Accident on the Farm: Famous Overnight

On a frosty January morning in 1992, John Thompson - a high school student from North Dakota - gets up. It promises to be an ordinary day of chores on his family’s farm. Simple tasks, ones he’s done thousands of times before. But on this occasion things take a sudden and horrifying turn, as John gets too close to some dangerous farming machinery and suffers devastating consequences. Critically injured and alone, he must rely on ingenuity, inner resolve and the support of the family pet to keep fighting on… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Carla Flores, RJ Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For more on this story read John’s book Home in One Piece. 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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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't got this.

• 0:34Speaker 01

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• 0:36Speaker 03

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• 0:46John Hopkins?

  It's 1992. On a secluded hilltop in the middle of rural North Dakota stands a lonely clapboard farmhouse, part shielded from the prairie wind by cops of spindly elms. It's January the 11th, the depths of winter, and snow settles in the eaves and gutters of the house. Powdery spindrift skitters across the yard, swirling and eddying in the frigid gusts.

• 1:13John Hopkins?

  Three hundred feet down the hill, at the edge of a frost-hardened cornfield, a tractor sits idling, its drive shaft turning a grain auger nearby.

• 1:24John Hopkins?

  Grain gushes from the end of the auger, clattering against the steel walls of a feed bin. Other pieces of farm equipment are scattered around, a couple of silos, a truck, half-filled with barley.

• 1:38John Hopkins?

  And 20 feet from the tractor, sprawled in the fresh fallen snow, is a body.

• 1:46John Hopkins?

  It's the body of a young man, lean and pale, with a thatch of blonde hair. He is lying on his right side, his legs slightly splayed, his face tilted downward.

• 1:59John Hopkins?

  He is shirtless, his bony rib cage clearly articulated against his ashen skin.

• 2:06John Hopkins?

  And on the ground around him, slowly spreading as it seeps into the snow, is a dark red circle of blood.

• 2:14John Hopkins?

  A dog stands over the young man's body, barking.

• 2:19John Hopkins?

  When his owner doesn't stir, the dog starts anxiously sniffing and nuzzling his face.

• 2:26John Hopkins?

  And after a few gentle licks, John Thompson opens his eyes.

• 2:33Speaker 05

  When I woke up, my dog was in front of me because he woke me up by licking my face, and I was laying on my right side. I knew something was wrong because I couldn't feel my arms.

• 2:44John Hopkins?

  The 18-year-old rolls onto his back. Something isn't right, but it's not immediately obvious what. There is a strange sensation in his arms, or rather, a complete lack of sensation, as if everything beyond his shoulders has gone completely numb.

• 3:02John Hopkins?

  Moments ago, John was standing next to the grain auger, watching the feed bin filled with barley. It's such a routine chore on the farm that John does it mindlessly, as rotus tying a shoelace.

• 3:16John Hopkins?

  But on this occasion, something went very wrong.

• 3:20John Hopkins?

  Gingerly, John lifts his head and turns to look at his left arm.

• 3:26Speaker 05

  I thought it just broke behind my back because I couldn't see it. And then when I looked at my other arm, I saw the stump, and I'm like, oh, there's no arm there. And then I looked back at my other arm, and I realized that one was also completely missing.

• 3:47John Hopkins?

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

• 4:07John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet 18-year-old John Thompson. On a frosty January morning in 1992, John, a high school student from North Dakota, gets up for an ordinary day of chores on his family's pig farm. With his parents out of town, the teenager has been left to unload barley from a dump truck using a grain auger, a spinning shaft that sucks up grain and deposits it into a feed container. A simple task, but on this occasion, as John stands alongside the spinning auger, this straightforward chore suddenly takes a horrifying left turn.

• 4:45Speaker 05

  I just pushed myself up, using the tractor tire as support, and then I just stood there, and I had checked myself over again and realized both my arms were completely gone.

• 4:54John Hopkins?

  The awful reality of what's just happened to him will take a few moments to compute, but when his body's natural defenses kick in, he turns his focus towards an improbable survival. With even the most minor of tasks now monumentally difficult, John will have to rely on an inner resolve and the support of his canine companion to keep fighting on.

• 5:15Speaker 05

  Once I realized what was going on, I just screamed for that split second. I looked at my dog and just calmed down immediately. My brain just shut down and said, okay, you're in survival mode now. You gotta go call for help. And I just started walking towards the house.

• 5:30John Hopkins?

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

• 6:04John Hopkins?

