Transcript of Adrenaline Rush | Campfire Stories with MrBallen

Hey guys, I'm back by the fire and I have another awesome story to share with you. Today's story is this epic survival story, and I mean, the story itself is truly unbelievable, but I'm telling you, the, the twist at the end, basically how this person was able to survive, you will not see coming. Great plot twist, great story. I know you're gonna like it. But before we get into today's story, If you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right campfire because that's all we do, and we upload 2, 3, even 4 times every week.

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Around 10 AM on March 18th, 1944, a 26-year-old Finnish soldier named Aimo Koivunen sat around a campfire with a group of other soldiers inside of the Arctic Circle in northern Europe. They were very deep into the wilderness in this forest that was covered in several feet of snow, and Aimo was melting a pot of that snow over the fire so the group could drink some tea. And at the same time that Aimo was doing this, even though it was kind of relaxing to be sitting here, Aimo, I mean, his whole body was basically aching. Number one, it was, you know, 5 degrees outside, and this was also the first time that he and the other soldiers had stopped to rest in about 2 days. They had been on the move the whole time.

At this point during World War II, they were allied with Nazi Germany. Not because, you know, they were Nazis—they were not—but because Finland and Germany shared a common enemy: the Soviet Union. Right now, Aimo and his squadron were in an area called Lapland, which used to belong to Finland. But 4 years earlier, the Soviet Union had invaded Finland and ultimately forced Finland to cede this land to the Soviets. But now, during World War II, Finland wanted to get their land back, and Germany was helping them do that.

And so Aimo and his squadron were in Lapland on essentially a reconnaissance mission. They were there to try to figure out sort of what the Soviets were doing in this part of Lapland and how many Soviets were out there, again, in this particular part of Lapland. However, Aimo and the others had spent the past 2 days skiing all over the place in their area of operations. But so far, they hadn't seen any Soviet soldiers or any Soviet bases. But, you know, for Aimo and probably for the other soldiers that he was with, I mean, this was ultimately a good thing.

They were trained for combat, but they didn't necessarily want to come across Soviets and have like a full-blown shootout, in part because the Soviets were just a bigger, more well-equipped military. And, you know, they were also more advanced. And so if they got into a gunfight with them, who knows what would have happened? And so even though Aimo is like sitting here feeling very sore and very tired as he, he melts his snow, he was ultimately feeling kind of grateful that this reconnaissance mission had proven to be Pretty low-key. However, just as the water began to boil, Aimo and the other soldiers heard the unmistakable sound of machine gunfire coming from somewhere that had to be nearby.

And so immediately, Aimo and the others, they jump up, forget what they're doing, and they're just— they're looking to see where this gunfire is coming from. But then before they could even make sense of the situation, Aimo's lieutenant yelled like, "Hey, get ready, get your guns!" And so they all scooped up their weapons. Aimo, he's picking his weapon up. And as he looks up, he looked off in the distance, maybe a quarter mile away, and he was shocked to see an entire pack of Soviet soldiers bearing down on them. They were literally skiing down this mountainside right nearby, and they were obviously shooting their machine guns not in random directions, but right at Aimo and the other men.

They were clearly being attacked by these Soviets. Now, Aimo and the other men have clearly been trained for this. This is literally why they're out here. They are soldiers. They're ready for this type of encounter.

But for a moment, when Aimo sees this overwhelming force that's descending on them, they're clearly outnumbered, like this is gonna end badly. All Aimo had in his head was just this overwhelming feeling of just terror. He was the oldest of 6 children, And when he first enlisted in the military, he had promised all of his little siblings that he wouldn't get hurt. He would come home. He would be okay.

And now he knew that wasn't going to happen. Like, he was going to get killed. He just knew it. But at this point, Aimo, he looked over at his lieutenant to get orders. But Aimo, after sort of breaking out of this initial thought, he looked over at his lieutenant, and his lieutenant looked terrified too.

