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This episode is brought to you by Honda. When you test drive the all-new Prologue EV, there's a lot that can impress you about it. There's the class-leading passenger space, the clean, thoughtful design, and the intuitive technology. But out of everything, what you'll really love most is that it's a Honda. Visit Honda.com slash EV to see offers. It's November the 21st, 1992, Saturday evening in Hawaii.
On the southeastern shore of Big Island looms the smoking Pu'uowo vent of Mount Kilauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes. The cone rises 800 feet into the dim autumnal sky. Today it is cloaked in a blanket of mist and rain. A soft pink glow silhouettes the jagged rim, providing only a vague suggestion of the violent natural processes going on deep within. But inside the vent, it's another story altogether. Visibility is near zero.
Noxious gases surge up from the crater floor, unleashed by the churning, bubbling reservoir of lava. The pelting rain is only making things worse. For 31-year-old American Chris Duddy, it's like being in the depths of hell. Perched precariously on a small, rocky ledge, Chris struggles to catch his breath. His nostrils and throat are burning, ravaged by the acrid fumes. Every so often, the volcano issues a guttural, rumbling growl.
Tremors ripple up through the rock, causing Chris's fragile shelf to shake. Occasionally, a spear of magma plumes into the sky. Fiery missiles crash into the cliff face beside him. Chris pulls his thin sweater tighter around himself. Despite the heat of the molten mass below, up here, halfway up the vent wall, the temperature is dropping quickly. With so many ways to die in a volcano, who'd have thought hypothermia would be one of them?
The weather is starting to get bad now. It's starting to rain, the clouds kind of come in, and then the visibility gets really bad. And it's just the smoke is swirling around and I'm soaking wet. And now at this point, I'm like uncontrollably shivering. But Chris is not alone. He hears a voice in the distance. It's his friend and colleague, Mike Benson, shouting to him across the void.
But it's impossible for the two men to see each other. Separated as they are in the toxic fog, it's every man for himself. At that point, there was just total despair. I felt like there was no chance to survive a night in that situation. The noxious fumes, could barely breathe. My eyes were burning. Death was looming. I didn't know if the rock I was sitting on was going to break off and I'd fall.
It was just complete despair. There was no way we were going to survive this. 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. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Chris Duddy.
He's a young camera assistant shooting on location in Hawaii for a new Hollywood film, but he'll be cast in his very own disaster story when his helicopter crash lands inside an active volcano. Suffocated by smoke and with nothing but a fiery death waiting below, the sheer cliff face above him offers the only route out. If he's going to survive this, he's going to have to do it by himself.
I keep looking up the cliff to like, how am I? There's got to be a way out. There's got to be a path that I can go that I can climb out of here. I can't go back down. There's no way to go back down. The only way is up. I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is Real Survival Stories. November the 21st, 1992. It's 11 a.m. in Hawaii. Chris Duddy, a young up and coming camera technician, is on Big Island.
He's here to shoot scenes for a new Hollywood blockbuster, Sliver, starring Billy Baldwin and Sharon Stone. Location scouts have identified the volcano Kilauea as the perfect setting for the film's dramatic finale. In the scene, a doomed couple fly into a lava-spewing crater. Chris is thrilled to be part of the production. After studying photography at college, he started his career at the studio of Star Wars creator George Lucas.
Now he's making a name for himself as a skillful and reliable assistant. Today, he'll be working with cameraman Mike Benson, one of the best in the business. He's also a good friend. I had done a few movies before this. I did a movie called The Abyss where I was in South Carolina for four months, and then I did a movie called Total Recall where I was in Mexico City for six months.
you know at that point my career i was traveling a lot i was out of town maybe eight nine months a year i had worked with uh mike benson who was the director of photography on on the shoot i worked with him on terminator 2 and we became really good friends he did a lot of aerial work and i was really interested in that type of work and i had done a few movies with him doing helicopter work and
aerial acrobatic work. Mike Benson is a pro at aerial photography and there's no one he'd rather have piloting him than Craig Hosking. Chris is lucky to be accompanying these two Hollywood veterans.
Craig Hosking, the pilot, he was considered, you know, one of the best helicopter pilots working on films at that time. And him and Mike had done a bunch of movies together. And I was just happy to be included in that team. And they were like brothers. And Mike was kind of like a father figure to me. Hawaii, an archipelago of more than 100 islands, is famed for its stunning beaches, lush forests, and dazzling waterfalls.
