Survival: The Last Laugh Survival: The Last Laugh Introduction By RON HOOD Ed.D. (ABD) © Ron Hood 1995 SURVIVAL: The living or continuing longer than another person or thing. Survival is the subject for this electronic book. For whatever reason you have chosen to examine these pages there is one thing certain. The conditions you may be faced with in a survival challenge are uncertain. I have no way of knowing exactly what information you will be needing to succeed. I do know however that there are many ways to solve a problem. There may well be a best way but there are also satisfactory answers resulting in the same product, your personal survival. I do not presume to provide you with the skills to run naked into the woods, look directly to the eyes of nature and say "I'm going to beat you" , it can't be done. Rather the intention is to help you to find answers that will teach you how not to challenge nature. It will just help you to learn to survive with the least amount of pain and the greatest possibility of a future. Nor is the book limited to woodsy wilderness survival issues. You will discover that it contains some of the concepts and attitudes you may need to survive the pressures of the urban environment, an environment many times more dangerous to you than the woods are ever likely to be. Through the years I have had the opportunity to experience many different kinds of survival challenges, some of them real threats to my life and some a self imposed and very personal test of my skills. I have also had the good fortune, over the years, to have been able to lead over 5000 students into the wilderness to teach them survival skills. Through this association with people I've seen a kind of pattern. The pattern starts with a frowning insecurity, a sort of "What am I doing here?" look the on the first day and ends with a smile and an obvious sense of personal power and security, by the last day. There exists in most of us a lingering distrust of the vagaries of nature, almost a fear of the wilderness environment. A fear? Yep. Most of us have spent the majority of our lives in a synthetic environment. An environment almost totally controlled by humanity. Our shelters are made by a community of builders, our foods are not produced by the consumer, nor are the clothes.....most of what we own or use is produced by another. To me it seems odd that even with this great dependence on the production of others, we feel fairly secure. Clearly we know and moderately trust the environment we occupy. As individuals, we feel confident. However, when we take those same fairly confident mostly competent persons into the woods for the first time, what do we see? Fear: A stricken look creeps across their faces. "What was that noise......was it a bear?......Rattlesnakes, is it safe to sleep on the ground? Do you think that it will rain? Does this thing bite? Is it poisonous?" Questions couched in a vessel of fear. Lets stop here for just a moment. Why are so many of us nervous in the wilderness? Certainly more and more individuals are partaking in the joys of nature Yet even these persons seem to need the security of an overloaded backpack. The stove, the pots and pans, a sort of house on your back, an insulation provided by the artifacts of the synthetic environment. Can't we just cast aside these affectations and plunge wholly into the wilderness as primitive persons once did? Nope, it isn't practical. Those artifacts serve to not only isolate us from the pressures of survival living but also to shelter the environment from us. Imagine for a moment the effect of tens of thousands of persons munching ,hacking and trapping their way through the wilderness. What a horrible thought. So you travel into the land of blue skies, you eyeball the fleecy white clouds wondering at their journey across the heavens. You stop for a moment , breathless, sweat snaking down your cheeks the air coming hot and raspy in your throat. You stoop, cup in hand. to a crystal brook rimmed with green grasses, ferns and all manner of plant life. You see the shadowy form of a small fish dart under the bank as you fill your cup with a clear, cold and somehow almost sacramental fluid. The water is ..well.....better somehow than the water in the city, it is more invigorating. It is also full of cow shit. Ah yes , the simple pleasures. What has all of this to do with survival? Just this. Imagine, you are out there, wherever there happens to be. What if you lost your equipment in a river crossing, or maybe one of those new type banditos of the woods steals your unattended backpacking gear, or you get lost or.....The possibilities are almost endless and limited mostly by your imagination. (If you want to explore these dark possibilities do it at night, just before you leave for the woods, it's so much more fun). The point is, you are there, possibly lost, possibly without water, food or whatever, what do you do ? This book will help you decide. It cannot however give you all of the survival skills. Nothing but years of experience can do that. Just a Thought In the million or so years since humans began to make tools we've come up with an incredible array of survival techniques. Many of them are good, and some are rotten. But a million years of survival skills is hard to imagine. Try this idea on for size. Draw a line ten feet long and say that it represents a million years. The line is what authorities believe is the time span our species has been developing its survival skills. Now halve it and call one half five hundred thousand years, halve it again and so on. Here is what you get for your one million years of human endeavor. IF 10 FEET EQUALS ONE MILLION YEARS THEN : 5 Feet = 500,000 30 inches = 250,000 7.5 inches = 62,500 3.25 inches = 31,250 1.62 inches = 15,625 .2 inches = 1,953 .02 inch = 244 years Thus we can see that on a time line ten feet long equal to one million years, the period from the signing of the Declaration of Independence until today is represented by about the thickness of two pages of a paper book: