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127 Hours of Hell<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ralston stood there stuck<\/a>, not knowing what to do. Besides the one liter of water, he had two burritos, a chunk of chocolate, some headphones, and a video camera. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That wouldn\u2019t allow him to live very long. This wasn\u2019t Castaway<\/em> where he could live secluded from the outside world for four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since nobody knew where he was or where he was going, a search party couldn\u2019t rescue him. He figured he had maybe a week or two of life in him.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ralston\u2019s first plan was to slowly chip away at the rock, hoping to get it to move and eventually separate from his arm. He tried this, and sparingly used his food and water, but was making hardly any progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ralston\u2019s mind was going delirious, and there were times when he was blacking out. Eventually, he realized if he was to live, he was going to have to make a very bold move. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In his pocket, he had a small knife from his inexpensive tool kit. He didn\u2019t use it to chip away at the rock; instead, he thought of something more intense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re gonna have to cut your arm off,\u201d Ralston said to himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ralston wrote in his autobiography how he had a conversation with himself back and forth about how he had to do this, but couldn\u2019t. Finally, he realized he had to take the chance to survive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So he took the knife and started cutting through his arm. If he could separate himself from his arm, he could at least keep moving and escape to safety and freedom. He cut through the skin, agonizing in pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, as he got through cutting, he hit something solid\u2013the bone in his arm. Ralston thought there was no way he could cut through the bone. He started using it more like an axe than a knife, trying to chop through the bone, but he was making very little progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By day five, he succumbed to the fact that he would die here. He began to feel at peace, knowing the end of his life was near. He just couldn\u2019t get his arm free. As he hallucinated going into the sixth day, he dreamt of himself dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I see myself in this out-of-body experience playing with him with a handless right arm,\u201d Ralston said. \u201cI see myself scoop him up and there’s this look in his eyes, ‘Daddy, can we play now?’ That look tells me this is my son, this is in the future, and I’m gonna have this experience someday. Now it’s like, I am going to get through this night.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the sixth day, Ralston took the most drastic measure, trying to fling himself at the boulder to try and break his bones to the point where his arm would break off. He kept snapping his bones, trying to break them so the arm would detach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For most people, snapping the bones in your arm would be the worst feeling in the world, but to Ralston, the sound was \u201ceuphoric\u201d for it was breaking up the area where he had to cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, after he had broken the bone enough, he was able to cut through the rest of it and detach himself. After six days trapped, he was finally free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ralston still needed to avoid bleeding to death. He desperately strapped himself to a rope, scaled 65 feet northward, got out of the canyon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was then was fortunately found by three Dutch tourists who helped get him the help he needed immediately to survive. A search-and-rescue helicopter with his family picked him up and took him to the hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat’s where I start getting all weepy-eyed,” says Ralston, “because when I see that helicopter what I’m seeing is my mom because she made the rescue happen.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of the video camera he had, many of these scenes, from the gruesome situation he faced to the miraculous recovery, was all filmed. Ralston had actually taped his last will and testament in the canyon thinking he was going to die. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The video-taping also helped with the movie \u201c127 Hours,\u201d where actor James Franco plays Aron Ralston and re-dramatizes the entire experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, Ralston is a motivational speaker, helping inspire others who needed that extra bit of courage. He also preaches about how God was a key figure in helping save him, and he discusses his out-of-body experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He said one big moment that has changed him is he always takes his friends with him if he ever does anything dangerous, such as rafting or climbing<\/a>, and he always alerts his family where he is. He also will visit Bluejohn Canyon as a remembrance of what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I touch it and go back to that place, remembering when I thought about what’s important in life, relationships, and this quest to want to get out of there and return to love and relationships,” he says, “to return to freedom instead of entrapment.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Barkham, Patrick. \u201cThe Extraordinary Story Behind Danny Boyle\u2019s 127 Hours.\u201d The Guardian. <\/em>15 Dec 2010. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2010\/dec\/15\/story-danny-boyles-127-hours<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.historydefined.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/aron-ralston-rock-1024x613.png\")
The Plan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.historydefined.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/BlueJohnCooridoor-683x1024.jpg\")
The Aftermath<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
References<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n