April 17, 2024 • 13 mins
Few people have been more qualified to survive a plane crash alone in the Amazon for almost two weeks than Juliane Koepcke. Let’s hear her story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's
Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave, which makes this
the traditional arrangement for short stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's right, A tale of survival of a young German woman.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah. I don't know why, but Julianne Kopka started making
the Rounds like a year ago, and since then everybody's
written on her story because it's an amazing story. But
I couldn't figure out what it was that set it off.
I heard about her on like some Quora thread that
was suggested to me, and I don't know if that's
(00:39):
the one that kicked it off or not. But she's
made the rounds and.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
She may have just opened up for business.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
No, no, I don't think so, because she released a
memoir and but that was back in twenty eleven, so
I don't know what happened. But she suddenly became part
of the zeitgeist. And I understand why for two reasons. One,
Zeitgeist is a German word, and she was a German
national by birth. And secondly, the story is just so
frankly amazing that everybody should know it.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, for sure, there's a great verner Herzog documentary about it.
That's a pretty quick watch for such a harrowing story,
but as all things for in our Herzog, I highly recommended.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It's called Wings of Hope or yeah, Wings of Hope.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
It's really good.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So she was a young woman that was raised in
the jungle. Her dad was a zoologist and her mom
was an ornithologist, and she was raised in the jungles
of Peru because they were researchers in the Amazon, and
she sort of grew up with this, I mean, I
think kind of idyllic life of you know, being this
(01:46):
nature girl living in the jungle.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
She said.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
She went to the school of the jungle and it
was a really unique upbringing for a young German woman.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, I mean her parents were like hardcore. They were
in Germany. They met in Germany. They were like, where's
a place that's just so biodiverse, it's not really on
the map. And they went there and they founded a
research station called Panguana And that place is still there today.
It's a large nature preserve now. But her parents founded
that and she was raised there starting in her tweens,
(02:16):
I believe, and then eventually moved on to private school
in Lima. But yeah, in between that time, like she
learned all of the animals, she learned what sounds they made,
she learned how to avoid who She basically just learned
how to survive in the jungle, which really set her
up nicely for one of the most significant events in
her young life that came later.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, it was a very sad event. Christmas Eve nineteen
seventy one. She was a seventeen year old. She was
on a flight with her mom and looking to go
celebrate Christmas with dad, and this flight turned really scary.
There's a very bad storm and one of the sort
of one of the few times where you can point
(02:59):
to an actual plane being struck by lightning in the
air hasn't happened that much. I think this one's regarded
as kind of the worst of all the times that's happened.
And with about twenty minutes to go in the flight,
this plane is hit and all of a sudden plumbing
toward the ground with ninety two people on board.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, what's said is apparently her mom was not a
fan of flying, she found it unnatural. And before it
got hit by lightning, it had started to hit some
horrible turbulence, like luggage was falling down on people from overhead,
and her mom said, she's like, I hope this goes okay.
So when the plane did start to break up, apparently
(03:43):
Julianne heard her mom say, now it's all over. So
that's pretty horrible, right, this is not just a regular
plane crest. They were at ten thousand feet and the
plane broke up so thoroughly that Julianne said that essentially
she didn't leave the plane. The plane left me. She
was still strapped to the bench seat that she had
been sitting next to her mother in, but all of
(04:05):
a sudden it was just her mother and the other passenger.
I guess we're just sucked right out of their seats.
And she found herself totally alone, ten thousand feet in
the air, headed straight down toward earth.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, just hurtling toward the ground. She said that, and
this is the only thing that saved our life, basically,
was this really thick jungle canopy.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
And she said she.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Remembers literally remembers being in the air, falling toward the
ground and seeing that the tree tops looked like heads
of broccoli. Next thing you know, she wakes up on
the ground. She's alive. She got a broken collar bone,
she's concussed, cut up pretty badly, got kind of you know,
beat in the face obviously, so one eye was swollen shut.
