The human body is an incredible thing when you think about it. That we can build tools, create machines, art, music, science and so much more. That we can communicate and understand what it even means to be alive; a real, thinking being is unique to just us. Maybe it's no surprise then that every so often one amongst us manages to do what sounds impossible, to defy all logic and odds and survive when everything seems to be against us.

The Little Girl and Her Dog

When you think of survivors, generally you imagine an adult, someone who can be in control of the situation and use their wits and some luck to get out of a sticky situation and, if not that, at least their strength to do so. But sometimes a three year old and her puppy can do some pretty amazing things as well.

In a remote part of Siberia, three-year-old Karina Chikitova left home with her dog to follow her father, who was on a trip to his native village. The father had no idea his daughter was following him and the mother, realizing the girl was gone, assumed the father had taken her with him at the last minute. The area they live in is extremely remote with very limited phone communication, so there was no way to check for four days. Four days the girl was missing before either parent knew.

A search was launched for the girl, now presumed to be lost in the grassy lands nearby that were home to wolves and bears. Due to the length of the grass in this area, an aerial search would be all but useless. It would have to be on foot.

She had been missing for a total of nine days when the dog she had left with returned to the home. Initially everyone thought this meant the worst, that the dog had come home alone and the girl must be dead. But the persistent pup had not abandoned the girl, it had returned and immediately went back out, leading rescuers right to the little girl. Incredibly she had survived on blueberries and water from a river, snuggling with the dog to keep warm at night. Though badly bitten by mosquitoes and other bugs, she seemed fine otherwise, thanks to the help of the dog.

The Sole Survivor

In 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke was on a flight with her mother from Lima, Peru to a site in the rain forest where her zoologist father was working. They wanted to spend Christmas with him.

The flight ran into a storm after about an hour in, and Koepcke remembers a bright flash to the side of the plane before it started a nose dive. A bolt of lightning had hit the fuel tank and torn the wing completely off. As the plane descended, it was literally ripped to pieces mid-air. And Koepcke was thrown from the plane.

She said she doesn't remember what happened next, she must have passed out. And when she woke up, she was flying – free falling mid air, strapped to a row of seats, with the jungle spinning towards her from below. And she passed out again.

The fall was two miles straight down and, somehow, Koepcke went through the canopy of the rainforest and crashed to the ground below with almost no serious injuries – a broken collar bones, a few cuts and bruises. Ninety-one other passengers died.

In the jungle, she passed out for the better part of a day and awoke alone and stranded. But the jungle was not new to her – her parents had been working there for some time and she had been with them. So she went walking until she found a creek after a day, and then followed the creek like her father had told her to do if she ever got lost.

During her journey she found other crash victims, all dead. She followed water, wading through streams avoiding crocodiles and piranhas, her only food some candy she'd had in her pockets. For 10 days she travelled until she found a hut and some Peruvian lumberjacks. She was brought to a town and was treated for her wounds – her arm had been infected with parasites and over 50 maggots were pulled from a cut But she was alive.

Double Atom Bombs

There is one man in all the world who was recognized as having seen the most horrible thing mankind has ever unleashed upon itself not once, but twice. His name was Tsutomu Yamaguchi and he was the only man to have survived both atomic blasts that hit Japan in the Second World War.

Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on business the morning of August 6th, 1945 when the first bomb was dropped. He was on the street when the Enola Gay flew over and remembered seeing it pass, and two small parachutes come out. The blast, about 3 km away, temporarily blinded him and knocked him over, rupturing his ear drums and burning the top, left side of his body.

Yamaguchi crawled to some shelter and rested for a bit. He left to find work colleagues he had left behind and together they returned the next day to the city they were from – Nagasaki.

The following day in Nagasaki, Yamaguchi had his wounds treated and then, like an absolute boss, went in to work. He was actually telling his boss about the bomb he had seen when the second bomber flew over Nagasaki and dropped the bomb, again about 3km away from Yamaguchi. This blast did not injure him, but as a result of his first injury he did fall ill and suffer a fever for about a week. However, he pulled through and went on to live until the age of 93, though he did suffer a number of radiation-related ailments.

The Ant Dive

Joan Murray was the kind of person who likes to experience an adrenaline rush and had taken up skydiving as a hobby. By no means an expert, Joan had done about 30 jumps before her fateful jump in 1999. She leapt from the plane at 14,500 feet in the air and went into her freefall. But when it came time to pull the chute, something had gone terribly wrong.

Murray's parachute failed to deploy. She had a backup chute, but perhaps due to a mix of panic and inexperience, she was extremely late to remember. At only 700 feet from the ground, in a dead spin, she pulled the cord. The spin prevented the backup from inflating properly and failed to slow her fall. She landed hard and what should have ended her life took an incredible and unprecedented turn.

Murray's landing site was dead center in a mound of fire ants. Her crash disturbed the nest and fire ants, not known for having a gentle disposition, attacked her in a large group. Hundreds of ants bit Murray with their painful little stings. But amazingly, the influx of ant venom actually stimulated Murray's heart and kept her alive long enough for paramedics to get her to a hospital. Had it not been for the venom coursing through her veins giving her an adrenaline boost, the extent of her injuries likely would have killed her.

As it was, many bones on her right side were completely shattered, the force knocked fillings from her teeth and she spent two weeks in a coma. But if not for the ants, she likely wouldn't have even made it to the hospital.

The Persistent Pup

OK, so this one isn't human, but still pretty impressive. Most dog owners like to take their pets with them when they go on outings, whether that be camping, to the beach, or out boating. This turned out to be a rough ordeal for a German Shepherd named Luna, however, when she fell off her owner's fishing boat.

Luna's owner searched for the dog, including reporting her missing to a nearby Naval Base. But after a week of searching, neither her owner nor Navy staff were able to find the dog and she was considered lost at sea.

Five weeks after Luna went missing, Naval officers were on an island two miles from where she'd disappeared, about 80 miles off the coast of San Diego, and ran across the happy pup on the side of the road. There are no domesticated animals on the island normally, so they suspected this was the dog that had vanished a month back, and it seemed like she had survived by eating wild mice on the island. A quick check at the vet found her to be in fairly good health, if a little undernourished.