Morbid - Episode 419: The Unbelievable Survival Tale of Juliane Koepcke

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

Juliane Koepcke's story will have you questioning any recent complaint you've made. This woman was the sole survivor of a plane crash in 1971. After the plane went down, she continued to survive in the AMAZON RAINFOREST among hundreds and hundreds of predators. It took 11 days for her to be rescued and when you hear what Julianne faced within those 11 days, you will be a changed human.When I Fell From the Sky by Juliane KoepckeList of books to help with fear of flying OR just education on flying and flying mechanics! Cockpit Confidential by Patrick SmithSoar by Tom BunnBBC. 2012. Juliane Koepcke: How I survived a plane crash. March 24. Accessed November 30, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17476615.1998. Wings of Hope. Directed by Werner Herzog. Performed by Juliane Koepcke.Koepcke, Juliane, and Beate Rygiert. 2011. When I Fell From the Sky: the True Story of One Woman's Miraculous Survival. Translated by Ross Benjamin. Green Bay, WI: TitleTown Publishing, LLC.New York Times. 1951. "Colombia Plane Crashes: 27 killed when Lansa Craft Falls." New York Times, March 22: 13.—. 1970. "Peru panel studies crash fatal to 99." New York Times, April 13: 2.—. 1971. "Plane Carrying 93 Missing Over the Mountains of Peru." New York Times, December 25: 20.United Press. 1948. "2 Britons Among 30 Dead In Colombian Air Crash." New York Times, December 16: 16.Wigg, Richard. 1972. "Girl's ordeal starts a jungle search." The Times, January 6: 5.Williams, Sally. 2012. "The woman who fell to earth." Daily Telegraph, March 17.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, Prime members, you can listen to morbid, early, and ad-free on Amazon music. Download the app today. You're listening to Immorbid Network Podcast. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of Wondries Podcast American Scandal. Our newest series looks at the Kids for Cash Scandal, a story about two judges who stood accused of making millions of dollars in a brazen scheme that shattered the lives of countless children. Listen to American scandal on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey weirdos, I'm Melina, I'm Ash and this is morbid. Yeah it ooze.

Today we're doing a survivor tale. Ooh, I feel like we haven't done a survivor tale in a minute. We have not. And this one, I have had on my list forever, but was scared to do it because it's a plain crash survivor. Have you ever really talked that in depth about your fear of flying? I've probably mentioned it. I don't know how far I've gone into it.

So we're going to be covering the survival tale of Julianne Copka. This was back in 1971. We're going to go through what happened her life and her journey after she survived. Julianne, I'm telling you guys after you hear this, go read her book, like go learn more about her life.

Like she is such an inspiring lady. Ooh, so inspiring, like outrageously inspiring. She flies all the time now after this. And when you hear what happened, you're gonna be like, excuse me. So this is actually, I didn't know if this was going to help or hurt. Do you think it helped?

I think it helped. Okay, because I'm like, well, fuck me. If Julian can get on flights, what the hell am I complaining about? Like, what the hell? You're like, I've never gone down in a fiery crash. Oh, Lord, why would you say that about? I guess it's not Jesus Christ.

I'm like, do't mean to put that. I thought we were out in there for a while. Never walking on all the wood. But yeah, so I'm sorry. So I have a debilitating fear of flying. Yes. And when I say debilitating, I mean, Ash witnessed it for the first time last year. Yeah.

And I literally walk into the plane and tears. Like I've seen Elena cry maybe like a handful of times in my life. I think like when sad things in her family have happened or like, Bubba, I would say like maybe three to five times. Yeah. And you walking under a plane was one of them. And I've also never seen you look scared. Yeah.

Other than when you're getting on a plane. It's've also never seen you look scared, other than when you're getting on a plane. It's honestly, I can say for sure, it's the only time I feel completely out of control of myself and my emotions. Well, you kind of, I mean, you are out of control. I mean, you are out of control. Fearful. Yeah. I have never felt fear like I fell walking onto a plane. I think a fear of flying is one of the easiest fears to kind of comprehend, like from an outsider's perspective. Yeah. Because it makes sense.

Because you're just kind of like, how do we fly up there? I don't like how it's going to happen. I don't like to think about it too much. But honestly, thinking about it actually helps more. Because it will help you understand. That's at least it helped me. Yeah. I don't know if it'll help everybody.

I'm not going to sit here and be like, it'll help everyone across the board. But I can tell you, the people I've talked to that also have dealt with fears of flying, so they found comfort in like, there's a lot of books. And honestly, I'm gonna link the books in the show notes to just in case some of you have a fear of flying,

it's a common fear. You know, and I'm telling you, I don't know if you have a fear of flying if listening to this episode is gonna help or hurt you. So I'm not you, I don't know if you have a fear of flying. It's listening to this episode is going to help or hurt you. So I'm not going to sit here and claim it did. It helped me researching it, but I don't know if it's going to freak someone out that has a fear of flying. So just know that going in.

But I will link the books because I got a few books that helped like understand the mechanics of flying. Okay. And understand the physics and understand air flow and understand wind shear and understand what turbulence actually is. And it makes you understand the physics and understand airflow and understand wind shear and understand what turbulence actually is and Jello it makes you understand the whole thing so you're kind of up there and you're like All right, so that's what that bump was okay, so that bump isn't a big deal because that's what's happening Or like you know the the earth is cooling at an irregular rate and that's why I felt a little bump because it let like push

Samara like and it's actually kind of interesting. Yeah, well, and you love science. Yeah, so it's very sciencey. It's like a nice way of just making it tangible, I think. I need something that I can hold on to. Just statistics don't really help me. I need tangible things to be like. I understand that. This makes sense.

But I will tell you that I'm literally like, like I get all the physical symptoms of anxiety on a flight. I burst into tears in the middle of a flight. As soon as a bump hits, I will look over at John and he always says the look in my eyes is like nothing he's ever seen. Like it's always just pure fear. Oh yeah, when we flew together, me and you were in the front and you were closer to the back and watching you walk

to your seat, I've never in my life seen you look as scared as in that moment. It's like walking to an execution to me. It's like what do I feel I would think it looked like? Yeah, like walking down the green mile. I feel like that's how it feels to me. But after like learning about all this, I was like, well, Julianne just gets on planes now.

That's crazy. And she just gets on planes to do really good shit for the environment and for animals and to further research and shit and to better herself. And I'm like, well, Julianne can do that. After what I'm about to tell you, I can stop. Are you having a Patrick Swayze Donny Darko moment with the little kid and he's like, I'm not afraid! I'm not afraid anymore! That's literally me right now. Let's hope it carries on

until I go into Disney with the kids and stuff and get it on a plane. But you know, this is, this is an amazing tale. So first, I'm going to talk about, you know, Julian, who she is, how she grew up, because it is a huge part of how she survived. Okay. So we're gonna talk about Julian Copka. And like I said, I'm terrified of flying, so this was definitely immersive therapy for me and I'm glad I did it, finally.

But I know that things have changed in airline safety now, and that this wasn't even in, you know, the United States. So it was like a totally different set of protocols and all that. This was also in the 70s. Anything went. We're going to find out that this airline was not great. This quote unquote airline. I honestly would say quote-unquote airline. It's not around anymore. It ended right after this actually. So don't worry about that. But this is a terrifying

tale that does, it does turn into like a tale of perseverance, of strength, of like inspiration, it's wild. Julian's a badass. She's a real testament to what the human body, the mind, and honestly, like the human spirit can withstand and endure. So what happened was December 24, 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Copca and her mother Maria were set to take a flight to Peculpa from Lima, Peru. Peculpa was about 450 miles away from where they were and the flight would have only been about an hour. They had done it before. But the airline they were essentially forced to take this flight on had a long history of tragic and terrifying air disasters. And in fact, the plane that they took this flight on was the only plane that the airline had left because they lost so

many planes. Are you fucking kidding me? This was it. Yeah. Oh, so backing up, we're going to talk about Julien first. Julien Copka was born in October of 1954 in Lima, Peru. Her parents were Maria, who she took this flight with. And her father was Hans Wilheim. Originally, he was from Germany. Hans and Maria had met each other while they were in a biology doctorial, doctoral, doctoral program and keel.

Oh, how fucking rad. They were both brilliant. Clearly. Like brilliant. This is a brilliant family. They had focused and excelled in studying ornithology, and this is the study of birds, essentially. Oh, cool. They also were heavily focused purely on zoology.

They were just very interested in animals, like fluorophon of the Amazon. They were, the research they did is outrageous and is still going on today. Once they graduated, they were looking to live in an area where they could like really dig their heels in and have a diverse and exciting field to put their degrees to good use in.

They found that Peru was just that place because there was a lot of unexplored areas of very highly diverse creatures there. So they moved together and they married there as well. And this was a massive thing at the time because during this time it was wildly taboo and completely unheard of really for a woman to even get a doctorate degree,

especially in a scientific field of study. But then Maria took it to another level when she moved with Hans to a foreign country before they were even married. Level up. Level up. Level up. Level up. Level up. She was a super strong, really determined and completely capable woman, and Julian is exactly like her in every way, truly. In fact, this is likely what allowed Julian to survive when the odds were catastrophically stacked against her. In fact, just to show you what kind of woman Maria was, she was once on a two-month excursion into the Amazon in 1955 when she was involved in a severe accident, a truck hit a power line,

and it ended up hitting Maria. She lost her sense of smell and taste from this and suffered serious injuries, but her only concern was how she was missing work and wanted to get back to it. Oh my God. Yeah. Just like, I want to keep doing my research. Good for her. Julian later said that when she was able to see her mother in her work environment She was struck by how patient and tenacious at the same time she was and she said nothing would deter her mother from a goal She this served her really well because Maria published several books and pamphlets on zoology and ornithology And was one of the most renowned ornithologists in Peru. How incredible is that? And this is, that's incredible anyways,

but the fact that women just like weren't really allowed to do this, exactly. Like, she credited. She just plowed through any boundaries that were like figurative or physical in front of her, was like, no, I'm doing this. She was like, I don't give a fuck. I'm gonna do it. Yeah, she's a badass. Now, was like, no, I'm doing this. She was like, I don't give a fuck, I'm gonna do it.

