Eject, Eject: Out of the Cockpit, Into the Unknown

When a US Navy fighter pilot loses control of his jet it seems his fate is sealed. Even if Kegan Gill can bail himself out of immediate danger, further perils await: debilitating injuries, a desperate fight to stay conscious, and an epic struggle in great white shark territory. Kegan may be a young and inexperienced pilot, at the start of his career. But no amount of training could have prepared him for this… A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05John Hopkins?

  It's January the 15th, 2014. Approximately 40 miles off the coast of Virginia.

• 1:12John Hopkins?

  In the ashen skies above the western Atlantic, a US Navy Seahawk helicopter beats the midwinter air. Rotor blades thrumming, the aircraft swoops, banks, then circles, tilting 45 degrees in a wide, arcing curve.

• 1:30John Hopkins?

  In the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot stare through the ice-flecked window, scouring the freezing expanse for an improbable sign of human life.

• 1:42John Hopkins?

  One hour ago, a fighter jet pilot ejected from his plane, and is now believed to be located in the ocean somewhere below this airspace. Every available military aircraft in the area has been scrambled as part of a search-and-rescue operation to save the missing pilot. But first, they have to find him.

• 2:03John Hopkins?

  The Seahawk dives low until it's practically touching the crest of the waves. It hovers in place as the crew desperately scours the undulating seascape below. A minute goes by, then another. The helicopter pilot flashes a hand signal. He's not here.

• 2:24John Hopkins?

  With a stuttering roar, the tail lifts and the helicopter accelerates forward, up, and away.

• 2:32John Hopkins?

  A nervous glance passes between the pilot and co-pilot. If they don't find their man soon, there's a good chance the sharks will.

• 2:44John Hopkins?

  Meanwhile, about half a mile north, a large, pale shape stirs beneath the waves. Great whites.

• 2:56John Hopkins?

  The cold coastal waters off the US eastern seaboard are a migration route for the world's largest predatory fish. And there is one particular beast known to roam these depths. A massive, sixteen-foot, three-and-a-half-thousand-pound shark that trackers spotted only this morning, circling this very area.

• 3:20John Hopkins?

  As the roar of the helicopter grows fainter, the underwater shape spreads and flattens against the face of the rising swell, until suddenly, it breaches the surface.

• 3:33John Hopkins?

  It's a parachute. A billowy canvas twisting in the waves, tangled paracords extending behind it like tentacles. And strapped to the end of those paracords, his head, barely visible amid the churning surf, is missing US Navy fighter pilot Keegan Gill.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  I can't breathe. I'm being drowned alive. I'm inhaling saltwater. Once you hold your breath for so long, your lungs will start to spasm. Your lungs will start to suck water in. And I remember being underwater and sucking that water in like this terrible feeling of just being drowned. I have vivid memory of the stinging of the water on my skin and really just this overwhelming sense of dread that this is a situation I'm not going to make it through.

• 4:29John Hopkins?

  Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice?

• 4:37John Hopkins?

  Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

• 4:50John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet 28-year-old fighter pilot Keegan Gill. In early 2014, Keegan is at the start of his military career, honing his aviation skills and preparing for his first deployment to a real war zone. And things are about to get very real, just not in the way he expects. On the morning of January 15th, a routine flight exercise over the Atlantic takes a disastrous turn when a maneuver he's executed countless times before goes horribly wrong.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  I pulled the throttles to idle, put out the speed brake in a desperate attempt to slow the aircraft, and very quickly the ocean rushing up at me just became completely overwhelming. It was just filling the canopy.

• 5:37John Hopkins?

  Trapped in a nosedive towards the ocean, Keegan will have to make a split-second decision between a guaranteed quick death and a likely slow one.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  I just felt this deep sinking sensation in my heart, and my body just instinctively assumed this body position and pulled the ejection handle.

• 5:56John Hopkins?

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

• 6:31John Hopkins?

  It's January the 15th, 2014, in Virginia Beach. An ordinary Wednesday morning at US Naval Air Station Oceana. As one jet takes off from the airstrip, another touches down, landing gears striking the runway with a squeal of rubber and a cloud of tire smoke.

• 6:51John Hopkins?

  In the background, beyond the perimeter fence, a drill instructor barks at a squadron of new recruits running laps, their breath fogging the crisp winter air.

• 7:02John Hopkins?

