Real Survival Stories - Mayday in Africa: Crash-Landing on the Savannah

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Greg Rasmussen is a wildlife conservationist, a man dedicated to protecting endangered species. But when he crashes his light aircraft deep in the Zimbabwean bush, he’ll become a prisoner in the landscape he strives to preserve. It’s a place known for breathtaking safari. But Greg must deal with life-threatening injuries and the searing heat. And then, as night closes in, the predators start circling… Find out more about Greg’s conservation work at www.painteddogresearch.org A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started with a 7-day free trial. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. It's October 2003. The mid-morning sun beats down on Hwangi National Park in Zimbabwe. This area consists of nearly 15,000 square kilometers. It's an expanse of sprawling, arid scrubland. The air is still and stifling. All is quiet, save for the vultures circling overhead. Halfway down a rocky slope is the smoldering wreckage of an aeroplane.

Sheltering under its buckled wing, 47-year-old Greg Rasmussen lies face down, motionless. Waves of pain pulsate through his body. He survived the crash, but only just. His legs are broken in six places and his pelvis is shattered. He's not going anywhere. And lying prone on the ground, he's at the mercy of the park's predators.

For the past 24 hours, Greg has fought to stay conscious. I sort of figured at that moment that if I did pass out, I wasn't going to wake up again. I was out definitely at that point. I knew that if I just let it

go, I was not going to wake up, whatever came. And then I realized the sun's going to kill me. You know, the burning, the heat. The heat's going to kick up. And I'm the sun's going to kill me. You know, the burning, the heat. The heat's going to kick up. And I'm already dehydrated. But then, Greg hears something. He squints up at the sky.

He can't see it yet, but the sound is unmistakable. The faint drone of a light aircraft. Greg heaves himself into a sitting position and grabs the tangle of broken radio equipment his blistered fingers frantically work the dials but he can't find the right frequency it wasn't on an emergency frequency it was point one off any frequency it could be the bumps and just jolted slightly off frequency. But I thought, well, I've got to give it a try. Greg can barely speak. His mouth is bone dry, his lips cracked.

All he can do is repeat, Mayday, Mayday, and read out his coordinates. But it's no use. The buzz of the aircraft fades until it's swallowed up by the suffocating silence of the savannah. Greg slumps back down, overcome with despair. At that point, I realized I had the power in me to just give up. And then I thought to myself, is that what I want to do? And then this thought went through my mind very rationally.

I thought, what have I got to live for? Somehow, Greg must find the inner strength to keep going. But even if he can summon the will to survive, how can he possibly hope to escape this sun-scorched wilderness? Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. A show that brings you astonishing tales of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations.

People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode we meet Greg Rasmussen, a wildlife conservationist who crash lands deep in the Zimbabwean bush. On top of a tortuous mental battle, Greg will have to overcome multiple deadly dangers, any one of which would pose a serious threat to his life. His terrible injuries, the searing heat, and the constant threat of hungry hunters. Now, obviously in the bush, you get to know every single footstep of every single animal within reason. And I heard this football and it's almost like a very rhythmic and I knew I felt that's a lion. I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is Real Survival Stories. It's early October 2003 in Zimbabwe, a few days before the crash.

Behind the wheel of a speeding Jeep, Greg Rasmussen scours the landscape of Huangi National Park. The 47-year-old biologist is tracking a pack of African painted dogs, an endangered species of wild canine, which he has dedicated his career to protecting. I started working with the painted dogs some 35 years ago now, in 1988, something like that, 1987. And when I started, we knew absolutely nothing about the dogs. And the irony of it was,

I was only going to help someone out for six months who needed a field assistant and after six months I realized I'd found the most incredible species that no one knew anything about and my whole my whole life was turned around quite quickly and I had no idea that here was a species that was going extinct right in front of my eyes. I felt I had a mission in life. Spotting the pack up ahead, Greg slams on the brakes and jumps from the vehicle. He crouches behind an outcrop and squints through his binoculars, watching as the dogs rip apart a young antelope

with his bushy dark beard and mane of hair greg looks almost as wild as the dogs he's tracking he feels at home here on the reserve i was based in zimbabwe where i actually grew up my work was all happening in Wangi National Park, which is one of the largest parks in southern Africa. And I was on my own when I began right in the beginning. My fieldwork was on my own. I didn't have a team. And slowly after about 10 years, I'd got a team.

