0:04

Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's

0:06

Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave, which

0:09

makes this the traditional arrangement

0:11

for short stuff.

0:13

That's right, A tale of survival

0:16

of a young German woman.

0:18

Yeah. I don't know

0:21

why, but Julianne Kopka

0:23

started making the Rounds like a year ago,

0:26

and since then everybody's written

0:28

on her story because it's an amazing story.

0:30

But I couldn't figure out what it was that

0:32

set it off. I heard about her on like

0:34

some Quora thread that was suggested

0:37

to me, and I don't

0:39

know if that's the one that kicked it off or not. But she's

0:42

made the rounds and.

0:43

She may have just opened up for business.

0:46

No, no, I don't think so, because she released

0:48

a memoir and but that was back in twenty

0:50

eleven, so I don't know what happened. But she

0:52

suddenly became part of the zeitgeist. And I

0:55

understand why for two reasons. One,

0:57

Zeitgeist is a German word, and she was

1:00

a German national by birth. And secondly,

1:04

the story is just so frankly amazing that everybody

1:07

should know it.

1:09

Yeah, for sure, there's a great

1:11

verner Herzog documentary about it. That's

1:13

a pretty quick watch for such a harrowing

1:16

story, but as all things for in our Herzog,

1:18

I highly recommended.

1:19

It's called Wings of Hope or yeah, Wings

1:22

of Hope.

1:23

It's really good.

1:25

So she was a young

1:27

woman that was raised in the jungle. Her

1:30

dad was a zoologist and her mom was an ornithologist,

1:33

and she was raised in the jungles of Peru because

1:36

they were researchers in the Amazon,

1:38

and she sort of grew up with this,

1:42

I mean, I think kind of idyllic life

1:44

of you know, being this nature girl

1:46

living in the jungle.

1:47

She said.

1:48

She went to the school of the jungle and

1:50

it was a really unique upbringing for a

1:52

young German woman.

1:53

Yeah, I mean her parents were like hardcore.

1:56

They were in Germany. They met

1:58

in Germany. They were like, where's a place that's

2:00

just so biodiverse, it's not really

2:02

on the map. And they went there and they founded

2:04

a research station called Panguana And

2:07

that place is still there today. It's a large

2:09

nature preserve now. But her parents founded

2:11

that and she was

2:14

raised there starting in her tweens,

2:16

I believe, and then eventually

2:18

moved on to private school in Lima. But

2:22

yeah, in between that time, like she learned all

2:24

of the animals, she learned what sounds

2:26

they made, she learned how to avoid who She

2:28

basically just learned how to survive in

2:30

the jungle, which really set her up nicely

2:33

for one of the most significant events in

2:35

her young life that came later.

2:38

Yeah, it was a very sad event. Christmas

2:40

Eve nineteen seventy one. She was a seventeen

2:43

year old. She was on a flight with

2:46

her mom and looking

2:48

to go celebrate Christmas with dad, and

2:50

this flight turned really scary. There's

2:53

a very bad storm and one

2:55

of the sort of one of the few

2:57

times where you can point to an actual plane

3:00

being struck by lightning in the air hasn't

3:03

happened that much. I think this one's regarded

3:05

as kind of the worst of all

3:07

the times that's happened. And with

3:09

about twenty minutes to go in the flight, this

3:12

plane is hit and all of a sudden

3:15

plumbing toward the ground with ninety

3:17

two people on board.

3:18

Yeah, what's said is apparently her mom

3:21

was not a fan of flying, she found it unnatural.

3:25

And before it got hit by lightning,

3:28

it had started to hit some horrible turbulence,

3:30

like luggage was falling down on

3:32

people from overhead, and her mom

3:35

said, she's like, I hope

3:37

this goes okay. So when

3:39

the plane did start to break up, apparently

3:43

Julianne heard her mom say, now

3:45

it's all over. So that's pretty

3:47

horrible, right, this is not just a regular plane

3:49

crest. They were at ten thousand feet and the plane

3:51

broke up so thoroughly that

3:53

Julianne said that essentially she

3:55

didn't leave the plane. The plane left

3:57

me. She was still strapped to the

4:00

bench seat that she had been sitting

4:02

next to her mother in, but

4:05

all of a sudden it was just her mother and the other passenger.

4:07

I guess we're just sucked right out of their seats. And

4:09

she found herself totally alone, ten

4:12

thousand feet in the air, headed straight

4:14

down toward earth.

4:16

Yeah, just hurtling toward the ground. She

4:19

said that, and this is the only

4:21

thing that saved our life, basically, was this really

4:24

thick jungle canopy.

