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Story: 42 Days without Food

Helen Klaben, 21 wanted to travel from Fairbanks to Seattle and decided to try and save some money by flying with an amateur pilot, 42-yea...




Helen Klaben, 21 wanted to travel from Fairbanks to Seattle and decided to try and save some money by flying with an amateur pilot, 42-year-old Ralph Flores. This turned out to be a costly decision, when Flores’ plane crashed in the Canadian wilderness on February 4th, 1963. They both suffered broken bones, but they were alive.

Unfortunately, they had no survival equipment apart from some matches, four cans of sardines, two cans of tuna, two cans of fruit cocktail, and a bottle of vitamin pills. In an attempt to deal with the night time temperatures that dropped as low as 42 below zero, they made a blanket from the plane’s carpet and stuffed clothes and leaves into the cracks in the plane’s cabin to insulate it. They used gasoline from the fuel tank to light a fire.

After a week, their meager rations ran out, forcing them to live off the melted snow. Fortunately, both passenger and pilot were overweight and could survive off their body fat for another 42 days, until they were rescued by a passing aircraft