Think about it. The synthetic environment we know began about 200 years ago. Survival started for humanity at the beginning of the time line and continues on today. There is a lot to know and a lot more to forget. No one of us will ever know it all and what is more important, it isn't necessary. I know how to survive most situations and I will, so can you. This book is intended to give you a little more of the "will". When all is done and said our definition of "Survival" will remain the same except we will have added another part to the definition: Survival is the last laugh. (If there is an interest in what I am writing, I will continue to add new material to these pages until you have as complete a document as I can present to you in this wonderful electronic communications medium. I hope that you will take the time to send me a note with your comments. Without your comments it will be like tossing words into a vacuum, and I will be lonely.) Diogenes@smartdocs.com Chapter One Chapter 1 THE BEGINNING Before we jump into this survival thing it seems wise to make a few suggestions about rescue. As basic as the following suggestions may seem, they may make the remainder of this book unnecessary. The goal of a trained survivalist is simple: always try to avoid placing yourself in a survival situation. If you think you can't avoid a survival situation because "Things like that seem to happen to me". Then the next best thing would be to ensure that you are rescued with all possible speed. TO HELP ASSURE YOUR RESCUE. 1) Tell someone reliable where you are going.Give them a note explaining what route you plan to take and what equipment you are carrying. Before you leave .If you fail to return on time, and your vehicle is still where it is supposed to be (leave the vehicle description, License number etc.. with your friend), The authorities may search for you. Your friend should be given the information needed to report your absence should you fail to return. It should include the phone numbers of the authorities in the area you plan to travel to. With this information the ponderous wheels of bureaucracy might begin to turn a little sooner. Keep in mind that the authorities have had many unnecessary experiences with foolish and thoughtless packers. It is up to you to survive until they arrive. 2) Tell that someone when to expect you back. 3) Call that person when you return. 4) If you are delayed, try to send word to that person or to the authorities. 5) While on your journey, avoid changing your plans without leaving or sending word about the plan changes. 6) Never go alone (Unless you are prepared to suffer the consequences); always travel with a companion. 7) Never leave a message on the outside of your automobile if it is parked at the trail road head. Thieves may make use of the information in your note and strip your machine to it's bones. If you leave a note, leave it inside the vehicle where it can be found by the authorities should they open it. 8) As you travel into the woods, stop and , look back frequently. This will familiarize you with the terrain behind you and it will be easier for you to recognize the proper path when you return. This rule applies when you are driving into the woods as well. Forested dirt roads have a way of becoming VERY familiar after awhile, even if you haven't seen them before. Learn to recognize your own tracks, foot and vehicle, as a clue to your previous travels. Learn to use a walking stick as the marks left on the trail by a walking stick are very distinctive. 9) Read the rest of this book so you will know what to do if you have an emergency survival situation. PRIORITIES "A funny thing happened on the way to survival; I couldn't decide what to do first so I didn't do a thing" When you think about it, the statement is not very funny, but it is true. It seems that in many cases where individuals find themselves in a survival situation they just look around a little, cuss a bit, finger their noses and react instinctively. Probably with sleeping instincts. That won't do. There's a better way, The better way is to take a quick look at the human machine and try to decide just which needs should be met first. Simple...... but then most survival is simple and obvious if you think about it. THE RULE OF THREES The rule of threes is a unpretentious way to remember the basic priorities of the human organism. There is plenty of room for argument and of course certain conditions might modify the rule to some extent. However the rule remains a good starting point for our exploration of the survival priorities. The Rule of threes looks like this. A person can live for: Three minutes without air. Three hours without shelter. Three days without water Three weeks without food Three months without love So it is , keeping these priorities in mind you have a chance at survival. Obviously there is more to the rule of threes. There may be circumstances where one or another of the items are not immediately important because those elements have already been taken care of. For instance. If you found yourself lost in an enormous warehouse you would probably decide that the first two priorities were of little immediate importance there being plenty of air and good shelter. However, should you wander aimlessly through the labyrinthine corridors of crates you would be using up precious moisture and energy. therefore a search for a water fountain or perhaps a restroom with one of those floor mounted porcelain springs, seems in order. By looking at the walls or ceiling you might be able to spot pipes which would lead you to the resources you need. Later you could consider trapping some of the large rats or maybe search for a quarter (Or a ball peen hammer) to operate one of the vending machines. But more to the point, How do the priorities fit together? SHELTER I've asked budding survival students the question; "If you were lost in a blizzard without equipment what would you do?" The answer I hear most (and which confounds me), sounds like this . "Search for something to