Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Amazing Tale of Juliane Koepcke

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Few people have been more qualified to survive a plane crash alone in the Amazon for almost two weeks than Juliane Koepcke. Let’s hear her story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Solea Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC. We dig into how money, politics, and power shape government and the consequences for voters. With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave,

which makes this the traditional arrangement for short stuff. That's right. A tale of survival of a young German woman. Yeah. I don't know why, but Julianne Kupka started making the rounds like a year ago. Since then, everybody's written on her story, because it's an amazing story, but I couldn't figure out what it was that set it off. I heard about her on some Quora thread that was suggested to me and I don't know if

that's the one that kicked it off or not but she's made the rounds. She may have just opened up her business. No, no I don't think so because she released a memoir and that was back in 2011 so I don't know what happened but she suddenly became part of the zeitgeist. And I understand why for two reasons. One, Zeitgeist is a German word and she was a German national by birth. And secondly, this story is just so frankly amazing that everybody should know it. Yeah, for sure. There's a great Werner Herzog documentary about it. That's a pretty quick watch for such a harrowing story. But as all things Werner Herzog documentary about it that's a pretty quick watch for such

a harrowing story. But as all things Werner Herzog, I highly recommend it. It's called Wings of Hope or Vings of Hope. It's really good. So she was a young woman that was raised in the jungle. Her dad was a zoologist and her mom was an ornithologist. And she was raised in the jungles of Peru because they were researchers in the Amazon.

And she sort of grew up with this, I mean, I think kind of idyllic life of, being this nature girl living in the jungle. She said she went to the school of the jungle and it was a really unique upbringing for a young German woman. Yeah, I mean, her parents were like hardcore. They were in Germany. They met in Germany.

They were like, where's a place that's just so biodiverse? It's not really on the map. And they went there and they founded a research station called Panguana. And that place is still there today. It's a large nature preserve now. But her parents founded that. And she was raised there starting in her tweens, I believe, and then eventually moved on to private school in Lima. But yeah, in between that time,

like she learned all the animals, she learned what sounds they made, she learned how to avoid who, she basically just learned how to survive in the jungle, which really set her up nicely for one of the most significant events in her young life that came later. Yeah, it was a very sad event. Christmas Eve 1971, she was a 17-year-old, she was on a flight with her mom and looking to go celebrate Christmas with dad and this flight turned really scary. There was a very bad storm. And one of the, sort of one of the few times where you can point to an actual plane being struck by lightning in the air hasn't happened that much. I think this one's regarded as kind of the worst of all the times that's happened.

And with about 20 minutes to go in the flight, this plane is hit and all of a sudden plummeting toward the ground with 92 people on board. Yeah, what's sad is apparently her mom was not a fan of flying. She found it unnatural and before it got hit by lightning, it had started to hit some horrible turbulence. Like luggage was falling down on people from overhead and her mom said she's like I hope I hope this goes okay so when the when the plane did start to break up apparently Julie Anne heard her mom say now it's all over so that's pretty horrible right this is not just a regular plane crash they were at 10,000 feet and the plane broke up so thoroughly that Julie Anne said that

essentially she didn't leave the plane, the plane left me. She was still strapped to the bench seat that she had been sitting next to her mother in, but all of a sudden it was just her. Her mother and the other passenger, I guess, were just sucked right out of their seats and she found herself totally alone 10,000 feet in the air, headed straight down toward Earth. Yeah, just hurtling toward the ground. She said that, and this is the only thing that saved her life basically, was this really thick jungle canopy. And she said she remembers, literally remembers being in the air, falling toward the ground and seeing that the treetops look like heads of broccoli.

Next thing you know, she wakes up on the ground. She's alive. She's got a broken collarbone. She's concussed, cut up pretty badly, got kind of, you know, beat in the face obviously, so one eye was swollen shut. So she's in bad shape, kind of going in and out of consciousness, but eventually wakes up. She had pretty poor eyesight and was out of consciousness, but eventually wakes up. She had pretty poor eyesight and was missing her glasses, which was no good.

And she would soon learn that she was the only survivor out of the 92 passengers and crew. Yeah. I say we take a break and come back because as bad as falling out of the sky two miles down and surviving alone in the Amazon is, it actually just went from bad to worse for her at this point. I'm Solea Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC.

We dig into how money, politics, and power shaped government and the consequences for voters. It's an election year, so there's a lot of focus on the voters that TikTok is reaching. The initial reaction is like, oh, things are looking so resilient. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I just don't see the political will down in Washington right now to change their tune.

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So you said flight 508 is considered the worst lightning strike disaster in aviation history. 91 of the 92 people on board died, including her mother. At this time though, when she landed, miraculously survived following two miles down to earth from midair. She didn't know this, so she started looking immediately for her mother. She spent the first day looking for her mom, looking for anybody really, but in particular her mom. And she didn't find anything. I don't know what day it was. I think perhaps the fourth day of walking around in the Amazon.