Yeah, she's a badass. Now, her father Hans was just like Maria. Like, they found their match in each other. Hans was someone who never backed down and never complained either. He just did what he wanted to do, did what he had to do, never complained. Whenever I hear about somebody that doesn't complain,

I'm like, I complained so much. And then I'm like, I should stop doing that. Like, come. Oh my God, I know. But he had a lot of adventure and a lot of hard work under his belt. And Julien was always an awe of him as well as her mother. She said she was just always impressed by her parents.

Those are like the two most incredible role models you could have. And it's like, that's all you want as a parent. Yes, for your kid to be like, wow, I'm an awe of my parents. Totally. And he actually wrote a book about zoology and aminals, aminals. Because I was about to say the kids too much.

I did, and I was about to say Amazon and animals at the same time, so I just reversed them. Animals in the Amazon, rainforest called the basis for a universally valid biological theory. That. Do you know it? It's a massive tomb of knowledge at over 1600 pages and covers everything you could ever want to know

about animal life in the rainforest. That's wild. Like wild. Wildsly, he had survived his own perils in his lifetime as well. He had been offered a job in South America Wildly, he had survived his own perils in his lifetime as well. He had been offered a job in South America in this being the 1940s when this happened. He had to make his own way there.

So he hitchhiked and hiked on his own through the Alps to get there. Fuck. Then when he was later in Italy for his studies, he was kidnapped and held in a prison camp in Naples. And he was later in Italy for his studies. He was kidnapped and held in a prison camp in Naples. And he escaped. And my ass this morning is like, I know it again. I was bad. I was like, I heard.

Like, they didn't do my coffee right at Starbucks. Yeah, fucking. My whole day is ruined. Oh, it's like damn. This honestly, this was a good, it's a wake up call. To begin the new year with. Yeah. Because it gave me this like, oh, shut the fuck up energy.

Yeah. It might just do your job. So what she wrote in her book, which is I fell from the sky. Oh. Yeah. It's, I'll, again, I'll link it in the show notes. When I fell from the sky, it's an amazing book. I'm proud of you for even saying those words.

Yeah. It's an amazing book. I really am. It's a saying those words. Yeah, it's an amazing book. I really am. It's a really amazing book. But my god is a terrifying. She said, I often think of my father's long, arduous, audicy when I find myself in danger of becoming a little disperited.

Yeah. And she said, his story is an illustration for me that it pays not to let things get you down. Girl, I'm saying. Isn't this a good, like, happy new year? I'm like, what's real? I'm not for real. I'm a Julian.

Julian is writing my anthem. She is. She's writing everything. So they had both built really impressive lives and careers around themselves through hard work and just discipline and perseverance and passion. They were thriving as a family. After their wedding in Lima, Peru, Maria

found out that she was pregnant with her remarkable daughter, Julien. I love this story so far, but I'm getting sad because I know, I know. They did have a wonderful life together. I will say that. Good. After Julien was born in 1951, Hans's brother, Yokem moved to Lima as well, and this was Hans' brother. Yep. Unfortunately, Yokem, he died shortly after moving due to spasms, I guess. Huh. But it was tragic. And still, the cause of death is completely unknown. And after his death, Hans' mother and his sister traveled to Peru to be with the little family and to kind of just like welcome Julianne into the world.

Yeah, and kind of like a cool, each other. Yeah. Do you think spasms was like seizures? I think it probably was. Just unreal world. Yeah, and kind of like a cool beach other. Yeah. Do you think spasms was like seizures? I think it probably was. Just unreal, I think. Yeah. I imagine that it was probably like, you know, epilepsy. Right.

Now Julian's childhood seemed like it was pretty wonderful. I could see. Yeah, sounds like it. She remembers being surrounded by animals and family, which sounds pretty great for a kid. Oh my god, it's like the fucking wild born bear. It really is. It just hit.

There you go. She also learned compassion and hard work very early on from her very impressive and very hardworking parents. She would help her mother a lot, nursing sick birds, and taking care of young chicks that lived in their home because Maria would take in any sick bird. I know that's fun. And she would nurse them back to health always. Can you imagine how rewarding that would be? And seeing your mother, like that is teaching true empathy and compassion for something that you that like most people don't show compassion for. It's so true.

And something that can't give anything back to you. It's just something that you are purely giving to. Exactly. And not getting anything back, but you just a sense of I helped that. That's the main thing. You know, it's like it can't do anything for. No, I mean, you know a sense of, I helped that. That's the main thing. You know, it's like, it can't do anything for, I mean, you know, it can be beautiful, but it's like, it's like much in return.

It's not gonna sit there and like, you know, pay the bill at the end. You know, like, but in fact, through all of the hundreds and hundreds of birds that Maria and her daughter brought into their homes sick or injured, not one of them died under Maria's care. Wow. All of them were saved. The importance of compassion and kindness were certainly a big deal in their home, but they also needed to make sure that Julianne knew the perils of living in the Amazon rainforest. They taught her a deep appreciation for the wonders, but also the vast dangers

that lurked within it. Totally. She was quickly shown how to survive and navigate the world around her without modern technology. They wanted her to always be prepared to make something out of absolutely nothing. And it's so fortunate that they did that. I was gonna say it sounds like it would have been a major key.

Oh, the most. So they took her as young as five years old onto hikes with them through the Amazon, where they would camp out in very simple tents or sleeping open and sleeping bags. Wow. And taught her how to survive there. Goodness. And what to avoid, what would help her, what kind of things she could eat, what she shouldn't even touch, how animals act around humans when they're going to attack, how animals act when they are just curious, you know, all of that.

But because of her parents' hard work and willingness to make themselves uncomfortable for their careers and betterment of their family's lives, they were doing pretty well financially. They had a maid, Alita, who Julianne became very close to. In fact, she is still close to her two day. I love that. They still have a relationship. She had very fond memories of

this time in her life and she said the people that she was surrounded by, like the best kind of piece. When she was of age, Julien attended the Alexander von Humboldt school. It's a German Peruvian's private school in Lima. This school was pretty prestigious and was mainly catered towards international students from like pretty wealthy families. She had friends and again holds very good memories of this time in her life. She said every she was a very normal kid, very happy, very healthy. Yeah. It had always been Hans and Maria's dream to take their research and conservation passions and skills to another level. And they wanted to open a conservation and research center

in the Peruvian jungle. How fucking awesome. And they did. I knew it. Of course they did. You didn't even have to say it. They were finally able to achieve this in 1968 when they opened their facility called Pangwana in 1968.

There they planned to live deep in the Peruvian jungle. They thought for about five years, studying the native flora and fauna. The thing was, Pengwana was far away, like really far into the jungle. It took days and days and days to travel through rivers, trails, jungles. It was super dangerous. It was long. It was arduous. During their trek, they would sleep wrapped in wool blankets on river banks and had to truly use all of their skills to survive together. But Julie Ann later said that at the time of this journey, she was 14 years old.

Wow. And she said at the time, she wasn't psyched at the idea of living in the jungle for years. She's like, I loved the whole thing, but like, I don't want to actually live in the jungle for years. She said, quote, I was less than thrilled by the idea of living in the jungle. I imagined sitting all day in the gloom under tall trees whose dense canopy of leaves wouldn't let a single ray of sunlight in. But luckily, because of her closest with her parents and her adventurous and very adaptive spirit, she was able to really find that she loved living in the jungle with her parents. She leaned in. It wasn't easy, though.

They had a house that was on stilts and had no, like, it had, like, half walls, and just, like, a canopy over it. Wow. It had to be really high, like, very high, to stay away from predators and flooding, and she would have to stay away from poisonous creatures, like spiders and snakes and all that, while doing just about everything. Yeah. Anything. about everything. Yeah, anything. Like sleeping.

Yeah. And all manner of animals were all up in her business at any given time, like bats and like in the house, like you know, fruit bats and they would be all kinds of like things just crawling in there and they'd have to make sure that they were out and not poisonous. There was no electricity, no running water

because they didn't want any modern devices making noise to scare animals away. Like they didn't want a generator because that would keep all animals away. Right. So they just, they were researching. What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill or are they made to kill?

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Hey Prime members, listen to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast Killer Psychie Daily in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today. So her whole life had led up to this. She had been taught to survive, thrive, and to live with animals in the wild her whole life. And now she was legitimately putting those skills to the test, and she was gaining a lot of new ones every day that she lived there.

She became even closer to her parents during this time and they really soaked in what they had to teach her while she was there. Now after a year and a half in 1970, unfortunately, this way of life had come to an end because the powers that be started to become concerned that Julian, although she was doing homeschooling, was not receiving a proper education in the jungle. And they said if she didn't return to Lima to take on a regular school curriculum, they weren't gonna let her graduate.

They all understood. I was gonna say, yeah, I have to. No one fought this, everyone was like, we get it. Yeah, well, and they are two people that are like, all in total educated. Highly educated, yeah. And they were like, you know what, she has great experience.

Plenty. And we are glad we gave that to her. And now she's got to do this. But now she can finish. She can always come back. Exactly. Now luckily, because she was surrounded her whole life by her family and people who loved her,

she was able to stay with family friends in Lima and continue her schooling at the same school while her parents stayed at Panguana. Okay. Now, Julien was always one to adapt in the jungle and in social situations. She was a survivor through and through. So she fell right back into the traditional

like school environment, like nothing happened. You imagine one day and you're in the jungle in the next year in a desk. Yeah, I'm just like living in the jungle for a year and a half and here I am, I'm at a desk and like nothing's changed. Like we got new kids all the time, but like none like that.

