Chuck Norris who?
Hugh Glass
While scouting for game in Grand River in 1823, Hugh Glass ran into a grizzly-bear mom who attacked him to defend her two cubs.
Unable to reach his rifle as they wrestled on the ground, Glass was able to escape from her death grip and stab her with his knife while she shredded his face, chest, arm, and back with her claws. His wounds were so gruesome that his fellow trappers simply placed a bear hide over him as a funeral shroud and left him for dead so they could get out of the hostile territory and away from the Native Americans who had recently killed half of their crew. With pretty much anyone else, the whole horrendous story would have ended there.
But not Hugh Glass. When Glass eventually regained consciousness, he set his own leg, wrapped himself in his bear hide shroud, and started crawling along the banks of the Cheyenne River.
During the insane trek across country that followed, he prevented gangrene from infecting his wounded back by lying on a rotting log and allowing maggots to eat his dead flesh, sustained himself by killing and eating rattlesnakes, and crawled overland for six weeks until he reached civilization — which was really surprised and impressed to see him alive.
Juliane Koepcke
On Dec. 24, 1971, a Peruvian commercial airliner crashed in a thunderstorm over the Amazon, killing every one of the 92 crew members and passengers aboard, except for one person...
High school senior Juliane Koepcke fell a total of 2 miles from the sky into the Amazon rainforest strapped to her seat — and walked away from the accident. For 10 days. Through the jungle. With a concussion, a broken collarbone, and a hole in her right arm. Then she met up with some local lumberman and took a canoe home.
C. Dale Peterson
Dr. Leonid Rogozov
In 1961, Rogozov developed peritonitis, meaning that he would have to get his appendix taken out or die. The problem? He was the only doctor stationed at the Novolazarevskaya Station in Antarctica at the time, the nearest help was a thousand miles away, and a massive blizzard was forming, which meant that he would have to perform the appendectomy on himself.
With two non-medically trained researchers standing by to pass him tools, Rogozov used a mirror, some novocaine, and a scalpel to remove his appendix over the course of an excruciating two-hour operation. In 1961 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, which is some cool Soviet award for being a total badass.