  It's around 8:30 AM on January the 11th, 1992. Wells County, North Dakota. A cold wind groans through the rafters of a farmhouse as 18-year-old John Thompson opens his eyes, pushes back the covers, and swings his legs over the side of his narrow bed.

• 6:24John Hopkins?

  The teenager yawns and stretches, then he gets out of bed and walks across the room to the window. A circle of frost runs around the outer edge of the pane, and John peers through at the frozen fields.

• 6:38John Hopkins?

  He looks down.

• 6:40John Hopkins?

  A set of fresh tire tracks in the snow leading away from the house tells him that his parents must have already left.

• 6:46Speaker 05

  January 11th, 1992, was just a cold January morning here in North Dakota. You know, we had snow and ice on the ground, it was probably in the 30-degree mark, and my parents left to go to Bismarck to visit my cousin who was in the hospital. She was in a car accident. And my job was to get up and unload the grain truck because we had barley in there, the feed for the pigs.

• 7:08John Hopkins?

  John shuffles through the empty house, the floorboards creaking beneath his bare feet. In the kitchen, he pours himself a bowl of cereal, grabs a spoon, and sits down at the table to eat his breakfast.

• 7:22John Hopkins?

  The day is a Saturday, but that doesn't mean he will be lounging around in his pajamas all morning. A farmer's work is never done, and as a farmer's son, neither is John's. Not that he's complaining. He's been mucking in around the farm since he was old enough to walk.

• 7:38Speaker 05

  Growing up on the farm, we started everything really young. When I was about 12 years old, that's when we got our big four-wheel-drive tractor. I'm out there in the fields, working with that stuff, and, you know, we just started really early in everything. And my whole life was pretty much just work, work, work.

• 7:55John Hopkins?

  The Thompsons forge their modest living from 1,200 acres of North Dakota prairie land, where they raise pigs and a few cows. Times, it seems, are perpetually challenging, with the farm forever one bad year away from foreclosure. But life on the Great Plains, with its bone-rattling winds and freezing winters, breeds a resilient sort.

• 8:18John Hopkins?

  As well as being one of the poorest, this is one of the most sparsely populated regions in America. The Thompsons' closest neighbors are a two-mile walk away. The nearest town, Hertzfield, has 72 people, five churches, and a single school, where for several years, John was the only kid in his grade.

• 8:39John Hopkins?

  He's since moved to a slightly larger high school in the next town over, but it's been hard for him to get settled there.

• 8:48Speaker 05

  I had a lot of problems in high school. That's one thing I got picked on constantly for was I just could not learn very well. If we had to do problems one through 50, like, well, John, you just do all the odd problems. Then my classmates, well, how come he only has to do the odd? We have to do all 50. It's like, well, he's not smart enough. He can't do them all in the time. So he has to work. And so I got picked on for that constantly.

• 9:13John Hopkins?

  Now 18, John is still struggling at school. The clothes he wears are often hand-me-downs inherited from his older brother and sister, who have both left home. On Tuesdays, John helps his dad take the pigs to market, which means he has to walk in late to history class smelling of livestock.

• 9:32John Hopkins?

  On top of all this, he has no interest in sports, which immediately sets him apart from the crowd.

• 9:38Speaker 05

  I was the only kid in the entire school that didn't play sports. I mean, every guy in high school played basketball and football, and I was the only one that didn't because I just did not like attention. I grew up very shy. I didn't like talking to people. I just kind of stayed in the back of the classroom, minding my own business. I was pretty much a loner the entire time. And the only release I really had was just my music and singing.

• 10:05John Hopkins?

  Music provides John with the means of escape. Whatever's going on in his life, he can always let the lyrics of his favorite bands carry him to a different place. And he enjoys an eclectic range of artists, too.

• 10:19Speaker 05

  Back then, it was like Guns N' Roses, Metallica, Backstreet Boys, Whitney Houston, Bette Midler, and just listened to pretty much whatever was on the radio.

• 10:30John Hopkins?

  The Thompson farm is too remote to receive FM radio signals. So whenever John wants to listen to music, he has to carry his radio to the top of the nearest hill and extend the aerial as high as it will go.

• 10:42Speaker 05

  And so I go sit on top of the hill every once in a while. I mean, I can remember being in the tractor and a good song would come on the radio and I'd stop on top of the hill to make sure I could hear the whole thing before I go down the hill again and lose the station. So just worked in the fields one time I got to listen to any music.

• 10:59John Hopkins?

  These moments also provide John with a glimpse of a world beyond North Dakota. As a family, the Thompsons have only ever left the state once on a family trip to South Dakota.

• 11:11John Hopkins?

  But last summer, John had an opportunity to travel further afield.