Imagine that fucking new kid showing up, right? We're not that she was new. She was in the studio. But then Julian, it's like whatever, like nothing's changed. So cool. She fell right back into the traditional school environment, right back in with her group of friends. Like she referred to this as quote, a wonderful lighthearted time and one that helped her grow

in a different way than her adventurous time in the jungle day. So the following year in December of 1971, Julian had blasted through her curriculum and had earned the credits and all the grades to graduate. She would graduate on December 23rd in 1971. She was also looking forward to the Fiesta de Promotion, I believe it is, which is a party thrown by the school to celebrate graduation as well. That's awesome. Her mother Maria traveled to Lima that November to spend time with Julien, and they had planned to fly back to Pocolpa after graduation.

They would spend the holidays together, and the Maria would travel back to Panguana. Maria had actually intended to leave a few days earlier, but Julien had wanted her understandably to stay for graduation, so she stayed. She didn't leave earlier. So Maria initially tried to book them a flight on faucet airlines, but unfortunately, with the holidays, there was no tickets.

So the literal only option they had was Lanza Airlines because they were the only other airline that actually flew to Pecolpa. This airline was bad. It had a very bad history of crashes and mishaps and huns that her father was horrified that they were going to be flying on it. Well you said they only had one plane left because all the others had been demolished. Oh, yeah, this is the last plane. That's like that alone. I'd be like, no. Hey, Hans actually insisted they cancel

in book with another airline. Even if it meant staying another day, he was like, I don't want you coming on that. But Maria wanted to get back home really bad and she didn't want to wait. So Lansa had 20 years of terrible history behind it in 1971. Just to name a few, a 1948, a Lancet flight from Columbia crashed five minutes after takeoff and killed everyone on board. Oh my god. Most of these crashes,

by the way, if not all of them are due to pilot error and lax maintenance on the plane. So they just were. They just didn't care. They were hiring anybody and not taking care of their planes. Less than two years after that, a lance of flight crashed into the side of a volcano in Southern Columbia.

Oh my God. And one year after that, another crash occurred where 27 passengers and crew were all killed. In 1966, a lance of flight 101, carrying 49 people went missing in the Andes, and it was found that due to pilot error, it had crashed into a mountainside. Oh my God.

In 1970, a Lansaflight 502 from Kusko to Luma carrying 99 passengers, 50 high school students as well, dropped from the sky when an engine stopped working because it caught on fucking fire. Oh my God. Lacks engine maintenance and pilot error were this issue. Double time. So he was checkered. God.

It was checkered. The other thing is it's like, you're how are you flying into the side of a volcano and a mountain you're not supposed to be that low? No. That's the problem. You're supposed to be way up. It's pilot error. These are all, nothing is being maintained,

was being maintained on this airline. Were they pilots even? That's what I'm saying. So this was definitely checkered. It was bad. It was tragic. Nightmare airline. In fact, people would say about Lanza,

Lanza lands on its belly. But sometimes these things seem less dire when you really wanna get home. And sometimes you don't take it all into consideration. It's like one of those things. Or when you're 19 and you book a little bit of a wild flight to Texas and you're just like, oh, the $120 flight, I'll take it.

Yeah, you did that. So I'm still astounded by that. I did there and back. I'm astounded by that. I was a cheap ass flight. Whoo, so Maria told actually said to Hans, I was astounded by that. I did there and back. I'm astounded by that. I was a cheap ass flu. Woo! So Maria told actually said to Hans, not every plane's going to crash. And book the tickets for December 24th.

So Christmas Eve, Julian and her mother arrived to chaos at the airport. Because of the book airlines, everyone was vying for the remaining Lancaster flight. And since Lancaster had crashed so many planes, like I said, they only had the one. There was one plane left in this entire airline. But this one plane, Julian said she looked out and she was like, I don't know, it looked brand new to me. All right. It looked fine.

It didn't look like it was beat up. It's like, I looked over there and there's like a propeller hanging from it. It's just like, wasn't all crusty and dusty. It looked like. Like it didn't look like it was beat up. It's not like I looked over there and there's like a propeller hanging from it. Like it's just like, wasn't all crusty and dusty. It looked like a plane. So she said she believed it looked completely fine, completely frightful. Like to this day, she's like, it's not, if I had looked out there and it looked janky,

I probably would have questioned a little bit, but she was like, you look at a plane that looks brand new. You don't know. What the hell are you supposed to know? Yeah, exactly. Now Lance a flight 508 model L-188A was actually a plane that was designed specifically for flying in desert conditions. So, not the rainforest.

No, this would be a flight through the Andes. It was not made for this at all. And actually could not withstand heavy turbulence, which you would undoubtedly face over mountains in rainforest. As if this isn't bad enough, like, yeah, and this is wild. As if it wasn't bad enough, this plane was also made with spare parts of other airplane,

the airplanes, I don't know why I can't talk, sorry. Spare parts. Spare parts. From like whatever plane. Gurley, this was a junk yard plane. This was just put to, it was a Frankenstein plane. This was herbie fully loaded but worse. This was herbie not loaded. This was, yeah, this was bad.

This is just herb. But at the time, no one knew this. So it's like no one was told, hey, by the way, this plane is made from pieces of other planes. I think they would all question that a little bit. Like, God, I like camp breath. Now, Maria and Julian sat in the second to last row, 19.

The flight, like I said, was supposed to be an hour, and there were 92 passengers on board. About halfway into the flight, 30 minutes or so, they brought lunch, and as they collected it a bit later, they entered directly into a stormy patch of clouds, a thunderstorm. Julian, now I know now, after doing a lot of research, that pilots don't want to fly through storms, and they don't. They will divert the airplane around the storm, even if it means adding some extra time to your flight.

Of course. I would much rather that. We would all much rather that. Julianne says she felt a jolt in some severe turbulence. Luggage and things began falling from the overhead bends. Panic started ensuing pretty immediately. She said, and this is going to get very, this, I can feel my entire body like lighting up right now. So if you have a fear of flying, even if you don't, I am going to talk about a pretty

spirit carry experience on a plane. Yeah. If you would like to skip ahead a little bit, I understand if you don't want to hear this part, it's going to be pretty quick. I don't have a fear of flying. And I'm like not even kidding you. I'm in my like fighter flight chance right now. I'm holding our hands.

So this is like a little scary. I just want to tell everybody because this is like, oh, like my whole body, but this immersive therapy. I'm really proud of you for doing this. All right. So she said, because I'm like Julian lived this so I can talk about it. Yeah.

I'm like, if she can live through this and get on another plane, I can fucking talk about it. And her story deserves recognition because she's a fucking badass. And I'm assuming Maria passes away. Yeah. And her story deserves recognition because she's a fucking badass. And I'm assuming Maria passes away on this. So her story deserves to be told. Exactly. So she said her mother was clearly anxious as this began happening.

And then she remembers a flash of white light as lightning struck the white right wing of the plane. Oh my God. No, I would like to say right now, lightning hits planes. Yeah. That happens. I'll be mindless. I was just wondering. But there are things put in planes now and have been for a while that divert the energy

from that lightning out of the plane. So it does not touch the electrical system. It's not going to explode the electrical system. In fact, if it does anything to a plane, which rarely does anything, you never have any evidence of a landing strike, it can literally make a pole that's like a dime size and it will do nothing. Okay. Just to put that out there, because I looked it up.

Yeah. I was scared of it. I was scared of it. But it's something that is in the plane that literally throws the energy out of the plane. It diverts it across the the energy out of the plane. It diverts it across the wings and out of the wings. But you can actually see the pieces on the wings that do this. Oh, you can. Which is interesting that we'll throw that energy out off the wings. So it's it's very interesting and that's why I'm going to link these books. Okay. I think even if you don't have a fear of flying,

it just might be very interesting to see how this all works. I'm interested. But back then, just might be very interesting to see how this all worked. I'm interested. But back then, no, no. And the answer? No, yeah, that was not happening. So what happened was when the lightning struck the right wing of the plane, this lightning hit the plane like it was something that had absolutely zero things in place to divert that energy. So that just was like lightning hitting an object. So she said, quote, with a jolt, the tip of the airplane falls steeply down forward. I can see the whole aisle to the cockpit, which is below me. People are screaming in panic,

shrill cries for help. The roar, this is the part that I was like, the roar of the plummeting turbines, which I will hear again and again in my dreams engulfs me. This part gets me every time. The last thing she heard, which she said was clear as glass over everything, was her mother saying quietly and calmly, now it's all over. Oh my god, how nearly afterwards the plane went into a sharp nose dive right after she said that. And she said, she said, the turbines,

I couldn't hear them, I couldn't hear anyone else screaming, I just heard my mother say, now it's all over. Oh my God, I am literate, my entire body is lit up. I am covered in chills. Oh my God, and you're, oh, take your mom say that. Now it's all over. And you're, oh, take your mom say that. Now we're in your bad ass mom. You have seen face everything in this world and do everything. She's not even to cry. It's just not even the yell it just quietly and calmly say, now it's all over. A lot of people say

that like the moment before you realize you're about to die, it's weirdly calm. Like a calm, a lot of people say that. It just woo, and then this is even scarier. When Julian opened her eyes again, because she said she could hear those turbines that roar, because we've all heard that in like TV, their movies when you hear that, like a plane, something happen, or even when you're starting to land,

you hear that like, yeah, like it's that bit, but those are so much louder. And she said it kind of like blacked her out. Yeah. And the nose dive obviously. So when Julian opened her eyes again, she was outside of the plane. And no, she was not on the ground. She was 10,000 feet in the fucking air. And still strapped to her seat with the row of seats still attached to her seat. Just free falling, falling outside of the plane.

Her row two miles up. What? Yep. Her row of seats just free falling from the sky with her still strapped to her seat. What? It was Werner Herzog who later said about, and we'll talk about Herzog after this too. He said it pretty perfectly.

He said she did not leave the airplane. The airplane left her. Yeah. And as chilling as that statement is, it's also very correct. The plane had been essentially blown apart by the lightning. And her row of seats with her still strapped to it was spiraling to the earth. And Julian was just going in and out of consciousness. So was her mother like thrown from her?