But this beautiful landscape was forged out of destruction, shaped by millions of years of volcanic activity. Big Island has five active volcanoes. The most ferocious of these is Mount Kilauea, considered one of the most volatile on the planet, the perfect place to shoot a film. On this November morning, weather conditions are ideal for flying. Sat in the back of the chopper, the warm air ruffles Chris's hair.
He leans forward and looks down to watch lava creeping towards the sea. As the helicopter follows the coastline, it skims low over hissing plumes of steam as the molten rock meets the ocean. It's not long before they spot their target, the Pu'u'u'o'o vent. It's a smoldering, mile-wide cone of dark red rock. It juts up 800 feet from Kīlauea's eastern flank. This vent is a mini-volcano in its own right.
and perhaps the most dangerous site on the island. Kris leans further forward, awestruck by the terrible power at work below. For over 30 years, the Pu'u'uo event had continuously erupted. Then, two years ago, it stopped. But in its last outpouring, lava flows had cascaded over land, consuming over a hundred homes, devouring villages and highways.
Some Hawaiians believe that a foul-tempered goddess named Madame Pele was the deity responsible for this tragedy. While Chris doesn't share these beliefs himself, with the volcano active so recently, he isn't taking any chances. As the helicopter approaches the rim, Chris prepares to make an offering. So the production hired a local priest and he came that morning before we started flying.
And they bless the helicopter and they bless the crew. And they give you a bottle of gin wrapped in tea leaves. And you're supposed to offer that to Madame Pele. And the legend is that, you know, if you offer her this gin bottle, she'll let you live, basically. I'm the designated bottle thrower because I'm in the back when the doors are off. So they say, throw the bottle now. And I'm like, oh, OK. And I grab the bottle and I throw it.
and there's this massive updraft of air that comes up out of the volcano. So as I toss the bottle, the updraft just blows it out and it crashes right on the rim of the volcano. Now at the time, you know, Mike and Craig kind of were laughing at it, like that it was a wussy throw. You know, we didn't think about it at the time, like, oh, that's going to cause us bad luck or anything, you know. Despite the bad omen, it's time to get down to work.
As Mike's assistant, Chris's job is to mount the camera ready for filming and ensure that everything runs smoothly. To get the shot the director wants, they're going to make a two and a half mile approach to the vent, fly over it, and then dip down inside the crater. So we did one take, then we flew around and landed on the dried volcanic field a few miles away from the cone to play back the shot.
So we all got out and I played back the shot for Mike and Craig. And Mike was like, "Okay, well, we could do it better. So let's do another take." You know, you always want to do two or three takes just to have backup. So we jump back in the helicopter, we line it up, and we go for the second take. They approach the edge of the crater again. Craig carefully steers them up and over the rim, and then they're inside the Pu'u'u'u event.
Chris can feel the heat coming up at them, blasting into his face through the open doors. He's heard volcanoes can reach temperatures of up to 1200 degrees Celsius. The chopper is in thick smoke now, so he can't actually see the lava, but he can hear it, crashing below like waves on the shore. They are now a few hundred feet down inside the crater and still descending slowly. But even though this is their second pass at the shot, this time something feels off.
This time it was a little different. I felt the back end of the tail section kind of make this wobble and we hit this turbulence and we were in kind of a whiteout because it's like the plume comes up out of it. So for maybe 10 seconds, you're in like a whiteout as you go over it. So the tail section wobbles, we have this turbulence. And the next thing I hear is Craig says, oh, and
You know, that's something you don't really want to hear a pilot say. And then the next thing he says is, hold on, we're going down. The helicopter spins out of control. The dark volcanic wall hurtles towards them. Chris grips the handrails and closes his eyes. Then his ears are filled with the crunching and screeching of twisting metal, the sound of rotor blades colliding with solid rock. Craig yanks the joystick to the right and we bank to the right.
And right as we're banking, the rotor actually hit the cliff. And I'll never forget Mike and Craig's bodies on the impact. It was so severe that they jerked to the right so severely their bodies disappeared for a second. Chris is thrown forward as the cabin shudders, then drops like a stone, plummeting to the bottom of the crater.
Overnight, Duncan's Pumpkin Spice Coffee has sent folks into a cozy craze. I'm Lauren LaTulip reporting live from home in my hand-knit turtleneck that my Nana made me. Mmm, cinnamony. The home with Duncan is where you want to be. Chris opens his eyes. He coughs and splutters. Sulfurous smoke fills the helicopter cabin. His head is spinning and there's a ringing in his ears. But incredibly, he's alive. He quickly checks himself for injury.