  Meanwhile, in a classroom inside the Top Gun Weapons School, Lieutenant Keegan Gill sits behind a computer, his brow furrowed in concentration.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  It was kind of a standard day in that world. You know, I'm busy doing all these side jobs. I spent the morning over at the Top Gun Weapons School doing mission planning. So, sitting at a laptop, programming mission cards, which isn't exactly the sexy version of being a fighter pilot. Most people think it is, but you spend a lot of time behind a laptop, programming computers.

• 7:33John Hopkins?

  Though hardly glamorous, Keegan is as committed to this part of the job as any other. Studious and methodical, he has a good head for numbers. It's what helped him finish second in his class at flight school.

• 7:46John Hopkins?

  Admin tasks like these actually enable the conscientious rookie to do what he does best: keep his head down, his mouth shut, and quietly absorb as much information as possible.

• 7:59John Hopkins?

  Even after three and a half years' training, and over eight months as a fully qualified naval aviator, Keegan still has a lot to learn.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Our squadron was preparing to go on what was about to become one of the most active combat deployments in modern warfare with US involvement. So, we knew we were going to do some very real stuff. There was a lot of close air support going down in the Middle East at that time. But yeah, it was getting really close and really real, and we were starting to do our workup cycle to prepare for that.

• 8:32John Hopkins?

  As midday approaches, Keegan glances up at the clock. With a slight acceleration of his pulse, he shuts the laptop and jumps to his feet. Time to switch gears.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  That afternoon, I was gonna get to go out and fly and practice what's called air combat maneuvering, or basic fighter maneuvering, BFM, which people probably commonly refer to as dogfighting, which was one of my absolute most favorite skillsets in the jet.

• 9:00John Hopkins?

  A short while later, Keegan arrives at the squadron ready room to receive his flight briefing.

• 9:06John Hopkins?

  Half a dozen pilots in khaki overalls sit facing a whiteboard at the front of the room.

• 9:12John Hopkins?

  Keegan nods to a few of his squadron mates before making his way to the duty desk, where his friend and fellow rookie, Visti, is going through the flight schedule.

• 9:22John Hopkins?

  Notorious in the squadron for his mischievous sense of humor, Visti grins when he spots Keegan approaching and gestures towards the whiteboard. Keegan looks over.

• 9:33John Hopkins?

  The board features a map of the airspace over the Atlantic where he will soon be flying. In the ocean below it, Visti has taken it upon himself to signpost the whereabouts of several local sharks.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Visti used what's called the Shark Tracker app on his phone to put up all these GPS sharks that had been tagged for research purposes using the Shark Tracker app, and he put them up on the whiteboard depicting the airspace that we were gonna utilize that day out over the open Atlantic Ocean. And it just so happened, the airspace that I was gonna be using, underneath there was a 16-foot, 3,500-pound great white shark named Mary Lee, which is one of the largest great white sharks that's ever been tagged.

• 10:20John Hopkins?

  Keegan manages a wry smile. This, he didn't need.

• 10:25John Hopkins?

  Maneuvering a supersonic jet is hard enough without Mary Lee taking up valuable headspace.

• 10:32John Hopkins?

  While the likelihood of ending up in the shark-infested ocean is slim, all aspiring naval aviators must go through water survival training before getting their wings.

• 10:42John Hopkins?

  Alongside this training is the ejector seat simulator. A mechanical chair mounted on a rail designed to replicate as closely as possible the sensation of bailing out of a high-speed jet.

• 10:55John Hopkins?

  Ejecting is rare. Most pilots will never experience it. But still, it's crucial to be ready for any and every eventuality.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  When you're pushing these aircraft to the limits that we do, you know mishaps do occur to the point where it's a very real possibility. Even in early flight school, when you're sitting in that room in your first ground school lectures, the instructors will say, "Hey, look to your left and look to your right." Statistically, at least one of you is going to have some sort of serious mishap or be killed on this line of duty. And are you sure you want to be here? Because it's very real danger.

• 11:39John Hopkins?

  The prospect of ejecting is remote enough for Keegan to chuckle along with the jokes about great white sharks. But despite his laughter, the stark truth is that today it would be a particularly bad day to find himself in the water.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  You've got below-freezing air temperatures. You've got winds that have churned up the ocean, nearly freezing water temperatures. And now there's this great white shark right underneath your airspace. So we're just joking. Hey, this will be a terrible day to eject.

• 12:15Speaker 00

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• 13:17John Hopkins?

  Keegan takes a seat. As he waits for his commanding officer to start the briefing, his eyes drift over to another corner of the whiteboard, where the names of every new pilot in the squadron have been written.

• 13:29John Hopkins?

