Speaker 1: Unseen with a twenty five year old male that was
Speaker 1: found playing in a smell bank. The cower temperature would
Speaker 1: not register with a Satanic thermometer. All signs lead to
Speaker 1: leaders to believe that he's been dead for a considerable
Speaker 1: amount of.
Speaker 2: Time, given his age and the fact that he has
Speaker 2: induced typothermia. I don't feel comfortable technically to call him.
Speaker 2: I know, I know where we're going. This is probably
Speaker 2: going to be a futile effort, but I think we
Speaker 2: need to do our best for him.
Speaker 3: This morning, twenty six year old Justin Smith is grateful
Speaker 3: to be alive after nearly freezing to death. I started
Speaker 3: shaking his head. No, no, you can't leave me, You
Speaker 3: can't leave me. Last February, Don Smith found his son
Speaker 3: unconscious in a snow bank. He'd been there overnight where
Speaker 3: temperatures had dipped to four degrees below zero next to night.
Speaker 4: To an incredible survival story, a lost hiker found by
Speaker 4: search teams in wide out conditions on Mount Rainier in
Speaker 4: Washington State, his pulse then flatlining at the hospital for
Speaker 4: forty five minutes tonight. The dramatic action doctors took to
Speaker 4: save his life and what he's now.
Speaker 5: Saying back from the dead when I.
Speaker 4: Woke up and didn't comprehend what had happened.
Speaker 5: Hiker Michael Nepinsky was lifeless when Navy crews found him
Speaker 5: in Mount Rainier National Park last weekend, lost overnight in
Speaker 5: below freezing conditions.
Speaker 3: Just complete wide out.
Speaker 5: The rescue team flew him to Harbor View Medical Center
Speaker 5: in Seattle when his pulse stopped, doctors jumping into action,
Speaker 5: administering CPR after forty five long minutes, finally jumpstarting his heart.
Speaker 4: I'm extremely grateful everybody here at the hospital for not
Speaker 4: giving up on me. I'm alive and breathing, and.
Speaker 6: Hello friends, and welcome to our latest video, Tales of Survival.
Speaker 6: In this video, we'll cover people who were frozen solid
Speaker 6: and survived. Now, as we all know, six hundred thousand
Speaker 6: people go missing in the United States alone every year.
Speaker 6: Of those six hundred thousand, between eighty nine and ninety
Speaker 6: two percent of them are found, whether it be deceased
Speaker 6: or live. Many people will see those statistics and think
Speaker 6: that's quite a high rate of recovery, and it just
Speaker 6: might be. But think about this. Of the people found deceased,
Speaker 6: many are found under quite unusual circumstances in inexplicable ways.
Speaker 6: That's what we're here to discuss today. Of those people
Speaker 6: who are found in those bizarre and precarious situations, I'm
Speaker 6: talking about those unfortunate people who are found deceased, who
Speaker 6: were literally frozen. If you stop and think about this,
Speaker 6: you'll be forced to consider the unimaginable being lost in
Speaker 6: the wilderness, taking your last breath of life and thinking
Speaker 6: you are slowly freezing to death, wondering if anyone is
Speaker 6: ever going to find your body. This is not only
Speaker 6: an absolutely horrific thought, but an even more nightmarish faith.
Speaker 6: The cases we're going to be reviewing today have had
Speaker 6: to face this nightmare for real. Trying to imagine their
Speaker 6: horror and dread is probably a feudal task. So let's
Speaker 6: take a few minutes to hear the incredible stories of
Speaker 6: survival and thank goodness they were found in time. The
Speaker 6: first story comes from Langby. It's an extremely small town
Speaker 6: in Minnesota in the United States. As of twenty ten,
Speaker 6: there were only eighty six people comprised of forty four
Speaker 6: households and twenty four families living in this tiny dot
Speaker 6: on the map. The city has a total area of
Speaker 6: zero point to two nine square miles, and if you
Speaker 6: were driving through it and happened to blink, you might
Speaker 6: just miss it. There is one thing, though, that makes
Speaker 6: Lingby extremely interesting to folks like us in this community,
Speaker 6: we who are the seekers of anything strange, odd and curious.
Speaker 6: On the night of December twenty, nineteen eighty, a nineteen
Speaker 6: year old young woman named Jean Hilliard was driving along
Speaker 6: a winding road heading home at around midnight from meeting
Speaker 6: some friends in town. She decided to take what she
Speaker 6: thought would be a shortcut through a gravel road to which,
Speaker 6: in the middle of winter and the dead of night
Speaker 6: in rural Minnesota, was also extremely icy. Her car ended
Speaker 6: up slipping off the road and running straight into a ditch.