(04:50):
So she's in bad shape, kind of going in and
out of consciousness.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
But eventually he wakes up.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
She had pretty poor eyesight and was missing her glasses,
which was no good, and she would soon learn that
she was the only survivor out of the ninety two
passengers and crew.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, I say we take a break and come back,
because as bad is falling out of the sky two
miles down and surviving alone in the Amazon is it
actually just went from bad to worse for her at
this point, So you said, Flight five awaits considered the
(05:44):
worst lightning strike disaster in aviation history. Ninety one of
the ninety two people on board died, including her mother.
At this time, though when she'd landed miraculously survived falling
two miles down to earth from midair, she didn't know this,
so she started looking immediately for her mother. She spent
(06:04):
the first day of looking for her mom, looking for
anybody really, but in particular her mom, and she didn't
find anything. I don't know what day it was, I
think perhaps the fourth day of walking around in the Amazon.
I guess we can say she walked by herself in
the Amazon, surviving for eleven days. Day four, she came
(06:27):
around the bend and found a really grizzly piece of
wreckage that I can't imagine seeing this.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, this was two men and a woman who landed
headfirst so forcefully that they were buried three feet into
the ground.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
And this is the part I don't quite get.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
She checked the feet to see if it was her mother,
and saw that the toenails were painted, so she knew
it wasn't. But and I'm not nickpicking, she was clearly traumatized.
But I thought her mom got ripped apart or ripped
out of the seat next to her on the bench,
and so she wouldn't be strapped into another bench.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
But I guess that's a nippicky.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah. I know, I had the exact same thought, and
I chalked it up to trauma too, or just maybe
hope or something like that.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I don't know, sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
But yeah, yeah, I mean three people exactly, But I
mean imagine seeing three people still strapped to their bench seat,
all headfirst into the ground with their legs sticking up.
That's just I just can't imagine that stuff like that
actually happens sometimes in the world. And this poor girl
saw that on day four of wandering around the Amazon,
(07:33):
totally lost. But like we said, she was just about
as prepared for this experience as a person can be
from her upbringing. And she remembered after a while, like, Okay,
what did I learn as a kid about living in
the jungle. And one of the things that came to
(07:54):
her was her father telling her, if you're ever lost
in the jungle, find water and just follow it one
way or the other, because eventually you're going to find
humans living around that water.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Totally And that's a smart rule of thumb period, if
you're ever you know, lost in the woods or something,
and at the very least you have some water. And
she lived on that water because she didn't have much food.
She had a little bit of candy. It was a
wet season there, so there wasn't like low hanging fruit
literally that she could get a hold of. It was
obviously because it was wet season. It was super hot, superhumid,
(08:30):
but she did get some water from that river, which
kept her alive.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
And like you.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Said, for eleven days, she tried that creek, then stream,
then it became bigger into a river. Eventually she was
basically at the point where she had given up hope
and she was, you know, kind of succumbing to the
idea that she might die. And she saw a boat
on the river bank and thought it was a mirage,
but she went over and touched it to make sure
(08:56):
it was real. Followed a path from that boat to
a shack, where she found some forest workers who immediately
were like, you know great. They gave her some fruit
and started taking care of her and taking care of
her wounds right away.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah. I think when she came in the shack, their
famous quote was what the what? Yeah, this was gross.
I can't remember which article. I think it might have
been for the New York Times. Article by a guy
named Franz Litz, and he said that they poured gasoline
on her wounds that had maggots sprouting from it like
(09:30):
asparagus tips. I mean, she was in bad shape. Chuck,
just put yourself in this girl's mind for a second.
You don't need glasses, do you just like some reading glasses?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Maybe? Yeah, reading glasses?
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So you've never needed glasses.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Except to read.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
One of the worst things that can happen to you
if you wear glasses and are significantly nearsighted, in particular,
is to lose those classes. This girl wandered around the
Amazon for eleven days nearsighted without her glasses, and that
was one of the east of her concerns at that time.
