Stupid Contrived Survival Stories

[u/MammothPenguin69]

1. 12 Feet Deep - Two idiots decide they absolutely positively MUST go swimming in a pool after it's closed. An incredibly contrived sequence of events happens so they get stuck in a pool. So the movie can happen.

2. Frozen (not that one) - Three idiots decide they absolutely positively MUST get on a ski-lift after it's closed. To the point of bribing the operator who for some stupid reason doesn't say anything. Do the movie can happen. Also, Wolves are not that aggressive. They are typically shy and avoid humans.

3. 47 Meters Down- Arguably the most believable scenario on this list. It's still really stupid.

4. Fall- Two idiots decide to climb an abandoned radio tower without proper equipment that would make escaping their predicament trivially easy. Stop me if you've heard this one before

so the movie can happen.

[u/Nur4m0n]

Contrived or not, some of these don't seem that far fetched considering how stupid real people have shown themselves to be.

[u/0kids4now → u/Nur4m0n]

I immediately thought of 127 hours, but then realized it's based on a true story...

[u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 → u/0kids4now]

127 Hours is not at all contrived. People climb canyons all the time. Aron Ralston didn't do anything wrong or out of the ordinary. His only mistake was not telling other climbers where he was going, which is a bad mistake, but one that is quite common. He just got very unlucky to have an accident in a canyon that doesn't see much foot traffic.

[u/DyingSunSeverian → u/Unfair_Pineapple8813]

Yeah I think a much better example is Christopher McCandless (as depicted in the movie Into the Wild).

Now that dude made so many easy-to-avoid mistakes it’s almost like he was just plainly suicidal.

Obviously neither of these films is contrived at all since they actually happened, but yeah, very different circumstances.

[u/HandsomePaddyRedux → u/DyingSunSeverian]

McCandless wasn’t suicidal, but likely mentally ill. He was sort of a cross between Ted Kaczynski and Michael Scott trying to be Survivorman. He wanted to disconnect from the social, medical, nutritional, and technological safety net of modern society with no practical skills for doing so. He could have even survived for a considerable period of time if he had known that potatoes are edible, but the rest of the plant is not.

[u/your_moms_a_clone → u/HandsomePaddyRedux]

Didn't he starve to death?

[u/HandsomePaddyRedux → u/your_moms_a_clone]

Yes, specifically he ate some potato plants because he didn’t know what a terrible idea that was. The severe diarrhea and vomiting caused him to waste his drinking water trying, and failing, to keep hydrated. This left him too weak to seek help or forage for more food.

[u/animalia555 → u/DyingSunSeverian]

Is he real life Monkey D. Luffy or something?

[u/MaineSoxGuy93 → u/Unfair_Pineapple8813]

Aron's book though made it pretty clear he was a reckless idiot. He wrote about how he got his friends trapped during an avalanche and didn't seem to understand why they wanted nothing to do with him after that.

[u/Malacro → u/Unfair_Pineapple8813]

“He didn’t do anything wrong, other than that massive thing he did wrong.”

[u/altymcalty-2 → u/Unfair_Pineapple8813]

That's just the nature of extreme sports like freeclimbing or canyon climbing. You can do almost everything perfectly, and sometimes thing will still go to shit. Just the luck of the draw, the same way your life can go perfectly normal and you can still get killed by a drunk chick slamming into your car on the way home from work

[u/NEBanshee → u/Unfair_Pineapple8813]

When "only mistake" is literally the worst mistake you can make when doing a solo climb intentionally out where no one is going to be.

And doing a solo climb is as stupidly dangerous as a solo scuba dive, to begin with.

Also no props to Aron for having cheap azz equipment like a DollarStore utility knife.