Her mother was not in the sea next to her. Oh my God. And if you think about those little like pee pod things that are like our little helicopters, you make the little helicopters out of their like're like that little boomerang shape. How if you do that, like you flip it and it kind of spirals down to the ground. If you can think of that, that's what her seat was doing. That's essentially what her seat was doing.

My God. Now, interesting, like a quick little interesting note about her, herzog, because I just mentioned him, he was supposed to be on Lance of Flight 508. Oh, shit! That day, in 1971, he and his entire film crew had been scouting locations for his film, The Wrath of God. And they were intended to be on that flight

to head out to a scout location. But because of all the chaos at the airport and this being the only flight, he was not able to get a seat. And he made arrangements for another flight. Imagine all the people he was not able to get a seat. And he made arrangements for another flight. Imagine all the people that weren't able to get a seat finding out about this plane crash. And later, he took this brush with fade and he went back to this and he did something with Julian. So we'll get to that after. But she survived, remember, she survived falling more than 10,000 feet

but she survived, remember. She survived falling more than 10,000 feet to the ground outside of the plane, strapped to a row of seats. How? Now, Julianne being brilliant, attributes her survival partially to this row of seats she was still trapped to. Like I said, it began spiraling as she fell

in this caused wind resistance and it caused it to slow as she was falling. Then she also crashed into the canopy of the jungle below. There were trees, leaves, vines, other vegetation that had she had already slowed thanks to that spiraling, which was also bringing her in and out of consciousness. So she was also not 10 step because she was not even there. So it's spiraling, creating the wind resistance. She's limp and then she hits the canopy, which slows her down, caught her.

She hit the ground below and immediately the whirlwind black. After an unknown period of time, Julienne began to have strange connected dreams, she said. She said first, she was running through a tight, dark space and she was trying not to touch any of the walls and she said it was loud with a roaring humming sound like a turbine surrounding her. And before she knew it she was shot into another dream where she was obsessively wanting to wash herself because she was sticky and covered in mud. She said in this dream she kept thinking one thing,

all you have to do is get up. Okay. And then she woke up. She was no longer attached to the row of seats. She had become, come on, buckled at some point. But she was now huddled beneath them instead. And it had rained, she was soaking wet and covered in mud, dirt and blood.

Oh my God. She was hurt, but her injuries will shock you when you consider that she fell 10,000 feet from a plane that essentially blew up. Uh-huh. She had a severe concussion that it caused her and cut over her left eye and it caused it to swell shut. Like huge.

She had a broken clavicle, which that's a hurts. I'm not saying any of these injuries are good or easy. But when you, like you expect her to be falling 10,000 feet, I thought she'd be in pieces. Yeah, all of her bones broken. Now, a very deep lacheleration on her arm and a pretty big open gash on her leg. Oh.

Later, she found out she had ruptured a ligament in her knee, but she didn't even know about it. And she said, weirdly, she didn't feel pain at the time. That's wild. Her body must have just been in shock. She was in shock. Corsing with a dreaded one. Yeah.

Julianne said her first thoughts that were clear were ones of helplessness and quote, a boundless feeling of abandonment. I mean, yeah. She's all alone. She saw no one around her either. She didn't see bodies. She saw nothing. She was like, I'm alone. I'm completely alone. Like you said, including her mother, and she also had lost her glasses, which she needed to see.

Oh, no. She managed to crawl from beneath the row of seats and stand up. Everyone take that in for a minute. She fell 10,000 feet, Everyone take that in for a minute. She fell 10,000 feet, strapped to a row of seats outside a fucking plane that blew up and then she just stood up. Like what? Stood up and she had blown apart a ligament in her knee and stood up. Now unfortunately she immediately blacked out upon standing, but Jesus. So flight 508 was scheduled to land at 4.30pm that day, and when it didn't show up with no communication, everyone started to panic because this is Lanta Airlines. Family and loved ones were trying to get information from Lanta officials, but they were giving

out contradictory and half statements. They had no idea what had happened. They were just out completely in the dark. A search operation was started, and it's still the largest in the dark. A search operation was started and is still the largest in the history of Peru. Wow. But it was still pretty small because it was the holidays and most of the officials were gone for the holidays.

Also, there was no communication from the plane and the thick canopy of the jungle hid the crash site. Oh. So helicopters were sent over the site several times and rescue planes, but they couldn't see the crash through the trees. Right. Julianne, however, could hear and see them, but was helpless to tell them she was down there. Throughout her entire journey, rescue planes flew above her, and she just looked up and

believed, and she'd try to yell for them, try to show them, but they never saw her. Oh. Because she was not rescued by a rescue plane. Wow. So day two, so she was out for the entire day. She blacked out, gone. Didn't wake up until the next day, which was Christmas morning. Yeah, exactly.

And she was unable to stand without passing out, but she fought and fought, tried to do it slowly and slowly, but she got passing out, coming back, I concussion must have been gnarly. And think about how sick and awful you feel when you pass out. Yeah. If you've ever passed out, she was just doing it over and over again, just trying to stand up. That's so much on your body. And she finally got herself onto her knees, and she stayed conscious. And after a lot of time and a lot of struggles, she was finally able to stand. And when she did, this is when she realized that her clappical was broken. She said, horrifyingly, quote, the two ends had pushed on top of

each other. But they had not broken the skin. And she couldn't feel the pain from it. So she could feel the two ends that had broken pushed on top of each other. Like the middle part. Like that. And she could feel it, which I'm sure was an outrageous, even if it wasn't pain, that she could feel it was outrageously uncomfortable. She dealt with this for 11 days. Oh my God. 11 days. And she has like multiple open wounds.

Oh yeah. She was shocked that she was not feeling a lot of pain. And once she had stood and assessed her shocked that she was not feeling a lot of pain. And once she had stood and assessed her surrounding, she was again confronted with the reality that her mother, who had been sitting in the seat next to her, was nowhere to be found. Right. No one was. She wasn't seeing anyone. She was completely alone, not even bodies. And she said it was the loneliness of this. That was the worst part. Of course. She said it made it her mission to find her mother. She was like, even if my mom is dead,

I need to find my mom. Now this is when those instincts, in those years of her parents, teaching her survival and strength kicked right in. It's almost like her whole life led out to this. Yeah, she was in the jungle. She knew the jungle. She knew how to survive this.

And although she had never done it under these kind of circumstances, she was ready to be that bad bitch that she is. And in her book, Julianne says that she immediately told herself one thing. She said, quote, with calm and methodical thinking, you could master almost any situation in which you end up in a nature.

I think that's such a good motto to live by. Calm and methodical thinking is like my lifeline always. So true. And I think it really is if you can calm yourself, which is no easy task, and you can get into that methodical thinking space, you really can get through most things. That's exactly how you get out of an anxiety attack. It's true, but it's easier said than done. It's like you can do it.

Yeah. If you really, really find the tools to do it. Mm-hmm. Now Julian said first things first. Of course I want to find my mother, but I need to put my oxygen mask on first before anybody else's. So she knew the first thing she had to do was find a source of fresh water. A human can only last three days without water.

She started licking the leaves she found because it had rained. Mm-hmm. So she was licking water off of all the leaves and like drinking it off the leaves Smart and she hadn't found a bigger source of water so this was just gonna have to hold her over Now, not only could she not see any bodies or people at all around her, but she said there was barely any plain wreckage around her either. Weird. But luckily, she did find a bag of candy and a Christmas stallion, which is like a fruit cake.

Oh, that's great. That's somebody it had in there. Unfortunately, the Christmas fruit cake had sat in the mud and rain for two days and it was soaked in like muddy and disgusting. Julian left it. She took the bag of candy and left that. She says now she definitely should have taken it. Okay. But at the time she was like, fuck that, that's gross. Well, she probably also was thinking like maybe like back to reality or something. But she. But she says now, she's like, I probably should have taken that for a cake.

Just like cut the top off. Yeah. I mean, I think we can all forgive her this little mistake, I suppose, considering she fell out of a fucking the sky. I would say, she spent hours around the craft site searching for supplies, anything that could help her with survival.

She found no bodies, no survivors, and no real supplies she could use either. Wow. It was these hours that she first heard the rescue plane above her. She had nothing to signal with and told herself she had to make her way to people because she was like, they're not gonna find me. I have to find them.

So as she realizes this, she hears the sound of dripping and running water. Okay, we love it. And so she follows it. She found a river. And she followed it downstream for hours and literally climbed over trees and huge boulders, bushwacked her way along the river until night came. Remember what just happened to her?

She's incredibly concussed. She felt 10,000 feet from the sky. Her clavicles are overlapping. She has multiple less reactions and one of her eyes is swollen shut and she also can't see without her glasses. Yeah, that just that. Yeah, like I did a peloton ride last night

and I was exhausted. I was exhausted, I was nauseous because I was hot and I was like, oh my God. Maybe while you're just like in your attic. Yeah. And I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, this is put so much in perspective for me. I'm like, fuck literally goddamn. I asked on a facial last night. I was like, well, I can't work out tomorrow. Can't do that, damn. Yeah. Like Julian, thank you. Thank you for being who you are. So Knight came, she was clearly exhausted and she found a place next to the stream

where she just fell asleep. At this time, news of the crash had reached Hans Kopka who had convinced who was, at this time, he thought his wife and his daughter had heated his warning about flying Lanza and weren't on the plane. Oh. So his hopes were crushed to the following day when he caught a news report that had listed

all the passengers and Maria and Julian Copka were on there. I can't imagine. And knowing that he didn't even want them on that flight. Oh, and just... And to have some sense of calm, like, no, they weren't on that flight. They weren't on that flight. They weren't on that flight. I told and just, and to have some sense of calm, like, no, they weren't on that flight. They weren't on that flight. They weren't on that flight. I told them not to get on it.