  Below each name is a nickname, a callsign bestowed upon the rookies by the older pilots as part of their induction into the regiment.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  So for US Navy callsigns, they're typically these badges of dishonor. You know, something that you've done that's probably the most embarrassing thing that you've ever done, or maybe some embarrassing feature of you, be that your appearance or demeanor. Whatever you dislike the most oftentimes is what gets used for your callsign as fuel. And oftentimes, they're, you know, pretty raunchy and rude. And the more you hate it, the more likely it's going to stick.

• 14:07John Hopkins?

  Keegan can't help noticing that his is the only name without a callsign written underneath it. Perhaps he should be flattered. Quiet and hardworking, he has avoided drawing negative attention to himself. He has a spotless record to be proud of.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  My squadron mate Basil, who is a pretty well experienced junior officer, was kind of joking with me too, saying, "Hey, man, you just haven't done anything dumb enough yet to earn a callsign."

• 14:35John Hopkins?

  Ever since he was a child, Keegan has wanted to be a pilot. His love of aviation goes back to when he was just eight years old, watching sky shows performed by the Blue Angels, a US Navy flight demonstration squad.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  When you're a little kid in the audience and these these jets go blasting over you, you know, maybe just a couple hundred feet above you and you get to feel that that jet noise reverberate through your soul. It's a very effective recruiting tool for the military, you know, that kind of inspires you as a young kid. And so I think that was always in the back of my head. And although I, growing up, I never thought I could do that. You know, I always had this block in my mind for whatever reason, like, you know, I'm not the kind of guy that could do something like that. That's, that's only for superhumans.

• 15:20John Hopkins?

  At a young age, Keegan didn't feel very superhuman himself. Shorter and scrawny than most of his classmates, with a thatch of tufty blonde hair, he was an easy target for bullies.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  I was just a kind of a runty kid. And initially, I kind of got beat up and picked on. And then I learned how to fight. And so I kind of came from this place of being an underdog, where I might have been shorter than a lot of other people, but I started being able to whip people's asses. And, and I kind of had this scrappy nature that was formed from that. It was sort of this rage burning within me of, of like, if you want to pick on me, I'm going to prove you wrong.

• 16:02John Hopkins?

  This defiant spirit fostered a rebellious streak. At school, he struggled against the constraints of the classroom and frequently found himself in trouble with his teachers.

• 16:14John Hopkins?

  At the age of 11, his parents enrolled him in an aviation program at a local community college, hoping to provide their son with a clearer sense of direction. It paid off, right from his very first ride in a small Cessna prop plane.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Just being up and disconnected from the world a little bit, you got to feel this absolute sense of freedom that is provided through the world of aviation. When you sort of leave the regular bounds of the earth and you just get to see that from up high and that really just inspired me. Something deep within me was touched by that experience of just the beauty, awe and freedom of the world of aviation.

• 16:57John Hopkins?

  After high school, Keegan went on to get his bachelor's degree in aviation. He became a flight instructor, then a corporate pilot. But after years of flying business executives around America in private planes, the young man started to crave a new adventure. Then, something came his way.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  I had a friend who was applying to go to Navy OCS Officer Candidate School. And I sort of asked him some questions, thinking that there's no way I could do that. Like, I've never been in the military, you know, my family wasn't aviators, and I didn't really know anything about it. But he filled me in and he showed me, no, as long as you have a four-year degree, you can apply to go into Navy OCS. And so I put together a package, and before I knew it, I had been selected to go into the Navy.

• 17:51John Hopkins?

  It's early afternoon, back at Naval Air Station Oceana.

• 17:56John Hopkins?

  Keegan emerges onto the runway, fully kitted out in his helmets, flight suits, parachute harness, and survival vest.

• 18:04John Hopkins?

  The roar of idling turbines thrums through his bones as he approaches the waiting jet.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  The F-18 Super Hornet is sort of the workhorse fighter jet of the US Navy. It's a gray fighter jet with a pointy nose, a bubble canopy. It's got twin afterburning engines that can put out 44,000 pounds of thrust. It can be fitted with a huge array of armament and ordinance, sensors, and pods. And it's basically designed to be deployed on an aircraft carrier, and you can kind of launch into any scenario and be ready for it.

• 18:40John Hopkins?

  The F-18 has particular resonance for Keegan. It's the aircraft flown by the Blue Angels, the Flight Demo Squad, who first inspired him to become a pilot.

• 18:52John Hopkins?

  He climbs inside the cockpit. Once he's finished his pre-flight checks, he flashes an OK signal at the ground crew before receiving the all-clear to taxi his jet into position. He glances over at the pilot in the plane alongside, his squadron commander, Diego. He'll be partnering Keegan on today's exercise.