4:26

And she said she.

4:26

Remembers literally remembers

4:29

being in the air, falling toward the ground

4:32

and seeing that the tree tops looked like heads

4:34

of broccoli. Next thing you know,

4:36

she wakes up on the ground.

4:39

She's alive. She got a broken collar

4:41

bone, she's concussed, cut

4:44

up pretty badly, got kind

4:46

of you know, beat in the face obviously, so one

4:48

eye was swollen shut. So she's

4:51

in bad shape, kind of going in and out of consciousness.

4:53

But eventually he wakes up.

4:55

She had pretty poor eyesight and was missing her

4:57

glasses, which was no good, and she would

5:00

soon learn that she was the

5:02

only survivor out of the ninety two passengers

5:04

and crew.

5:05

Yeah, I say we take a break and come back,

5:07

because as bad is falling

5:09

out of the sky two miles down

5:12

and surviving alone in the Amazon is

5:15

it actually just went from bad to worse

5:17

for her at this point, So

5:41

you said, Flight five awaits considered

5:44

the worst lightning strike disaster

5:46

in aviation history. Ninety one

5:48

of the ninety two people on board died,

5:51

including her mother. At this

5:53

time, though when she'd landed miraculously

5:55

survived falling two miles down

5:58

to earth from midair, she

6:01

didn't know this, so she started looking immediately

6:03

for her mother. She spent the first day of looking for her mom,

6:06

looking for anybody really, but in particular her

6:08

mom, and she didn't find anything.

6:11

I don't know what day it was, I think

6:14

perhaps the fourth day of

6:16

walking around in the Amazon. I

6:18

guess we can say she walked by

6:21

herself in the Amazon, surviving

6:24

for eleven days. Day

6:26

four, she came around the bend and found a

6:28

really grizzly piece of wreckage that I

6:32

can't imagine seeing this.

6:34

Yeah, this was two

6:36

men and a woman who landed headfirst

6:40

so forcefully that they were buried

6:42

three feet into the ground.

6:44

And this is the part I

6:46

don't quite get.

6:47

She checked the feet to see if it was her mother,

6:49

and saw that the toenails were painted, so she knew

6:51

it wasn't. But and I'm not nickpicking,

6:54

she was clearly traumatized. But I

6:56

thought her mom got ripped apart or

6:58

ripped out of the seat next to her on

7:00

the bench, and so she wouldn't

7:02

be strapped into another bench.

7:04

But I guess that's a nippicky.

7:05

Yeah. I know, I had the exact same thought, and I

7:08

chalked it up to trauma too, or just maybe hope

7:10

or something like that.

7:11

I don't know, sure, Yeah.

7:13

But yeah, yeah, I mean three people exactly,

7:18

But I mean imagine seeing three people still strapped

7:20

to their bench seat, all headfirst into

7:22

the ground with their legs sticking up. That's

7:25

just I just can't imagine that stuff like

7:27

that actually happens sometimes in the world.

7:29

And this poor girl saw that on day

7:31

four of wandering around the Amazon, totally

7:33

lost. But like

7:36

we said, she was just

7:40

about as prepared for this experience

7:43

as a person can be from her upbringing.

7:46

And she remembered after a while, like, Okay,

7:49

what did I learn as a kid

7:51

about living in the jungle. And one of the

7:53

things that came to her was her father telling

7:55

her, if you're ever lost in the jungle, find

7:58

water and just follow it one

8:00

way or the other, because eventually you're going to

8:02

find humans living around

8:05

that water.

8:06

Totally And that's a smart rule of thumb period,

8:10

if you're ever you know, lost in the woods or something, and

8:12

at the very least you have some water. And

8:15

she lived on that water because she didn't have much food. She

8:17

had a little bit of candy. It was

8:19

a wet season there, so there wasn't like low

8:21

hanging fruit literally that

8:23

she could get a hold of. It was obviously

8:26

because it was wet season. It was super

8:28

hot, superhumid, but

8:30

she did get some water from that river, which

8:32

kept her alive.

8:33

And like you.

8:34

Said, for eleven days, she tried

8:36

that creek, then stream, then it became bigger

8:39

into a river. Eventually

8:41

she was basically at the point where she

8:43

had given up hope and she was, you know, kind

8:45

of succumbing to the idea that

8:48

she might die. And she saw a boat

8:50

on the river bank and thought

8:52

it was a mirage, but she went over and

8:54

touched it to make sure it was real.