But he quickly composed himself and yelled for Aimo and everybody else to flee. Just moments later, Aimo and the other Finnish soldiers were on their skis, skiing as fast as they could away from the Soviets down the backside of this mountain, just doing anything they could to survive. And as Aimo is skiing away, he can hear the sound of gunfire ricocheting off trees, zipping by his head. Like, he's thinking, at any point I'm going to get hit, or one of my teammates are going to get hit. There's nothing we can do, we just gotta go as fast and as far as we can.

And so he's skiing, and actually Aimo was at the front of their formation, so he's actually leading the pack. And so really it was his job to kind of create tracks in the snow that the others could follow in behind. It was easier for them, but it meant he was expending a lot of energy basically pushing all the snow down as he was making his escape. And as much as he wanted to maintain that position and do this for his teammates, to continue to make tracks here, It was so exhausting. And also, like, when you're in combat, you have this unbelievable adrenaline rush that sometimes can lead to, like, a massive crash of energy.

And it was like he had this huge rush of energy, and now it's like he's collapsing. Despite the need to escape here, it's like his body just cannot go any faster than he's going. And so before long, it's like he found himself slowing down, and his teammates are zipping by him because they can't The bullets are flying fast. Like, their only hope of survival is just to keep on going. And so Aimo knows that, like, basically if he can't keep up, he's dead.

But his body, it was just— he couldn't, he couldn't go any faster. He was slowing down. He was going slower and slower. He can hear the sound of the gunfire getting closer and closer, and he's thinking about his siblings and how devastated they're gonna be to find out that he was killed in this war. And so slower and slower he's going.

The sounds are getting louder and louder behind him. And he sees the last of his teammates pass him, and he sees them just kind of drift off down the mountain into the white abyss beyond, and they're gone. He's alone, and he just can't keep up. And then finally he just loses control of his skis. He veers off to the side.

He starts tumbling down the mountain, smashes into a tree, and he passes out.

When Aimo woke up, it was light outside, but he had no idea how much time had passed. He also really had no idea how he was even still alive. Like, what, did the Soviets just decide not to kill me? Or did they not see me? Like, what happened to my teammates?

Like, what's going on? He had a lot of questions. But in addition to feeling confused about the whole situation, he also had this really distinct other feeling. He had this immense sense of being alert, like hyper alert, more than really he had ever been in his whole life. It's like he could hear and see everything at like a 10 times level.

It's like, oh my God, I know everything going on around me. I'm totally aware. So with his like hypervigilance that he suddenly was having sort of out of nowhere, he began to, you know, take stock of his situation. Right away he, you know, was able to see that he's alone, like the Soviets are not nearby. He's not like being held captive.

And again, his comrades are nowhere to be seen. So he's alone in the middle of the Arctic Circle, in the middle of the wilderness, which is quite bad. But he also could see that, okay, well, I still have my skis, so I can still get around. He still had his boots on. He still had his equipment on.

Like, he had the things he needed to survive. He even had his compass still. Which had been in his hand, but he hadn't lost it. And so he had a way to navigate, and he had his weapon still. And so he's thinking, okay, you know, the situation's bad, but I have what I need to survive for some time.

And he also realized that sort of amazingly, despite clearly crashing as a minimum and smashing into this tree that he was laying near, despite that, he didn't feel any pain in his body, and he didn't appear to have any injuries. So he's thinking, you know, what a miracle here. That the worst thing that's happened here is I've basically been abandoned and I'm effectively lost, but it could be worse. And so Aimo, after taking stock of his situation, he stood up and just began looking all around him. And again, he has this hypervigilance thing going on, which, you know, he's thinking is, you know, the product of a huge adrenaline rush from nearly dying, maybe.

But either way, you know, he's hyperaware and he's looking around and he notices off in the distance, maybe like 6, 7 miles away, there's this mountain that immediately looks familiar to him. It looks like the mountain that he and his squadron had agreed would be their rendezvous point if they got separated. And so he's looking at it thinking that that's got to be it. And then he sees on this mountain, as he's kind of squinting and staring at this mountain, he sees what appears to be smoke coming off the mountain. And he's thinking, that's it.

