Throughout history, there have been all kinds of survival stories of adrift castaways. For example, Alexander Selkirk spent four years and four months alone on an island. In fact, his story inspired the classic Robinson Crusoe (and others). A century later, the 21 crew of an Essex whaling ship survived 93 days adrift and inspired Moby Dick. Cannibalism aided those who came ashore. Even the Titanic had many survivors. Now something equally surprising has happened in Russia.

News. A video of 46-year-old Russian Mikhail Pichugin is making many major international media headlines. The image shows a bushy bearded man wearing an orange life jacket floating on a small catamaran-type boat with a red flag on the mast being rescued as emergency services try to reach him. The man can be heard shouting, “I don’t have much strength.”

It appears he has survived on the loose for over two months. Sometimes he is alone in a small inflatable boat and in a place as inhospitable as it is unthinkable, in the frozen seas of Siberia. Upon arrival, Pichugin described his terrible experience, although he was lucky. According to authorities and reports, his brother and teenage nephew died in the incident.

Story: The scene is the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, a place largely surrounded by Russia’s eastern Siberia and the Kamchatka Peninsula. The region generally freezes over between October and March, and is actually ranked as the coldest sea in East Asia.

Well, here are two grown men and the 15-year-old son of one of them, who went to the island of Sakhalin “to see the whales” by catamaran on August 9. As Elena Krasnoyarova, spokeswoman for the transport prosecutor’s office in Russia’s far east, explained, “after some time, communication with them was lost and their whereabouts are unknown.”

Moreover, from that moment on, nothing further was known about the three shipwrecked men until last October 14, “around 22:00 in the evening, the catamaran was sighted by a fishing boat passing in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk at Ust-Khayryuzovo in the Kamchatka region” he added. It was approximately 1000 km from the starting point and 66 days after departure.

What happened? While prosecutors were investigating what happened, Pichugin’s wife spoke to Russian state media. According to the woman, the victim’s weight could have played a crucial role in his survival, considering that he was around 100 kg before separation.

His wife told the media that there was no other explanation, saying it was some kind of miracle, considering Pichugin and his late brother and nephew only had enough food for two weeks. Meanwhile, it was stated that the man was “serious but stable and conscious”. He lost half his weight, now 50 kg.

Hypothesis. Transport police have launched an investigation into possible breaches of security regulations, raising the possibility that Pichugin could face criminal charges and be sentenced to up to seven years in prison.

According to The Guardian newspaper, sources close to the police said that he had about 20 liters of water, collected rainwater and ate dried noodles and peas. Additionally, Pichugin reportedly told the rescue fishermen that his nephew had died in early September, after which the brothers spent about three weeks together on the boat. He also explained that his wounds started due to sitting for a long time, and that his brother tried to wash himself and fell into icy water. According to this information, Pichugin saved him but died soon after.

Other survival cases. What happened is enormous if we analyze the rations of food, which were left unattended for more than two months in a place where the temperature was extreme, due to ignorance of the truth revealed by the investigation. As we said at the beginning, history is full of unique cases in which humans surprisingly avoided death.

Cases like the case of Yamaguchi who survived two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the woman who survived 47 years after being declared dead with the alcohol bottle in the hands of the baker on the Titanic, and even the case of the man who managed to do this after being heartless for 48 days.

All impossible cases, like Pichugin’s story, raised more questions than answers when found.

Image | RIA Novosti

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