eat, and build a fire." I can see it now, lost in a howling blizzard, the wind whipping the trees to rubble, frost forming on even the memories of warmth, while our erstwhile survivalist tunnels through snowdrifts in search of a fresh green salad made of "wild edibles". Or uses his precious matches trying to light wet wood in the roaring wind. Without proper shelter our friend may die within three hours. It seems obvious our survivalist must react immediately to the threat posed by the cold blowing storm. Only hours of life remain if basic shelter needs are not met. Miserable and hungry, cold and scared but alive if the shelter is of the right type. The right type? This is a subject we will explore in detail when we examine the mechanics of heat loss and gain. For the moment let us assume that the shelter is proper and will attenuate heat loss while allowing the victim to rewarm without external heat sources. The wind dies , the snow moves from its horizontal path to one more nearly vertical and then stops altogether. The trees shiver as great blobs of storm driven snow loosen and fall to earth. A patch of blue as the clouds part. Then the first muted mutterings of the forest as signs of life begin to return. The survivalist shivers a bit and the hunched form of his body shoves aside parts of the hastily erected shelter and he sets forth in quest of the next priority. water. WATER Like the sailor lost at sea with "water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink" our survivalist first gobbles a handful of snow to help fill the vacancy rapidly developing in the hungry center. OOPS. That won't do either. It takes energy to turn snow into water. After all snow may be only about 20% -30% water by volume yet it takes lots of precious energy to convert the cold snow into warm water. Where is the energy going to come from? No food to eat, and none in the stomach. There will be no power from the fat battery for some time. (It takes many hours to start receiving energy from our fat reserves.... we need to stay alive until those reserves are available to us......)Our friend is still powered by the energy stored in the bones and blood. Water will be necessary to assist the energy extraction processes the body uses when converting fat into energy. Water, the third priority, can stop us from even utilizing our own reserves, With dehydration we discover another interesting relationship between water and our chances for survival. For each five percent our body dehydrates (by weight i.e. a 100 pound body weight reduced to 95 pounds by dehydration) we lose approximately 25% of our ability to do work. Some authorities claim even a greater loss of power. Remember, this is in addition to the loss of ability to do work caused by insufficient energy. The ratio of work energy lost versus the percentage of dehydration remains relatively constant until the victim is literally unable to continue to function. The percentages look something like this ; PERCENTAGE OF DEHYDRATION AND ABILITY TO DO WORK: % of dehydration / % of work possible 0% 100% 5% / 75% 10% / 50% 15% / 25% 20% / 0% Possible death Water is the third priority whether you find yourself at the ocean or in a snow storm. I ought to mention at this point that backpackers sometimes find themselves uncomfortable and a little under the weather a day or two after the beginning of a trip. Many times this is the result of dehydration. Though they are drinking much more water than they normally do, they still do not consume enough to compensate for the increased effort they are putting into their days. Lots of water, with enough salt in the food to stave off those agonizing midnight muscle cramps. Just a happy thought here. Drink or die. FOOD Food, that glorious word. Those four letters draw more pictures in more imaginations than most other four letter combinations I can think of. How important is it? It's right up there. If you don't eat your habitual meals, how do you feel? Not too energetic, eh, A little on the shaky side, angry or short tempered with a funny thrumming feeling in the old gut. The important thing to remember here is that the hungry sensation you feel in the pit of the old grub grinder is not a sign that the body is low on power. it is telling you that you are low on food in the tummy. It isn't telling you that for every extra pound of fat on your body you have roughly 4000 Calories of energy available. 4000 Calories can get a lot of work finished but.,..,is that energy available to do work now? There's the catch, it isn't, in fact the reserve fat calories probably won't be ready to give themselves up to you for 18 to 24 hours from the time of your last meal, in a way that's a comforting thought. You really only have to survive for 18-24 hours on an empty stomach and then you' ll find things are getting a little easier, energy wise. Another problem, if you don't eat during this first period, is the great blue funk. The funk is the cause of much unhappiness for most people during their survival emergencies. It might cause you to make some decisions that will hasten your movement into the next incarnation. If our hungry salad seeker in the previous example were to think about his position, the storm would pose a more immediate threat to survival than the more distant specters of dehydration and starvation. By successfully facing the first challenge to survival our imaginary victim should begin to feel the earliest stirrings of hope. Hope is a nice dressing for the salad of confidence. Too bad you can't eat it. The glimmerings of hope provide heat for the soul but generally they won't do much to heat the body. How do you heat the body when you are without food and have no external sources of heat? THE BODY BATTERY As you know, when you eat food, a number of events occur. There is an increased blood flow to the stomach, mysterious process's begin, chemicals are released, muscles convulse and energy is somehow extracted from whatever it was you chose to shove down your throat. Later, the energy removed, the same material