• 19:18John Hopkins?

  Basic Fighter Maneuvering Training, BFM, involves staging aerial combat scenarios. Keegan and Diego will be sparring in a series of nose-to-nose dogfights, aiming simulated missiles at each other's aircraft. Keegan doesn't expect to come out on top. Diego has far more experience than him.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  It was gonna be like stepping into the ring with a seasoned black belt fighter pilot, which was my commanding officer, who had been doing this for nearly two decades. And me, a guy who is, you know, eight months fresh out of the rag, still figuring out the basics of it. But I knew I was gonna get an ass-kicking, but that's kinda just how you had to learn.

• 20:05John Hopkins?

  It's later, some 50 miles off the coast, high above the Atlantic.

• 20:12John Hopkins?

  Keegan and Diego are in the thick of their dogfight.

• 20:17John Hopkins?

  The two F-18s twist, duck, and weave, fighting to gain a positional advantage. The air around them thunders with a combined force of 88,000 pounds of raw thrust. Contrails of white vapor crisscross the stone-colored sky.

• 20:37John Hopkins?

  In the cockpit of his jet, Keegan is all focus.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Some people say it's like playing four-dimensional chess with an elephant perched on your lap, or like a knife fight in a phone booth. There's a lot going on at very high pace. You're operating the aircraft, you're operating weapon systems, you're operating sensors, defensive systems. You're under a high-intensity workout training as your body's experiencing 7.5 Gs. So my 200-pound-ish body with all my gear and everything now weighs 1,600 pounds under this kind of G-force. So you're under a lot of physical and mental stress.

• 21:17John Hopkins?

  As he maneuvers the aircraft, Keegan watches the digital radar on the inside of his visor. He can see Diego banking sharply, rolling 180 degrees, then swooping back up to get a clear shot of Keegan's tail fin. He pivots left, trying to shake off his pursuer. But it's too late. Diego has outwitted him again.

• 21:41John Hopkins?

  The older pilot's voice growls through the radio to confirm another direct hit.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  Fox 3, knock it off.

• 21:51John Hopkins?

  The pilots reset one last time, turning to face each other in the air like a pair of medieval joustuses. Keegan steals himself for the final round.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  We had just enough fuel left for one last fight as we kind of exited the airspace. And with the kind of the crunch on time and fuel, we ended up setting up lower and quite a bit faster than we typically would.

• 22:17John Hopkins?

  The pilots are on what's known as Joker fuel, meaning they have just enough to complete the exercise and get back to base. Diego gives the order.

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Speed and angels, 3, 2, 1, fight off.

• 22:34John Hopkins?

  Keegan engages the afterburners.

• 22:37John Hopkins?

  The jet speeds forward, gray wingtips flexing as they tear apart the sky. Bracing himself, Keegan keeps one eye on the radar. The distance between the two jets closes quickly. Their flight paths cross. Diego's trajectory takes him upward, Keegan's downward, nose low.

• 22:57John Hopkins?

  His jet is now accelerating vertically towards the ocean. 10,000 feet, 9,000, 8,000. The speedometer reads 695 miles per hour and ticks steadily upward towards the speed of sound.

• 23:13John Hopkins?

  He needs to pull up to change direction. His skull vibrating inside his helmet, Keegan pulls the control stick into his lap, angling the nose of the jet upwards. The cockpit shudders and groans under the massive G-force. The weight of it tugs at Keegan's face, pinning him against his seat. But then...

• 23:36Speaker 03

  All of a sudden, as I'm pointed straight at the ocean, I just felt that ease up. So it was like going around a sharp corner in a sports car and then having the steering wheel kicked back halfway. Only instead of now skidding off the road, I was stuck in a dive at the ocean.

• 23:52John Hopkins?

  The G-force suddenly drops away as the acceleration slows. This shouldn't be happening.

• 24:00John Hopkins?

  His skin prickling with panic, Keegan yanks the control stick, but the jet won't change direction.

• 24:07John Hopkins?

  The voice warning system blares, "Pull up, pull up." But the aircraft is unresponsive.

• 24:14John Hopkins?

  Keegan looks up from his lap. The gray textured surface of the Atlantic is rapidly approaching the cockpit window, close enough that he can make out the white crests of the waves.

• 24:26John Hopkins?

  A robotic voice reverberates around his helmet again, "Pull up, pull up." But it's too late.

• 24:33John Hopkins?