And then, like, Julianne knowing that her father didn't want them on that flight, not knowing what happened to her mother, knowing that her mother just wanted to get home for her. For Christmas. Like, just wanted to get to him quicker. Him knowing that she just wanted it,

like, it's a whole, it's horrible. So day three, on the third day, December 26, she woke up and continued falling the stream. It was winding and not straight, which made it more difficult and long to follow. And the obstacles were still there, but she took them all like the bad ass she is. She recalled seeing a Goliath bird eater spider on her way. I looked it up so you don't have to. It's a giant tarantula that eats birds. I don't have words. And she said that alone would have killed her.

Like if she had to go away from her. If that thing had come close to her, like that would have been it for. And honestly, me just looking at it would have killed her. Would you say it was? A giant, a goliath bird eating spider. Goliath? Spider should not be in the scene.

It would have been cardiac arrest for me. It's giving sinister babe. I don't know if you guys follow. Bye. Guys, you need to follow. I don't know the TikTok name now, shit. Hang on, I'll pause. There's a TikTok that you guys absolutely need to follow.

Yeah. Okay, you tell them the TikTok name and then I've got a hot, a hot goss to throw on you. So there's a TikTok account that's given Sanister by I don't even know how to describe it, but it makes me laugh and gives me joy. Just go follow every single time that I watch any video. And it is at Sinister Palm Bay pond babe. Okay. I'm gonna link it in the show notes because I hope she gets a billion followers because I think she just reached like a hundred K followers

and I'm like, let's get her. Get her to a million. Let's bring her to the billions. Omelie, omelie, omelie. It's the way she tells stories and she has the best accent and she says, babe, after everything and she'll say, it's giving sinister vibe.

I've been saying it in my real life. Can't come forward. It's giving sinister vibe I've been saying it in my real life can't come all the time. It's giving sinners. It's a dark sad It's like she's so fucking funny. Please follow her. Please follow her. I want bives page to just blow the fuck up to pop off I want to make it pop off because she's so fucking funny and this is truly the Goliath bird eating spider is sinister vibe So sinister vibe that it's inch long fangs babe act like hypodermic needles babe. Yeah, yeah Long things. Yeah, it is giving dark Sadden and she had to see this sinister spot. Oh my God.

She had to see this thing along the way. And just avoid it. No. Just hope to avoid it. Oh, I feel like they're crawling all over me. Bye. But besides that sinister moment, bye. She also had to climb over boulders, fallen trees.

She had to dodge other animals, other insects. She faced it all with a concussion, a swollen eye, and a broken clavicle. I'm not worried. Throughout the entire journey, she heard the continuous sound of planes above her, searching for missing flight, 508. To be that close, to rescue, and to full well know,

like I'm so close, but it's not gonna happen. It's right there. Like I have no way to let them know. I I'm so close, but it's not gonna happen. It's right there. Like I have no way to let them know. I did right there and you just keep hearing it and you're like, yep. And then you're probably like, they're gonna give up. It's awful.

One of them gonna give up. Right. Exactly. When am I gonna stop hearing that? How hopeless. And when I stop hearing that, that's the true like no one's coming. Like, now the Amazon had jaguars,

cougars and at least 17 different species of supremely venomous snakes. Yeah. Finally, after hours and hours and hours and hours, the stream opened up into a big river and into it, Julie and waited, because she thought, okay, I'm gonna just float down this river.

I'm gonna let the current take me. I'm gonna hope to make it somewhere. There's water snakes aren't there. And remember, the Amazon is a constant barrage of threats to humans. In the water, there were several different types of camons. What is that? Which are like tiny-looking little alligator things. They're very dangerous.

I say tiny, but they get big. I'm gonna see. They're scary. There's anacondas. My anacondas. My anaconda don't. No, and stingrays, piranhas, bull sharks sometimes. Yeah, but remover.

Bull sharks are among the most dangerous. Oh yeah, and there's some in this fucking forever. Yeah, piranhas just make me think of Wednesday. Yeah, there you go. So, but remember, Julian is a bad bitch. Always remember that, never forget it. And she has also been prepared for this shit her whole life.

She would lead, yeah, right? I'm sorry to interrupt, but you said tiny. I know, I don't know, because sometimes I'm thinking of baby ones are tiny and cute, but like big ones are scary. They are thickens, McGee-Hooch. And they will eat you in one little bite.

They're like alligators or crocodiles. Like, you know what I mean? Like that kind of. It's an alligator royd. Alligator royd, there you go. That's terrifying. But what you would do is she would lead with one foot and she said she found her sandal, like one sandal.

Oh, and so she would lead with the sandal foot and feel things out in the waters. And then she used a large walking stick to touch in front of her before moving forward. So she didn't step on anything? Exactly. The entire time she was walking, she was just slowly eating the candies out of the bag

just to keep her going. Just to picture her, like, I'm just picturing her with like a big old bag of Skittles. Yeah, just sitting there eating them, just floating down the Amazon river. Poking out for paradas, both our- Just After falling 10,000 feet out of the sky. Oh, fuck. Now, hours of walking through the water was when she finally saw a piece of the plain wreckage. It was in the middle of the river. She saw a large turbine. That...

No, it's that fear of big things that are not supposed to be. Yeah. I'm doing the nah, the nah motion right now, like not not for me, like, cut it out. Yeah. Uncle Joey cut it out. No, I cut it out. I don't want seeing a large turbine in the middle of a river. That's not it. It's that's giving sinister by that's given dark side.

That is the most dark side it because I'm telling you go follow that account. You got it. I'm telling you. It'll just give you joy. When you need a little pick me up, you need to laugh at something silly. This is the account for you. I don't know why. What is it? It is. It's a great thing. Just speak to your soul. If you're listening the person who owns that account, you're fucking great. You're giving me a lot of joy. So she said, where are you condos? What Julianne said, was she just stared at this turbine? She said, she stared at it and she was just amazed at what she was looking at. But mostly she said, which I'm like, this is just, this is Julianne.

She was like, but then I got happy because it meant that I was likely going in the right direction to find more pieces of the plane and possibly more people. She said she was convinced that she was not the only survivor. She kept saying to herself, she's like, there is no way that only I survived this part. I could understand that. There has to be more survivors. Yeah. And she said years later, she would return to this memory of seeing this turbine in the middle of the river Yeah, and she said she would return to it over and over and over again think about it all the time And she said it would just amaze her

How like she had this weird detachment from Discovering proof that a plane had exploded around her. Yeah, like she was like I was looking had exploded around her. Yeah. Like she was like, I was looking at a piece of the plane that I had just been sitting on two days earlier. And I'm sitting there going, wow, that's interesting. That means there's people over there, I bet. And instead of just being like, what the fuck?

Like crazy. And she's like, I just kept returning to it being like, I don't know what was going on there. I feel, I just feel like her mom was with her too. You know, 100%. Guiding her and was with her too. A 100% guiding her and giving her strength. I think so too. Now, this was when ground searches were knocking into high gear back in Lima,

and they had begun to journey through the jungle looking for the crash site. Damn. Now, unfortunately, this was not organized well, and they were sending them in wrong directions because they were getting false leads and shitty tips. Because of all the false leads being sent in, the government actually had to impose a blackout

on news reports because people are shit. Correct. Everywhere. And this was to stop the false shit from spreading, but also it kept the families in the dark. They didn't know what was going on. How sad is that? But like certain media gets involved, even like it reminds me of

the Idaho killings. Yeah. The amount of misinformation being spread now that she's been apprehended. Yeah. It's crazy. And it's so, it's so easy for it to spread to. Yeah. Now, day four brought a horrific memory and discovery for Julianne and one that I can't imagine stumbling upon. No. She said on this day, she had walked for a few hours and then remembers

distinctly hearing quote, the flapping of large wings, unmistakable, louder and lasting longer than that of other birds. This was very concerning because she knew what this was. She said it was the king vulture. And she remembered a lot about this kind of bird. Specifically, she knew from her mother's lessons that its presence meant there was a large amount of carrion very close by. That is dead meat. Oh, unfortunately, she was right. Now, she left the river and walked into the jungle until she came across a row of three seats from flight 508. Oh no. They were lodged three feet deep into the ground upside down.

Oh my God. So they were upside down. So the head portions of them were in the ground. This meant that they had hit the ground with unbelievable force. Incredible. Unbelievable force. What is worse, All three passengers was still strapped into the three seats. All of them were lodged headfirst into the ground.

Oh my God. Only their legs jutted out and as Julian described it, quote, their legs were just jutting grotesquely upward. And it was two men and a woman. That's awful. Of course, this would destroy anyone. But Julianne fought against any initial instinct to run, because she said her first instinct in any of ours would be to run the fuck away from this site. Absolutely. This would be the most horrific

that I would just want to get as far away from this as possible. And she knows that the fucking King Vultures on his life. Yeah, so I'm out. Which might I note has a wingspan of about six feet. Yeah, that's why the sound of it is very distinct because it's huge flapping, like. This thing is massive. And I'm sure the sound of it flapping

is probably really scary. I wonder if we can find a sound of it. Yeah. Because just to give you a full picture here, like we'll pause and find a, a little clip. A sound clip, I think. We will not find you on because I'm lost. And yeah, you really can't get a clear one. That sounds like anything other than like,

bo-bo-bo-bo. We're not meant to hear it. We're not. That's what we believe. In trying to find that though, I'm not gonna live in this alone. I found a fucking video of an eagle that found a goat and carried that motherfucker into the air,

into the air. Nature. It's giving sinister. It's getting sinister by it really is. But what is the fucking planet? Yeah, so this is after Julianne discovered this horrific scene. She fought every instinct she had to run the fuck away from this. And instead,

she went closer. Because even though she knew logically that none of those passengers were her mother, because she had to be sure. She had to be sure. That's love. So she used a stick to move the woman's shoe and saw that her toenails had been painted and her mother never painted her toenails. Oh, that's just like such a... I know, it's just like a specific thing. Like I know my mom. Meanwhile, the king vultures perched above her and the trees and were just waiting for her

to leave, essentially. Yeah, because they're not very confrontational. They're not. So they were just waiting for her to leave. They were like, can you please leave? They also don't have eyelashes. They don't. Do we find that out?