That's where my teammates have gone. Like, they haven't abandoned me. They've gone to The rendezvous point. They're going to wait for me. I just need to get to that mountain.

I got my skis, I got my equipment, I don't think I'm hurt. I can do it. I'm going to get over there and I'll be saved. So Aimo scooped up his backpack and picked up his gun and whatever other equipment he had on the ground, and then he started skiing towards this mountain. And for a while, he just kept on staring up at the smoke coming off the mountain, making sure he was going in the right direction, and You know, as he got closer, he was nearly positive.

He could see that in addition to the smoke, he could see what appeared to be little lean-to tents on the mountainside, which were telltale signs that those were Finnish soldiers. That's how they set up their tents. So he's thinking, this is it, like, I'm gonna be saved. I just gotta get there. And he had so much energy, maybe, you know, because he was so close to being rescued or something, but he felt like this huge surge of energy.

It was like nothing could make him tired. And then finally, Aimo got close enough to this campsite on the side of this mountain that he actually could see faces. He could see the other soldiers, and they were his Finnish comrades. They had clearly gone to the rendezvous point, and they hadn't seen him yet. And so here he is, you know, feeling like full of energy.

He's barreling towards them, and he starts calling out to them. You know, he's thinking they're going to be like totally shocked. That, you know, anybody would just come out of the wilderness towards their campsite, let alone Aimo, who they must have assumed by this point was dead. Also, he's thinking, I don't want them to shoot at me thinking I'm a Soviet soldier, so I better get their attention. And so he's yelling out for his comrades.

And at some point, one of the men, they turn and they see Aimo, and their reaction is not what Aimo wanted. Their reaction was being really shocked grabbing their weapon and shooting at him. And before long, all these soldiers, all of his comrades, are opening fire on Aimo. And Aimo's like, "Come on, like, I'm one of you. What are you doing?" But he's already going so fast, skiing so fast, that his only move was to basically ski right down the middle of their camp and just go to the other side of the mountain.

And so he literally skied through this campsite with all of his comrades shooting at him, who miraculously missed him, so he doesn't get shot somehow. The bullets are whizzing past his head, and he's thinking, "Oh my gosh, they think I'm a Soviet. Come on, I'm calling out to you guys. I'm not a Soviet." But he barrels past them, and then after he's pretty far away from this campsite, he's yelling back to them like, "Guys, it's me. It's Aimo.

What are you doing?" But they still, they're yelling and they're shooting in his direction, and so he had no choice but to just keep on skiing away from them, away from safety, or what he believed was going to be safety. And so on he went for hours and hours, just skiing and skiing away from this ambush, if you will. And the whole time he's thinking like, what happened? Even if they shot at me at first, couldn't they have figured it out that like, I'm one of you? Like, wouldn't you have realized that eventually as I skied right through your campsite?

I have the same uniform as you, I have the same weapon as you? You recognized me? Like, what was that? And so he has no idea what happened, but he's also— he's like, how do I have so much energy? Like, how am I able to do this?

I've been skiing for hours and hours and hours. I've been shot at so many times. Like, this is— this is surreal what's happening. Like, what is going on here? And so Aimo just continued skiing for hours and hours until it was abundantly clear He was not in shooting range.

He didn't hear the sound of any gunfire. Like, he's safe again. Still very confused why this was even happening, but he's safe. You know, the sun's gone down, and so he thinks like, okay, I need to stop. I need to make camp.

I need to regroup. But it was at this point that he's thinking to himself like, I haven't eaten anything. I haven't had any water. I've basically been at a full sprint, like skiing at a full sprint sprint here for basically practically the whole day. I've had multiple near-death experiences.

I smashed into a tree during that initial, you know, skirmish, but I feel great. I feel like I have more energy than I've ever had in my whole life. And so he's just caught by like, how am I able to do this? Is this what it's like when you're in a true survival situation? Like, your, your body just goes into like overdrive or something?

Like, he, he couldn't understand it. And so he's standing there like basically telling himself, you really need to stop even though you have the energy to go pretty much indefinitely. You need to stop. You need to make a fire. You need to have food.