I had two people assisting me on the project. Greg has recently acquired a small second-hand ultralight aircraft. It's a great asset to his work, monitoring the painted dogs. But with its exposed sides, wire frame and single propeller, just staying airborne is enough of a challenge. Not to mention that in addition to piloting the plane, Greg also navigates and works the animal tracking equipment at the same time. It's a recipe for disaster, and he knows it. Being a wildlife biologist and trying to be pilots and tracker all at the same time

is a highly dangerous operation. And in fact, when I looked at the wildlife biologist statistics of how many had died because of trying to track their target species, I'd actually made a conscious decision I was never going to fly again. And I'd actually found a pilot that was going to take over all the flying for me because I realised I was pushing the envelope. However, this pilot that Greg has hired has been delayed in starting his new job. He won't be able to get cracking for several more weeks. And because of that happening, I was still in the pilot seat.

It's almost like I shouldn't have been there, but I was anyway. Fate was leading a dirty hand. Despite his reservations, Greg must keep flying for a while longer. And so, when he receives a phone call from a fellow conservationist in need of a pilot, he agrees to help. And then I got an emergency call from the National Park Psychologist who was tracking the rhino up in this area known as Cinematella, which is a completely different part to the normal area I flew. He said, Greg, can you help? He said, we've got a situation. He said, we've lost a lot of rhino poaching. He said, we have no idea how many are still alive or dead.

He said, would you be able to get your plane up? And I said, of course, you know, I can't let another conservation biologist down. Greg is happy to assist. But on the morning of his departure, things get off to a bumpy start. There was premonition that day that everything was going to go wrong. Before I left my camp, there had no water all day because elephants had ripped up all the pipelines, which is quite a common event. Elephants can sense water at two meters deep.

But I thought, well, never mind, I'll get in the plane and when I get the other end, I'll have water then. Later that evening, Greg touches down on the rough landing strip in the remote Cinematella region of the park. He'll spend the night here, then head off early in the morning to look for the missing rhino. He's greeted warmly by the local warden. But when Greg asks about the water situation, he's given some unfortunate news. The pumps are down and there's no water running here either. Greg looks at his empty canteen.

More bad luck. So, I basically went to sleep that night, having not had what I call a proper quota of water, which didn't bode well. Never mind, I was trying to tell myself, I'll only be up for three hours. I can be without water for three hours. At daybreak, Greg climbs into his rickety little plane and go through the safety checks.

He's got enough fuel for three or four hours. He doesn't expect to be out any longer than that. And without water, he can't afford to be. The engine whirs into life. He bounces along the dusty airstrip, then ascends into the dawn sky. It only takes a few minutes for Greg to realize that the conditions aren't great for flying. He feels yesterday's premonition returning. Something just isn't quite right.

I remember, I don't know, I just had a, almost did have a funny feeling that morning. There was something about the atmosphere that wasn't right. And it's funny we talk about these six senses. But anyway, but as soon as I got a radio signal, I started to get back to business, basically, which was radio tracking. And I got a signal from the rhino collar very quickly. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn ads.

Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. Trying to ignore his misgivings, Greg concentrates on the task at hand. He flies deeper into the bush scanning the rocky terrain for the missing Rhino during the wet season the rains transform much of wangi into luscious grasslands but by now in October

at the end of the dry season the land is barren today Today the savannah bakes in 35 degree heat. The watering holes are empty. Just cracked earth and parched yellow scrub as far as the eye can see. The tracking signal pings again. Greg swoops over a ridgeline and drops lower, hoping to get a better look. I was getting really low and finally there was the rhino. And I'm like, right, I've got it, I've nailed it, I've pressed the GPS where it is,