Amazingly, there's barely a scratch on him. It seems impossible, but Craig has managed to crash land the helicopter in an upright position. And Craig looks over and he has this huge gash over his eye. He must have hit something on that impact. Immediately, blood's gushing down his face. We all look at each other like, what just happened?
So we jump out of the helicopter. We don't really know where we are. It's very disorienting. I'm looking around. The tail section is broken off. The rotor's gone. The fuselage of the helicopter looks like a crushed beer can. You know, there's smoke everywhere. So we're like, "Are you okay? Are you okay? Craig's bleeding."
And then we look around and then I realized we're inside the volcano. We're at the bottom of the volcano and we're probably about 50 yards from the lava pool. The lava pool is a sunken reservoir of 1,000 degree molten rock right at the center of the vent. And around them on all sides are cliffs of sheer jagged. It's like a bowl inside there and it's about the size of say a football stadium, you know?
And immediately the gases and the noxious fumes in there, they hit you like a ton of bricks. Like your eyes start burning. You can't really breathe. There's very little oxygen in there. And immediately we start coughing. The smoke is just swirling around. Like one second you can see clear and the next second you can't see anything. It's just swirling smoke. And when you step, your feet...
kind of crunch into the dry lava and steam comes out of where your feet step in. We're in the worst case scenario possible right now. The cloud of noxious gases is known as VOG, a combination of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen chloride mixed with glass-like particles of volcanic dust. Just breathing it in is painful.
but it can soon cause serious oxygen depletion, resulting in brain hypoxia and even death. The three men cover their mouths and huddle up to discuss their next move. Craig reports back that the helicopter radio is fried, the electrical circuits fused in the crash. That means one thing: no chance of calling in a rescue. They need to get to high ground and away from the lava and the fumes as fast as possible. Staring up at the amphitheater of rock, it seems like madness.
But what other choice do they have? So we started climbing. The beginning, say, third of the climb was pretty, I would say, easy. But the higher you got, the more sheer the cliff. And then it was literally 90 degrees sheer cliff. I got in the lead somehow. I just because, you know, I was so panicked. And I would grab onto these rocks and it would just give way and break off. And I would yell down to them, you know, watch out, there's rocks coming. And they would duck and
It was horrific. Pumped full of adrenaline, it's less than an hour since the crash and the men have made short work of the initial ascent. In the lead, Chris can hear the other two scrambling up the crater below him. He stops to let them catch up. But as the angle of the wall gets closer to the vertical, Chris is soon at a point where he can go no further. So I got about halfway up and it got so difficult to climb. I was like, guys...
"Don't come this way because I can't go any farther right now. I don't know, I don't see a way." So Craig says, "Okay, let's just stop. Let's just stop. We need to just figure this out." So we all just kind of stopped and I was on this little ledge that was about three feet by five feet maybe. So I just stopped and sat on this little ledge. It's now early afternoon and hellishly hot inside the crater.
At least in this position, partway up the rock face, there's slightly more oxygen in the air, meaning the threat of suffocation is over for now. The men can still hear each other, but each is shrouded in smoke from the others. They can all hear the rumble of the volcano and they can all make out the glow of the lava pool beneath them. They're trapped. - At this point now, I'm starting to panic a little bit. Like, I can't go up, I can't go down. I'm stuck on this cliff inside a volcano.
So Craig's like, okay, listen, everybody just stay calm. I'm going to go back down to the helicopter and I'm going to fix the radio and do a mayday. And Mike and I are like, okay, that sounds like a plan. You know, what else are we going to do? Craig scrambles back down to the bottom. Chris buries his face in his shirt to hide from the pungent air and tries to stay calm. Then he hears Craig's voice floating up from the crater floor. He doesn't sound too good. So Mike and I...