  Keegan has two seconds before his jet hits the ocean, when the force of the impact will vaporize this aircraft and anyone left inside it. There's no time to think.

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• 26:15Speaker 00

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• 26:48John Hopkins?

  It's early afternoon on January 15, 2014, approximately 50 miles east of Virginia Beach. As it approaches the speed of sound, a US Navy fighter jet careens nose-first into the Atlantic Ocean.

• 27:11John Hopkins?

  The aircraft disintegrates on impact, blotted out of existence in a searing flash of powderized metal and a starburst of fire and shrapnel. Within seconds of the collision, the jet is reduced to nothing more than a slick of fuel shimmering on the surface. Of the few scraps of floating debris, the largest is no bigger than a crumpled car license plate. Meanwhile, in the sky overhead, a parachute opens.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  A normal ejection is violent. It'll cause permanent spinal compressions. It'll cause flail injuries of your arms. And that's in an ideal scenario where you're straight and level flight, below 180 knots airspeed. I was way outside of that envelope, but I didn't have any other choice. Either I pulled that ejection handle when I did, or two seconds later, I was going to plunge into the ocean and be vaporized along with that jet.

• 28:13John Hopkins?

  When Keegan pulled the ejection handle, an explosive charge detonated beneath his seat, firing him from the cockpit like a rocket from a launch pad.

• 28:22John Hopkins?

  As the aircraft slammed into the ocean, his body smashed into the sound barrier with a force 100 times stronger than a category-one hurricane.

• 28:33John Hopkins?

  A normal ejection at 200 miles per hour can cause devastating, life-threatening injuries: spine damage, whiplash, bone fractures.

• 28:45John Hopkins?

  Keegan exited the aircraft traveling at more than three times that velocity. The impact ripped off his helmet and knocked him unconscious.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  The human body is not terribly aerodynamic at that speed. I was going 695 miles per hour, or 604 knots indicated airspeed, which is 0.95 indicated Mach, so 95% the speed of sound in what we call the transonic region. The force of the air at that speed is so strong, and only getting exponentially stronger as you approach the speed of sound, that there's no way anything can penetrate that. And so it was that very sound barrier, that wall of air that my body smashed into.

• 29:30John Hopkins?

  As his parachute opens, Keegan is jerked back. His dislocated limbs flail like a rag doll in a tornado, ripped from their sockets by the savage force of the air.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  By the time I exited the aircraft, I was at about 1,500 feet above the ocean, traveling at almost 700 miles per hour. And in that little bit of time and altitude, about a second and a half from impact, that parachute was able to deploy and slow me enough so I didn't die in impact with the water.

• 30:03John Hopkins?

  Had he waited even a second longer, scarcely more than the blink of an eye, Keegan would be dead. By ejecting when he did, he's given himself a fighting chance, however slim.

• 30:17John Hopkins?

  The parachute slows his descent, but he's still falling fast. And when his steel-toed boots hit the ocean, he plunges straight down, arrowing through the blackness as a thousand icy hands claw at his skin.

• 30:35John Hopkins?

  Moments later, he resurfaces.

• 30:39John Hopkins?

  Keegan gulps at the air.

• 30:43John Hopkins?

  In his state of semi-conscious shock, it's a good thing his survival vest is equipped with automatic sensors. The life preserver around his neck inflated the moment it touched salt water. Now, the risers connecting his harness to the parachute should also release automatically upon contact with the sea.

• 31:03John Hopkins?

  But something is wrong. Only one of the risers disconnects.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  So I remained trapped to this parachute, and with my arms completely destroyed, there is no way I could manually disconnect. And very quickly, found myself just being drug underneath the ocean by the parachute.

• 31:23John Hopkins?

  Keegan rises and falls with the swell.

• 31:27John Hopkins?

  Then the parachute fills with water and sinks beneath the surface, pulling him down with it.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  Very fortunately, the life preserver unit around my neck provided enough buoyancy that it would drag me to the surface against the force of that parachute on occasion where I could cough up some water and get a fresh breath of air and scream for help.

• 31:49John Hopkins?

  No sooner has a sound escaped his lips than he is dragged back down again.

• 31:55John Hopkins?

  This time, the weight of the chute holds him under for longer than he can hold his breath. He inhales, sucking freezing salt water into his lungs, flooding his airways. And just when it seems like drowning is an inevitability, the life preserver brings him back to the surface.

• 32:18John Hopkins?

  Clearly, rescue is Keegan's only hope. But most of the communication gear strapped to his utility vest has been lost in the ejection. Even if he were in full control of his faculties, he wouldn't have the means to radio for help.

