"Girl who survived Washington plane crash hikes to safety"

"I've spent 30 years in the Civil Air Patrol and in search-and-rescue. Moments of joy like this can be hard to find."

A teenage girl who survived a small-plane crash in the craggy, thickly forested mountains of north-central Washington state emerged from the wilderness after hiking "for a couple of days" and was picked up by a motorist who drove her to safety, authorities said Monday. But the fate of her two step-grandparents, who were also on board, remained unclear.

David Veatch, the father of 16-year-old Autumn Veatch, told reporters outside a Brewster hospital late Monday his daughter is exhausted but doing remarkably well.

She was able to joke with him about all the survival shows they watched together on television, he said. (read more)

David Veatch, the father of Autumn Veatch, 16

Nepal Baby

A 5-month-old baby is pulled from the earthquake rubble with barely a scratch. http://t.co/YyVxJJW6CE pic.twitter.com/4umQJJZILh

— CNN Health (@cnnhealth) April 30, 2015

Crushed between two semi-trailers

Mr Whitby’s amazing survival was captured in a photo showing his mangled four-wheel-drive crushed like a pancake between two trucks on an icy highway in the state’s northeast.

“Thank God that I’m still alive,” Mr Whitby told the Oregonian. “Now I’ve got to go figure out why.”

 

“I just braced and hoped that everything would be all right,” the father-of-one said, adding that he starting praying as the truck was seconds from smashing into him.

9 poncho tent configurations

"An essential item for ANY outdoor outing and certainly in every Survival Kit and Bug Out Bag is a good quality Poncho.  If you don’t have one and need one go to the NOT IF BUT WHEN STORE HERE. There is nothing more miserable (and dangerous) than getting soaked by rain. There are 100′s of different ponchos to choose from. I prefer a Military Style Poncho with grommeted corners and snap closure sides. These are typically constructed of a nice quality rip-stop nylon material that not only makes them water proof but very durable."

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What should be in the ideal bug out bag?

Communing with the stragglers on the road of progress

The Independent: "Students offered grants if they tweet pro-Israeli propaganda"

"In a campaign to improve its image abroad, the Israeli government plans to provide scholarships to hundreds of students at its seven universities in exchange for their making pro-Israel Facebook posts and tweets to foreign audiences."

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, which will oversee the programme, confirmed its launch and wrote that its aim was to “strengthen Israeli public diplomacy and make it fit the changes in the means of information consumption”.

The New Yorker: "Sixty-Nine Days, The Ordeal of the Chilean Miners"

“I’m not embarrassed to say I cried, a lot, at that moment, thinking that I wouldn’t see my family again, and thinking of the suffering they would go through,” Reygadas said. He walked away from the others, in violation of a mining code that says you should never walk alone underground. The rules didn’t matter anymore. He followed the light of his lamp until he found a front loader like the one he operated. He sat inside the cab, but after a few minutes he remembered the moment of the collapse. Tons of rock fell on top of the miners, and yet “there wasn’t anyone who was hurt.” The improbable fact of their survival, he thought, carried a hint of the divine. He decided to go back to the Refuge, and to be a strong old man instead of a weak one. If it was all part of a plan by his Creator, maybe his prayers would reach the surface, and make the people who loved him strong, too, because they had to be suffering, out there in the night, wondering if he and thirty-two other men could still be alive.” (excerpt from an over 13,500 word piece)

You can survive falling through the ice

Florida Man is Lucky To Be Alive

"Rutledge is a truck driver from Orlando, Fla. He was on his way to Indiana with a delivery when this week’s winter storm hit."

About 6 a.m. Monday, after the snow passed, Rutledge was staying at a truck stop in Whiteland. His brakes were frozen, so he went under the truck to fix them. That’s when the truck shifted in the snow.

“It caught my left side and my left arm was pinned by the axle of the truck,” Rutledge said.

He was stuck in below-zero temperatures, unable to move.

“I wound up being frozen to the pavement in the snow,” Rutledge said. “As I got colder and colder, I was yelling but nobody could hear me.”

That’s where that miracle – or maybe something more – came in.

What is the lesson? Never go under the cab without a Bluetooth. Which you may buy using our Amazon portal, at no extra cost to you, while supporting this blog's contributors. Thanks.

Self Destruction: A Feature or a Defect?

Humans are a lonely species, convinced that there must be others like us in the universe; looking but never finding proof.

 Radio telescopes look further and further into the universe and beyond, hoping to find planets like ours.  Planets on which beings like us could live.  Radio waves are sent from Earth to everywhere in hopes of a reply. There is no reply; the silence of space is maddening.

Astronomers and astrophysicists find more and more planets where life can exist, but there is no evidence that intelligent life does exist.  It’s the Fermi Paradox, which briefly stated is: Where is everybody?

They must be there.  The Drake Equation tries to quantify the number of advanced civilizations just in our own galaxy.  To simplify, it's the number of stars in the galaxy....

• multiplied by the fraction that form planets...
• multiplied by the average number of planets in the habitable zone...
• multiplied by the fraction of these that give birth to life in some form......
• multiplied by these that develop intelligence......
• multiplied by the fraction of these that produce interstellar communications...
• multiplied by the fraction of the planet's lifetime during which such civilizations survive.

Modern data applied to the Drake Equation says the number should be very high.  But where are they?