reemerges to become part of another process which is best left to those who deal with that sort of thing. The important part to us....The energy is extracted and made available to you so you can use it to do work or simply to store for work to be done at a later time. Some of the energy we store is converted to fat, a part of the invasion of the inanimate muscle many of us see developing just under our skin. Another part is stored in another way. Remember, as you eat you start to feel a little surge of energy, This preliminary surge is the immediate benefit of eating. Later, when you push the plate away, release some foul smelling gas, and drift away from your repast, you know you will be able to move about for hours on the food just consumed. Even if you go without eating for a few hours and the contents of your stomach have been broken up into so many components, you continue to move and work. Where is that energy coming from? You already know that it will be some time before the fat power rolls around. The belly battery is empty yet still we move. There must be another way to store power in the body. AHA! you got it. There is. In the blood, in the bones, in the organs. Wherever there is a bit of tissue, we have the ability to store a bit of power in the form of a large branched polymer of glucose called glycogen. Each individual cell has the capability to store at least a little of this material. Some of us can barely stand when we are tired and hungry but most of us store a surprising amount of power in our bodies. This is the power that keeps us going when we find ourselves benighted in the wilderness. This is the stuff that puts pop in the poop. This is the stuff we can replenish from the fat if we are given the time to get the process into operation. The time, there's that word again. All we ever need is time, For a person in a survival situation without food it will be 18 to 24 hours before we retrieve some fat power. The power in the blood must keep us alive for the 18 to 24 hours, then we stand a much better chance of working our way out of the situation. If the point seems labored it's because it's important to realize that most people caught in a survival situation will be rescued or find their way out if they survive the first 24-48 hours of the emergency. The body reserves must be carefully guarded until the cavalry of fat can come charging to the rescue. We must do what is necessary to satisfy the first survival priorities of air, shelter, and water, until we get a handle on the fat reserves. After that there are many simple and wondrous things that can be done to assure continued survival for prolonged periods. THE OTHER PRIORITIES , AIR AND LOVE I guess in a superficial way we've talked about all of the most important priorities with the exception of the killer and the crippler. Air and Love. Air: If you can't breathe, make it so you can. If you can't make it so you can, die. Love is another story. I suppose one might say that there are many kinds of love. Spiritual, emotional, physical and mixes and matches of those. For the survivalist the word is faintly tied to the word "hope". It has been noted that many excellent survivalists who find themselves trying to make it on the land, alone, can do so with a great degree of success for a couple of months. Then about three months down the line comes a sort of crisis. They feel the loneliness, the homesickness, the tension and sometimes give up hope. When this happens there is a definite if invisible threat to survival. Those who manage to rally, to drag themselves through the barrier, will feel a new energy, and a renewed purpose. Sometimes the personal crisis never occurs, the individual may become a hermit and live life as a part of the natural order. Sometimes the crisis is immediate and as deadly as any of the other crisis waiting to suck the energy from the hopeless victim. This is the time when faith in the self becomes most important. Words like self reliance, self confidence, and self sufficiency help to fill the void of loneliness, Hang in there. WORKING OUT THE PRIORITIES The rule of threes is only a starting point for the priorities. It gives us a sort of handle on a solution to your own unique survival situation. There is a lot more that must be done. Here's where we run into these so called "what ifs" that confound so many budding survivalists. Its sort of funny to be giving a talk about an aspect of survival and have someone ask a question like." What if you were lost In the desert, naked, without water. Your left leg is broken, and no one is expecting you back for months. Then a snow storm blows in carrying with it a load of man eating grasshoppers with stainless steel teeth and large noses. What would you do?" It's a type of question I like to call the "A Bomb" question. No realistic answer will satisfy the unrealistic problem. You are in trouble. Not much you can do except lasso a passing dirt bike rider and get towed to the nearest Trappist monastery. I brought this thing up because when these kinds of questions are shot at the training survivalist they sometimes leave that person with self confidence resembling emotional Swiss cheese. There will always be situations where assigning priorities will be a difficult task. Challenges originating in the imagination most often surpass the real emergencies you will face. Of course there is always Murphy's law........."Whatever can go wrong will go wrong" (some believe that Murphy was an optimist). The struggle to set priorities can be simplified if we try to define our problem first. We must ask ourselves some questions. What forces of nature are acting against us? What strengths are waiting to be summoned? What artifacts do we have available immediately? By asking these types of questions, and others, and giving answers, even unsatisfactory answers like "I don't know" we've taken some long steps toward survival. We are thinking. Stay tuned for Chapter 2.... Thinking in survival terms and innovative thinking. diogenes@smartdocs.com Copyright Ron Hood 1995