You need to have water. You need to rest. But it was like he was forcing himself to do these things. He didn't feel compelled to do them. It was like, oh, that's right, I need to like do human stuff.

And so that's what he did. He stopped. He built a fire. He made some food and He's like not hungry at all, but he's eating the food, you know, forcing himself to. He's having some water, and then he said, "Okay, I'll rest, and then in the morning I'll figure out what to do next." But he lays down to go to sleep, and he should have been completely exhausted, but he wasn't.

He couldn't even sleep, like not at all. He just laid there completely wide awake as the wind and sleet and snow whipped all around him, and he just laid there again feeling great, but just not tired at all. The next morning when the sun came up, Aimo had not slept at all, but still he was able to get up, put his skis on, and get his stuff and continue skiing basically in the direction that he believed would bring him back to Finland. And as he was skiing, you know, he's thinking to himself, it's kind of interesting because when he first got attacked by the Soviets, it was like his mind was clear but his body failed him. Like his legs got so tired from trying to cut those tracks in the snow that he fell off and crashed, and that sort of led him to this position.

But now, for whatever reason, it was like his mind was delirious, like he couldn't keep his thoughts straight, but his body was like a Terminator, like he just kept on going no matter what. And so he just kept on skiing almost like without even thinking. His body was like on autopilot. And so all day that day, Aimo just skied in one direction and just didn't stop. And the whole time he's skiing, he didn't see another soul.

He is out in the middle of, you know, the Arctic Circle. There's no more Soviets, there's no more teammates, nothing. He's just out in the middle of the wilderness. And realistically, he didn't know if he was even remotely going in the right direction, but he was just gonna go. But that night, as he's still just skiing in a straight line, not stopping, sort of unbelievably, he looked up ahead and he saw somebody.

The first person he had seen since, you know, the ambush at the campsite. And even more unbelievable is the person he saw was one of his teammates. It was this guy named Matty. He was a comrade of his. They had been together when the Soviets had first attacked.

And so immediately, Aimo's thinking like, clearly Matty got separated as well, and it's just serendipity that we have wound up at the same place. And so Aimo, he skis right up to Matti and he's waving him down. He's so relieved to see him. And Matti, when he looks over at Aimo, he doesn't shoot at him, but he sort of tells him to like, be quiet, like calm down. And he kind of beckons him over.

And when Aimo comes up next to Matti, he has all these questions like, what do we do? Where are we going? But Matti just tells him like, just to be quiet and then gestures to lay down on the ground. And so Aimo doesn't really know what's going on here, but he trusts Matti. You know, Matti is not shooting at him.

That was a good sign. And so the two of them just laid in the snow. They laid down right there. And for the first time in what felt like a very long time, Aimo was able to feel tired enough that when he closed his eyes, he did drift off to sleep almost right away.

When Aimo woke back up again, he was not still lying down in the snow next to, to Matti. He was instead standing up on his skis, skiing down a mountain like on a mission. Maddie's nowhere to be found. And on top of that, he didn't have his backpack and he didn't have his gun. Had no idea how long he'd been skiing for.

He didn't know like where he was going. It was like he went from passed out to skiing, just magically skiing. Now realistically, at this point, IMO is thinking to himself, clearly what's happening here is I'm like hallucinating or something. Because how is it possible that I was just with Maddie laying on the ground sleeping and now I'm here? Like, it didn't add up.

And so as he's just sort of mindlessly skiing along, he's like telling himself like, this is you dying. Like, this is you losing your mind before you die. Like, your mind is all over the place. Your body's still going for reasons he didn't really understand. Still at full tilt, full energy, didn't know why.

But at some point that's gonna give out and you're just gonna die. Like that's what's going to happen here. And so Aimo's only hope was that between now and when he died, that hopefully somebody would see him and save him. He knew it was an outside chance, but at this point that's all he had. And so on he skied.

