Randy Knapp was a teenager when he spent 13 nights trapped in a whiteout on Oregon's Mount Hood. Thirty-three years later, he's still climbing.

Jonathan Metz tried to saw off his arm this summer after it got stuck in his furnace and infection set in. Crouched alone for three days in his Connecticut basement, he's about to return to his job as a finance manager for an insurance company.

Their stories of survival reveal a heartening truth for the 33 men trapped deep in a Chilean mine: While nobody walks away from catastrophe completely unscathed, neither do most survivors succumb in the aftermath to paralyzing despair, said George Bonanno, a psychology professor at Columbia University's Teachers College.

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