Aron Ralston’s 127 Hours: The Choice No One Wants to Make — Transcript

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1. 0:00Have you ever really stopped to think
2. 0:01about what you're capable of? I mean,
3. 0:04what kind of raw, primal will to survive
4. 0:06is just sitting there, dormant, inside
5. 0:09all of us? Today, we're diving into one
6. 0:11of the most unbelievable survival
7. 0:13stories you will ever hear. This is the
8. 0:16story of Aron Ralston.
9. 0:18So, let's set the scene. The date is
10. 0:20April 26th, 2003. The place, Bluejohn
11. 0:24Canyon, deep in the Utah desert. We're
12. 0:26talking about a seriously remote, rugged
13. 0:29landscape of narrow slot canyons. And
14. 0:31this is where one man's solo adventure
15. 0:34is about to take a very, very sharp
16. 0:36turn.
17. 0:37You know, it's the ultimate
18. 0:39hypothetical, right? It's the kind of
19. 0:41thing we might ask ourselves just for
20. 0:42fun, never, ever expecting we'd have to
21. 0:45actually answer it. But for one man,
22. 0:48this question wasn't a game. It became a
23. 0:50brutal, life-changing reality. Aron
24. 0:53Ralston was an experienced mountaineer.
25. 0:55For him, a solo canyoneering trip was
26. 0:57just another day at the office. But this
27. 1:00day, while he was descending a narrow
28. 1:01passage, a huge boulder, a chockstone
29. 1:04that had been suspended above him,
30. 1:06shifted. It fell, and it pinned his
31. 1:08right arm against the hard canyon wall.
32. 1:11And this wasn't just some rock. We're
33. 1:13talking about a boulder that weighed an
34. 1:15estimated 800 lb. Just try to picture
35. 1:18that. It was an immovable object. He was
36. 1:21completely, totally, and utterly stuck.
37. 1:25And here's the kicker. This is the
38. 1:26mistake that took a horrifying situation
39. 1:29and turned it into a potential death
40. 1:31sentence. Ralston had broken the number
41. 1:33one rule of the outdoors. He didn't tell
42. 1:35anyone where he was going. Nobody knew
43. 1:38his plans. Nobody was looking for him.
44. 1:41So, who was this guy? How did he end up
45. 1:44here, all alone in this canyon?
46. 1:47Well, to really get a handle on his
47. 1:48incredible will to survive, you first
48. 1:51have to understand the life that he
49. 1:52chose. See, this wasn't some
50. 1:55inexperienced kid looking for a thrill.
51. 1:58Aron Ralston was brilliant, a Carnegie
52. 2:00Mellon graduate, double majored. He had
53. 2:02this successful career as a mechanical
54. 2:04engineer at Intel, and he walked away
55. 2:07from it all. Why? For a life of
56. 2:09adventure in the mountains. And that
57. 2:12engineer's mind, a mind trained to solve
58. 2:14impossible problems, well, it was about
59. 2:17to get the test of a lifetime. And when
60. 2:19I say he was committed, I mean he was
61. 2:21all in. His goal was to be the first
62. 2:24person ever to climb all of Colorado's
63. 2:2614ers. That's peaks over 14,000 ft by
64. 2:30himself in the winter. He'd quit his job
65. 2:32to go climb Denali and had even survived
66. 2:34a massive grade five avalanche just a
67. 2:36few months before this. This was a man
68. 2:39who understood risk. He lived with it.
69. 2:41So, back in the canyon, pinned by the
70. 2:44rock, time just began to stretch into
71. 2:46this agonizing eternity. For five days,
72. 2:49Ralston fought against the inevitable.
73. 2:52You know, the first couple of days were
74. 2:54all about this futile struggle against
75. 2:56the rock. Just chipping away at it,
76. 2:58hoping for a miracle. But by day three,
77. 3:00severe dehydration and delirium started
78. 3:03setting in. And this, this unthinkable
79. 3:05thought began to form in his mind,
80. 3:07amputation.
81. 3:09By the fifth day, he was completely out
82. 3:11of food and water. He took out his
83. 3:13camcorder and recorded his goodbyes to
84. 3:14his family, absolutely certain he wasn't
85. 3:17going to make it through the night. This
86. 3:18number, it's just staggering. 350 ml.
87. 3:24That's less than a single can of soda.
88. 3:26That's all the water he had to make last
89. 3:28for five days in the brutal desert heat.