We can hear him coughing and he's yelling up to us like, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe." And he kept running up to this little mound that he could get a little bit of air, a little bit of cleaner air. And then he'd run back down to the helicopter. - The gaps between Craig's reports get longer as he struggles with the busted radio until finally they hear the words they've been longing for. - Craig's like, "I got the Mayday out, they're coming." You know, we're like, "Okay, great." He's just like, "Just sit tight.
the rescue's on so that was like a brief moment of like okay we're gonna get rescued but this is the last they hear from craig they call out to him but no response then chris hears another sound a faint whooshing noise coming from above mike shouts that he can hear it too chris looks up sure enough he sees it a helicopter hovering above the rim craig did it they're saved and uh we could hear this helicopter but i could see it hovering
for a little bit and then the smoke just was getting really, it was just getting worse and worse the longer we were in there. And this helicopter was hovering, hovering, hovering and it was getting louder and louder. And the louder it got, the less Mike and I could hear what was going on. - For a moment, Chris imagines he hears Craig's voice. But with the deafening thrum of the helicopter, he can barely hear himself think, "What's taking him so long?" - And then the helicopter goes away.
And we're yelling, "Craig, Craig, Craig," and we didn't hear nothing back from him. So Mike and I think Craig is dead. We think he died 'cause he was in a really bad way before we hear this helicopter. - Why has the helicopter suddenly vanished? More importantly, what's happened to Craig? Without answers, all Mike and Chris can do is sit tight and wait, feeling the volcano reverberating beneath them and praying the rescuers will return.
It's now nearly four hours since the crash, and the sky is darkening. Chris sits there on his crumbling little ledge. Every so often, he and Mike shout to one another across the expanse. They can't help but wonder if they've been abandoned to their fate. And then finally, from somewhere far up above, they hear voices. So maybe like an hour later, a ground crew is up on the top of the volcano, and they yell down to us.
"Hey, we're up here. We're gonna try to get you guys. Just sit tight." So we're like, "Oh, great." But it's like an echo chamber in there. You can't tell where things are, 'cause it's like a bowl inside there. So sounds are bouncing around. I couldn't tell if they were to my right, to my left. - But just as it seems like help is at hand, nature intervenes once again. Dark clouds start rolling in. - So they're making their way around, and they keep verbally yelling at us.
And then meanwhile, the weather is starting to get bad now. Now it's starting to rain, the clouds kind of come in and then the visibility gets really bad. Mike and I are coughing and our eyes are burning. You know, I was in almost like a fetal position sitting on this rock and I would just put myself inside my sweatshirt and just keep my eyes closed and just, it was all about shallow breathing, right? Like that was...
If you took too deep of a breath, you would just uncontrollably cough. So I would just try to stay calm and I couldn't open my eyes for more than a couple seconds because they would just start burning. The rescue team keep looking for a way down, but as evening arrives, the weather is only getting worse.
Another hour goes by and nothing's really happening. Mike's telling me to just stay calm and they're going to rescue us. Mike was trying to stay very positive and I was starting to lose hope, you know. And about 4.30, the rescuers yell down and they say, we have to call off the rescue till tomorrow. And I'm like, wait a minute, what? Conditions are too dangerous now. The team reassure Chris and Mike that they'll be back at dawn.
They just have to hang on until the morning. "This is not good. This is just…just despair started to set in. Like, you know, how are we going to survive a night in a volcano?" Chris lies curled up in a ball, struggling to stay warm. Despite the exhaustion on the rocky outcrop, sleep is out of the question. Half hallucinating, he thinks he hears the shrill screech of some prehistoric bird circling the crater.
It was like a light show in there, you know, through the fog and the steam and the smoke. The lava, just this oranges and reds and yellow light just bouncing off the steam and the smoke. And you could hear the lava flow. It reminded me of like, you know, if you're camping by a river at night and you're in your tent, it's super quiet and all you can hear is the river flow. That's what it kind of sounded like.
It was pretty incredible, but it was still so scary in there. But every once in a while there would be this rumble and then there would be like these rock slides all around us. And I was like, what if a rock comes flying down and just hits me? Or, you know, what if the rock I'm sitting on in one of these little earthquakes, like if it breaks loose and Mike's right below me, like it would just be a disaster.
As the night drags on, the weather deteriorates and the temperature drops further. Hummelled by the driving rain, Chris is soon shivering violently. All he can do is focus on his best reason for staying alive, getting home to his kids. I had two young sons at the time and I thought about them a lot in there. And we were really close. I was divorced at the time from their mom, but my sons and I were really close and
I kept, all I could think about was them and how terrible it's gonna be for them to grow up without their dad, you know? That was really the inspiration that kept that survival instinct in me, was my sons and my family, and I thought about them a lot. Dawn breaks. Chris and Mike have both survived the night. The pale morning light begins to warm their half-frozen bodies.