• 11:16Speaker 05

  When I was in high school, my junior, senior summer, I left and traveled down to Oklahoma and I did custom combining. I flew down there and then we worked from Oklahoma and we worked our way up through the middle of the country, up to Montana harvesting. And that was the best experience I ever had.

• 11:34John Hopkins?

  Custom combining trips are organized agricultural tours, a bit like summer camp for young farmers. For John, being away from home, earning money under his own steam, brought a new and welcome sense of independence.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  I'd never done anything by myself and it was just my first experience getting out and doing something on my own.

• 11:55John Hopkins?

  Seeing what else life could offer had a powerful effect on him. Now he's only a few months away from graduating high school. It's a chance for a fresh start.

• 12:05Speaker 05

  I realized what the world was like out there and I'm like, I really want to get out here and do something different. So then I decided I was going to join the Air Force because I love flying and I wanted to do the Air Force and then go on to NASA. So I'd love the science stuff and space and all that kind of good things. And then I thought, well, if I don't want to do the military, I'd join the airlines and be a pilot. But I was going to start off just being a steward and just getting out and flying around and getting to see the world and get some experience. You know, I've heard so many times, oh, I'm just a farmer. I don't do this or that. And I just want to be more than just a farmer. I want to get out in the world and see things and do something great.

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• 13:22Speaker 07

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• 13:41John Hopkins?

  After breakfast, John heads back up to his room to get dressed. He pulls on his blue jeans and a thick flannel shirt that hangs loose over his thin frame.

• 13:50Speaker 05

  We grew up very poor. In the eighties and nineties, farming was extremely tough. So we didn't really have anything. I can remember, you know, every fall, we get to go to the mall, to the store 100 miles away, and we get to buy new clothes for school. You know, we get two pairs of jeans, maybe two or three pairs of new shirts and a pair of shoes. That was pretty much our clothes for the rest of the year.

• 14:15John Hopkins?

  Once he's dressed, John reaches down and picks up a pair of handsome leather cowboy boots.

• 14:22Speaker 05

  The boots I had, I got when I was on harvest, when I was doing custom combining. And when we got to Montana, I had my paycheck. I'm like, oh, we're going to go to town and get cowboy boots. You know, our whole crew went to town and bought cowboy boots for everybody. And so that was my first pair of really nice cowboy boots because it was the first job I ever had. And so I was really proud of my boots that I got.

• 14:42John Hopkins?

  John pulls on the boots and places a baseball cap on his head. Then he goes downstairs and steps outside.

• 14:49John Hopkins?

  The cold hits him squarely in the chest as he pushes open the screen door and emerges onto the front patio. As he descends the patio steps and starts walking across the front yard, a small brown and white dog appears to his heels.

• 15:05John Hopkins?

  He reaches down and pats the animal's fur. Tuffy is the Thompson's farm dog, but he and John have a particularly special bond.

• 15:14Speaker 05

  We just spent all of our time together. You know, I built my doghouse in our shed. You know, I go lay in there with him all the time and just lay down on the straw, make him a nice little bed. And we just grew up together for quite a few years. And he was a healer, so we'd walk out and he was just a small ball of muscle. He was really a tough dog and he was just my best friend I ever had.

• 15:37John Hopkins?

  With Tuffy bounding along beside him, John walks down a shallow slope, past a scattering of outbuildings, to the edge of a cornfield. Here he climbs into a dump truck and backs the vehicle up to a large feed bin called a hopper.

• 15:52John Hopkins?

  Next to it is the auger, a long metal shaft mounted at an angle on a wheeled frame with the raised end positioned above the hopper. Inside the shaft is a spinning corkscrew-like device that sucks grain from one place and moves it to another.

• 16:10John Hopkins?

  John's job for the morning is to use the auger to transfer grain from the back of the truck and deposit it inside the feed hopper. It's a routine task, something he's done 1,000 times before.

• 16:24John Hopkins?

  John connects the auger to a tractor using a PTO shaft, a short steel cylinder that transfers power from the tractor's engine.

• 16:34John Hopkins?

  When the engine's on, the shaft spins and the auger turns. John starts the tractor's engine and the PTO shaft begins rotating rapidly, about 1,000 rotations per minute.

• 16:47John Hopkins?

  Ordinarily, PTO shafts are encased in a plastic safety shield, but times are hard on the Thompson's farm.

• 16:55Speaker 05

  It was a very tough life and we couldn't afford everything. And the shields on were plastic and they get broken in the winter time, it's so cold and we'll just never replace because that was money we could spend on that or spend it somewhere else. And it was usually spent somewhere else, so we didn't have all the safety shields on.