• 32:33Speaker 03

  My beacon had malfunctioned, so there was no electronic way to find me. My radio was gone. All my signaling equipment was gone. And I was now in the currents of the ocean, which were very quickly going to change that position.

• 32:51John Hopkins?

  Keegan lurches between prolonged blackouts and flashes of sharp, terrifying awareness. During these lucid snapshots, he feels the biting cold of the ocean, the parachute harness pressing violently into his chest.

• 33:07John Hopkins?

  And along with the physical pain comes a crushing sense of hopelessness.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  It was just an overwhelming sense of dread. You know, the overwhelming sense that, what, I'm going to get eaten by a shark at any moment? I can't breathe, I'm being drowned alive, I'm inhaling salt water. Once you hold your breath for so long, your lungs will start to spasm. And you get this sort of guppy where you'll automatically, your lungs will start to suck water in. And I remember being underwater and sucking that water in like this terrible feeling of just being drowned.

• 33:41John Hopkins?

  And there's another, just as intense fear, that the great white Mary Lee could be circling nearby.

• 33:49John Hopkins?

  If there is a shark in the vicinity, it surely won't be long before it comes to investigate. A great white can smell blood from a quarter of a mile away, in concentrations as low as one part per million, the equivalent of a single droplet in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Far, far less than the quantity pouring from Keegan's compound fractures, turning the water around him a murky red.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  My legs had been shattered so violently that the bone had ripped through. There was even chunks of the bone like coming out and falling out of my lower legs. So there's two open fractures down there that are bleeding pretty well.

• 34:33John Hopkins?

  Keegan's entire existence has been reduced to two basic functions: taking a breath when he can and holding it when he must.

• 34:44John Hopkins?

  And yet even in these dark moments, his focus and grit remain resolute.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  I think maybe that same fighting spirit that I had developed as a kid, maybe gave me what I needed to hold on in this moment of just absolute terror. You know, I shouldn't have survived.

• 35:02John Hopkins?

  But sheer willpower can only carry him so far.

• 35:06John Hopkins?

  Keegan has been exposed to the extreme cold of the ocean for almost an hour, and hypothermia has taken hold.

• 35:13John Hopkins?

  His skin has gone from a bloodless gray to an icy blue.

• 35:18John Hopkins?

  It won't be long before his organs start to fail.

• 35:22John Hopkins?

  Coupled with severe blood loss and the extensive internal damage suffered during the ejection, time is fast running out.

• 35:37John Hopkins?

  It's an hour later. A US Navy Seahawk helicopter flies low over the Atlantic Ocean. A short while ago, this aircraft had been heading for a training day off the Virginia coast, when the call came in about a missing pilot believed to be adrift somewhere below this airspace.

• 35:56John Hopkins?

  Fortunately, the pilot's ejection was witnessed by his squadron commander, who dropped a GPS pin above the crash site before contacting air traffic control to coordinate the search and rescue.

• 36:11John Hopkins?

  Now, as the helicopter circles, a rescue swimmer waits in the cabin.

• 36:18John Hopkins?

  Finally, the call comes from the cockpit. They've got a visual on their target. Time to move.

• 36:26John Hopkins?

  The aircraft lowers until it's hovering feet above the waves. And there, resurfacing momentarily before dropping back beneath the white caps, is the small, dark dot of a human head.

• 36:40John Hopkins?

  The cabin door slides open, the wind rushes in. The rescue swimmer positions himself on the edge, then jumps.

• 36:50John Hopkins?

  Braced against the stinging cold, the swimmer makes his way over to the unconscious pilot. He reaches out and clips him into his harness, just as a wave crashes over them, and both men are forced down into the darkness.

• 37:06John Hopkins?

  The two bodies tumble in the freezing churn, locked in a tight embrace.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  That force of that parachute drug both of us underneath the surface, and he had done that in training, in a warm, lit swimming pool. But to look down to the bottom of a warm, lit swimming pool, vice looking down to this dark-blue abyss and tangle of paracord in the open ocean was a very different experience. Fortunately, his training kicked in.

• 37:33John Hopkins?

  Dragged deeper by the currents, the rescuer takes a knife and begins cutting through the paracords. One by one, he severs the ropes, disconnecting the pilot from the canopy.

• 37:46John Hopkins?

  Once untethered, the rescuer swims back up to the surface, Keegan's body limp by his side.

• 37:54John Hopkins?

  Above water again, the rescuer signals for the helicopter crew to pull them up.

• 38:01John Hopkins?