That's interesting. And she searched for anything else that could help her, but nothing really could. Just pieces of scorched plain were in the area, so she went back into the river. And it was just those three passengers she found. That's all she found. Now, night four, the candy was gone.

No food in the immediate area, and that this crash had happened in the rainy season when fruit was not plentiful in the trees, like it would have been in dry season. She didn't have tools to open any of the fruit anyways, and she didn't have any way of getting up into the high trees to get the fruit. So she drinks from the salty river in like dirty river water

just to keep herself somewhat hydrated and distract herself from the hunger. Right. So, as she fell into hunger and exhaustion, she came across a barrier of driftwood and tangled reeds that would be impossible to climb in the river. This made her have to leave the river again, which was dangerous and difficult, and she had to get through the dense, unbeaten jungle for hours before finally being able to get around that

and back to the river. When she does, this is the first time that she sees that the canopy above her head has opened. Like there's an opening of the trees. And now she sees the plane as it flies over. Oh! She can hear it. She can, and now she's seeing it. And she's like, they might be able to see me.

So she starts waving her arms and screaming, throwing things like trying to get the attention. It hovers and then just leaves. Oh, yep. This would have been devastating. I can't imagine. This was the closest thing to being able to be seen to her that could have happened and it didn't happen.

And this is night four.. And this is night four. Yeah, this is night four. I believe it is. Let me know. No, this is a, this was night four. We're in today's like five and six. Oh, that's what like we're kind of like all bleeding into each other. But this is devastating.

And Julian says it was this when she finally took stock of her situation and finally started to think about not only what had happened, but also how vast and massive the jungle around her really was. And she said this made her start losing hope so she didn't let it consume her because she said if she had really fallen into thinking about what was actually around her and what wasn't around her, you'd lose yourself.

She wouldn't be able to go forward. Now to give you context for what was around her and what wasn't around her. You'd lose your soul. She wouldn't be able to go forward. Now to give you context for what was around her, Chaguar's. The Amazon rainforest covers more than 2.5 million square miles of land. Wow. 59% or a little under 1.5 million square miles is per-is in Peru. And in 1.5 million square miles of rainforest land, they're really estimated to live just a little over a thousand people. Wow. Yeah. In 1.5 million square miles of land.

That's crazy. Which meant the odds of her running into a person for help was essentially slimtoned. Like more than that. But less than that mean. But she didn't let this take her down. A lot of people would give an up. They would have let the insurmountable depression of this reality just make them lay down. Absolutely. And hope to be found or just surrender. But it's Julianne we're talking about.

So she kept going down the river. She knew if she let the current push her down the river. She was conserving her strength as well as keeping herself safer on land too because if she's in the river, the things on land can't get to her and she felt like she could at least contend with the river shit. Yeah. Now also, days in the Amazon were about 85 to 95 degrees. Oh my God.

And humid too. And nights could get colder. And remember, she was wearing, I think the only thing she was wearing at this point was like a cotton short dress. And she's wet now too. And she's wet. And during the day, she was being beaten down by the sun.

And then soaked in at night, she was just freezing. Oh my God. She was also being assaulted by mosquitoes. Every other insect, it was hell. And at night, they would just buzz around her in the day. They would buzz around her constantly. Think about mosquitoes. And it's like those kind of bugs buzzing all the time

would drive you insane. And like I would lose it. So Julian's concussion by like day seven, so we're a week into this. Thank God. Julian's concussion had actually kind of afforded her a big like a bit pre-eve in a way in the beginning days of her survival.

She was in kind of a brain fog of sorts. Right. So she could really only think and focus on survival in those days. Well, in those days. But by the seventh day, she was really only thinking about her mother and the reality of her situation, finally. And sometimes the thoughts were typical, You know, she's a teenager. So she would sit there and she would think about,

you know, what she was she would be doing right now. What her friends were doing, who she missed, like, you know, I wish I could eat my favorite junk food, kind of thing. And then she would get like super existential as well, like thinking about like, what's the meaning of all this? Like, why is it supposed to be here? Why did this happen? Like, why is it supposed to be here? Why did this happen? Like, why me, you know, like all that.

And although she doesn't really understand why or how, she knew in that moment, and she knows now that her survival meant something. Of course. She just didn't know what. Of course it did. But she was like, there's no way this was an accident. There's no way this is coincidence.

I meant to do this. I meant to be here and I'm not meant to die alone in the fucking rainforest with no one knowing what I've done. I just felt 10,000 feet from the area and survived seven days. I'm not supposed to die right now. I'm getting out of this. The river has not taken me down. Nothing's taken me down. So she resolves that she's like, I'm going to get to safety. I'm going to lead a life of meaning She resolves that she's like, I'm gonna get to safety, I'm gonna lead a life of meaning, and I'm gonna contribute to the world

when I get out of here. Like she sat there at 17 years old in the fucking rainforest, in the middle of a river, a week after falling 10,000 feet from the sky, and said, I'm going to make a difference in the world from the beginning. To have that wearer with all at 17-year-olds.

But then you had all of those circumstances. Now at this point, her resolve had not dissipated. She was still sure there had to be another survivor of this flight. There was no conceivable way in her mind that she was the sole survivor. So she was just always looking out for people. And by this time, a week after the crash, she noted that the cuts on her arms and legs

were starting to look pretty bad. And now they were starting to hurt. The laceration on her calf had become very irritated and very swollen. Oh, no. She's in the dirty river water too. It's not helping. And the laceration on her arm was feeling very painful

and very hot, but was in a place that was difficult for her to see, it was like behind her arm. So unless she strained her neck to look at it, she really couldn't see a lot of it. But when she did finally see it, she saw that maggots had actually been onto burrow into the wound. Oh my God.

Yep, flies had laid eggs in the wound, probably while she was sleeping. Oh my God. She knew that this meant. She knew that it meant that if she allowed them to continue burying into the wound, it was her arm off. Really gonna get bad and possibly need to be imputated. So she tried to pull them out herself using a piece of bent plain metal that she molded into tweezers.

Oh. But she couldn't get them and just had to give up and keep going down the river with maggots in her arm. I don't even... Yep. She just was going down the river with live maggots eating the wound on her arm that she got when she fell 10,000 feet out of the sky. I'm not well, bitch.

I'm not well, bitch. I'm not well, bitch. This is coupled with another scary turn of events. Like we've stated many times before, Julian was very experienced, so very knowledgeable about the jungle and survival. And she knew that most of the animals in this jungle would probably be terrified of her and pretty much keep their distance. They would run from her normally, but she now sees that they were making themselves known and seemingly watching her, following her, acting curious.

I just so fucking stressed. What this told her was that they had probably rarely possibly never seen a human before. Oh my god. Their lack of fear was evidence of that. This was a crushing blow to her spirit, because she now knew that she was completely isolated from anyone else. These animals had not seen a human before. Oh my god. She was the first one to roll through here. Oh my god. So days eight and nine, it was now that the sun started to unleash the full assault on her body. Oh, it was like infected with violence.

Oh, yes. It was eight days in and she woke up in searing pain on her back and shoulders and realized that she had about a second degree sunburn on her back and shoulders that had actually broken open and was now bleeding. What the fuck? Yep. Unfortunately, she can't do literally anything about this. No. And just has to keep going in this unbelievable pain while bleeding.

Not like she has any fucking copper tone on her. Nope. This day is when she began to hallucinate as well. Her mind started to play a lot of cruel tricks on her. She keeps being sure that she's seeing houses in the distance, but it's just a sea of trees. Why does her mind do that? It's just, I don't know if it's, I think it's partially like a survival thing, a preservation thing.

It's trying to get you in a cave. Yeah, trying to get you to keep going. She also has auditory hallucinations, thinking she hears chickens, which would mean that humans were nearby, but it's just jungle birds that she hears. This may have broken someone else's spirit, hearing and seeing things only to realize that they were not real, but Julian said it made her strive even harder to survive because she was now determined to really see

and really hear those things. Okay. Now while she is hearing and seeing these false images and sounds, she accidentally gets her foot stuck in a sand bank and it makes her trip and fall. Oh my God. Now she's been traveling through the jungle for over a week straight with no food and little water,

no medicine or aid for her wounds. And she's likely fighting various infections. When she hits the ground, all she wants to do is sleep. She was like, I hit that ground and I was like, I can't get up. Like this is it. And she can't fight the urge anymore. Her body is telling her, go to sleep.

So she closes her eyes and just lets herself rest on the jungle floor for a few moments. But then she said she was woken up by a chirping sound. And it's not a bird chirping. She knows that sound. It's a baby Cayman. When she opens her eyes, she sees a baby came in and then she sees its mother. No. And they are approaching her in a very aggressive and very threatening way. Oh my God. And she said if she jumped up like she wanted to, they would have attacked her in

and got her in an instant. They would have, she would have no choice, no chance. But she said what she knew she had to do was just slide away from them. So she slid on the ground away from them slowly when every cell in her body said was screaming at her to jump up and run the fuck out of there. She was slowly sliding like a worm on the ground until she slid back in the river and let the current take her away and got away. Eliza fucking Thornberry. Yep. But unfortunately, this also cemented her the knowledge she already knew that there were no humans anywhere near here because she said there was a large amount of camons and that made it sure that there was no humans around. Fucking alligators, y'all.

Yeah. Fucking alligators. Yeah. But the ninth day, she was beyond exhaustion and her hunger was something that was no longer something she could ignore. And it just ate away at her. It's all she could think about. She tried for hours that day, she said, to catch a poison dart frogs to try to eat something.

You can eat them even though they're poisonous. You can eat them. I think there's a poison sack that she likes to eat. I'm sure she knew where it was. And she said she tried for hours. Literally, all her energy was spent trying to catch these frogs. She couldn't.