And, mercifully, it's not long before they hear the rescue team shouting down to them from above. They're ready to try again, just as they promised. And there was this renewal of hope that, you know, it's a new day, we're gonna get, they're gonna rescue us. It took them a while, it took them a couple hours to get, I think, where they thought we were. I have no sense of time at this point. And I hear this sound.
And I look to my left, and I see this rope come flying down. I hear this sound. And I look over, and the rope is about 20 feet away from me, not close enough at all to grab it. So Mike and I are yelling out, you know, "20 feet to your right, 20 feet to your right." So the rope gets pulled up. 10, 15 minutes later, comes back down. We see the rope come back down.
but it's still like 10 feet away. So we're yelling up, "10 feet to your right, 10 feet to your right." The rope gets pulled up, about 10 minutes later, comes flying down, and now it's like almost reachable. I'm like, "Mike, I can't reach it." And Mike's like, "I can't reach it either." I'm like, "How is this even gonna work?" - Even if Chris could grab hold of the rope, what's he supposed to do? Haul himself up, tie it around his waist? But before he has a chance to figure it out,
The rope vanishes. Then the rope gets pulled up again, and then 10 minutes goes by, 20 minutes goes by, and nothing. We're yelling up, "Hey, where's the rope? Where's the rope?" And we hear nothing. It's like really hard to see now. I couldn't even see. I stick my arm out. I couldn't even see my hand. That's how bad the visibility was in the smoke.
My ass hurts from sitting on this rock. My back is killing me from sitting in this fetal position. It's just, I could barely move. I don't know what, I think it's like two-ish in the afternoon now at this point. And I'm like, something's wrong. They're not there. They're not calling back to us. We're not, you know, they're not responding. I'm like, Mike, something's wrong. There must be something wrong. Now it's like full chaos.
Full despair. Like, I'm like, this is it. There's no chance now. Mike urges him to wait for another rescue attempt. But Chris just can't take it anymore. Figuring he's got an hour of sunlight left, Chris searches desperately for any route that might lead him out of there.
I keep looking up the cliff too, like how am I, there's gotta be a way out. There's gotta be a path that I can go that I can climb out of here. I can't go back down. There's no way to go back down. The only way is up. And I'm just trying to talk myself into like getting the courage to do this, right? And another, like say 15 minutes goes by and all of a sudden I'm looking up again and I'll never forget this.
the the clouds started to part and a ray of sun this part of the wall that i hadn't seen the whole time i was there it was like a ray of sunlight hitting this spot and all of a sudden i see this path i'm like oh my god i i could see away now so i yelled down to mike i'm doing it i'm going and he's like don't do it chris i'm like i see i see a way i can i i think i can do this and
He's like, "All right, well, good luck." Chris starts the climb. He inches up the rock face, arms and legs trembling from the effort. His whole being is focused on each grip, each foothold. It was so dangerous, like, and I'm not a rock climber. I was just, I was in full survival mode, right? Rock crumbles in his hands. He loses his footing, unleashing a small avalanche of volcanic basalt in Mike's direction. He shouts a warning.
Then, regaining his balance, he pushes on. I've lost all sense of time on this climb. I don't know if it took me 10 minutes or an hour. Now he can see the rim just a few feet above him. He's nearly there, so close to salvation when he realizes he can go no further. There's like maybe three feet to the top, right?
But that last three feet is just flat gravel. There's no big chunks to grab onto. I'm out of things to grab onto. I'm looking down, you know, into the abyss, right? And I'm like, I have to do something. Chris improvises. He plunges his right hand into the gravel right up to his elbow. Pain shoots through his arm.
The lava rock is like broken glass. So I'm basically sticking my arm into broken glass, cutting my arm up. So I got, now I get my left arm all the way into my elbow. And I figure I can just use that leverage and just lunge up this last three feet. Chris closes his eyes, tenses every muscle in his body, and pushes hard with his legs. Before he knows what's happened, he's lying on his back.
on top of the rim. I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I landed on my back on the top, on the rim, and I was out. And I jumped up and I'm like, oh my God, I did it. I'm out. I tried to yell down to Mike, I did it. I'm out. And he couldn't hear me. You know, it was raining, smoke swirling around. And I'm like, oh my God, I got to get out of here. Chris struggles to breathe.