  Spinning wildly in midair, blasted by a torrent of rotor wash, the two men are hoisted up into the cabin of the Seahawk. Then the helicopter lifts, turns, and roars off in the direction of land.

• 38:18John Hopkins?

  Lying on the backseat, Keegan oscillates between extreme agitation and total inertia. He's on the brink.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  I was sitting up and yelling and shouting in shock, completely just out of it. But then I would just go into complete stillness, and they would have to resuscitate me, and that just happened over and over and over.

• 38:47Speaker 00

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• 39:18Speaker 01

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• 39:48John Hopkins?

  It's two weeks later, at a naval hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. Keegan is in the ICU. An assortment of tubes and wires protrude from his motionless body. He's been in a comatose state for the last 14 days. But today, finally, his eyelids flicker.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  It was just like waking up from a dream, except for some reason, all these people are in your room. And I had monitors all over my body, I had plastic wrap all over my extremities, this sort of vacuum-sealed stuff to prevent infection. My arms and legs were covered in hundreds of staples and sutures from all the surgical procedures. And I thought that this thin wool blanket that was over me had been tied down onto the bed because I couldn't move. But it was because I had been paralyzed from the level of trauma my body sustained.

• 40:45John Hopkins?

  Gradually, the hospital room comes into focus. The hazy shapes around him sharpen, revealing the concerned faces of doctors huddled around his bedside.

• 40:56John Hopkins?

  Still groggy from the sedatives, Keegan struggles to focus on their words.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  The medical staff kind of came in and just kind of laid it out and said, "Hey, you've been in a high-speed ejection, you've shattered your arms and legs, your neck, your shoulder, all these other problems, you're likely never going to walk again, we don't think you'll ever use your arms again, and your military flying career is over."

• 41:22Speaker 03

  I could have just basked in this darkness, and I could have just believed that prognosis, but there was that fight, that fighter within me, "I'm going to prove you wrong", and sort of that real, this vigor within me of this little kernel of hope, this little tiny ember that I started to feed.

• 41:39John Hopkins?

  Whether or not Keegan can defy the doctor's expectations, one thing is certain: the road to recovery will be a long one indeed. The ejection shattered practically every bone in his body.

• 41:53John Hopkins?

  But he has the motivation he needs.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  I just thought, "What can I do today? How am I going to get back to the jet?" And I started to visualize, "What's it going to be like when I'm back in my flight suit with my wings on my chest and my arms and legs work, and I get to walk back into this hospital room and see these medical professionals say, 'Hey, look at me, look what happened, you were wrong.'"

• 42:13John Hopkins?

  After several weeks, Keegan is transferred to a rehab center in Richmond, Virginia.

• 42:19John Hopkins?

  There, he begins a grueling regimen of physical therapy.

• 42:24John Hopkins?

  Numbing the pain with a cocktail of strong opioids, he slowly starts to show tiny incremental improvements. One day, he can move with a walker, some function returns to his arms and legs. Then, he's allowed to return home to his apartment in Virginia Beach.

• 42:45John Hopkins?

  He continues his program of therapeutic activities, and the months pass slowly, painfully, until eventually, an entire year has gone.

• 43:01John Hopkins?

  In the long sprawl of days, Keegan has a lot of time to reflect on the accident.

• 43:07John Hopkins?

  He says he remembers how the jet suddenly became unresponsive, refusing to pull up with the control stick. An official inquiry determines that rather than any catastrophic mistake on Keegan's part, the accident came down to a programming error.

• 43:24John Hopkins?

  Essentially, when he stepped into the jet, the aircraft was still configured according to the previous pilot's settings. When Keegan was flying, the actions he took clashed with these preset programs, triggering a system override that caused him to lose control of the aircraft.

• 43:43John Hopkins?

  But now, every ounce of his focus must be trained on the future. And eventually, over two years after his brush with death, a huge day arrives.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  I ended up gaining a stack of medical waivers in order to return, and after two years, I was able to max out the Navy's physical fitness test again. I was physically, mentally, emotionally feeling, you know, awesome. And I was very fortunate because I got to return to flying F-18 Super Hornets.

• 44:16John Hopkins?

  Keegan returns to his regiment, but not as Keegan. During his absence, his squadron mates have given him a nickname: Smurf, a portmanteau combining the words scrappy and motherf*. Well, you get the idea. Anyway, to get the name past Navy leadership, the squadron had to invent a more PG explanation. Their official story: They called Keegan "Smurf" because he was a short guy who turned blue from hypothermia.

• 44:47John Hopkins?