• 17:15John Hopkins?

  John stands there kicking his heels as grain spews from the end of the auger.

• 17:21John Hopkins?

  He yawns and scratches his chin.

• 17:25John Hopkins?

  As he glances up at the sky, the loose, untucked corners of his shirt flap in the cold wind. Meanwhile, just a few inches away, the exposed PTO shaft spins furiously, a blur of raw mechanical power.

• 17:42Speaker 05

  When you do something all the time, you don't think of the dangers of it. It's just a standard thing you do and you just really don't think a whole lot of things.

• 17:51John Hopkins?

  He taps the heel of his boot. Tuffy scampers around behind him, rolling in the snow.

• 17:59John Hopkins?

  John turns and smiles at his dog, completely oblivious to how close the corner of his shirt is getting to the spinning shaft.

• 18:07Speaker 05

  I've been around it my whole life. You don't think anything of it. And I was just kind of standing there, walking around, looking at my dog and just got too close to it and it just grabbed my shirt and pulled me in.

• 18:25John Hopkins?

  It's about 10 a.m. on January the 11th, 1992.

• 18:30John Hopkins?

  John lies unconscious and shirtless on the frozen ground. His baseball cap, knocked from his head, sits beside him.

• 18:40John Hopkins?

  Some twenty feet away, the auger continues to run, grain gushing from its spout into the hopper.

• 18:48John Hopkins?

  John's dog Tuffy stands over him barking.

• 18:52John Hopkins?

  When John still doesn't move, Tuffy starts nudging and nuzzling the teenager with his snout.

• 18:58John Hopkins?

  Eventually, his eyelids flutter.

• 19:02Speaker 05

  When I woke up, my dog was in front of me, Tuffy, because he woke me up by licking my face. And I was laying on my right side, and I knew something is wrong because I couldn't feel my arms.

• 19:12John Hopkins?

  John rolls onto his back and glances over at his left arm.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  I thought it just broke behind my back because I couldn't see it. And then when I looked at my other arm, I saw the stump. And I'm like, oh, there's no arm there. And then I looked back at my other arm there, realized that one was also completely missing.

• 19:27John Hopkins?

  John looks from one side of his body to the other.

• 19:31John Hopkins?

  It takes a few moments to register what has happened. And even then, shock softens the horror. His nerves must be in a shock state too, because he doesn't feel any pain.

• 19:45John Hopkins?

  He pushes his back against the tractor tire and squirms himself into an upright position.

• 19:52John Hopkins?

  He looks again at the empty space where his arms should be, and the reality finally hits him.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  I just screamed for like, a split second. Tuffy was sitting in front of me with his head cocked to the side, his ears sticking up, like, looking at me.

• 20:06John Hopkins?

  The dog's expression is inquisitive and concerned, but calm. Somehow, this helps.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  I looked at my dog, and just calmed down immediately. My brain just shut down and said, okay, you're in survival mode now. You gotta go call for help, and I didn't feel any pain whatsoever.

• 20:25John Hopkins?

  He is, of course, bleeding severely. But the shock lowers John's blood pressure, moderating his blood loss and suppressing any pain. Though, right now, it's not his body's natural defenses that he is grateful for.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  I owe, I owe everything to my dog. And I mean,

• 20:46Speaker 05

  it's hard for me to talk about my dog. Tuffy's the one that woke me up. He's the one that kept me calm. When I realized what happened, I just focused on him. I owe everything to my dog, Tuffy.

• 20:58John Hopkins?

  John begins the 100-yard walk back to the house.

• 21:03John Hopkins?

  By now, the mid-morning sun has moistened the frost, leaving the ground slippery beneath his cowboy boots.

• 21:11John Hopkins?

  He walks unsteadily, without arms to help his balance.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  When I was walking up, because when I took my arms off, it also took my jacket and shirt off, so I was just bare-chested. Now I'm walking up to the house with my dog on my right side, and my ulnar nerve was hanging out of my right shoulder, swinging back and forth as I'm walking, because I'm kind of flopping back and forth, because my balance wasn't the best anymore.

• 21:37John Hopkins?

  John keeps his gaze fixed on the house. He staggers up the steps to the patio and crosses over to the front door. But when he reaches the welcome mat, he stops.

• 21:50John Hopkins?

  Just walking here was difficult enough. But how on earth is he supposed to get the door open?

• 21:56Speaker 05

  I didn't have any arms to open the door, but there's a handle on it. And I had the bone sticking out of my left shoulder where my arm was at. And I tried sticking the bone on the handle to slide the door, but I didn't have any grip, and it was wet. And so it just slid. I couldn't get the door open.