Speaker 6: She was driving her father's to Ford Ltd. Which had
Speaker 6: rear wheel drive and no antilock brakes. Now, the temperature
Speaker 6: was pretty usual for that time of the year, twenty
Speaker 6: degrees below zero fahrenheit. Jean decided to get out of
Speaker 6: the car and walk in her cowboy boots no less
Speaker 6: to where she thought a friend of hers lived, figuring
Speaker 6: she could get him to help her. She explains that
Speaker 6: she was more frustrated than scared because she would keep
Speaker 6: on thinking her friend was just over the hill. But
Speaker 6: once she would get to the top of that hill
Speaker 6: and look down, she wouldn't see anything familiar, including her
Speaker 6: friend's place, And so it went Jean would keep on
Speaker 6: walking over hill after he, with every single step thinking helpless,
Speaker 6: just over the next one. Finally, about two miles later,
Speaker 6: Jean said she saw her destination right ahead of her
Speaker 6: through some trees, then everything went black. What she doesn't
Speaker 6: remember and later had to be told, was that she
Speaker 6: did in fact make it right to her friend's doorstep.
Speaker 6: Once she got to his yard, though she had tripped.
Speaker 6: Being as cold as she was, she couldn't stand back
Speaker 6: up and walk, so she crawled on her hands and
Speaker 6: knees to his front door. Before she could alert anyone
Speaker 6: to her presence, however, she lost consciousness and there she
Speaker 6: lay for six whole hours in the frigid and below
Speaker 6: freezing temperatures of a normal Minnesota winter's night. She was
Speaker 6: found six hours later on that same friend's porch, the
Speaker 6: exact same spot she had passed out, with her eyes
Speaker 6: wide open, as frozen as a log. Jean's friend, Wally Nelson, said,
Speaker 6: who was a cattle and part time butcher, who had
Speaker 6: an accident of his own when he was younger, got
Speaker 6: kicked in the head by a horse, which knocked one
Speaker 6: of his eyes loose. He remembers that night and finding
Speaker 6: Jean there in that horrific condition, as if it were
Speaker 6: only yesterday. He recalls, I was so damn surprised when
Speaker 6: I saw that little lunk out in the yard. I
Speaker 6: grabbed her for the collar and skidded her into the porch.
Speaker 6: I thought she was dead, froze stiffer than a board,
Speaker 6: but I saw a few bubbles coming out of her nose.
Speaker 6: Wally said. Wally and Jean were friends because she was
Speaker 6: dating his best friend at the time, whose name was Paul.
Speaker 6: As a matter of fact, he'd just been hanging out
Speaker 6: with Paul and Jean the night before when they went
Speaker 6: out dancing and drinking in a little hole in the
Speaker 6: wall spot the only spot within driving distance considering the weather.
Speaker 6: Wally had actually met a woman that same night and
Speaker 6: took her home with him. Imagine how awkward the next
Speaker 6: morning when he had to ask her to help him
Speaker 6: load the frozen body of his friend. They were just
Speaker 6: out having some fun with the night before, but that's
Speaker 6: exactly how it happened. According to Wali, The pair drove
Speaker 6: Jeane to nearby Foston Hospital, where the doctors admitted they
Speaker 6: thought the situation was grim. They couldn't even get an
Speaker 6: IV into Jeane's arm because of how frozen it was.
Speaker 6: The needles were actually breaking at the touch of her
Speaker 6: frigid skin. Despite the doctors and hospital staff thinking she
Speaker 6: was pretty much as good as dead already, they decided
Speaker 6: to take a chance, warm her up as best they
Speaker 6: could and pray for a miracle. Literally, a member of
Speaker 6: the hospital staff decided to call her pastor to get
Speaker 6: a prayer chain started. For Gene Heillier, a miracle is
Speaker 6: what was needed, and a miracle is exactly what it
Speaker 6: seemed to be too, as by the next morning Jeane
Speaker 6: had woken up. Her body was in excruciating pain all
Speaker 6: over and spasming, but she was indeed alive. By noon
Speaker 6: that day, she was even speaking incoherent sentences. In less
Speaker 6: than five hours, she was feeling well enough to Her
Speaker 6: biggest concern, now remember she was a teenager, was that
Speaker 6: her dad would be angry when he found out she
Speaker 6: had driven his Ford Ltd. Into a ditch. Minnesota professor
Speaker 6: of medicine and the man who worked on Jean, says
Speaker 6: that over the past ten years or so, he has
Speaker 6: seen approximately twelve cases very similar to this. He said,
Speaker 6: we have patience you can knock on like wood. They
Speaker 6: feel rock solid frozen. That in no way dissuades us
Speaker 6: from the resuscitation attempt, and we do have a track
Speaker 6: record of success with that. He also states the dictum
Speaker 6: is that no one is dead until they're warm and dead.
