Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
An air crash, an ambush, and a sinking left three men alone in some of the emptiest places on earth.
How long can one person last when no one knows where he is? Three men faced that question in starkly different environments: Alaska’s frozen interior, the Libyan desert, and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Each had a few scraps of gear, his own judgment, and a decision to make about what came next. In the accounts below, Soldier of Fortune shows what each man did next.
Leon Crane Survived 84 Days in the Alaskan Wilderness
Leon Crane was on a routine cold-weather test flight when his B-24 Liberator began to fail high over Alaska. Minutes later he was standing alone on a frozen mountainside at 40 below, with a parachute, two books of matches and a Boy Scout knife. He had no wilderness training, and no one knew where he had come down. What he did next is the story.
Alone in the Sahara, Jack Sillito Survived the Impossible
Jack Sillito was part of a four-man SAS patrol sent to wreck a railway line behind enemy lines in Libya. A German patrol hit the group at night, and by sunrise he was alone with a revolver, a compass, a box of matches and a small flask of water. Every direction held a danger, and the nearest friendly camp lay somewhere across some of the emptiest ground on earth. Find out how far he went, and what it took to get there.
Steve Callahan Survived 76 Days Adrift in the Ocean
Steve Callahan was asleep aboard the 21-foot sloop he had built himself, more than 800 miles west of the Canary Islands, when cold water woke him. The breach was below the waterline and the pump could not keep up. He had minutes to decide what to save before the boat was gone. Here’s what he saved before the boat went under, and where it took him.