• 22:11John Hopkins?

  No matter what he tries, it's no use. John even attempts to wedge the tip of his boot between the sliding screen door and the frame, but he can't manage it.

• 22:22John Hopkins?

  Change of plan. He leaves the patio and walks around the side of the house to the open garage. Inside here, there is another screen door leading into the house, and John finds that it's been left slightly ajar.

• 22:36Speaker 05

  Once I got in the garage, I was able to get my cowboy boot, the point of it, in between the door frame and the screen door, and get the first door open, because that screen door wasn't shut completely. And then our main door into the house was shut. And then I just got down on my knees and bit it with my mouth and turned my head to get the door open.

• 22:54John Hopkins?

  John works the handle with his teeth, twisting and straining his neck. And slowly, he manages to get the door open. Then, leaning against the door frame, he rises to his feet and lurches forward into the house. Once inside, he pauses. By now, the blood has started to flow more quickly.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  I was just standing there at the entryway of the house, and I'm just still bleeding like a pig. I mean, there's blood everywhere. And I'm standing on our welcome mat in front of the door, and that's getting covered in blood. And I knew I had to get across the house to our office where I had the only push-button phone.

• 23:35John Hopkins?

  Most of the phones in the house have a rotary dial, which would pose a pretty obvious problem.

• 23:42John Hopkins?

  John makes a beeline for the office, staggering across the floorboards and carpet. When he reaches the office, he shuffles over to the push-button phone and uses his face to knock the handset off the cradle.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  And I started pushing buttons with my nose. And I tried calling a friend of mine first. And back then, if you misdialed, you'd get an operator recording coming on saying, "Oh, you dialed the wrong number. Please check your number again," and all this kind of stuff. It took me a few tries.

• 24:12John Hopkins?

  He finally dials the right number. But there's no answer. He hangs up and starts dialing a different number, his cousin, Tammy.

• 24:21Speaker 05

  And I never once thought about calling the ambulance myself. I just wanted to call somebody that I knew, because I was afraid I might die. And I just wanted to hear a friendly voice, somebody, the last person I get to talk to.

• 24:33John Hopkins?

  John leans over the desk, his ear pressed against the receiver. It rings and rings, until finally, Tammy answers.

• 24:43Speaker 05

  She's like, hello. I said, hey, I need an ambulance. She's like, who is this? I said, this is John. I said, I lost both my arms. I need an ambulance. She's like, oh, what are you doing? I'm like, Tammy, I was in an accident. I was unloading grain. I got caught in the PTO shaft. Both my arms were ripped off. And she's all, yeah, what are you doing this weekend? She thought I was joking. She didn't take me seriously.

• 25:04John Hopkins?

  After a frustrating back and forth, John eventually manages to convey the seriousness of the situation to Tammy, who jumps into action. She promises to call an ambulance and let others know what's happened. And with that, John ends the call.

• 25:20John Hopkins?

  Now what? It'll be 20 minutes at least before an ambulance gets here. He could bleed to death in that time. But right now, John is less concerned about his own safety than he is about the state of his parents' carpet.

• 25:35Speaker 05

  So I hung up the phone, and then I went and sat in the bathtub, because the office was full of blood, because I was still bleeding quite a bit, and the carpet was full of blood and everything. And so then I went and sat in the bathtub, because I didn't want to get any more blood all over everything.

• 25:49John Hopkins?

  Feeling increasingly lightheaded, John drags his feet up the stairs, nudges open the door of the bathroom, and clambers into the tub.

• 25:59Speaker 05

  I was able to open the shower curtain with my foot, and I just got in the bathtub and sat down. And I really didn't sit. I just kind of, I call it a farmer's sit, where you just kind of sit on your feet. And so I just kind of sat down on my feet, put my back against the back of the shower, and just sat there waiting for help.

• 26:18Speaker 06

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• 26:44Speaker 02

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• 26:56Speaker 03

  She makes amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.

• 27:01Speaker 03

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• 27:07Speaker 03

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• 27:16John Hopkins?

  Ten minutes go by before John hears the front door open and the voice of his Aunt Renee calling his name. He shouts down to her, and a few moments later, the bathroom door creaks open.