I just when I think about that, it just sends
a chill down my spine because it's so awful to
(10:08):
not be able to see like that.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, I imagine.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
So she, you know, she survived, she got flown to safety,
she got reunited with her father. The real obviously huge
tragedy here for her personally and her for her father
was they lost their mother and wife. And so you know,
she comes back home, you know, obviously elated to be saved,
but instantly mourning her mom's loss.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
She avoided the media.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And that's why I think she maybe didn't you know,
was open for business more recently, because she very famously
avoided the media, except for Bernard Hertzog, who was supposed
to be on that flight because he was scouting stuff
for a either movie or documentary. I couldn't tell which
and he reached out. You know, he's very moved by
the story. Obviously because his close connection and reached out
(10:57):
to her, and again because of his Eastern European heritage,
they might have bonded or at least she trusted him,
and that's when he made wings of hope.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Man, it's just nuts. So yeah, in that documentary, apparently
he got her to go back to the wreckage site
and there's still yeah, man, plenty of wreckage just sitting
there in the jungle from that plane crash. Because it
crushed in such a remote area, there's just no way
they were ever going to remove it.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yeah, it was tough stuff. She also talked to some
of the people who saved her. It's really amazing.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, I've got to see that.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Then it's not long. You can watch it on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
There was something else that I thought was really great
about her. She apparently made one of those deals with
God or the universe or whatever and said, like, if
I make it through this, I promised to dedicate myself
to nature and humanity, And after she was saved, she
made good on it. She's she's been She's used a
lot of her spotlight to help drum up. I guess
(11:56):
contributions and donations to preserve the Amazon, particular to preserve Peguana.
That the preserve appropriately enough. It started out I think,
around four hundred and forty five acres, and it's grown
to four thousand plus because of her, just through private fundraising.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I wonder if God was like, oh, I thought you
were going to say, like in service of me, but
that's cool, like that that's good too, or.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
But first God said, how are you alive? So yeah.
One of the other sweet things I think about this
is she returned to Peguana. She got her own doctorate
in biology. She focused on bats and worked with her dad,
and then her dad died in two thousands, so she
took over the Panguana Biosphere Preserve in research station, and
(12:48):
as far as I know, still runs the show there
and she considers it her sanctuary, just like it was
for her parents.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I wonder if she has shirts that says not that biosphere.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Amazing Tales Survival. I'll tell you that much, buddy.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And does that mean short stuff? Is it?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I would say so?
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple
podcasts
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's
Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave, which makes this
the traditional arrangement for short stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's right, A tale of survival of a young German woman.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah. I don't know why, but Julianne Kopka started making
the Rounds like a year ago, and since then everybody's
written on her story because it's an amazing story. But
I couldn't figure out what it was that set it off.
I heard about her on like some Quora thread that
was suggested to me, and I don't know if that's
(00:39):
the one that kicked it off or not. But she's
made the rounds and.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
She may have just opened up for business.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
No, no, I don't think so, because she released a
memoir and but that was back in twenty eleven, so
I don't know what happened. But she suddenly became part
of the zeitgeist. And I understand why for two reasons. One,
Zeitgeist is a German word, and she was a German
national by birth. And secondly, the story is just so
frankly amazing that everybody should know it.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, for sure, there's a great verner Herzog documentary about it.
That's a pretty quick watch for such a harrowing story,
but as all things for in our Herzog, I highly recommended.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It's called Wings of Hope or yeah, Wings of Hope.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
It's really good.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So she was a young woman that was raised in
the jungle. Her dad was a zoologist and her mom
was an ornithologist, and she was raised in the jungles
of Peru because they were researchers in the Amazon, and
she sort of grew up with this, I mean, I
think kind of idyllic life of you know, being this
(01:46):
nature girl living in the jungle.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
She said.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
She went to the school of the jungle and it
was a really unique upbringing for a young German woman.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, I mean her parents were like hardcore. They were
in Germany. They met in Germany. They were like, where's
a place that's just so biodiverse, it's not really on
the map. And they went there and they founded a
research station called Panguana And that place is still there today.
It's a large nature preserve now. But her parents founded
that and she was raised there starting in her tweens,
(02:16):
I believe, and then eventually moved on to private school
in Lima. But yeah, in between that time, like she
learned all of the animals, she learned what sounds they made,
she learned how to avoid who She basically just learned
how to survive in the jungle, which really set her
up nicely for one of the most significant events in
her young life that came later.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, it was a very sad event. Christmas Eve nineteen
seventy one. She was a seventeen year old. She was
on a flight with her mom and looking to go
celebrate Christmas with dad, and this flight turned really scary.
