When 35-year-old Mitsutaka Uchikoshi was found last October lying in an ice-cold field on Japan’s Rokko Mountain, a bucolic hiking spot north of Kobe, he was presumed dead. He had no detectable pulse or respiration, and his body temperature was 71 degrees Fahrenheit, 27 hatch marks shy of normal. While returning alone from a party on the mountain, Uchikoshi had stumbled and hit his head; he spent the next 24 days sprawled unconscious in the frigid air, without food or water. But when he arrived at Kobe City General Hospital, something remarkable occurred: He woke up. To the astonishment of the doctors who treated him for severe hypothermia and blood loss, Uchikoshi made a full recovery without a trace of brain damage. “I was in a field, and I felt very comfortable. That’s my last memory,” he told reporters before walking out of the hospital.
Freak survival stories like Uchikoshi’s ...