• 27:30Speaker 05

  My aunt came in the bathroom right away, but I had the shower curtain closed, so she couldn't see me. She just saw blood everywhere. She's like, what happened? I said, I don't have any arms. I got caught in the grain auger. It's like, well, how are you doing? I said, I'm just getting really tired. I'm just want to go asleep. I'm getting dizzy. I don't know how much longer I'm gonna be able to do this. And my aunt, she just pulled back the shower curtain, took a look at me, took a breath, and she was completely calm. I mean, she did not hesitate. She didn't have a moment of freaking out. She was the calmest you could ever imagine. It was unreal how she handled it.

• 28:03John Hopkins?

  Calmly and competently, Renee wraps her arms around his midriff and hauls him out of the bath.

• 28:10Speaker 05

  And she grabbed me by my torso and lifted me up and sat me on the stool beside the bathtub. And I just sat down on there. I was kind of leaning against her, and I put my head on her shoulder, and we just sat there and talked until the ambulance came.

• 28:24John Hopkins?

  Renee makes small talk about the weather, about the upcoming high school basketball game, anything to keep John occupied.

• 28:33John Hopkins?

  He chats back, soothed by his aunt's steadiness. But blood continues to pulse from his wounds, and with each passing minute, his head grows heavier on Renee's shoulder.

• 28:47John Hopkins?

  After about fifteen minutes, there are footsteps on the stairs. The ambulance crew has arrived. However, in this remote corner of America, there is no nine-one-one dispatch network. Ambulance crews are made up entirely of good Samaritans.

• 29:03Speaker 05

  It was a hundred percent volunteer ambulance. Like, back home, when you call for help, there's many people that are on the ambulance crew. And when you call for the ambulance, it calls every farmhouse that's on the crew, and it just rings and rings until somebody answers.

• 29:20John Hopkins?

  That is to say, you never know who's gonna show up. You get whoever's available. On this occasion, the three crew members who walk into the bathroom are all people John recognizes.

• 29:31Speaker 05

  They walked in, and the one lady was my classmate's mom. The other gal was a school bus driver, and the other guy was our grain elevator manager.

• 29:43John Hopkins?

  After composing themselves, the volunteers get to work bandaging up John's wounds. Then, with the bleeding stemmed for now, they help him onto a stretcher and start carrying him downstairs.

• 29:56John Hopkins?

  As they do, one of the volunteers, Rick, asks John where his arms are. John tells him that they're outside by the grain auger, and the tractor's still running.

• 30:07John Hopkins?

  Aware that the family can ill afford any damage to their equipment, John asks Rick to turn off the engine while he's down there. Rick assures him that he will.

• 30:18John Hopkins?

  A few minutes later, he comes back into the house, carrying John's limbs. He puts them in a bag full of ice from the freezer.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  And then they got me loaded into the ambulance and shut the doors, and we took off down the road to the nearest hospital, which is twenty-seven miles away.

• 30:39John Hopkins?

  It's later that afternoon. John is awake in bed in a hospital in Minneapolis, the sharp smell of antiseptic in his nostrils. The last few hours are a blur.

• 30:53John Hopkins?

  He was first taken to the local county hospital, where the shocked medical staff redressed his wounds. He was then loaded into a plane and flown to the nearest major trauma center here in Minneapolis. His parents have been notified, but it'll take them a while to get to the hospital from Bismarck.

• 31:12John Hopkins?

  Now, a doctor comes into his ward and addresses John in a gentle but firm voice.

• 31:18Speaker 05

  He's like, I'm a micro surgeon. We're gonna reattach your arms and do our best to save you and put your arms back on. And I'm like, all right. He's like, but you need to make a choice. Do you want us to put your arms on or leave them off?

• 31:31John Hopkins?

  John doesn't hesitate. Of course, he wants his arms back. The doctor nods, but his expression turns grave.

• 31:39Speaker 05

  He's like, okay, but before we do that, we need to let you know the circumstances of what's gonna happen, because if we leave them off, you're gonna be extremely disabled. We can make prosthetics and put a hook on you to function that way. Or we can put them on, but if we do that, there's a high risk of infection. There's a high risk of them not taking, you're not gonna be able to keep your arms. We may have to take them off later. There's a high risk that they'll never work. You're gonna be disabled no matter what we do. But if we put them on, there's a chance that you're gonna die.

• 32:18John Hopkins?

  It's a few hours later.

• 32:21John Hopkins?

  John lies sedated on an operating table, bathed in a pool of bright LED light.

• 32:28John Hopkins?

  Peering through powerful magnified lenses, the surgeons meticulously stitch his arteries and nerves back together.

• 32:38John Hopkins?

  Microsurgery is a highly specialized surgical technique that involves repairing bodies at a cellular level. It uses microscopic needles and thread so fine that it floats on air. Double-arm reattachments are exceptionally uncommon.

