What I survived

Former Australian soldier Rob Langdon went to Afghanistan as a private security contractor. He would eventually be convicted of murder, sentenced to death and spend seven years inside one of Afghanistan's most notorious prisons.

But before the prison, the death sentence and the fight to stay alive, Rob had spent much of his adult life as a soldier.

In Part 1 of his story, Rob takes Jack back through his early life and the road that led him into the Australian Army. He talks about his years in the military, the experiences that shaped him and eventually his decision to leave and enter the rapidly growing world of private security contracting.

His work would first take him to Iraq before eventually leading him into Afghanistan, where he worked protecting convoys and operating in an extraordinarily dangerous environment.

In 2009, everything would change.

A confrontation with an Afghan colleague would end with Rob shooting and killing the man. Rob says he acted in self-defence. The Afghan courts would ultimately convict him of murder and sentence him to death.

This is Part 1 of Rob Langdon's story on What I Survived.
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After surviving malaria, starvation and near death in the Amazon, Benedict Allen was left with a question he couldn't shake: why had he survived? His search for an answer would take him deep into Papua New Guinea and into a brutal initiation ceremony designed to transform young men into “crocodile men.”

In Part 3 of Lost in the Amazon, Benedict explains why simply returning home wasn't enough. Surviving had changed him, and he felt compelled to understand what it meant to be tested, transformed and pushed to the limits of human endurance.

That search took him to live among tribal people in Papua New Guinea, where he underwent the dangerous initiation ceremony traditionally undertaken by young men as part of their passage into manhood.
Benedict also takes Jack through more extraordinary moments from a lifetime spent exploring some of the world's most hostile environments — including an Arctic expedition where he lost his dog team and once again found himself facing the possibility that he might not survive.

From the Amazon rainforest to Papua New Guinea and the Arctic, Benedict's story becomes about something much bigger than one expedition: why did surviving once leave him with the need to keep putting himself back on the edge?

This is Part 3 of Benedict Allen's story on What I Survived.
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Lost and alone in the Amazon, British explorer Benedict Allen contracted two forms of malaria, including a potentially deadly strain. Starving, feverish and running out of options, the 22-year-old faced a decision that would stay with him for decades.

In Part 2 of Lost in the Amazon, Benedict takes us deeper into his fight for survival as his physical condition deteriorates and the reality of his situation begins to set in.

With little food and his body being ravaged by malaria, Benedict was forced to confront an unimaginable choice: to survive, he would eat the dog that had become his companion during the journey.
Benedict tells Jack about that decision, what it took to make it, and the desperate condition he was in as he continued trying to find his way out of the Amazon alive.

What began as an ambitious expedition had become a battle against starvation, disease and isolation — with no guarantee that anyone even knew where to find him.

This is Part 2 of Benedict Allen's story on What I Survived.
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At just 22 years old, British explorer Benedict Allen set out to travel 600 miles through the remote northeast Amazon. It was supposed to be an expedition. Instead, it became a fight for survival.
Gold miners hunted him. His canoe capsized, swallowing his supplies. Malaria burned through his body — two types of it, including one that could kill him in 24 hours. Starving, feverish and alone, Benedict made a choice that would haunt him for decades.

He eventually walked out of the jungle. But something inside him forced him to confront his near-death experience and a question he needed to answer: why had he lived?

So he went back. Not to the Amazon, not yet, but to Papua New Guinea. There, he immersed himself in a culture that still held ancient rituals of manhood and underwent a secret ceremony alongside young tribal initiates — to be cut, scarred and beaten, and to try to understand what it meant to survive, to be tested and to be transformed.

This is the story of a young man running towards the very thing that nearly killed him. Of unfinished business in the jungle. Of the price of seeking answers that only survival can provide.
And of a man who has nearly died nine times.

This is Part 1 of Benedict Allen's story on What I Survived.
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For three years, Giovanni Rocco lived two lives. By day, he was a man with a wife and children. By night, he was Giovanni Gatto—a mob associate climbing the ranks of the DeCavalcante crime family, one of America's most powerful organised crime organisations.He was brilliant at it. Too brilliant. So brilliant that his captain, Charlie Stango, loved him like a son. So brilliant that he was proposed for membership—to become a made man.But there was a price. Everything he built was a lie. Everyone he loved was in danger. And when Charlie Stango asked him to arrange a murder, the FBI had to pull him out.What happened next was worse than anything that came before: witness protection, erasure, a life lived in hiding, and the realisation that the man he'd become—the only version of himself that felt real—could never exist again.
This is the story of an undercover operation that succeeded brilliantly and destroyed everything in the process. This is what it costs to survive.

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