Speaker 6: It became even more sensational when the doctors informed the
Speaker 6: media in public that they were very close to amputating
Speaker 6: both of Jean's legs in order to avoid infection setting
Speaker 6: in from all the frost bite. This was unbelievable though,
Speaker 6: because when it was all said and done, she went
Speaker 6: home with nothing more than a few blisters on her toes.
Speaker 6: Jean said she doesn't know why this miraculous event happened
Speaker 6: to her, as her life had been very normal. She
Speaker 6: went on to marry, have kids, divorced, and now works
Speaker 6: at Walmart. She does, however, make sure she is never
Speaker 6: out driving at night when the ice heat Minnesota winter
Speaker 6: weather kicks in for the season. Our next story is
Speaker 6: about a young man named Justin Smith. Twenty six year
Speaker 6: old Justin Smith was walking home from what he thought
Speaker 6: was a typical night hanging out and having some drinks
Speaker 6: with friends when his life took a turn for the
Speaker 6: incredibly miraculous. On February twentieth, twenty fifteen, at around nine
Speaker 6: thirty p m. The Pennsylvania native thought he was just
Speaker 6: going home for the night. Unfortunately, however, he tripped and
Speaker 6: fell into the snow. It was five degrees below zero
Speaker 6: and snowing pretty hard when his father went out looking
Speaker 6: for him when he hadn't returned home when he was
Speaker 6: supposed to. As he was walking along the familiar streets
Speaker 6: of the route his son would have had to have
Speaker 6: taken in order to have walked home, he saw the
Speaker 6: boots first, poking out of a small snow mound that
Speaker 6: had collected onto his son's body. He says, I looked
Speaker 6: over and Justin was just laying there. He was blue,
Speaker 6: his face was lifeless. I checked for pulse, I checked
Speaker 6: for a heartbeat, but there was nothing. As it turned out,
Speaker 6: Justin had been lying on the side of that empty
Speaker 6: and desolate road where he had fallen for a bit
Speaker 6: longer than twelve hours. When emergency services first arrived, They
Speaker 6: too could find no signs of life and made the
Speaker 6: assumption that Justin had frozen to death. David went so
Speaker 6: far as to lay a white sheet over his frozen body. Then,
Speaker 6: as the state police took over and started to work
Speaker 6: the investigation into Justin's death, which admittedly seemed to be
Speaker 6: pretty cut and dry, the corner was called out to
Speaker 6: the scene as well. Justin's father, Don Smith, who had
Speaker 6: found him, had even had to make the devastating phone
Speaker 6: call to his wife, Justin's mother, and break the unimaginable
Speaker 6: and heartbreaking news to her, the news no mother should
Speaker 6: ever have to hear their son was dead, frozen to
Speaker 6: death on the side of a dark and lonely road. However,
Speaker 6: when Justin's body was transported to the hospital in the
Speaker 6: early morning hours of February twenty first, the doctor on duty,
Speaker 6: a doctor Coleman, had a completely different train of thought altogether.
Speaker 6: He said, my clinical thought was very simple, you have
Speaker 6: to be warm to be dead. The doctor did something
Speaker 6: quite unorthodox and ordered the paramedics to start performing CPR
Speaker 6: on a lifeless man who had no puls or heartbeat.
Speaker 6: He also had no blood pressure and it was presumed
Speaker 6: he had taken his last breath the day before. According
Speaker 6: to the National Post Online, when a person's body chills
Speaker 6: at the right rate, the associated slowing of metabolic processes
Speaker 6: will protect him from the other effects of exposure. Their
Speaker 6: lethargic cells don't require as much oxygen, so the fact
Speaker 6: that their heart is slowed and their breathing stop is
Speaker 6: dangerous but not necessarily deadly. These people hang in a
Speaker 6: state of sort of a suspended animation, almost seeming dead
Speaker 6: by all the standard measures, but not irreversibly gone. He
Speaker 6: continues now for almost two whole hours. Paramedics and hospital
Speaker 6: emergency personnel, going on doctor Coleman's orders, continued to pump
Speaker 6: Justin's chest and even gave breath into his open mouth
Speaker 6: until he was able to be flown, even in the
Speaker 6: treacherous snowstorm still blazing outside, to another hospital more equipped
Speaker 6: to handle this very unique situation. Once he finally arrived
Speaker 6: at this hospital, which was in Allentown, Pennsylvania, by a
Speaker 6: life flight helicopter, doctors there pumped Justin full of warm
Speaker 6: oxygenated blood using a treatment called ECMO extracrporeal membrane oxygenation.
