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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2wSUS76:
torrilin reblogged your post and added:
Huh, I’d order them as water, fire, shelter and I’m not sure how I’d prioritize food vs signal. Technically air goes over water, but lots of people forget about air.I’m amused WI has useful hunting info, because they’ve got almost unrestricted hunting.
No, you can live three days without water, but you can die of exposure in a matter of hours, so water’s a lower priority. The thing about survival, yeah on a philosophical level we’ve got maslow’s heirarchy of needs and all, but on a practical level, people who are lost in the woods are going to have getting rescued as their #1 priority, and it doesn’t matter how prepared you are, if you’re not rescued or at least reunited with a larger party, you’re eventually going to die of something. So, yes, if you’re in a postapocalyptic fantasy novel, or a survival game scenario, you’re going to have to consider all kinds of abstract things. But from a practical standpoint, if you’re someone who was on a day walk into some woods, such as one who is out hunting, you’re probably going to die of some pretty well-studied causes, and knowing them will enable you to avoid the obvious ones.
So #1 they say you need to prioritize not freezing to death, not getting yourself *more* lost, not injuring yourself by trying to do something unwise, and then you can worry about things like finding water to keep you alive a couple more days, and maybe eventually, finding something to eat, but they reiterate, you won’t die from not eating, you’ll just make dumber decisions. Most people who get lost hunting or hiking are not going to need to forage for food. And literally never in the history of ever has someone gotten lost hiking and then instantly suffocated because they forgot that humans need air.
Signal is a high priority because your odds of getting rescued are probably highest if you’re found right away. In fact, you may not even count it as an incident if you get rescued right away.
So, they say, #1 thing is stop, think, orient yourself, plan [acronymized as STOP]; #2 shelter yourself so you don’t freeze, #3 once you’ve established shelter build a fire both to signal and to keep warm, #4 establish a good signal so if you’re near help, which you probably are, someone will find you (three fires, a big X visible from sky, a whistle, something like that), #5 find a water source and figure out how to purify it, and a distant #6 is try to forage for sustenance because you’ll be able to think clearer if you have stable blood sugar. But let’s be real here, if you’re lost in the woods in the winter, you’re almost certainly not going to survive long enough to starve to death.
torrilin reblogged your post and added:
Huh, I’d order them as water, fire, shelter and I’m not sure how I’d prioritize food vs signal. Technically air goes over water, but lots of people forget about air.I’m amused WI has useful hunting info, because they’ve got almost unrestricted hunting.
No, you can live three days without water, but you can die of exposure in a matter of hours, so water’s a lower priority. The thing about survival, yeah on a philosophical level we’ve got maslow’s heirarchy of needs and all, but on a practical level, people who are lost in the woods are going to have getting rescued as their #1 priority, and it doesn’t matter how prepared you are, if you’re not rescued or at least reunited with a larger party, you’re eventually going to die of something. So, yes, if you’re in a postapocalyptic fantasy novel, or a survival game scenario, you’re going to have to consider all kinds of abstract things. But from a practical standpoint, if you’re someone who was on a day walk into some woods, such as one who is out hunting, you’re probably going to die of some pretty well-studied causes, and knowing them will enable you to avoid the obvious ones.
So #1 they say you need to prioritize not freezing to death, not getting yourself *more* lost, not injuring yourself by trying to do something unwise, and then you can worry about things like finding water to keep you alive a couple more days, and maybe eventually, finding something to eat, but they reiterate, you won’t die from not eating, you’ll just make dumber decisions. Most people who get lost hunting or hiking are not going to need to forage for food. And literally never in the history of ever has someone gotten lost hiking and then instantly suffocated because they forgot that humans need air.
Signal is a high priority because your odds of getting rescued are probably highest if you’re found right away. In fact, you may not even count it as an incident if you get rescued right away.
So, they say, #1 thing is stop, think, orient yourself, plan [acronymized as STOP]; #2 shelter yourself so you don’t freeze, #3 once you’ve established shelter build a fire both to signal and to keep warm, #4 establish a good signal so if you’re near help, which you probably are, someone will find you (three fires, a big X visible from sky, a whistle, something like that), #5 find a water source and figure out how to purify it, and a distant #6 is try to forage for sustenance because you’ll be able to think clearer if you have stable blood sugar. But let’s be real here, if you’re lost in the woods in the winter, you’re almost certainly not going to survive long enough to starve to death.