No weapon, no backpack, no supplies. You know, he's basically operating on no sleep, and he's just skiing. And for days and days he doesn't stop. He can't believe his body is keeping up as well as it is. His mind is like totally gone, but he is just going for days and days and days.

Doesn't run into anyone, but then one day, again days later, he's skiing along and magically almost in front of him appears this building. He can't tell if it's necessarily a military outpost or civilian. He doesn't know if it's if it's Finnish or German or Soviet, but he knows even in his totally fractured mental state that attempting to go in that building and hoping there are people in there that will save him, even if they won't, even if they kill him maybe, that is a better outcome, a better choice than doing what he's doing right now, which is the sort of endless ski to his death. And so Aimo starts skiing faster and faster towards the this building, just like full reckless abandon, fully committed to this is my rescue or this is my death. And as he gets closer, he sees sort of unbelievably that this is a military installation, and it is a German military installation.

And remember, the Finnish are allied with the Germans at this point, and so this is a safe place for him. And so he's so relieved, he can't believe he's gonna potentially I'm gonna survive this thing. He takes off his skis and he starts running towards the front door of this building. But before he gets to the front door, he steps on something and then there was a loud bang and he's thrown into the air and comes crashing down. And when Aimo opened his eyes and sort of took stock of what had happened, he didn't feel any pain, but he looked down and he saw his foot was just a bloody mess.

There was literally bones poking out of his ankle. Like, he could see clearly he sustained a horrible injury, and he must have just stepped on a landmine. But Iamo, determined to get into that building, he pulled himself up again, sort of channeling this unbelievable just endurance he had been feeling the past several days that he'd been out here. He stood up, and on one foot, began hobbling his way towards this installation. And he finally gets to the front door, of this German military base, and he grabs the doorknob, and he's about to open it when there's another banging sound, and he's thrown again into the air.

He had stepped on another landmine, and he comes smashing down, and he doesn't die. He doesn't feel any pain, but he looks down at his legs, and he sees his other leg that was not injured a minute ago is now also mangled. So now he can't even stand. He's incapacitated. And on top of that, even though he's near this military outpost, he turns and looks at it.

And now that he's a little bit closer and he's sort of looking more, you know, intentionally at this building, he realizes it's abandoned. Like, this isn't going to save him. He's trapped. He's in the middle of nowhere and there's no one here. And so at this point, Aimo just said, you know what?

It's over. Like, I'm gonna die. And so he literally just crawled his way over to this nearby ditch, let himself roll into it, and he just waited to die. He just knew it was over. But he didn't die.

For days he just laid in this ditch, like, unable to die. He wanted to die. He wanted this to be over. Like, what else is he going to do? Who's going to save him?

But he just watched the sun come up and set, go up, set, over and over. He lost track of how many days he was just laying there, again, bleeding profusely, like grievously injured. He hasn't eaten anything, he hasn't had any water, like he's— like he can't believe he's still alive. He really can't believe it. And for days and days, Aimo just laid in this ditch, fully awake, fully alert, like just completely alive.

It was like he wanted to die. He wanted his body to shut down and just have this end, but it's like his body wouldn't. It was still in this super intense, like, hyper-survival mode where his mind was a mess, but his body was just like full stay alive no matter what mode. And so he's just laying there like wondering, when is this going to finally end? And it just wouldn't.

Like, days and days are going by. And then as he's laying there, you know, one of these days he's just in this ditch, he looks up during the daytime and he sees what looks like a plane flying overhead. Now at this point, Aimo is in very bad shape. I mean, he's alive, but it's not going well, and he knows that, you know, so he doesn't know if he's hallucinating this or what, but he felt like it was real. But after watching this plane circle overhead for a minute, Aimo was almost certain he heard the sound of this plane landing near nearby.

And then a couple of minutes later, he could have sworn from the ditch, you know, he can't really see anything, he could hear the sound of people speaking in Finnish, his native language. And then a moment later, again, he didn't know if he was hallucinating or not, but he sees this, this head poke over the top of the ditch. And it was this young man, this young Finnish guy, and he's looking down at Aimo, and Aimo's looking back up at him. And then a second later, Aimo was being pulled out of the ditch. Later that day, Aimo found himself laying in a hospital bed inside of a hospital in Finland.