and immediately started to get out of there, because you know when you're low-flying, you know, you're always in trouble, you're always at risk. And I was definitely below 1,000 feet, because the rhino was so hard to see. Greg pulls hard on the controls, angling the plane into a climb. But there's a problem. As the nose comes up, the easterly airflow over the left wing suddenly vanishes. By the time Greg realizes what's happened, it's too late. The left wing drops and the plane goes into a spin. Before I knew it, suddenly

it hit me on the left wing and I went into something known as a wing stall. It's like a sycamore leaf. Your plane just starts to go down in the spiral. Greg is powerless as the ground surges up towards him. You're fighting it and you realize it's probably, you know, a second. That's all it is. So at 1,000 foot and you're doing, you know, over 100 miles an hour,

it doesn't take long to cover that distance. It was almost like the inevitable has come, because I'm not going to make this. And I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do and I was going to hit the ground. The light aircraft lies smoldering, a crumpled heap of twisted metal. One of the wings is wrapped around a nearby tree. Debris is strewn across the hillside.

And at the center of the wreckage, still strapped into the pilot's seat, is Greg. At that point, I was stunned. I was like, is this a dream? Is this real? Is it? I was completely confused. And then the reality dawned on me

that I was actually still alive. Normally, most crashes, you don't survive. Not from that altitude, head on. I remember just thinking, I'm alive. just thinking I'm alive God I'm alive

but there's no time to reflect on this good fortune and then I felt a drip of something on my face and I'm like that's not blood that's petrol and I went into absolute panic. The pungent fumes of aviation fuel fill Greg's nostrils. Struggling with his safety belt,

he knows that the plane could burst into flames at any second. Unfortunately for me, I have an absolute terror of fire. I almost had this vision of just a wall of fire. And I'm like, no, this sucker's going to go up, and I'm just going to be a tinderbox. And at that point, the adrenaline kicked in again, and I'd unbuckled my harness, and I immediately just started to throw myself out the plane Greg clambers

out of the cockpit and collapses in a heap on the ground he tries to crawl to safety but he can't he doesn't feel any pain yet but his legs aren't working so Greg rolls onto his back and heaves himself away from the wreckage. At a safe distance, his brain starts to process the situation. And as it does, he realizes he's made a terrible mistake. His crash landed in the middle of nowhere and he hasn't radioed in a mayday signal. No one knows where he is. Still running on adrenaline, Greg drags himself back over to the plane.

He reaches up to the cockpit and pulls out the radio handset. So I managed to grab the handset and it was physically hot. And I'm like, oh, why is it hot? And then, because it's plugged into the plane, and basically I realized what had happened was that the radio had been shorted by the positive and the negative terminals during the crash had come together and basically shorted the radio. And there was hardly any power

and it also bumped onto the wrong frequency. So I was basically realizing, oh, you know, we're screwed. And the petrol was still coming down. Unable to radio for help, Greg is completely stranded. But before he can consider his options, he needs to get back away from the smoldering wreck and the dripping fuel. He scans around.

There's a thorn tree about 50 yards away, a potential source of shade. It's little more than a gnarled stump protruding from the earth, but it'll have to do. Endorphins are still coursing through him, blocking the pain receptors in his brain. Medically speaking, this can create a pain-killing effect stronger than that produced by morphine. But almost halfway towards the tree stump, the adrenaline wears off. The pain suddenly kicked in just as I started my journey towards away from the plane. The pain kicked in and it was the pain was everywhere mostly in the legs it was pain in the pelvis pain in the chest but that was minor compared to the pain in the legs. Finally Greg makes it to the thorn tree. He leans back against the spiky trunk. Still in agony, he tries to focus his thoughts and assess the situation.