If anything, the air is even worse up here, on top of the vent. He staggers around in a circle, shielding his eyes, trying not to slip on the gravel and plunge straight back from whence he came. Then he catches sight of something. The rescuers have left a rope near the rim. Rushing over to it, Chris shouts down to Mike, but there's no response. He waits a minute or two. Then he lowers the rope down into the void.
He has no way of knowing whether it's anywhere near his friend, but at the very least it'll act as a marker pointing towards Mike's approximate location. The last sunlight is vanishing fast, cradling his lacerated arm, barely able to see, Chris staggers down the slope away from the rim. He has no idea which direction he's going. He just knows that he must get away from the volcano. He has to find help for Mike. I made my way around the crevasse and then I'm running down the backside of the mountain
And I see this camp where the rescuers were. There was a couple of tents, but nobody was there. And I run up to the tents and there was there were water bottles and there was oxygen tanks with masks. I desperately try to drink some water, but my throat was like almost swollen shut and I couldn't even barely get water down my throat.
So I grab an oxygen tank and a mask and I put the mask on and I turn the oxygen on and I'm just finally getting to breathe some real air. I put a water bottle in my pocket and I'm like, "I'm just gonna walk. I know kind of where our production base camp is. I'm just gonna walk until somebody finds me or I find somebody." Chris plows on, taking deep breaths in his mask.
Two guys jump out and they come running over to me. As soon as they
grabbed me, my whole body went completely limp. It's just all the adrenaline and all that just stopped. They had to pick me up and carry me and put me in the helicopter. And I just start uncontrollably crying. It's hard to describe that moment, like the feeling of I'm finally rescued after 28 hours I was in this nightmare. And the pilot
just kind of passed me on the back and he goes, "It's okay, it's okay. You're gonna be okay now. You're rescued, you're safe." Chris is flown back to base camp. He watches the volcano recede into the distance, the terrain transforming from the dark volcanic rock back into the rolling green of the island. When they come into land, Chris can't quite believe the scene on the ground, but even more amazing is the friendly face waiting to greet him.
And then I remember flying into the base camp. There were fire engine trucks and ambulances and police cars and news vans and news reporters. It was like, you know, literally like a scene out of a movie. And we come around and land and I'm getting out of the helicopter and all of a sudden Craig runs up and he grabs me and I'm like, "Oh my God, you're alive. Craig, we thought you were dead."
Craig, it turns out, was rescued the day before by the first helicopter. Visibility was near zero, but the rescuers took advantage of a brief parting of the smoke to land at the bottom of the crater and whisk Craig to safety. From their position, halfway up the rock face, Chris and Mike had no idea this was happening. Chris rushes to explain how Mike is still trapped, how he still needs help, but the team just can't do anything in this weather. As desperate as it is, they must sit tight till the rain clears.
And so, the very first thing in the morning, they return to the vent. Guided by that rope that Chris left behind, Mike, too, is finally saved. There's three of us. There was three different rescues on three different days, and we all survived this ordeal. It's crazy. Miraculously, all three men are pretty much unharmed.
But needless to say, the whole ordeal will have a profound and lasting effect on Chris. His brush with death will alter his view of life forever. And I still think about that climb and how dangerous it was and how, you know, the odds of me making that climb, I would say nine out of ten times I would have fallen to my demise.
When you're forced into those situations, your instincts take over and you can do almost inhuman things. I'm speechless about it. I mean, I know I'm just telling the story, but I can't... I feel so lucky after that. And it changed my life in a good way. After something like that, you can't take life for granted.
chris went on to become one of hollywood's most acclaimed cinematographers he is known for his special effects work on several disaster blockbusters including titanic and the volcano thriller dante's peak his incredible determination and courage carried him out of the crater the thought of his sons and family forced him to keep going but chris is under no illusions as to how fortunate he was i even have lucky tattooed on my arm
and I have a four-leaf clover tattoo. And I have my screensaver is a picture of the volcano because I want to be reminded every day of how lucky I am. Every day you wake up, you should be thankful. I try to live my life now like every day could be my last because of that.
And 30 years later, I still feel like that. Like, I still feel like I'm the luckiest guy on the planet. In the next episode, we meet Danelle Berlangi. She's an endurance athlete, an experienced explorer of the Utah backcountry. But when a training run through the Moab Desert goes disastrously wrong, Danelle is left immobile and incapacitated. There is just the faintest glimmer of hope.
Stranded in a ravine with only her loyal dog for company, she'll come to realize that her canine companion could offer a moonshot chance of survival. That's next time on Real Survival Stories.