Show Notes
On the 19th of August 2007, British Army reservist and SAS trooper Jamie Hull was days away from completing his private pilot's licence when his aircraft engine caught fire during a solo training flight over Florida.
He had 45 seconds to decide how to survive.
With the cockpit engulfed in flames and the plane descending rapidly, Jamie did something that should have been impossible. He climbed out of the burning cockpit, stood on the wing of a plummeting aircraft, and jumped. The plane exploded sixty feet behind him.
What followed was six months in intensive care, six months in a coma, third degree burns to 60% of his body, over 60 operations, and a 5% chance of survival. And then the longer, quieter battle, rebuilding a life, a body and an identity from the wreckage.
This is not just a story about surviving a plane crash. It is a story about what happens in the years that follow when the world moves on and the hardest fight is still ahead. SIGNAL AWARDS 2026 VOTE HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from What I survived
Zoya Phan was 14 when the Burmese army attacked her Karen village in Burma (Myanmar) and her family fled through the jungle towards Thailand. On What I Survived, Zoya Phan tells her story of surviving ethnic cleansing by Burma's military. We trace the roots of the Karen conflict, one of the longest-running civil wars in the world, from British rule to the military coup, and follow Zoya's family from Manerplaw to a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border. Settle in, get comfortable, and let us tell you the story of Zoya Phan. SIGNAL AWARDS 2026 VOTE HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 2009, Australian security contractor Rob Langdon shot and killed an Afghan colleague during a confrontation in Afghanistan. Rob says the man pulled a pistol and that he fired first in self-defence. What happened next would cost Rob seven years of his life.
Former Australian soldier Rob Langdon went to Afghanistan as a private security contractor. He would eventually be convicted of murder, sentenced to death and spend seven years inside one of Afghanistan's most notorious prisons.
After surviving malaria, starvation and near death in the Amazon, Benedict Allen was left with a question he couldn't shake: why had he survived? His search for an answer would take him deep into Papua New Guinea and into a brutal initiation ceremony designed to transform young men into “crocodile men.”
Lost and alone in the Amazon, British explorer Benedict Allen contracted two forms of malaria, including a potentially deadly strain. Starving, feverish and running out of options, the 22-year-old faced a decision that would stay with him for decades.