He casts his mind back to his time in the British Merchant Navy, where he'd learned strategies for coping in extreme situations. I was almost prepared for this day, partly because of training that I'd had, you know, 10 years before for the British Merchant Navy. They called it the what-if game. Wherever you were in life, they say when you're on a ship and play the what-if game, what am I going to do if suddenly someone says, you know, there's a hole in the ship or there's a fire? When you know you're living in a dangerous world, common sense dictates that you spend your life working out what you would do

in all the scenarios that could possibly go wrong. I'd played the what-if game all my life. It's a useful mental tool, but hypotheticals are one thing. This is reality. Out of the sun's glare, for now at least, Greg takes in his surroundings. He's on a rocky hillside that leads down to a steep ravine. He must be ten miles at least from the nearest access road, and hundreds of miles from the closest town or village.

As he surveys the area, Greg feels a sudden, excruciating pressure coming from his feet. Then I started to get this intense pain in my ankles, and it was insane. And I'd got proper boots on, and I realized then what was going on. Basically, there was severe damage in the ankles, and they were swelling. The swelling is cutting off circulation to his feet. Soon the soft tissues will begin to die and gangrene will set in. So I realized that if I didn't get those boots off

I was going to lose both legs. So I'm like, how on earth do I get boots off? I was paralyzed from the waist down pretty much. I couldn't feel my feet, I couldn't move anything, I couldn't wiggle my toes, I didn't know what was going on. When I was dragging myself around I realized both my femurs at least were broken because I felt, could almost feel the bone moving around inside my legs as I moved. So I had to get these boots off. feel the bone moving around inside my legs as I moved. So I had to get these boots off.

Greg casts around for anything that might help him undo his laces. The sawn tree that I was at turned out to be a blessing in disguise. And there was a low branch that I could break off and it was just just long enough to reach my boots from from where I was lying down and I had to then focus above all the pain to start picking at the shoelaces and bit by bit I pulled each lace until I basically got the whole lace off. I remember thinking later, how on earth I did that, I have no idea, but I achieved it. And I got the lace off, put the lace in my hand,

because, again, in survival, they always say keep the lace, because you keep anything that could be used as a tool. And then, even worse, was that the shoe never still came off. It wouldn't budge. Greg grabs a larger stick from the ground. He digs it into the heel of his boot and just about manages to push it off. Then I pushed the other one off and I felt that that was the sense of achievement. And I took, you know, one step at a time was to deal with that.

But that had taken me nearly three hours to do that. You know, something you can describe in two minutes takes three hours to achieve. He's cleared this hurdle. But he can't allow himself any real optimism. In a scenario such as this, even hope can be dangerous. In survival, you always predict that whatever you, if you think it's going to take 24 hours to get out of the mess, you project 2048.

And so mentally, that's one way of keeping your mind in a straight line. And so I was constantly telling myself, they're not going to find me and I've got to get out of this myself. As midday approaches, another danger looms. The intense heat. This tree stump is no longer adequate. The only substantial source of shade is beneath the broken wing of the plane. The plane that could burst into flames at any moment. Unable to top up on water at camp last night, Greg was pretty thirsty before this whole thing began. And now, with dehydration well underway, he knows he faces certain death from exposure if he stays in this spot. He has no choice but to risk it.

But without the numbing effects of adrenaline, the short distance that he crawled three hours ago feels impossibly vast. And I remember at that point, a pair of vultures just came and perched themselves on a tree. And I remember looking at them and thinking, what are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here. And I remember saying to myself, I'm not ready for you yet, you've got to wait 24 hours.

Then back to focusing. And yes, the pain was bad but you know I had to go into pain override over the next two hours Greg fashions splints for his legs using sticks and his shoelaces

then he grits his teeth and starts edging backwards on his elbows. His arms buckle beneath him. And then at one point I ran out of energy completely. I was absolutely, totally done. I'm like, I'm going to just bake here in the sun. If I can't get to that plane, I knew the sun was burning me up already. And I still got a long way to go. Well, I realized that the only way I'd have enough power to do, to move that distance was to roll over onto my stomach. At that moment, I had one of the

worst pains. And I realized my pelvis was broken because I heard a crack as I rolled. After what seems an eternity, Greg makes it to the plane's wing. He lies there, slowly inhaling and exhaling through clenched teeth. The charts of bone from the femurs in particular were stabbing the muscles, the deep muscles internally. It was like somebody going inside with shards of glass and stabbing me from inside. And that I wasn't prepared for.