Like, the man and the plane, all that, not a hallucination. He really had been rescued. And once he was at the hospital, it turned out he weighed just 94 pounds. He was also badly burned and frostbitten, and both of his legs were very badly mutilated and mangled, and his heart was beating at a staggering 200 beats per minute despite the fact he's just laying in bed not doing anything. And even more crazy was they couldn't actually get his heart to slow down.

It just kept beating at this crazy high level. Now, at first, I mean, doctors and nurses and all the staff were like really shocked by Ayamo's condition. Not really just that he had survived, But again, like, his heart rate, like, it just seemed like, dude, how are you alive right now? Like, your heart can't beat at this level for this long without eventually killing you. But after they spoke to Aimo and had him recount the whole ordeal of him being out, you know, getting shot at and lost in the whole thing, they learned one really specific thing that explained the whole thing.

When Aimo and his, you know, Finnish comrades were initially ambushed by the Soviet the soldiers, they decided to flee. But Aimo, he was having such a hard time physically keeping up with the other soldiers. Like, he was just getting so tired from trying to break the tracks, and then he fell off, and he's thinking to himself, if I don't find a way to keep up, I'm gonna get captured or get killed by the Soviets. And so he's desperate, and so before he ultimately crashed down the side of the mountain from exhaustion, he tried something to try to give himself some energy to try to make this escape. He pulled out these special military rations that he had been issued along with everybody else in his squadron.

They were all given these rations, and the reason you take these rations is to give yourself some energy. And so he takes these rations, and he's thinking, this is going to do it. This is going to give me the boost I need to get out of here and make the escape with my teammates. But the rations didn't work, and so he did sort of he was so tired, to the point where he literally tumbled down the side of the mountain. You know, his teammates, they skied off, and he smashes into a tree, and he passes out.

However, when Aimo woke up, one, he was amazed he had not been captured or killed by the Soviets, but he's realizing he's all alone, and like, what's going to happen to me? And then he starts to feel like, man, I just have a lot of energy. You know, I can, I can see and perceive things on a level that I couldn't before. Well, that's because the military rations had kicked in and now he had like this abundance of energy and it allowed him to basically ski indefinitely without sleeping, without having water, without food. He gets blown up twice.

His feet have been blown off. Basically, he's laying in a ditch dying, but he just can't seem to die. I mean, the guy should have died. Like several times, but these rations did their job. They gave him all the energy he needed to survive this crazy, crazy 2 weeks in the wild.

Well, the military rations, they're called Pervitin. And this drug, I don't know if it's still given to soldiers now, but probably not, because effectively what Pervitin is, is just pure crystal meth. And so in essence, Imo survived in the wild for all this time because he was on just a pure meth-fueled rage. He was just completely high for 2 weeks and it saved his life. One thing to note about Pervitin is it does have 2 distinct downsides.

One, it is incredibly addictive, and two, it creates really, really intense hallucinations. And so very likely he did not come across his own battalion who then opened fire on him. He did not come across Mattie, you know, his teammate out in the wild who told him to lay down. And who knows, we're not even sure if the military installation he saw was real. Like, very likely all of that was just in his mind.

However, the landmines, those were real. Somewhat unbelievably, Iamo would make a full recovery, and he would go on to get married, he would have 9 children, and he would live to the age age of 71. And as grateful as he was to the drug that did save his life, he never took Pervitin again.

A quick note about our stories: they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

The Mr. Ballen Podcast: Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballen. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Produced by Jeremy Bone. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan.

Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacascio, Jordan Stidham and Cole D'Acasio. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Production coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Manada and Delaina Corley.

Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballen Podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you want to hear more like it, go ahead and check out our YouTube channel just called Mr. Ballen. Where we have hundreds more stories a lot like this one, but most of them are not available on this podcast.

They are only available on that YouTube channel, which again is just called Mr. Ballen. So that's gonna do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.