For a number of years following the end of World War II, Japanese soldiers would occasionally emerge from the jungles in the Pacific theater, either unwilling to believe or unaware that the war was over. The last verified Japanese holdout came out of hiding in the Philippines and officially surrendered back in 1974. It's an incredible story, but a piece in this month's Smithsonian magazine tops it, in both longevity and in the sheer harshness of the landscape in which it occurs. In 1978, Soviet geologists discovered a family of six eking out a desperate existence in the depths of the vast Siberian taiga. They had been living there, completely cut off from all human contact, completely unaware of events like WWII, since 1936.
A man found dead in a remote mountain hut was an adventurer who had planned a year-long Bear Grylls-style survival challenge in the Scottish wilderness. David Austin, 29, from Derby, was found dead in a 'bothy' by a track worker near Corrour, a remote railway station in Highland Perthshire, on December 31 at 9.50am. His body is believed to have been lying there for several weeks when it was discovered. A post-mortem found there were no suspicious circumstances behind his death, which is understood to have been as a result of hypothermia.
U.S. and Mexican authorities are still searching for survivors after a chartered fishing boat carrying 44 passengers and crew capsized after being caught in a storm off the coast of Mexico.
From this story on ABC News: The U.S. Coast Guard and Mexican Navy are scouring the Sea of Cortez by boat and helicopter in a continuing effort to locate the seven U.S. tourists still missing after the sinking of a charter boat off the coast of Mexico Sunday. One U.S. tourist died. The Coast Guard will be using a larger aircraft in its search today that is capable of covering greater distances, U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Pamela Boehland said. The Coast Guard expects to be up in the air over the Sea of Cortez around 10:30 a.m. PT. The Mexican Navy is expected to deploy the same two helicopters it has been using.
An Illinois coonhound gets rescued after being trapped in a cave for three days.
From this amazing story in the Chicago Tribune: Dogs are renowned for loyalty to their owners, but sometimes it works the other way, too. Just ask Jared Gamboe, who stood vigil outside of a cave that he believed his dog was trapped inside for three days.
An avid raccoon hunter, Gamboe went out to the wooded area near Indian Lake Road in Delhi last Sunday night to hunt with two of his buddies and four dogs altogether. When the hunters unleashed their dogs, two ran off in one direction and two ran off in another. Gamboe's 2-year-old Treeing Walker coonhound, Threat, was one of the dogs that boldly ran off in pursuit of raccoons. "Within 15 minutes, I knew something was wrong, because I lost the signal from Threat's GPS collar, and Paul (Young) lost contact with his dog, Cassie, at the same time," Gamboe said.
A man's camouflage clothing and beard apparently contributed to his shooting death in a weekend hunting accident, Tehama County Sheriff Clay Parker said Monday. Larry Gene Pendley, 54, of Vacaville was shot in the head Saturday morning with a 12-gauge shotgun on the opening day of turkey hunting season ... by Stephen Henderson, 50, of Fremont ...
From an AP story via myCentralJersey.com: Coast Guard boats, planes and helicopters searched the roiling ocean off Cape May on Thursday for three commercial fishermen whose boat sank, and colleagues of the missing men prayed for a miracle. . . .
From the Billings Gazette: Lost in the Big Horn Mountains, presumed dead by family and friends and hallucinating because of too much wind and too little food, Travis McMahan, stumbling up a creek, found a dead fish.
“It looked all rotten,” he said. . . . “I cut its head off and skinned its back,” he said of the fish. “And there was good meat in there, so I ate it.”
So say you're stuck in the woods, the temperature's dropping fast and you need shelter and fire, quickly. There are trees all around but you have neither saw nor axe. All you have is your knife. It's not even a big Rambo-inspired, serrated-edge survival sword with a picatinny rail, but a twelve-dollar plastic-handled mora with a little four-inch blade. Hey, no problem.
What would it take for you to summon Search and Rescue? Lost for a day? Mauled by a bear? Fell out of your treestand? How about, tasted some salty water?
There's already been a boatload of bloviation expressed on the recent reversal of the ban on loaded firearms in our national parks, some of it sensible but most of it (predictably) bordering on hysterics.
"In fact, the new rule is likely to make national park visitors less safe around wildlife. Packing heat could give some people a false sense of security and make them more likely to approach bison, elk, moose, and grizzly bears, rather than keep a safe distance which is better for both people and animals."
But the most certain outcome of this congressional action is that it will promote poaching. The National Park Service warned in its fiscal 2006 budget submission each year for the past several years ... The data suggests that there is a significant domestic as well as international trade for illegally taken plant and animal parts." Poaching, the agency said, "is suspected to be a factor in the decline of at least 29 species of wildlife and could cause the extirpation of 19 species from the parks."