That wave of pain really shook me up. And I thought, you know, do I want to end it now because it's almost inevitable or am I going to fight it? And I remember realizing, and this was what almost scared me, was that at that point,

I realized I had the power in me to just give up. I mean, it was a mentally rational thing going on in my head. I couldn't believe it was actually happening. There was no fear. It was just like, if I want this to end, I can make it end. And then I thought to myself, is that what I want to do? Very rationally, I thought, what have I got to live for?

What have I done in life? Then I thought family. Well, I didn't have a family to raise. I'd spent years and years of my life fighting for the cause of conservation. I remember thinking, well, at least I've achieved. You know, at that point, I'd done a lot for Painted Dogs. The ranchers had stopped shooting Painted Dogs. I just got this kick in me and it was like the second wave, or a third wave, whatever it was,

and it was just like, you know, there's so much more I need to do in this life for conservation. At that point I got a kick in me and I'm like, that's it. I'm going to fight this, and I'm going to, whatever it takes, I'm going to fight this until right to the bitter end, and I'm going to give it my all, and I'm going to keep fighting it, whatever the cost.

And that was the turning point. Invigorated, Greg tries to think rationally. His colleagues have probably been alerted to his disappearance by now. Chances are they'll soon have planes out scouring the park. But in a 14,500 square kilometer wilderness, the odds of being found before dehydration kills him are vanishingly small. Could he send up a smoke signal? Lighting a fire would be too dangerous with all the petrol around.

No. All he can do is conserve his energy as best he can and give the rescue team as much time as possible to track him down. Greg takes a long, deep breath. I immediately engaged in doing focused, very focused deep breathing. When you do this deep breathing, you have to focus on your stomach. And then that means that your heart rate naturally starts to go down. Because you've got to stop that panic situation. You've got to stop losing moisture.

You've got to stop wasting energy unnecessarily on things that don't matter. And I had one hour of absolute, with unbroken deep breathing. His knowledge of biology is proven crucial. He understands how his body is functioning and what he needs to do to help it. But some things are beyond his control. Especially in a nature reserve teeming with dangerous wildlife.

It's around 4pm when Greg feels the ground trembling beneath him. He knows instantly what it is. Of the 415,000 elephants alive in the wild today, Zimbabwe is home to nearly a quarter of them. Adult males can weigh up to 6 tons and stand 12 feet tall at the shoulder, making them the largest land mammals on earth. Although herbivores, they can still pose a serious threat to humans. When threatened, elephants will often stampede, trampling any living thing unfortunate enough to get in their way. Elephants are so dangerous. Sadly, at that point in my life, I have seen people killed by elephant.

And it's not pretty. Once they get going, I mean, there's nothing stands in their way. Lying face down in the dust, Greg can't see them. But he can hear how close they are. If they catch his strange scent on the breeze, that could be enough to send them into a frenzy. I think my heart, if my heart was going to stop at any moment, at that moment it nearly stopped.

I wasn't going to breathe. Waiting, because there was this deathly silence. And then I heard an elephant inhaling. I could hear them smelling the suction through their trunks, so they were that close. And at that point, I realized they were either going to stampede and run the other way, or they were going to stomp me. And suddenly I heard this trumpeting of... And I'm like, no, this is it, it's coming.

And they stampeded. And they all went the other way. Greg lies there, feeling the tremors recede. How many more close shaves before his luck runs out? By now, it's early evening and the light is fading fast. As darkness fell, my survival hinged,

and this was the hard bit, on me staying awake. I knew that the second I fell asleep, that I would lose the ability to control my situation, control my oxygen, my breathing, my moisture, my mental state. But it's not long before he hears something else that sends a shiver down his spine. There is something prowling through the undergrowth nearby. Now, obviously, in the bush,

you get to know every single footstep of every single animal within reason. And that's part of being a field biologist. And I heard this football, and it's almost like a... Very rhythmic. And I knew I felt, that's a lion. Lions are the apex predator of the savannah, and they do most of their hunting at night. From just a few feet away, Greg hears a distinctive call. It's a female.

