. I found it particularly amazing that the mother and father were unselfish during this life and death situation. You’ll probably say love is what kept them together as a family, both working for a common unselfish goal - surviving together. What’s my take on this seemingly amazing unselfishness? Well that will have to wait for the next post…

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