Survival: 50

Recently widowed Dr. Nate Samuels and his teenage daughters, Meredith and Norah, arrive at the Mopani Reserve in South Africa for a vacation. Nate reunites with his old friend, Martin Battles, a biologist and Mopani manager, who introduced Nate and his wife. Martin takes Nate and the girls to the village where Nate’s wife grew up. Nate confides to Martin his guilt over being distant following his and his wife’s separation, after which she developed terminal cancer. The trip is to reconnect with his daughters. The next day, Martin and the family tour the reserve’s restricted areas. Martin shows them a local lion pride and notices that one is injured. At a nearby Tsonga ...

In 1909, Danish explorer Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen organizes an expedition to Shannon Island, East Greenland, from which he makes treks to recover the records of the ill-fated Denmark expedition. His first attempt is unsuccessful and a crewman loses toes to frostbite in the process, but on the trek Mikkelsen discovers a dead Denmark expedition member with a log and a map showing the location of a cairn built by his expedition. The only volunteer to accompany Mikkelsen on his second attempt is an inexperienced engineer named Iver Iversen, while the rest of the crew stays behind. Mikkelsen and Iversen lose two of their sled dogs in their first few days and gradually sacrifice the ...

On June 23, 2018, twelve boys of the junior football team “Wild Boars” and their assistant coach Ekkaphon Chanthawong leave practice to explore the Tham Luang cave. When the team fail to arrive at a birthday party organised by their parents, their families head to the caves, only to find them flooded and the boys missing, their bikes left at the entrance. The parents immediately alert emergency services. Royal Thai Navy SEALs, led by Captain Arnont, arrive to search for the missing boys, but find the dive too difficult to locate the team. Vernon Unsworth, a local British caver, shares his extensive knowledge of the complex and dangerous cave and suggests the authorities ...

Adrenaline junkies and best friends, Becky and Hunter, are climbing a mountain with Becky’s husband, Dan. While attempting to secure a piton inside a small cave, a bat flies out at him, causing him to lose his footing and swing from the harness. Becky and Hunter try to save him, but the harness breaks when he tries to swing back to the rock face and he falls to his death. 51 weeks later, Becky has become a depressed alcoholic who has estranged herself from her father, James, because he suggested that Dan was not as good a guy as Becky had made him out to be. James encourages her to move on with her life, but Becky refuses and later contemplates suicide by overdosing on ...

The North Water is a 2021 five-part television miniseries based on Ian McGuire’s 2016 novel of the same name directed by Andrew Haigh and starring Colin Farrell and Jack O’Connell. An international co-production between British public broadcaster BBC, and Canadian English-language public broadcaster CBC Television, in association with Canadian premium television channel Super Channel and CBC Television’s French-language counterpart ICI Radio-Canada Télé, the series first premiered in the United States on AMC+ on ...

In June and July 2018, a junior association football team and their assistant coach were rescued from the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai Province in northern Thailand. Twelve members of the team, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old assistant coach entered the cave on 23 June after a football practice session. Shortly thereafter, heavy rainfall partially flooded the cave system, blocking their way out, and trapping them deep within. Efforts to locate the group were hampered by rising water levels and strong currents; and no contact was made for nearly two weeks. The cave rescue effort expanded into a massive operation amid intense worldwide public interest and involving ...

The film flashes between musher Leonhard Seppala raising his dog Togo and the 1925 serum run to Nome. In 1913, Seppala and his wife Constance welcome a newborn Siberian Husky puppy to their sledding dog pack in Nome, Alaska. While Seppala insists on immediately retiring him due to his small and weak state, Constance is strongly supportive of the puppy. The young dog turns out to be close to unmanageable, and refuses to stay at home when the other dogs are working. He constantly escapes when left in the kennel, and seeks out Seppala’s dog team, causing great disruption to Seppala’s training routine. After trying to get rid of the Husky twice, the young dog escapes by ...

Overgård is stranded in the Arctic Circle waiting for rescue, living in his crashed plane. His daily routine consists of checking fishing lines, mapping his surroundings and running a distress beacon powered by a hand-crank dynamo. One day, his supply of fish is raided by a polar bear. A helicopter responds to his beacon and attempts to land, but crashes. The pilot is killed and the passenger, is severely injured and unconscious. Overgård dresses her wound and takes her to his plane. She does not speak English and only proves her alertness by squeezing his hand. Overgård returns to the wreckage of the downed helicopter and finds some food, a propane ...

The film opens with an unspecified year but is probably around WWII, as the rifle he carries appears to be a German KAR98, which was introduced in 1935 as the standard German infantry rifle. It is possible he could have obtained it during the Spanish Civil War, ca. 1936 to 1939, but it would have been a German frontline weapon at that time. The local townspeople do not appear to have all the modern comforts of the era with exception of electricity. The main character Martinon is a huntsman who lives a life of solitude completely without modern day comforts high on a mountain top in an abandoned town, which appears to have been ravaged by war. Martinon’s life is that of ...

After their flight is canceled due to stormy weather, neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Bass and photojournalist Alex Martin hire private pilot Walter to get them from Idaho to Denver for connecting flights to Alex’s wedding in New York and Ben’s emergency surgery appointment in Baltimore. Walter, who has not filed a flight plan, suffers a fatal stroke mid-flight, and the plane crashes on a mountaintop in the High Uintas Wilderness. Ben, Alex, and Walter’s Labrador Retriever survive the crash but Alex has injured her leg quite badly. Ben attends to her cuts and injured knee, and buries the pilot while she is unconscious. Once conscious, Alex ...