• 32:57John Hopkins?

  The operation is incredibly complex, and there's no guarantee that it'll work. Once the limbs are reattached, success depends on the body's natural healing processes to knit the tissue back together.

• 33:10John Hopkins?

  There is every chance the body rejects the implanted tissue, and there is a very real risk of infection. If complications arise during surgery, the patient could die on the operating table.

• 33:22John Hopkins?

  As he lies there, John's fate rests on a knife edge.

• 33:28John Hopkins?

  But eventually...

• 33:30Speaker 05

  It took them six hours to reattach my arms, and they had to shorten my arms two inches because they're just really shattered. So they shortened them two inches, and they put steel plates in to connect all the bones. And also, they had to shorten my arms to get the nerves and blood vessels reattached, because they were kind of ripped up at the end. So they had to shorten everything to get everything to reconnect. So my left bicep muscle is actually a muscle from my back, and my right arm is actually, the bicep in my right arm is actually my tricep. They flipped over because I lost both biceps in it. I lost three of the four muscles, and they rebuilt all that stuff.

• 34:07John Hopkins?

  After the operation, John is put into an induced coma to give his body time to heal. When he finally comes to, four weeks later, he wakes to find his arms by his sides.

• 34:21John Hopkins?

  The surgery was a success, and while he will likely never regain function in his hands, he is whole again.

• 34:30John Hopkins?

  But the operation was only the first stage of a long recovery.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  I mean, I didn't know how to walk. I had to learn how to walk again. Having my arms ripped off and reattached, I didn't have any balance whatsoever, and learning how to walk was, I mean, that took me like a week just to walk again.

• 34:49John Hopkins?

  After six weeks in the hospital, he is allowed to go home, but life, of course, doesn't go back to normal.

• 34:55Speaker 05

  I could do anything. I couldn't dress myself. I couldn't feed myself. I couldn't do anything. And I had a home healthcare nurse come in every morning, help me get me out of bed, get me dressed, and get me fed, and off to school. And you know, I was somewhere there taking care of me the whole time until I figured out how to do things on my own.

• 35:12John Hopkins?

  To the surprise of his doctors, John does recover some motor function in his hands. After months of physical therapy, he is able to move his right thumb ever so slightly, a remarkable testament to modern medicine and to the resilience of the human body.

• 35:30John Hopkins?

  In countless ways, however, John's life will never be the same again.

• 35:35John Hopkins?

  Eventually, he returns to school.

• 35:40Speaker 05

  It was really weird because I was always a loner and really didn't have many friends in high school. And then once my accident happened, you know, I was Mr. Popular. And hearing all my classmates, "Oh, he's our best friend, you know, he's this, he makes us laugh all the time, you know, he's this and that." After my accident, you know, everybody rallied around me and took care of me and helped me out and, you know, it was just a complete turnaround from what I was used to. I can remember in my history class, we had to turn the page, and I'm sitting with my textbook open, and I wasn't paying attention to anybody else in the class. And I had to flip this page, and I was trying to get my, because my hands didn't work or

• 36:23Speaker 05

  nothing, I could move my shoulders a little bit, you know, my hands are in splints, and I'm using my hand trying to get my page to turn. And I finally got flipped over after a while, and everybody started clapping for me in the classroom because I wasn't paying attention to them. But they're all watching me to see if I was able to get the page turned by myself. My classmates were just amazing with me, and the whole community was.

• 36:43John Hopkins?

  Though the support is welcome, John has always hated being the center of attention. And now he will have to get used to the harsh glare of public fascination. His story quickly travels far beyond the confines of his small town. Just forty-eight hours after the accident, when he was still in a coma, his story hit the airwaves.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  Within two days, it was on the news in Minneapolis that this had happened to me. And it just started going around, and everybody started wishing me well, and everybody just wanted to do something for me.

• 37:14John Hopkins?

  Interest in John keeps growing. He receives thousands of letters from well-wishes. Gifts arrive from celebrities like Whitney Houston and John Mellencamp. A member of one of his favorite bands, Guns N' Roses, sends a collection of tapes and T-shirts. Whole segments on the national news are devoted to the extraordinary tale of this courageous young man from North Dakota who overcame unimaginable horror. But it's all a lot for a shy eighteen-year-old to handle. For some, John's survival even elevates him to an almost saint-like status.