Lionesses have a call that they use when they've got cubs, young cubs. And it's like a... small mewing sound that they make. And then I was worried. Then I was worried that she had cubs. And, you know, if one of those cubs would suddenly go forward, she was going to go in and take me out. And I'm like, what do I do?

Greg has mere seconds to come up with a plan. He fast forwards through all the lessons that nature has taught him over the years. He alights on one memory, an image from his childhood. When I was a kid, I used to go collecting snakes a lot growing up in Zimbabwe. You'd turn over every single rock, you're looking for scorpions, you're looking for anything, snakes. And periodically you'd have a shrew, which is like a little long-nosed mouse. And every time you lift something up on a rock, shrews in particular, they give this like explosive sound. And they always do it, and you always get a fright.

In this instance, Greg is the shrew. Vulnerable prey that must rely on the element of surprise. He takes a shard of shattered plexiglass from the plane windscreen. In his other hand, he picks up a length of twisted metal from the fuselage. And I waited until the lioness was walking parallel, but just curving in towards me. I waited until I could actually see her face full on, at close range. And then immediately I started banging with pieces of the plane. This could easily backfire. The startled lioness could lash out.

But she doesn't. Instead she flees. Back into the darkness. And she backed off. And then I heard the footfall getting less and less and less and she veered away from me and went down the hill yet again Greg has dodged death by the narrowest of margins what else does this crazy night have in store for him?

and I remember constantly thinking, well, whatever comes is going to come. I can't stop anything come. I had to just hunker down for the night and wait for whatever was maybe going to come my way. As full darkness settles over the savannah, the temperature plummets. Shivering, Greg cups his hands around his mouth.

He exhales and inhales through his nostrils. This creates a pocket of warmth and allows him to reabsorb the trace amounts of moisture in his own breath. Unable to read his watch in the gloom, Greg reaches up into the aircraft cockpit and retrieves the damaged GPS. To his amazement, its timepiece is still working. It is only 7 PM. Greg stares at the faintly glowing numbers. Watching the minutes crawl by is its own kind of torture.

He looks away. All through the night, he battles the urge to close his eyes. And then, finally, the faintest light creeps over the horizon. Dawn must be just an hour or two away. And then I heard what was my worst nightmare, and I'd had to wait all night for this one, which was footfall of hyena. It's a common misconception that hyenas are mere scavengers.

They're actually expert hunters in their own right, possessing one of the most powerful bites in the animal kingdom. They're called bonecrackers, bonecrushers. I mean, you know, they can take an elephant's femur and crack it open. You know, and they're very powerful animals. And there's no stopping them. Once they get going into feeding mode, you won't stop hyenas. Hyenas have a highly distinctive gait.

Greg recognizes it immediately. And I heard it coming, and it was almost like one of these horror movies where suddenly there was this ch-ch. And then ch-ch became ch-ch, became louder. Ch-ch-ch. and then became louder. My two feet were almost like a bait for a hyena to say, here, have a leg. And I knew that the second they grabbed that leg, there'd be no stopping, that was going to be the end of me.

All Greg can do is hope the same trick will work twice. But if he bangs on the plane too early, he'll simply give himself away. And if he waits too long, he's done for. I was like, shall I now? And I'm like, no, hold, wait for another ch-ch. And every time, in between those ch-ch moments, I was expecting to feel a clamping of a jaw on my foot and then it would all be over.

And finally actually I it built up so much that I bottled out. I was like I can't take this anymore and I just started to beat with the stick onto this piece of strut. And then he hears it.

The hyena scampering into the distance. And as daylight creeps across the dusty ground, Greg can make out the footprints. I'd bottled out at the right moment because that hyena, the foot, was inches away. His foot was inches away from my foot. The sun crests the horizon. Greg's legs may be shattered.