In the early 1980s, an Israeli adventurer named Yossi Ghinsberg travels to Bolivia planning to journey into the heart of the Amazon rainforest. There, he meets Marcus Stamm, a Swiss school teacher, and his friend Kevin Gale, an American hiker and avid photographer. The three are staying in La Paz, at an Israeli community hostel. Yossi is out in the market one day where a stranger asks if he is an American; Yossi replies ”no”. During conversation the Austrian stranger, Karl Ruprechter, claims the existence of an indigenous tribe in the jungle that they should go see. Karl says he knows the jungle, and he is friends with the tribe. Yossi, excited about the prospect of exploring the ...

The film is set in the 1960s, during the Cold War and the Space Race between Soviet Union and the United States. The Soviets plan to send a man into space. During the construction of the craft, a technician is killed and the engineers question the safety of the craft. A test vehicle, representing the Voskhod 2 spacecraft, breaks up in flight two weeks before the official launch and Soviet engineers cannot identify the causes of the explosion and sudden loss of communication. Ex-WW2 pilot, Pavel Belyayev, and military test pilot Alexei Leonov are called to man the craft, but during a skydive Pavel injuries his leg landing and is considered unfit. He is replaced by a new, young, and ...

6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain is a 2017 American survival drama film directed by Scott Waugh and written by Madison Turner, based on the non-fiction book Crystal Clear by Eric LeMarque and Davin Seay. It stars Josh Hartnett, Mira Sorvino, Sarah Dumont and Jason Cottle, and tells the true ...

Dozens of people from Copiapó, Chile, work in the San José mine. The owner ignores the warnings of the failing stability of the mine, which collapses a short time later. The only path inside the mine is completely blocked, and the thirty-three miners manage to get to the rescue chamber. They discover that the radio is useless, the medical kit is empty, the ventilation shafts lack the required ladders, and there is very little stored food. Mario Sepúlveda becomes the leader of the miners, dividing the foods rations and stopping the outbursts of violence and despair. The mine company does not attempt any rescue, and the relatives of the miners gather around the gates.

In 1850, author Herman Melville visits innkeeper Thomas Nickerson, the last survivor of the sinking of the whaleship Essex, offering money in return for his story. Nickerson initially refuses, but then finally agrees when his wife intervenes. The story turns to 1820: a whaling company in Nantucket has refitted the Essex to participate in the lucrative whale oil trade, and 14-year-old Nickerson signs on as a cabin boy. The owners hire veteran whaler Owen Chase as first mate, though he is disappointed not to receive a captain’s commission. The captain is George Pollard, an inexperienced mariner from an established whaling family who envies Chase’s skill and popularity. Chase ...

In 2035, the crew of the Ares III mission to Mars is exploring Acidalia Planitia on Martian solar day (sol) 18 of their 31-sol expedition. A severe dust storm threatens to topple their Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV). The mission is scrubbed, but as the crew evacuates, astronaut Mark Watney is struck by debris. The telemetry from his suit’s bio-monitor is damaged and Watney is erroneously presumed dead. With the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle) on the verge of toppling, the remaining crew takes off for their orbiting vessel, the Hermes. Watney awakens after the storm, injured and with a low-oxygen warning. He returns to the crew’s surface habitat (“Hab”) and treats his ...

During late 1823, Hugh Glass guides Captain Andrew Henry’s trappers through the territory of the present-day Dakotas. While he and his half-Pawnee son, Hawk, are hunting, the company’s camp is attacked by an Arikara war party which is seeking to recover its Chief’s abducted daughter, Powaqa. Many of the trappers are killed during the fight, while the rest of them escape onto a boat. Guided by Glass, the survivors travel on foot to Fort Kiowa, because he believes that traveling downriver will make them vulnerable. After docking, the crew stashes the pelts near the shore. While scouting game, Glass is mauled by a grizzly bear and ...

During an April 1943 bombing mission against the Japanese-held island of Nauru, Louis “Louie” Zamperini is flying as a bombardier of a United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber when his plane is damaged in combat and a number of the crew injured. The pilot brings the aircraft to a stop at the end of the runway despite suffering an exploded tire. In a flashback to his early youth as an Italian-American boy in Torrance, California, Louie misbehaves by stealing, drinking liquor and smoking. He is often picked on by others for his Italian ethnicity. His brother Peter sees how fast Louie can run and decides to train him to be a runner. Louie begins to learn discipline ...

In June 1995, despite a lack of hiking experience, recent divorcée Cheryl Strayed leaves Minneapolis, Minnesota, to hike 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of the 2,650-mile (4,260 km) Pacific Crest Trail on a journey of self-discovery and healing. During the hike, Strayed reflects in flashbacks on her childhood in Minnesota and memories of her mother, Bobbi Grey. Bobbi’s death from cancer sent Cheryl into a deep depression that she tried to numb with heroin and anonymous sex, eventually destroying her marriage to her husband Paul. After finding out she was pregnant, she got an abortion and resolved to hike the trail to redeem herself. Strayed begins her ...

Alex prepares to take his girlfriend Jen camping for the weekend. When they arrive, a park ranger tells them the trail Alex wanted to take is closed and suggests they hike elsewhere; Alex refuses a map, confident that he knows the park well. After a canoe trip down river, Alex injures his foot. Night falls and they set up camp. During dinner, they encounter a tour guide called Brad who flirts with Jen, which irritates Alex. Brad implies he would be more suited to take Jen on a hike. Though Alex and Jen initially planned on not hiking far, the next morning Alex decides to go off-trail, deeper into the park where Alex remembers there is a lake with a waterfall. On the way, he spots a ...