Couldn't catch one and ended up just falling asleep in the middle of it. Oh. in the middle of it. So the 10th day was the same. She just let the current take her down the river, and unfortunately the river is now becoming less open and expansive, and now there are dams of driftwood and rocks that are trying to climb over and avoid. She has zero energy so you can imagine how difficult this was getting. She has fucking maggots in her arm, y'all. Yep. As the day went on, and eventually, the sun was beginning to set.

Julianne saw what she thought was like a gravel bank on the shore. So she was like, you know what, that's a great place to get some sleep. I'm gonna land the bank and just let my body rest. So she laid down, she just let her body begin to let go. But right before she was closing her eyes. She saw something. Oh no. It was a boat. She saw a boat. And in her head, she was like, this is a mirage, like closure your eyes, look at it again. So she thought, she blinked, and when she blinked, it was still there. And she's like, and I looked around, and it was still there, still tied to the bank. No one's in it.

So she shook her head, still there. She reached out and touched it. Still there. It was a boat, and she was touching it. And she said, and it looked new, and it looked like it was in working order. Meaning someone who ran this boat is nearby, like at the very least. So she explores the area around the boat.

She's got like a new found energy. She didn't even know existed within her at this point. She's got hope. She finds a footpath that she said was not natural. It was cleared by hand. Okay. She follows it and finds a tambo. Then really, who natural. It was cleared by hand. Okay. She follows it and finds a tambo, which is-

Who the fuck am I going to find? Exactly. So she finds a tambo, which is a small shack that was made by hand, where people will store supplies like gasoline for boats and such. Yeah, yeah. Now this was crucial because it confirmed there had been a human around, and also there was gasoline in there, which could be used to help her maggot infested wound. Debbie bought gasoline. There you go.

She gritted her teeth and poured the gasoline onto her wound, which would cause unbelievable staring pain. But because she is brilliant and learned from experience and from her parents, she knew this would be something something internal to heal, like to help get those maggots out. steering pain, but because she is brilliant and learned from experience and from her parents, she knew this would be something internal to heal, like, to help get those maggots out. That's so horrific. First, it made the maggots try to dig deeper into the wound, but eventually it forced them out. Oh my god! So she was able to pull some of the mout, she pulled over 30 maggots out of that wound. I need you to stop saying the word maggots. And she later found out that there was far more that had to be removed later. Oh my god

So she's trying to sort out her thoughts make a plan so far She didn't see a human but just evidence that one was around at one point in the recent past so She did think really quickly about just using the boat to take her down the river Honestly, but then she was and because she was just so tired, but literally, I mean, she just performed amateur surgery on her arms, essentially. But she just laid down, and she was like, I'm gonna lay down first and think this over. And then when she started thinking about it, she was like, well, taking the boat as a non-starter, because it would help me, but I could potentially be abandoning someone else in the Amazon rainforest. And she's like, I literally can't do that. No, she wrote later, I cannot possibly save my own life

and jeopardize another. That's a human right there. So she did borrow a tarp from the shack and laid down on the banks to sleep again. Okay. Now, day 11th, when she woke up, there was still no one around her. Suddenly a depressing thought hit her like a ton of bricks.

Sometimes hunters or woodcutters would use these tambos while they were out in the jungle and then they would just abandon them for months. Sometimes forever. Even their boats? So when she didn't know, she was like, I don't know. No. So she made the impossible decision to continue floating down the river now, just hoping that maybe. She would come across a village or evidence of more people. So she's about to go into the river and then it begins to rain. And once again, her exhaustion and her lack of nutrients and infection were making it impossible to move very much. And she didn't have a lot of strength. So she's like, you know what it's raining? I'm going to stay in the shack until the rain passes.

Okay. I think a lot of this is her mom. I do too. That the universe and her mom working together. I think sure. Because in the afternoon, the rain finally stopped and she was still alone. So she made the decision to move, but unfortunately her body still

just wouldn't even stand. Like she had no strength. I mean, she just had to pour gasoline into her arm. Exactly. It's almost like something was working there to keep her there. To keep her there. So she decided to rest another full day. She was like, I'm going to get myself another full day to regain some of the strength and then I will start moving in. I might as well just stay in the shack while I can. So she's in a serious state of despair at this point.

She hasn't eaten even a little something in over six days and it was only drank dirty river water. She's been bitten on every inch of her body by a variety of insects. As she tried to sleep and they're buzzing in her ears, she's cold, she's soaking wet. Suddenly her brains begins telling her that she was correct. More people survived the crash, but they stayed put and they were saved. That's what her brain is telling her now. You are correct Yes, people survived, but they were all saved and you're left here. No, no, no This what she said this was just she was like I was the only one left I was the only one that left the crash site and now I'm stuck in the jungle forever because of my decision

No, that's what she like her brain just started going against her. And in her book, she said she thought to herself, how strange is it that a person can disappear just like that? And no one knows about it. It is crazy. So she just lays in the shack for most of the 11th day, just trying to catch something like a frog to eat. She was seeing them. She just couldn't catch them.

She never gets one. The hunger really starts to shut her body down even more. And as Twilight seeps in and another day passes behind her in the jungle, she hears it. Voices in the distance. Immediately she sits up. But then just as quickly, her head tells her, that's just another auditory hallucination. Don't listen to it. She doesn't want to get excited, but she keeps hearing them. And then she's hearing them getting closer and closer and closer. And she's still trying to convince herself that this is just another hallucination when suddenly three men just emerge from the jungle immediately. They all like jumped back because they saw her in the shack because

it was their shack. So that was like, what the fuck? But they look at her and they knew about the plane crash. Oh my God. And they're like, holy shit. She was almost too stunned to speak, but she quickly regained her composure and said in Spanish, I'm a girl who was in the Lancet crash. My name is Julian. Oh my God.

These three men were forest workers and they immediately hustled Julian to safety. Oh my God. They brought her back to their camp. They fed her. They gave her clean water, dry clothing. They helped to tend to her wounds to the best ability they could. Oh my God. They even took out more maggots out of her arm themselves. Stop. They then praised her for staying at their shack. They were like, that was a brilliant decision. It was so glad you did that. And they said, if you had left that area, you would have never been found because like the rainforest as you go further out gets more uninhabited.

You would have been going deeper into it. And they said her body, by the way, like the the cushion condition they found her in, they said, your body would have given out by tomorrow. You'd be gone. Like there's no way you were going to be living. Wow. And they said that if she'd even tried to float down the river, that would have been out. She was literally on her last breaths essentially when they got her. That was her strength and her mom with her. No fucking doubt in my mind. Exactly. They weren't in what's even crazier. And this is why I'm like, holy shit, everything worked. They weren't even supposed to have returned to the shack that day. Why? But they wanted to make sure that the boat was still tied up after the rain storm.

Otherwise, they weren't coming back to the shack. Kizmit. And they said they never would have found her. That all of that was meant to be 100,000, Gajillion percent. So she immediately asked them about other passengers, other survivors, and they tell her the airplane hasn't even been found, and you are the only survivor. Oh my God. And she asked about her mother, even though

they had just told her no one survived, and they said, no, you're the sole survivor. Can you imagine the weight of that falling on you, hearing that, like, out loud? It's just you. tells them the story to like is there like you have to tell us like what have you been through? Yeah, it's been almost two weeks like what's going on? It's so she tells them the story she told they shit and they kind of tell her to like about the massive search That's been going on and she's like I heard the planes and they're like holy shit like they were on top You like that's wild going on and she's like, I heard the planes and they're like, holy shit, like they were on top of you, like that's wild. And they're telling her like, you know,

they like everyone thought everybody was gone. No one thought that somebody survived, like no one's gonna believe this. She told them about like going down the river, about the vulture. She told them everything. The alligator. Yeah. And they tell her that the next morning after she sleeps, a real sleep, they will take her to turn a vista where they can get her proper help and medical care. They're angels. And Julian couldn't sleep that night even though she was safe. She was like, I just couldn't believe I was going to get out of here.

Yes, she's probably so excited. Now, it is very shortly after Julian's discovery that it's like headline news worldwide. A lot of lies were told because the press, they somehow tried to make her story like even more sensational, which they did not have to. Like they were saying that like, she had like made a makeshift raft that she lived on for 11 days and it's like no she didn't. Yeah. And like it's even more impressive that she didn't. And that she woke up under three bodies or something like that and she's like no I didn't. Like that none of up under three bodies or something like that. And she's like, no, I didn't. Why would you? That none of that was true.

Why would you? Why would your brain even go there? And the times actually quoted Juliana saying, and this isn't not a real quote, they quoted her as saying, I felt a sensation of emptiness, but I don't remember anything else until I woke up on the ground with three bodies on top of me. She didn't say that.

How do you do what? And then they said that she told them that she survived by eating the Christmas cake which she had been taking to her father. And she's like, nope, that wasn't even mine. That wasn't my Christmas cake. And I didn't need it. So what's worse is in the days that followed the rescue, also the press started to kind of turn on her a little bit. What? And they started saying, well, she ran away from injured passengers who could have been helped?

No, honey, they were left to defend for themselves. They were left to be into the ground or just gone. Yep, like fuck off. Yeah. Luckily for the most part, the overall tone and the most of the tone was celebration that she was alive. Isn't it wild that there were trolls in this situation? Trolls in every situation. Trolls will always. They will always find a trolls in this situation? Trolls in every situation.

Trolls will always. They will always find a way to be mistreated. Trolls be trolling. But they spent, so these three men and Julianne spent 11 hours on a boat going to turn to Vista. God. Once they arrive in turn to Vista, she's taken to a hospital where she's finally

able to get real treatment and medicine for the various infections she was suffering from. Unbelievably, she has to fly to Yearn Cokka, I believe it's called, to get better medical treatment. And this is where she would actually stay and be stabilized. But she was actually, she was absolutely terrified obviously. This is less than two weeks after she fell out of the sky. Fell from the sky.

Yeah. But she was also so out of the sky. Fell from the sky. Yeah. But she was also so out of it and had no strength. So she was like, I couldn't fight it. I just come on the flight. I just needed a lot of better medical attention. But like holy shit. Wow. And she wouldn't have lived if they tried to take her a slower way.