90. 3:31The physical toll must have been just
91. 3:33immense. And as he was right there on
92. 3:35the absolute brink of death, something
93. 3:38shifted.
94. 3:39He started to hallucinate.
95. 3:41He had this incredibly vivid vision of
96. 3:43himself in the future with part of his
97. 3:46right arm missing,
98. 3:47playing with a little boy, a son he
99. 3:49hadn't even met yet.
100. 3:52Ralston said later that it was this
101. 3:53powerful vision that gave him the
102. 3:54absolute unwavering belief that he had
103. 3:57to live.
104. 3:58And that vision, it sparked one of the
105. 4:00most incredible, gut-wrenching escapes
106. 4:03you can possibly imagine. It was a
107. 4:05brutal, cold calculation for survival
108. 4:08carried out with that engineer's
109. 4:10problem-solving mind and a mountaineer's
110. 4:12grit.
111. 4:14On the morning of the 6th day, with his
112. 4:16arm already starting to decompose, he
113. 4:18had an epiphany.
114. 4:20A horrible, brilliant idea. His cheap,
115. 4:23dull multi-tool couldn't possibly cut
116. 4:25through bone. But he realized he could
117. 4:28use the torque of his own body against
118. 4:30his trapped arm to snap the bones
119. 4:33inside. So, that's what he did. First,
120. 4:36he broke the two bones in his forearm.
121. 4:38Then, for an entire, painful hour, he
122. 4:41used the tiny, dull knife on his
123. 4:43multi-tool to saw through the skin, the
124. 4:45muscle, and the tendons. But he wasn't
125. 4:47free yet. He still had to rappel
126. 4:50one-handed down a 65-ft wall and then
127. 4:53somehow hike for miles to find help.
128. 4:55When you look at it like this, it wasn't
129. 4:57an act of madness at all. It was a
130. 4:59calculated, logical choice. Doing
131. 5:02nothing meant certain death. Amputating
132. 5:04his own arm, as horrifying as that is,
133. 5:07at least gave him a chance.
134. 5:09And he took that chance. And incredibly,
135. 5:12after hiking for miles, bleeding,
136. 5:14exhausted, he ran into a family on
137. 5:16vacation. He was found. He survived.
138. 5:20But what happens after that? After you
139. 5:22live through the unthinkable, how do you
140. 5:24even begin to go on?
141. 5:26A hero's journey doesn't just stop when
142. 5:29the credits roll. Ralston's life after
143. 5:31the canyon has been this really complex
144. 5:33mix of triumph and struggle. He kept
145. 5:36climbing. He got married. He became a
146. 5:38father. That vision he had actually
147. 5:40became a reality. But he also faced
148. 5:42immense personal challenges, including a
149. 5:44divorce and even a highly publicized
150. 5:46arrest. It just paints a picture of a
151. 5:48real complicated human being, not just a
152. 5:51simple survival myth. He told his own
153. 5:53story in a best-selling book, which was
154. 5:55then turned into that critically
155. 5:57acclaimed film 127 Hours starring James
156. 6:00Franco. His story of survival just
157. 6:02resonated with people all over the world
158. 6:04and he became this powerful symbol of
159. 6:06human endurance.
160. 6:08And Ralston was deeply involved in
161. 6:10making that film. And you don't have to
162. 6:12take my word for its authenticity. He
163. 6:14said it himself, "The film is so
164. 6:17accurate, it's pretty much a
165. 6:18documentary." That's a testament to just
166. 6:21how raw and real his harrowing
167. 6:23experience was on screen.
168. 6:25But of course, this story doesn't just
169. 6:26have a perfect Hollywood ending. Life
170. 6:29after the rescue was a whole new kind of
171. 6:31battle. Yeah, he continued to climb, he
172. 6:34even finished his 14ers project, but he
173. 6:36also battled with depression. He had to
174. 6:38figure out a new purpose for his life, a
175. 6:41life that had been so profoundly and so
176. 6:43publicly defined by those 127 hours.
177. 6:47And that really leaves us with this one
178. 6:49big question to think about. Aron
179. 6:51Ralston will always be the guy who cut
180. 6:53off his own arm, but his story really
181. 6:55asks us to consider something deeper.
182. 6:57Does one single extraordinary moment
183. 7:00define an entire life? Or is the true
184. 7:02measure of a person found in everything
185. 7:04they managed to build and rebuild in the
186. 7:07aftermath?