8:57

Followed a path from that boat to a shack, where

8:59

she found some forest workers who

9:01

immediately were like, you know great.

9:04

They gave her some fruit and started

9:06

taking care of her and taking care of her wounds right away.

9:09

Yeah. I think when she came in the shack, their

9:11

famous quote was what the what? Yeah,

9:15

this was gross. I can't remember which article.

9:18

I think it might have been for the New York Times. Article

9:20

by a guy named Franz

9:24

Litz, and he

9:27

said that they poured gasoline on her wounds

9:29

that had maggots sprouting from it like asparagus

9:31

tips. I mean, she was in bad shape. Chuck,

9:33

just put yourself in this girl's mind for

9:36

a second. You don't need glasses,

9:38

do you just like some reading glasses?

9:40

Maybe? Yeah, reading glasses?

9:42

So you've never needed glasses.

9:44

Except to read.

9:45

One of the worst things that can happen to you

9:47

if you wear glasses and are significantly

9:50

nearsighted, in particular, is to lose

9:52

those classes. This girl wandered around

9:54

the Amazon for eleven days nearsighted

9:57

without her glasses, and that was one

9:59

of the east of her concerns at that time.

10:02

I just when I think about that, it

10:04

just sends a chill down my spine because it's so

10:07

awful to not be able to see like

10:09

that.

10:10

Yeah, I imagine.

10:11

So she, you know, she survived,

10:14

she got flown to safety, she got reunited

10:16

with her father. The real obviously

10:19

huge tragedy here for her personally

10:21

and her for her father was they lost their mother

10:23

and wife. And so you know, she comes back

10:26

home, you know, obviously elated to

10:28

be saved, but instantly mourning

10:30

her mom's loss.

10:32

She avoided the media.

10:35

And that's why I think she maybe didn't you

10:38

know, was open for business more recently,

10:40

because she very famously avoided the media, except

10:43

for Bernard Hertzog, who

10:45

was supposed to be on that flight

10:48

because he was scouting stuff for a either

10:50

movie or documentary. I couldn't tell which and

10:53

he reached out. You know, he's very moved by the story.

10:55

Obviously because his close connection and

10:57

reached out to her, and again

11:00

because of his Eastern European

11:02

heritage, they might have bonded or

11:04

at least she trusted him, and that's when he

11:06

made wings of hope.

11:08

Man, it's just nuts. So yeah, in that documentary,

11:10

apparently he got

11:12

her to go back to the wreckage site and there's

11:14

still yeah, man, plenty of wreckage just sitting

11:17

there in the jungle from that plane crash.

11:19

Because it crushed in such a remote area, there's just no way

11:21

they were ever going to remove it.

11:24

Yeah, it was tough stuff. She also talked to some of

11:26

the people who saved her. It's really amazing.

11:27

Yeah, I've got to see that.

11:28

Then it's not long. You

11:30

can watch it on YouTube.

11:31

Okay.

11:32

Cool.

11:33

There was something else that I thought was really great

11:35

about her. She apparently made

11:37

one of those deals with God or the universe

11:40

or whatever and said, like, if I make

11:42

it through this, I promised to dedicate

11:44

myself to nature and humanity,

11:47

And after she was saved, she made good on it.

11:49

She's she's been She's used

11:51

a lot of her spotlight to help

11:55

drum up. I guess contributions

11:57

and donations to preserve the Amazon,

12:00

particular to preserve Peguana.

12:02

That the preserve appropriately

12:05

enough. It started out I think, around

12:07

four hundred and forty five acres, and it's

12:09

grown to four thousand plus because

12:12

of her, just through private fundraising.

12:15

I wonder if God was like, oh,

12:17

I thought you were going to say, like in service of me,

12:20

but that's cool, like that that's good too, or.

12:24

But first God said, how are you alive?

12:28

So yeah. One of the other sweet

12:31

things I think about this is she returned to Peguana.

12:35

She got her own doctorate in biology.

12:38

She focused on bats and worked

12:41

with her dad, and then her dad died in two thousands,

12:43

so she took over the Panguana Biosphere

12:45

Preserve in research station, and

12:48

as far as I know, still runs the show

12:50

there and she considers it her sanctuary,

12:52

just like it was for her parents.

12:54

Amazing.

12:55

I wonder if she has shirts that says not that

12:57

biosphere.

12:59

Amazing Tales Survival. I'll tell

13:01

you that much, buddy.

13:03

And does that mean short stuff? Is it?

13:05

I would say so?

13:05

Sure.

13:09

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