I guess we can say she walked by herself in the Amazon surviving for 11 days. Day four, she came around the bend and found a really grisly piece of wreckage that I can't imagine seeing this. Yeah, this was two men and a woman who landed head first so forcefully that they were buried three feet into the ground. And this is the part I don't quite get. She checked the feet to see if it was her mother and saw that the toenails were painted, so she knew it wasn't. But, and I'm not nitpicking, she was clearly traumatized. But I thought her mom got ripped apart

or ripped out of the seat next to her on the bench. And so she wouldn't be strapped into another bench. But I guess that's nitpicky. Yeah, I know, I had the exact same thought and I chalked it up to trauma too or just maybe hope or something like that, I don't know. Sure, yeah. But yeah, I mean three people can.

I've never been there so I'm not judging. Exactly, but I mean imagine seeing three people still strapped to their bench seat all head first into the ground with their legs sticking up. That's just, I just can't imagine that stuff like that actually happens sometimes in the world. And this poor girl saw that on day four of wandering around the Amazon, totally lost.

But like we said, she was just about as prepared for this experience as a person can be from her upbringing. And she remembered after a while, like, okay, what did I learn as a kid about living in the jungle? And one of the things that came to her was her father telling her, if you're ever lost in the jungle, find water and just follow it one way or the other, because eventually you're going to find humans living around that water. Totally. And that's a smart rule of thumb, period. If you're ever lost in the woods or something. And at the very least you have some water. And she lived on that water, because she didn't have much food.

She had a little bit of candy. It was the wet season there, so there wasn't like low hanging fruit, literally, that she could get a hold of. It was obviously because it was wet season, it was super hot, super humid, but she did get some water from that river which kept her alive. And like you said, for 11 days she tried that creek, then stream, then it became bigger into a river. Eventually, she was basically at the point where she had given up hope and she was, you know, kind of succumbing to the idea that she might die. And she saw a boat on the riverbank and thought it was a mirage, but she went over and touched it to make sure it was real,

followed a path from that boat to a shack where she found some forest workers who immediately were like, you know, great. They gave her some fruit and started taking care of her and taking care of her wounds right away. Yeah, I think when she came in the shack, their famous quote was, what the what? Yeah. This was gross, I can't remember which article,

I think it might've been from the New York Times article by a guy named Franz Litz. and he said that they poured gasoline on her wounds that had maggots sprouting from it like asparagus tips. I mean she was in bad shape. Chuck, just put yourself in this girl's mind for a second. You don't need glasses, do you? Just like some reading glasses maybe? Yeah reading glasses. So you've never needed glasses? Except to read. One of the worst things that can happen to you if you wear glasses and are significantly nearsighted in particular is to lose those glasses. This girl wandered around the Amazon for 11 days nearsighted without her

glasses and that was one of the least of her concerns at that time. I just, when I think about that, it just sends a chill down my spine, because it's so awful to not be able to see like that. Yeah, I imagine. So she, you know, she survived. She got flown to safety. She got reunited with her father. The real, obviously, huge tragedy here for her personally and for her father was they lost their mother and wife. And so, you know, she comes back home, you know, obviously elated to be saved, but instantly mourning her mom's loss. She avoided the media. And that's why I think she maybe didn't, you know, was open for business more recently, because she very

famously avoided the media except for Werner Herzog who was supposed to be on that flight because he was scouting stuff for either a movie or documentary, I couldn't tell which. And he reached out, you know, he's very moved by the story obviously because his close connection and reached out to her and I guess because of his Eastern European heritage they might have bonded or at least she trusted him. And that's when he made Wings of Hope. Man, it's just nuts. So yeah, in that documentary,

apparently he got her to go back to the wreckage site and there's still plenty of wreckage just sitting there in the jungle from that plane crash because it crashed in such a remote area. There's just no way they were ever gonna remove it. Yeah, it was tough stuff. She also talked to some of the people who saved her. It's really amazing. Yeah, I've got to see that then. It's not long. You can watch it on YouTube.

Okay, cool. There was something else that I thought was really great about her. She apparently made one of those deals with God or the universe or whatever, and said, like, if I make it through this, I promise to dedicate myself to nature and humanity. And after she was saved, she made good on it. She's been, she's used a lot of her spotlight to help drum up, I guess, contributions and donations to preserve the Amazon, in particular to preserve Panguana, the preserve appropriately enough.

It started out I think around 445 acres and it's grown to 4,000 plus because of her just through private fundraising. I wonder if God was like, oh, I thought you were gonna say like in service of me, but that's cool, like that's good too. Or if at first God said, how are you alive? So, yeah, one of the other sweet things I think about this is she returned to

Panguana. She got her own doctorate in biology. She focused on bats and worked with her dad. And then her dad died in 2000, so she took over the Panguana Biosphere Preserve in Research Station and as far as I know, still runs the show there. She considers it her sanctuary, just like it was for her parents. Amazing. I wonder if she has shirts that says,

"'Not that biosphere.'" Amazing tale of survival. I'll tell you that much, buddy. And does that mean short stuff is out? I would say so, sure. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.