Life is generally a safe experience, but it can take a sudden and deadly turn without notice.

Most people are at a loss for what to do when staring death in the face, but sometimes, surprising things can happen.

Whether it is by sheer willpower, determination or a massive amount of luck, people have survived incidents that were a matter of life and death.

Check out some of these real-life stories where people somehow survived despite the odds against them:

1. Vesna Vulovic: fell 10,000 metres from the sky

Jan 26, 1972 should have been a normal working day for Serbian flight attendant, Vesna Vulovic, who was working onboard a passenger airliner.

There was just one problem: there was a bomb on board.

When the bomb went off, the aeroplane was 10,000 metres above the ground, a height taller than Mount Everest.

The exploding plane split into two and the depressurised cabin caused everyone to be sucked out and plummet to their deaths.

However, Vulovic was kept in the back of the plane when it exploded, pinned down by a food cart, with the fuselage landing in a snowy forest.

It also happened that she had low blood pressure, causing her to pass out when the bomb exploded, which also prevented her heart from bursting from the force of the crash.

The first person on the scene of the crash was also a World War II medic, who found the badly injured but alive Vulovic in the wreckage. He kept her alive until help arrived.

2. Aron Ralston: trapped by a boulder for 127 hours

Imagine going for a hike, slipping down a narrow ravine and having your right arm trapped by a rock that weighs more than 362kg.

That was what happened to Aron Ralston in 2003 when he was trapped in the precarious situation for 127 hours.

Soon, it dawned upon him that if he was to survive, he would have to lose his trapped arm.

While he was able to cut through his flesh with a knife, he was unable to break through the bone, leading to him using the rock and his own body weight to shatter his forearm.

Afterwards, he used a rubber hose as a tourniquet before continuing to sever the rest of his arm.

Finally free, he was found and whisked away to safety four hours after amputating his own arm.

3. Tsutomu Yamaguchi: survived both nuclear bombings

On Aug 6, 1945, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was about to leave Hiroshima when he saw an American bomber plane drop a single bomb onto the city.

Seconds later, a flash of light blinded everyone, with a loud boom following immediately.

Tsutomu barely managed to jump into a ditch when this happened, burning his face and forearms and rupturing his eardrums in the process.

The injuries he sustained were rather miraculously light, considering that he had been less than 3km from ground zero.

Shaken, he still made his way back to his hometown of Nagasaki to report for work, arriving on Aug 9.

Just as he was telling his superior of what happened at Hiroshima, the Americans dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki.

He was again, less than 3km from ground zero, but somehow, was left unhurt.

Yamaguchi lived a long life after the war, dying in 2010 at the age of 93.

4. Michelina Lewandowska: buried alive with an engagement ring

When 27-year-old Michelina Lewandowska was invited to go on a shopping trip with her boyfriend, she was surprised as their relationship had been on the rocks lately.

It turned out she had reason to be wary, as while she was preparing, her boyfriend knocked her out with a Taser gun before burying her in a cardboard box, and placing a 40kg log placed atop her grave.

Having nothing with her but her engagement ring on her finger and thoughts of her four-year-old son on her mind, she slowed her breathing and waited for the sound of his car driving off.

With her diamond ring, she started slashing and tearing at the cardboard, eventually managing to carve a hole through it.

After 30 agonising minutes in the dark, she managed to break out of the ground and reach the road, where a passing motorist aided her and called the police.

Her boyfriend would be sentenced to 20 years of prison for his crime, with more time added after he was found to possess bomb-making material at home.

5. Truman Duncan: run over by a train

Given that being hit by a car is likely to cause serious injury or even death, it is not surprising that getting run over by a train is ever more lethal.

Railyard worker Truman Duncan found this out the hard way when he slipped and fell onto the tracks right in front of a train.

Despite his attempt to outrun it, he was pulled under its wheels which proceeded to mangle his body for the next 22 metres.

He had nearly been cut in half at the waist, with one of his legs remaining connected to his body by a single strand of muscle.

Somehow, despite the agonising pain, he managed to find his phone and call for help.

It took a painful 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive and even then, paramedics were of the opinion that Duncan was as good as dead.

Amazingly, he survived, albeit without his legs, and he would return to work in an office position after six weeks of 23 surgeries.