10 Headstrong Details Surrounding Aimo Koivunen, Who Survived WWII Due To Overdosing On Meth By Accident

6 /10 Westbound

It was a good thing he remembered that the next waypoint of the patrol was located in a barren plateau to the west of his current position.

Aimo set the course of his compass and skied westbound. It didn’t take long until he came across a camp with some soldiers inside.

The way was downhill, and thinking they were friendlies, Aimo glided towards them as fast as he could.

He had already reached the middle of the camp when he realized they were Russians. Turning around would make it worse, so he skied even faster to escape instead.

5 /10 Cabin On Fire

It must have been at least two days since the unfortunate encounter with the Red Army when Aimo came across an abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere. The doors were open, so he went inside and made fire.

He found a tin can and melted a pile of snow for a hot drink. Still, under the influence of Pervitin, Aimo failed to realize that he had burnt a wooden floor.

The fire grew larger until, eventually, the cabin collapsed. Miraculously he survived and continued skiing the following day. At this point, he had completely lost track of time.

4 /10 Land Mine

Along the way, Aimo once again bumped into another camp. It had dugouts, barbed wire obstacles, and a plowed road in front of it.

The center was a German guard post to his relief. He took off the skis and walked toward the entrance on the roadside. After a brief walk of about 20 steps, Aimo set off a land mine right under his left foot.

The German post had been abandoned indeed, but the land mines were still scattered around as a form of fortification.

3 /10 Siberian Jay Treat

Aimo crawled away as far as he could, grabbing anything he came across on the ground. On his left hand was a ski pole, and on the right was a door handle still attached to the panel.

He forced himself into a hole then stopped crawling. Trying to make himself as comfortable as possible, he used the door panel to make fire.

Aimo was so weak he could barely sit up. He hit a Siberian Jay that flew across his head using the ski pole and ate the bird raw.

2 /10 A Rescue, Finally

Now inside a hole with his left foot severely injured and without food, Aimo felt all hopes were lost.

He couldn’t remember what day it was when he heard the sound of an airplane, and it was German reconnaissance with some Finnish soldiers onboard.

A man spotted Aimo only to tell him that help was on the way but not possible at the moment. As it turned out, Aimo was right in the middle of a minefield. Aimo waited again with a renewed hope of survival.

1 /10 To The Hospital

About an hour later, the soldiers came back to the hole and picked him up. They put him on a horse-pulled sled on the way to the hospital.

He arrived at the emergency care weighing only 43kg with a heart rate of 200bpm. Aimo was later informed that the hospital began taking care of him on April 1, 1944.

He had wandered around the wilderness under the influence of a mind-altering drug for two weeks.

Over that period, he embarked on a hysterical trip covering 400km. Aimo Koivunen recovered from the ordeal and died peacefully at age 71.