There's a very bad storm and one of the sort
of one of the few times where you can point
(02:59):
to an actual plane being struck by lightning in the
air hasn't happened that much. I think this one's regarded
as kind of the worst of all the times that's happened.
And with about twenty minutes to go in the flight,
this plane is hit and all of a sudden plumbing
toward the ground with ninety two people on board.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, what's said is apparently her mom was not a
fan of flying, she found it unnatural. And before it
got hit by lightning, it had started to hit some
horrible turbulence, like luggage was falling down on people from overhead,
and her mom said, she's like, I hope this goes okay.
So when the plane did start to break up, apparently
(03:43):
Julianne heard her mom say, now it's all over. So
that's pretty horrible, right, this is not just a regular
plane crest. They were at ten thousand feet and the
plane broke up so thoroughly that Julianne said that essentially
she didn't leave the plane. The plane left me. She
was still strapped to the bench seat that she had
been sitting next to her mother in, but all of
(04:05):
a sudden it was just her mother and the other passenger.
I guess we're just sucked right out of their seats.
And she found herself totally alone, ten thousand feet in
the air, headed straight down toward earth.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, just hurtling toward the ground. She said that, and
this is the only thing that saved our life, basically,
was this really thick jungle canopy.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
And she said she.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Remembers literally remembers being in the air, falling toward the
ground and seeing that the tree tops looked like heads
of broccoli. Next thing you know, she wakes up on
the ground. She's alive. She got a broken collar bone,
she's concussed, cut up pretty badly, got kind of you know,
beat in the face obviously, so one eye was swollen shut.
(04:50):
So she's in bad shape, kind of going in and
out of consciousness.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
But eventually he wakes up.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
She had pretty poor eyesight and was missing her glasses,
which was no good, and she would soon learn that
she was the only survivor out of the ninety two
passengers and crew.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, I say we take a break and come back,
because as bad is falling out of the sky two
miles down and surviving alone in the Amazon is it
actually just went from bad to worse for her at
this point, So you said, Flight five awaits considered the
(05:44):
worst lightning strike disaster in aviation history. Ninety one of
the ninety two people on board died, including her mother.
At this time, though when she'd landed miraculously survived falling
two miles down to earth from midair, she didn't know this,
so she started looking immediately for her mother. She spent
(06:04):
the first day of looking for her mom, looking for
anybody really, but in particular her mom, and she didn't
find anything. I don't know what day it was, I
think perhaps the fourth day of walking around in the Amazon.
I guess we can say she walked by herself in
the Amazon, surviving for eleven days. Day four, she came
(06:27):
around the bend and found a really grizzly piece of
wreckage that I can't imagine seeing this.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, this was two men and a woman who landed
headfirst so forcefully that they were buried three feet into
the ground.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
And this is the part I don't quite get.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
She checked the feet to see if it was her mother,
and saw that the toenails were painted, so she knew
it wasn't. But and I'm not nickpicking, she was clearly traumatized.
But I thought her mom got ripped apart or ripped
out of the seat next to her on the bench,
and so she wouldn't be strapped into another bench.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
But I guess that's a nippicky.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah. I know, I had the exact same thought, and
I chalked it up to trauma too, or just maybe
hope or something like that.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I don't know, sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
But yeah, yeah, I mean three people exactly, But I
mean imagine seeing three people still strapped to their bench seat,
all headfirst into the ground with their legs sticking up.
That's just I just can't imagine that stuff like that
actually happens sometimes in the world. And this poor girl
saw that on day four of wandering around the Amazon,
(07:33):
totally lost. But like we said, she was just about
as prepared for this experience as a person can be
from her upbringing. And she remembered after a while, like, Okay,
what did I learn as a kid about living in
the jungle. And one of the things that came to
(07:54):
her was her father telling her, if you're ever lost
in the jungle, find water and just follow it one
way or the other, because eventually you're going to find
humans living around that water.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Totally And that's a smart rule of thumb period, if
you're ever you know, lost in the woods or something,
and at the very least you have some water. And
she lived on that water because she didn't have much food.