• 37:52Speaker 05

  We had people thinking that I could heal him. And this gal wanted to fly her son up because he wanted to touch me. And people thought if they touched me, I could heal them. I mean, it was crazy. And I said, "I cannot heal you. I'm not magical. I don't have any powers. I can't do nothing for you. I just survived. I did what I had to do for myself. I can't do anything for you. I can talk to you, but..." And people thought I could heal him. That was probably the most, that was the most difficult thing, was just dealing with public. I was doing all these press things, I was doing all these public appearances, so I was trying to please everybody because I had so much support from everybody around the world that I wanted to show them my gratitude by doing all this stuff. And it really took a big toll on me trying to do all this stuff.

• 38:37Speaker 05

  I'm just a regular person that something extraordinary happened to that I was able to survive.

• 38:42Speaker 07

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• 39:04Speaker 01

  Honey, that flu keeping you up?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't got this.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  You need NyQuil Intense Flu.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Undo your flu symptoms with NyQuil Intense Flu. The nighttime sniffling, aching, aching fever, best sleep with a flu medicine. You do got this. Uses directed, keep out of reach of children.

• 39:20John Hopkins?

  The years pass, and the frenzy dies down, but the accident continues to shape the course of his life.

• 39:25Speaker 05

  You know, I had all these dreams and plans to join the military, the Air Force, and be in the flight attendant, and going to NASA. I had all these plans, and everything got thrown out the window, and I never had a chance to do anything.

• 39:40John Hopkins?

  Despite his reservations, John continues to engage in public speaking. And one silver lining is that he has had the opportunity to use his platform to advocate for the people who helped save his life: the emergency medical services and local healthcare workers.

• 39:59Speaker 05

  One thing I really enjoy doing is working with EMS. I'm a big supporter of EMS and our local nurses. I mean, nurses really need our support. We need to get more nurses in hospitals. They deserve so much respect. And our rural EMS are so underfunded, we really need to help them out. And like, my ambulance crew that showed up, it was volunteer. It was my bus driver, my classmate's mom, and our elevator manager. And these are just regular people, and we need to get far more people involved in rural EMS.

• 40:27John Hopkins?

  John has become directly involved in EMS work, helping to train rural crews and speaking to groups about farm safety. He says it's work he hugely enjoys. Over the years, he has managed to find various jobs and build his independence. Though he does continue to rely on the help of others, it's one of the reasons he remains in North Dakota, as he has a close community nearby at all times. This dependency could have become deeply ingrained. But one day, something changes for John.

• 40:59Speaker 05

  I started working for a farmer back in 2014. When he hired me, alls I had to do was drive a pickup back and forth from the field to the farmer. And I was working for him hauling hay, and my truck was out of gas. And I said, "Miles, I need gas to put in my truck." He's like, "Well, fill it." And I said, "Well, I can't pump my own gas. I can't do that." He's like, "I've seen what you can do. You can fill your own gas." And I did. It took me like five minutes to figure out how to do it, and I've pumped my own gas ever since. But from an accident up until 2014, people just expected me to be disabled and not be able to do anything. And he was the first person that had the confidence, like, "You can do this on your own."

• 41:41Speaker 05

  Well, then, all of a sudden, I'm mowing hay, I'm raking hay, he had me in a skid steer, and all of a sudden, I'm running that like I've done it my whole life, and I was awesome at it. Last year, I was fixing my gutters on my house, and it took me about five hours to rehang this ten-foot gutter. It took me forever to do it, but I did it on my own. And that is the only thing I really have going for myself, is to be able to say, "I can do this on my own." And to show people, no matter how hard it is, it may take you many hours more than anybody else to do it, but you can say with confidence, and you get the joy of being able to say, "I did this on my own." And that's kind of what I want people to get from it, and just to never give up.

• 42:23Speaker 05

  And when you're faced with an obstacle, find a way around it, because there's ways to get things done, no matter what.

• 42:37John Hopkins?

  Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet professional firefighter and licensed pilot Brian Brown. In May 2012, Brian is flying his small, single-engine private plane from his home in California over to Idaho to visit his eldest daughter. It should be a simple journey, just a few hours. But when the plane is assailed by terrible weather over the Ojai Mountains, all his plans are thrown out of the window. Storm clouds close in, the aircraft begins to struggle. And worse still, Brian isn't alone. His wife, Jayanne, and daughter Heather are in the plane with him. Faced with an awful situation as a pilot, husband, and father, the moment will come when Brian is all out of options.

• 43:18Speaker 05

  I actually told Jayanne and Heather I was sorry, that I didn't think we were going to make it, and I told them I loved them.

• 43:28John Hopkins?

  That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now without ads and without waiting a week by subscribing to Noiser Plus.

• 43:36Speaker 06

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• 44:06Speaker 07

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