  Whatever its origin, Keegan doesn't mind. After all this, he finally has a callsign.

• 44:54John Hopkins?

  And that's where the Hollywood version of this story would end, with Keegan, Smurf, Gil, flying off into the sunset.

• 45:03John Hopkins?

  But in the real world, that isn't quite how things pan out.

• 45:14John Hopkins?

  It's eighteen months after Keegan's return to active duty.

• 45:19John Hopkins?

  Considering where he was three years ago, his recovery has been nothing short of miraculous.

• 45:25John Hopkins?

  Then, one day out of the blue, he begins experiencing strange, vertigo-like symptoms: dizzy spells, panic attacks, nausea. He consults the base doctor, who provides a diagnosis: delayed onset post-traumatic stress disorder.

• 45:44John Hopkins?

  He is taken off active duty and sequestered to the psych ward of a veterans' hospital. Once again, Keegan finds himself surrounded by doctors administering powerful medication.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  I had already had this terrible experience with the pain meds, and having to wean myself off all of that with the addiction issues that that caused. But now, I'm having to do the same thing with psych meds, and it drug me down just an even darker, deeper hole that eventually led to my medical retirement. You know, I went from a high-performing, capable human being to in and out of psychoses. I was, you know, I thought I was in The Truman Show at times. I thought that everyone around me were actors, and this was all just fake.

• 46:25John Hopkins?

  When he's eventually discharged, months later, he emerges a very different man.

• 46:32John Hopkins?

  Over the last three years, Keegan has passed several major life milestones. After his initial recovery, he met and married his now-wife. The couple have two children. But in the wake of his latest medical setback, Keegan alienates himself from his family.

• 46:51Speaker 03

  I was really suffering in that darkness after I got out of the inpatient psych facility, where we were very actively discussing divorce. I was no longer somebody anybody wanted to be around. I was so bitter, really the only emotions I could feel were just betrayal and anger and rage. My kids would come up and try to play with me, and I would tell them just to leave me alone. I didn't want to be talked to, I didn't want to be bothered, and I was just a different person.

• 47:17John Hopkins?

  He tries numerous approaches, even exploring alternative medicines and psychedelics, anything to get better. And slowly, but surely, he does make improvements.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  I discovered psychedelic-assisted therapy, which was being used, in some cases, to treat people of trauma and mental health issues. And so, I realized that maybe there's a different path to this healing.

• 47:42John Hopkins?

  While controversial to some, Keegan is convinced these processes helped him, and remains an advocate for alternate approaches to getting better.

• 47:52John Hopkins?

  Day by day, he starts to feel more like himself again, eventually making another remarkable recovery.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  It's been a wild transformation, almost unbelievable and miraculous. Surviving the ejection in the first place has been this recovery from severe mental health issues, and getting my life back.

• 48:12John Hopkins?

  Having spent much of his career viewing the world from over 40,000 feet, Keegan knows a thing or two about perspective.

• 48:19John Hopkins?

  And when he looks back on his long and arduous recovery, he doesn't reflect with bitterness or resentment, but with acceptance, even astonishingly, with gratitude.

• 48:30Speaker 03

  There's a quote I really love by Carl Jung, and that's, "In order to grow to reach the heavens, we must have roots that have been deep into hell." By going through these hardships and challenges in our lives, it unlocks our potential to grow to be something much more than we could be without them. And so, I'm really grateful for these experiences, and now having this perspective of it all.

• 48:58John Hopkins?

  Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Tara Pyfram. Together with her wife Catherine, and their six-year-old daughter Hazel, the Pyframs live a life of idyllic bliss in the Bahamas. That is, until September 2019, when Hurricane Dorian makes landfall and plunges their peaceful island existence into chaos. As this record-breaking storm swamps the land, Tara's home is engulfed. Their house becomes a death trap, where they will have to go to increasingly extreme measures, just to keep their heads above water.

• 49:34Speaker 06

  The water's not slowing down, and it's still rising. We're in danger of drowning inside of our house. That's what's going through my head. That's the worst-case scenario. That's how I'm gonna die.

• 49:46John Hopkins?

  That's next time on Real Survival Stories.

• 49:50John Hopkins?

  Listen right now without waiting a week by subscribing to Noiser Plus.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at The Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess Collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want, online only, at homedepot.com.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Are you ever shopping online and suddenly a discount that helps you save pops up? It makes your day, sometimes even your week. Want that feeling month after month? Well, new customers who save by switching their home and auto insurance to Progressive save hundreds. Cue your happy dance. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.