He may be dehydrated and burnt almost to a crisp, but he has made it through the night. And then, at around 9am, he hears something that makes his spirits soar. The distinctive whine of a small plane circling somewhere overhead. The pilot will never spot him him unless Greg can somehow signal. I kept thinking about the radio to see if there was any way I could get a peep out of the emergency radio. Greg wrestles with the tangle of broken equipment. He twiddles the dials, searching for the right frequency. He lifts the mouthpiece to his cracked lips and croaks an emergency message. Mayday, mayday, mayday. Zulu Mike Echo Bravo.

Latitude, duh-dum. Longitude, duh-dum. I'm 20 k's north, certainly east-northeast of Cinematela airstrip. But the drone of the aircraft just gets fainter and fainter. The radio is a bust. He needs to improvise something else. The harsh glare of the sun might just be his salvation. Greg sets about constructing a DIY heliograph, a device to reflect the sunlight. That was my next life-saving trick.

And I had a piece of windscreen, the broken windscreen, and I tried to just kind of shake it and heliograph with it. Greg hears the aircraft returning. He waves the broken windshield. The buzz of the plane recedes again. But did it spot him? Greg waits and waits, and eventually, after several hours, he hears it coming back around. This time, Greg holds up a twisted piece of aluminium, a metal struck from the wreckage. He angles it carefully until a dazzling beam bounces off the silvery surface. Again and again, Greg manipulates the metal in his hand. Flash. Pause. Flash.

And then I suddenly heard the plane change engine pitch. And I was almost... I was deliberately trying not to tell myself that they'd actually found me right until the last moment. All he can do is sit there and pray. A short while later, Greg hears something else. Footfall. And this time it isn't an elephant, a lion or a hyena.

They landed the helicopter so far away to get to me that I didn't even hear the helicopter land. And they walked into me. And that moment, yeah, that's just indescribable. I heard footfall and I knew what footfall it was. It was human beings. The rescue team medics hook Greg up to a drip. Then they stretch him to the waiting chopper. The nurse straps him in and the propellers reserve to Victoria Falls.

In the hospital, he learns the full extent of his injuries. He has broken every bone in his feet, his tibias, fibulas and femurs in both legs are shattered, his pelvis is fractured and he has multiple broken ribs. Greg is transferred to an intensive care unit in the city of Harare. Here, the doctors explain that they'll need to operate in order to determine whether his legs can be saved. Life for me, as someone who's always been active, you know, has got a passion, has got a life to live,

jobs to do, a job to do in conservation, that's my life. And I'm like, I'm not ready for that. And I remember thinking to myself, I didn't do all that fighting just to be a double amputee at the end of it all. On Monday morning, four days after the crash, Greg wakes up after nine hours of surgery. The doctors have managed to save his legs. But he still faces a long and difficult road to recovery.

The recovery itself obviously took months. And it was months before even a toe moved. Basically, the fight to survive and walk again was far greater in the long term than the fight to stay alive at the crash site. Greg will undergo 100 operations in total. He'll end up three inches shorter than before his accident. But from the plane crash to this point, it's a remarkable turnaround. If there were to be one single factor, it was one thing at a time.

And not being, trying to solve, have too many balls up in the air at the same time. You can only solve one problem at a time. I knew how my body worked. I knew what, not my personal body, but how the human body, what goes on when the heart's pumping and oxygen and all that. If I didn't have that knowledge, I wouldn't have known to take any remedial action. Eventually, Greg will get back out on the reserve. He's able to return to tracking and studying the painted dogs. In no small part, his love for these endangered animals kept him alive. And since 2003, Greg has dedicated his time

to coming good on the promise that he made to himself at his darkest moment. For the past 20 years and counting, he has continued working tirelessly for their preservation and protection. My focus was still and still is today the dogs, and we meet Chris Duddy. He's a young camera assistant shooting on location in Hawaii for a new Hollywood film. But he's soon cast in his very own disaster story, when his helicopter crash-lands inside an active volcano. Suffocated by smoke, a bubbling lava lake lies waiting below.

The sheer rock face above offers the only route out. If Chris is going to survive this, he's going to have to do it by himself. That's next time on Real Survival Stories.