She had a little bit of candy. It was a
wet season there, so there wasn't like low hanging fruit
literally that she could get a hold of. It was
obviously because it was wet season. It was super hot, superhumid,
(08:30):
but she did get some water from that river, which
kept her alive.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
And like you.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Said, for eleven days, she tried that creek, then stream,
then it became bigger into a river. Eventually she was
basically at the point where she had given up hope
and she was, you know, kind of succumbing to the
idea that she might die. And she saw a boat
on the river bank and thought it was a mirage,
but she went over and touched it to make sure
(08:56):
it was real. Followed a path from that boat to
a shack, where she found some forest workers who immediately
were like, you know great. They gave her some fruit
and started taking care of her and taking care of
her wounds right away.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah. I think when she came in the shack, their
famous quote was what the what? Yeah, this was gross.
I can't remember which article. I think it might have
been for the New York Times. Article by a guy
named Franz Litz, and he said that they poured gasoline
on her wounds that had maggots sprouting from it like
(09:30):
asparagus tips. I mean, she was in bad shape. Chuck,
just put yourself in this girl's mind for a second.
You don't need glasses, do you just like some reading glasses?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Maybe? Yeah, reading glasses?
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So you've never needed glasses.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Except to read.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
One of the worst things that can happen to you
if you wear glasses and are significantly nearsighted, in particular,
is to lose those classes. This girl wandered around the
Amazon for eleven days nearsighted without her glasses, and that
was one of the east of her concerns at that time.
I just when I think about that, it just sends
a chill down my spine because it's so awful to
(10:08):
not be able to see like that.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, I imagine.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
So she, you know, she survived, she got flown to safety,
she got reunited with her father. The real obviously huge
tragedy here for her personally and her for her father
was they lost their mother and wife. And so you know,
she comes back home, you know, obviously elated to be saved,
but instantly mourning her mom's loss.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
She avoided the media.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And that's why I think she maybe didn't you know,
was open for business more recently, because she very famously
avoided the media, except for Bernard Hertzog, who was supposed
to be on that flight because he was scouting stuff
for a either movie or documentary. I couldn't tell which
and he reached out. You know, he's very moved by
the story. Obviously because his close connection and reached out
(10:57):
to her, and again because of his Eastern European heritage,
they might have bonded or at least she trusted him,
and that's when he made wings of hope.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Man, it's just nuts. So yeah, in that documentary, apparently
he got her to go back to the wreckage site
and there's still yeah, man, plenty of wreckage just sitting
there in the jungle from that plane crash. Because it
crushed in such a remote area, there's just no way
they were ever going to remove it.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yeah, it was tough stuff. She also talked to some
of the people who saved her. It's really amazing.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, I've got to see that.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Then it's not long. You can watch it on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
There was something else that I thought was really great
about her. She apparently made one of those deals with
God or the universe or whatever and said, like, if
I make it through this, I promised to dedicate myself
to nature and humanity, And after she was saved, she
made good on it. She's she's been She's used a
lot of her spotlight to help drum up. I guess
(11:56):
contributions and donations to preserve the Amazon, particular to preserve Peguana.
That the preserve appropriately enough. It started out I think,
around four hundred and forty five acres, and it's grown
to four thousand plus because of her, just through private fundraising.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I wonder if God was like, oh, I thought you
were going to say, like in service of me, but
that's cool, like that that's good too, or.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
But first God said, how are you alive? So yeah.
One of the other sweet things I think about this
is she returned to Peguana. She got her own doctorate
in biology. She focused on bats and worked with her dad,
and then her dad died in two thousands, so she
took over the Panguana Biosphere Preserve in research station, and
(12:48):
as far as I know, still runs the show there
and she considers it her sanctuary, just like it was
for her parents.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I wonder if she has shirts that says not that biosphere.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Amazing Tales Survival. I'll tell you that much, buddy.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And does that mean short stuff? Is it?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I would say so?
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple
podcasts
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Death, Sex & Money
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.