Like she had to get on this flight to get there. It's almost like a midflight. Julian spent months in that medical facility in Yaren Koka, but she was strong. And by March, she was back in Lima and back in school. Oh my God. Yes. She loved being back in her normal routine and around those she loved. Her dad, but the press were fucking nightmares and they hounded her day and night. To leave her alone.

Day and night. So because of all the craziness, her father Hans actually had her sent to Germany to get away from it. She lived with her grandmother and her aunt there. And Julian said that he had good intentions moving her there, but she felt very betrayed by it because she said she was in such a state. She just shot me through and she had lost her mother in that way, that she was like being sent away, felt like I was abandoned. Yeah. And that's not his intention, but like he was also going through the trauma that he had gone through.

So it's like this was just all a lot of confronting a lot of different trauma. Well, and I'm sure in his mind, he probably felt like she needed to be with her grandmother as like a maternal figure. I think he just didn't know what to do. And with his own grief of living his wife, which he and his wife were so close, like they were together in the region. It was 24. 24.7, you know, like their bond must have been outrageous.

Absolutely. So it's like this is just unthinkable. It's so layered. And she said, Pengwana in my school were the only things left for me. And she said, that's when she felt the sense of abandonment. Unfortunately, Hans was very understandably devastated by the loss of Maria. And Julian said, she, quote, suspected that for him, it was a problem that I survived

and not my mother. And what I think she means by that is that only one of us came out of that. Not that it was bad that it was her who came out of that. It was just like, I would rather have both of you. And I think, you know, like I really want both of you, would be a reminder constantly. And she looks like her mom. Yeah.

Like you know what I mean? Like she has a lot of her mom's features. I'm sure that's like really tough. That's on a different level of trauma. And it's a different grief. Like I don't know that grief. I can't imagine that grief. I'm not referring to that Like, I don't know that grief. I can't imagine that grief. I'm not referring to that grief.

I don't know the grief that Julian was going through and I don't know the grief that Hans was going through. So I'm not going to judge either, or I have no idea what that feels. And, oh, that makes me out of cry right now. And Julian loves her parents and respects her parents to this day. She does not have bad things to say about what happened here.

I don't think anybody could have handled that situation. I don't think there is a proper way. No, I really don't. I don't know what this, I honestly don't know what the way to handle it would have been. But Hans left Pangwana for Peru in 1974. He just kind of left in Sayagabide anybody and didn't tell anyone. He just started living in Germany, but everyone said he was just never the same. Like it's just destroyed a huge part of him. He died in 2000 at 87 years old. Wow. Julian said their relationship definitely changed when she came home. That's really sad.

It never really recovered, but she kind of liked she could understand in some way. Okay. Later Julian actually learned she wasn't initially the sole survivor of that crash. When the crash site was later found, they discovered bodies and were able to bring them out of the jungle. And there was also evidence that at least a few of them, 17 to be exact, had survived the fall from the sky.

Wow. But their injuries were so significant that they died very shortly after hitting the jungle floor. One of those people was Maria. She survived initially, but she was nowhere near, truly at all. Yeah, like nowhere near her to find,

nowhere near where she would know where she was. But did they were able to recover her body? They were able to recover her body. She said, when Julian said, when she found this out, it did shatter her. No, we're not. Her mother had survived at some point that she wasn't near her.

Yeah. Now an investigation into the crash found that the crew was under a ton of pressure to keep the schedule on that flight because things had fallen behind during the holidays. So they pushed through the storm instead of diverting around it and adding more time to the flight. Dude, time is made up. Fadalair is not.

Yeah, fatal error. That's ridiculous. Also, the plane was in terrible shape. Like I said, it was put together with scraps of other plane to begin with and after this, Lanza shut down. Good. Bye, Lanza. Now, Julien did not return to Peru for a decade.

And honestly, I probably would never return, but she was a PhD student. Oh my God, of course she was. Yeah, and had an opportunity to study Amazonian bats in Panguana. Again, the place where she lived with her parents and formed such a strong bond with them and foundations for her eventual unbelievable survival.

And she took the opportunity and spent 18 months living in Panguana finishing her dissertation. My God. After surviving in the jungle, she went back to the jungle. She is the most badass woman I think I've ever heard of. She also became the director of Panguana after her father died. Wow. And in the 1990s, she returned to the crash site

with director Werner Horzg, the actual crash site. And he was the one who was supposed to go on that plane with his crew. Exactly. And she said, this is when she really realized how badly she wanted to return to the jungle. And she wanted to preserve her parents' legacy. She said, this was one of Hitter. And she said, the way she looks at it, quote, the jungle caught me. It saved me. It was not its fault that I landed here. Yeah. How do you look at that?

I don't know. Like, how do you have the fucking your abyss of a spirit? Now, we talked earlier about how filmmaker Werner Herzog was supposed to be on Lance of Flight 508. But he actually made a documentary in 1999 called Wings of Hope. And where he returned to the jungle and to the crash site with Julianne, they walked to where she crashed and also visited where she was rescued and the stops along the way of her unbelievable

journey where she just tells the story. And she talks about all the emotions. She felt the pain, the numbness, the times when she thought she couldn't go on anymore. She talked about the isolation and feeling of loneliness that truly goes unmatched. I can't imagine. No. None of us will ever know what that's like. As they go through this experience, she would stop and pick up pieces of the scattered, like picking up pieces of the plane that are still there today. Wow. That it's just scattered over a crazy amount of space.

And they actually visited Pocopa, where there's a cemetery that many of the passengers from Flight 508 are buried. And there's a big memorial that the graves are all around. And there's this map in the memorial that traces with dotted lines from the crash site to turn a Vista where Julian was eventually healed. Wow. Under the memorial, there are the words, a last day Esperanza or wings of hope. All 71 passengers and all six of the crews of the planes crew died in the crash with only Julian surviving. That is so remarkable. Yeah.

Today Julian Copka is married and actually goes by Julian Diller, her married name. And she splits her time. She lives in Munich and she also works as a librarian at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology and Pangwana. My God, she does it all still. She has spent decades in Pangwana building it up, making the facility in the institute larger, more like with more resources, and it has actually been designated as a conservation area now. She flies all the fucking time. Like God, all the time. Flies all the time is making the world a better place.

Is treating animals, is studying, is researching, is bringing new information into the world, is a fucking G. The G is G. There was a point earlier where you said she was like, all right, first things first and all, I could think of as first things first on the realist. Drop the horse and let the whole world feel it. Like that's Julian. She's still in the jungle business.

Julian. My God is one of the most inspirational people I have ever read about. I want to play this episode for my children some day and be like, never fucking complain about any thing. Like I know we all like everyone's allowed to complain about shit, like shit goes down. We're not saying like, oh, you're not you're never allowed to complain.

No, I'm jokes. But it's like if you feel yourself slipping into a rut of like everything sucks and I'm mad and this is annoying to me and the man who will be in, guide your way. Think about Julian, Just think about Julian. Just think about that journey. Just think about maggots in our arm.

I could be stuck in the rainforest right now face to face with an alligator and it's fucking baby. I could be sitting next to my mother one second in a plane and then I could be crashed by a thousand feet out of the air in the second. And then I could spend almost two weeks battling the Amazon fucking rainforest. You know what's fun?

Just to survive. We're gonna be on a plane in two weeks, and that's fucked. Yeah, but you know what? It's okay. This plane is from 2000 and whatever. This plane can withstand the lightning strike. This plane has had regular maintenance. This plane has a very lightning strike. This plane has had regular maintenance.

This plane has a very professional pilot. Yeah. And flying is different now. I flew over tornadoes earlier last year. Flying is different. So we good, we good. Actually, I was flying the day that Miley Cyrus' flight was hit with lightning that day.

We all know that day. I know that, how do you know where you were that day? How could you forget that day? I was out of flight and she was too and it got hit by lightning. But she was fine, but she was I. Exactly because the planes come with sand lightning now. That's my point. And also, no plane has ever crashed due to turbulence. There you go. So you can take that with your hat and Jello. And Jello, oh yes, I don't know if I've mentioned this before. I think maybe. Maybe I have, but if I have here, over again.

There's a tiktok where this girl said that she heard from a pilot that if you ever get nervous about turbulence and you can't understand what it is because it is a little very scary. I was gonna say a little, it's very scary. I like shit my pants every time this is a little bubble. She put a little rolled up piece of paper and a little cup of gelo and she put it in the middle and she said, here's the plane and the gelo around it is the air that you're flying through and then she taps the gelo and you see the gelo just kind of wiggle and she said,

is that piece of paper going to drop? And you say, no, TikTok, it's not. And she said, that's because there's all this air pressure underneath and all this air pressure on top and on either side. And that little piece of paper isn't going anywhere. It's just jostling around because the air is jostling around. And then she said, anytime you get in turbulence, just think about that. Think about Jell-O. Yeah. And I'm telling you it helps the last time I was on the plane. I thought about Jell-O. That's what I thought about too. And it helps me. But again, I will link some of those books in the show notes in case you are a feel for a flyer or if you're not, you're just interested.

Yeah, totally. But I'm telling you, Julian did it. Julian forever. Julian forever. Julian forever. Julian forever. Julian forever. Julian forever.

Julian forever. Yeah. Julian forever. Yeah. Julian forever. Yeah. Julian forever. Yeah. Julian's an inspirational, inspirational bitch. To say the least.

Yeah. I love her. Wow. Well, with all of that, we said, we thought this was going to be a short episode. But the one you're insane, you always think it's going to be a short episode and then we have like four parts. Yeah. But we love you for it.

I try. And we love you guys. We love you. And we hope that you keep listening. And we hope you keep it. We're weird. Oh, weird. That That was like why did you say weird? I don't know because we did the the yeah, I don't know I don't know. We were like, what's giving sinister vibes? It's given dark side of it Hey, Prime Members!

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