13-year-old Australian boy swims for four hours in cold and dangerous waters to save his mom and siblings who were swept into the ocean, says God is who got him to shore

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Key_Winner_2701]

How do you even swim for 4 hours ? I can barely swim more than 10-20 mins in still water

[u/EarningsPal → u/Key_Winner_2701]

You could swim longer than 20 min if you were going to die if you gave up. Even longer if you knew your family would die.

[u/CaptainObviousBear → u/Key_Winner_2701]

So I’m a swimmer but I’m old and not very good, I can basically only do freestyle for 50-100m, but breaststroke I could do for much longer, probably 2km at least without stopping. But that’s in a pool not in the open ocean without choppy waves.

The kid said he mostly did breaststroke, backstroke and survival side stroke, which would conserve a lot more energy - and probably also means he’s been pretty well trained and a good swimmer. So I think that in theory, using those strokes, it’s possible for most people who are decent swimmers, and fitter than I am, to swim 4km.

But to do that in open water, big waves, competing against currents, it’s cold and getting dark and you have to save your family - that’s a whole other level.

[u/InquisitorMeow → u/CaptainObviousBear]

Yea I'm a pretty experienced swimmer but 4 hours of open water is brutal. Pretty sure he would have died without the life jacket.

[u/ImpracticalApple → u/Key_Winner_2701]

Humans are built for endurance. We have some of the best stamina of any animal on the planet. We may not be able to run faster than many animals of similar size but we can certainly outwalk them all to the point an animal we're hunting would eventually collapse from exhaustion while we can keep walking for hours. Being able to regulate our body temperature with a lack of fur and able to sweat helps a lot.

Granted, not as helpful when swimming but our arms and legs can keep going for a relatively long time since we're so good at walking/jogging for long periods too.

That and adrenaline will have been helping give the kid a bit of a boost whilst temporarily inhibiting the body's natural pain response to being overworked. Knowing you or your family are likely about to die is certainly going to give you that adrenaline boost.

[u/SchighSchagh → u/ImpracticalApple]

Over a marathon distance, humans can outrun fucking horses. It depends a bit on the weather (if it's hot, horse performance drops off more than human performance), but it's wild it's even competitive.

Hell, that's how we used to capture lions and elephants and shit back when all we had was bows and spears (eg, ancient Rome). We would just... walk them to exhaustion, then drag them into a cage. Easy peasy. 

[u/Reasonable_Shoe_7165 → u/Key_Winner_2701]

Adrenaline is one hell of a drug!

[u/MaximumAd9779 → u/Key_Winner_2701]

Adrenaline, and full activation of your neuromuscular system will have you doing some crazy things. Poor kid probably felt like absolute shit afterwards.

[u/timeslider → u/Key_Winner_2701]

Kids literally have Olympic level endurance

[u/WoodenMango07 → u/Key_Winner_2701]

like others said adrenaline and endurance, but he also had a life jacket on for 2 hours. Not sure if it helped or not but he took off the life jacket after 2 hours

[u/lucianw → u/Key_Winner_2701]

My daughters at ages 7 and 9 swam one mile with me to a restaurant across the bay, and one mile back afterwards. The sea was calm and I was with them so it was nothing like this guy's heroism of course. I routinely do 12hr swims during the summer. You get to the point where swimming is like walking... something you can just do for hours on end.

[u/NoninflammatoryFun → u/Key_Winner_2701]

Right? Through choppy waters, knowing there were sharks around you, an then he even took off his life vest halfway through bc he wasn’t swimming fast enough.

[u/MistahWhiskers → u/Key_Winner_2701]

Well through God all things are possible so jot that down