Speaker 6: Early on that evening as the sun went down. That
Speaker 6: was the same sun that was just coming up when
Speaker 6: he had been found by his own father and pronounced
Speaker 6: dead by emergency workers and even a corner Justin Smith's
Speaker 6: hart miraculously finally began to beat on its own again.
Speaker 6: Though a miracle in itself, no one, not even the
Speaker 6: doctors treating him, were prepared for Justin to make anywhere
Speaker 6: near full recovery, as they were understandably worried about what
Speaker 6: all of the lack of oxygen would do to his
Speaker 6: burn function. However, as miracles sometimes go, Justin made a
Speaker 6: full and complete recovery and his back to living his
Speaker 6: normal life again. Surprisingly, he had no long term or
Speaker 6: ongoing problems due to this accident and incredible brush with
Speaker 6: death all those years ago. Michael Nepenske, forty five year
Speaker 6: old Michael Nepenske of Woodenville, Washington, went on a hike
Speaker 6: in Mount Rainier with a friend on November seventh, twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: The two decided to separate below the Mirror snowfield, with
Speaker 6: Michael snow showing to Paradise and his friend continuing on
Speaker 6: skis to Camp Muhr. They were going to meet up
Speaker 6: at a designated time down near Paradise, close to where
Speaker 6: Michael was heading to. Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere,
Speaker 6: Michael reports the weather into extreme whiteout conditions, which prohibited
Speaker 6: him from being able to see even an inch in
Speaker 6: front of his face. Obviously, this made it impossible for
Speaker 6: him to go any further. He recalls taking very small
Speaker 6: and easy steps to get himself slowly down the mountain
Speaker 6: while still seeing nothing but the white out conditions ahead
Speaker 6: of him. This is the last thing he remembers before
Speaker 6: becoming confused about the next course of events. He says
Speaker 6: he thinks he fell, but can't be sure, as he
Speaker 6: totally blacked out and has no memory of what actually
Speaker 6: occurred while he was blindly snowshoeing through the blizzard conditions.
Speaker 6: Needless to say, Michael didn't make it back to meet
Speaker 6: his friend near Paradise that evening and was reported as missing.
Speaker 6: Three National Park search teams went out and conducted full
Speaker 6: searches of the area throughout the night, and because the
Speaker 6: temperatures being sixteen degrees fahrenheit and the white out causing
Speaker 6: minimal to no visibility, the searches were called off for
Speaker 6: the night early Sunday morning, however, the search teams went
Speaker 6: back out to look for Michael. Though everyone's thoughts were
Speaker 6: grim and thinking the worst at this point because of
Speaker 6: the he weathered too, the aerial searches weren't able to
Speaker 6: be started until late Sunday afternoon, nearly twenty four hours
Speaker 6: after Michael had been reported as missing by his concerned friend.
Speaker 6: Helicopter searchers finally found Michael Nepinsk in the Nisqually River drainage,
Speaker 6: and by the time foot searchers got to him about
Speaker 6: an hour after he was first sighted, he was unconscious.
Speaker 6: He had a pulse, though weak as it was when
Speaker 6: he reached the hospital, but went into cardiac arrest very
Speaker 6: shortly after arriving. The doctors began using the most advanced
Speaker 6: form of artificial life support available, which included bypassing his
Speaker 6: heart and lungs miraculously or some say coincidentally due the
Speaker 6: location where he went missing and all the strangeness surrounding
Speaker 6: Mountaineer itself, Michael was legally deceased for forty five minutes,
Speaker 6: yet was able to be brought back to life with
Speaker 6: no long term negative effects, although he remained unconscious for
Speaker 6: two days after his heart started beating again. Michael did
Speaker 6: wake up and come back to life, suffering some frostbite
Speaker 6: and bruises and scratches, all which will heal. So what
Speaker 6: do you think of these stories? Isn't that amazing? Sometimes
Speaker 6: the body can surprise us. Just the very will to
Speaker 6: live that the body seems to have inherent in it
Speaker 6: can go a long way toward recovery. I look forward
Speaker 6: to reading your comments on this. Please remember to keep
Speaker 6: it friendly. Meanwhile, be good yourselves and each other, and
Speaker 6: I'll see you just a little farther on down the road.
Speaker 6: I'm Steve Stockton, and I'll talk to you next time.