When it Comes to Survival, Get Some Rest! ©

 

Photograph by the author.

I started writing this article more than a month ago, at that time COVID-19 was only in Wuhan, China.  Now, obviously it’s everywhere.  And while the main thrust of this article is about what to do if you are “misplaced” in the wilderness, today many, many people are anxious and suffering from sleepless nights, because of the corona virus.  Getting plenty of rest, so you can control your fears and anxieties is important in any crisis, whether you are turned around in the woods or dealing with a virus – Author’s note.

Count Rugen to Prince Humperdinck, in the Princess Bride, 1987¹

“Princess Bride!”, you say, “That’s a romantic fantasy from the 80s!  What does that have that have to do with survival and woodlore?”  Yes, this is a quote from a romantic fantasy movie, but the advice to “get some rest” is actually very good survival advice.  “But, it’s okay to miss some sleep,” you think, “it’s no big deal, I can sleep after I’m rescued, right?”  Wrong!  Read on to find out why...

 

An excerpt from, Major Stephen J. Townsend’s The Factors Of Soldier's Load, page 56.  This quote was originally found in Brigadier General, S. L. A. Marshall’s, The Soldier’s Load and the Mobility of a Nation.

Fatigue and fear, fear and fatigue, a deadly spiral.  Being tired or fatigued makes it difficult to control your fears and being afraid can cause you to become more tired or fatigued (for more on fear and survival read “What Are You Scared Of?! ©”, HERE).  But just why are your tired and fatigued?  Perhaps, it is muscular fatigue caused by overexertion or over-exercise, the inevitable consequence of performing important and necessary physical survival tasks, such as lifting, carrying, walking, etc.  Perhaps you are mentally fatigued, because of your psychological reaction to the “Seven Enemies of Survival”: cold, thirst, hunger, boredom, loneliness, pain and fatigue.  Don’t forget that being fatigued, mentally or physically, will make you increasingly more tired and fatigued, over time, as you struggle with this and the other enemies of survival.  The only way to recover from fatigue is to rest.  But what if you haven’t been sleeping? 

The Rule of Threes, graphic by the author.

Just as, on average, you can’t live longer than three days without water; you can’t live more than three days without sleep.  “But” you say, “that 17-year-old kid, Randy Gardner went without sleeping for 264 hours, almost 11 days, back in 1965!”  Your right he did, at a school science fair, all-in-all a pretty tame place.  By the end of his record setting ordeal, Randy Gardner, although awake, was cognitively dysfunctional².  Would he have been able to stay awake for 264 hours in the middle of the wilderness, without hallucinating, falling, accidentally getting wet and hypothermic, hurting himself, etc., I don’t think so, and here is why. 

An excerpt from “Sleep Deprivation Is The Same As Being Drunk, Study Says”, by Kristina Rodulfo

According to current studies, going without sleep affects the body in the same way as drinking alcohol does.  Even moderate sleep deprivation impairs your alertness, your memory and your motor performance and precision.  In fact, after only 17 to 19 hours without sleep, you will perform as if your blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was 0.08%, which is considered impaired by US law.  For the average sized American woman, this would mean drinking three standard drinks in an hour, and for the average sized American man, it would take drinking four standard drinks in an hour, to reach a BAC of 0.08%³.

  

An excerpt from On Combat, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Loren W. Christensen, page 24, showing the effects of not sleeping on performance.

The US Army performed a study, shown above, which underscored how going without sleep will affect you the same way as drinking alcohol does.  This study documented a drastic drop off in performance and efficiency as the amount of sleep declined.  In this study Groups Two, Three and Four were kept awake between 18 and 20 hours each day for 20 days.  During this experiment their performance dropped to only 15%, for Group Four, and to 50%, for Group Two, of their peak task efficiency: in effect they performed the same as if they had been drinking and had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08%!

Now, many people go without sleeping for 24 hours, it isn’t that uncommon.  However, not sleeping for more than 24 hours will affect you the same way as if your blood alcohol concentration is at 0.10%, the equivalent of four standard alcoholic drinks.  And the effects of not sleeping get progressively worse after 24 hours.  In fact, as Healthline.com notes, the effects of going without sleep for more than 24 hours include, drowsiness, irritability, impaired decision-making and judgement, impaired hearing and vision, decreased hand-eye coordination, increased muscle tension and tremors.  In addition, you might begin to experience altered perceptions or hallucinations and memory deficits.  All these combined, increase your risk of having an accident, and in the wilderness, just as on the highway, an accident can be fatal.  The only good news is these symptoms will all go away once you have had some sleep.

After just 36 hours without sleep, only a day and a half, according to Healthline.com, you can expect to suffer from hormonal imbalances, which can alter your appetite, metabolism, temperature, mood and ability to deal with stress.  Additionally, you will be prone to making risky decisions, have inflexible reasoning, a decreased ability to pay attention, a lack of motivation and a difficult time speaking and choosing words.

After 48 hours, or two days, without sleeping you will begin to experience “microsleeps”, which are involuntary naps where your brain will shut down, lapsing into a trance like state that might last from 15 to 30 seconds. 

And finally, after 72 hours, or three days, without sleep, Healthline.com reports that on top of all the previous symptoms you will have an increased difficulty thinking, multitasking and remembering.  You might also experience hallucinations, where you see things that aren’t there.

In a wilderness survival situation, would you drink until you were drunk?  No, of course not!  But if you don’t sleep, that is exactly what you are doing.  And hallucinating and seeing things that aren’t there can seriously impact your chances of surviving a wilderness emergency, so...

An excerpt from the 1969 edition of Survival Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, page 1-13⁴.

  

So, work smarter not harder and when you can rest, REST!  If all your immediate survival needs are met, take a nap, sleep!  Sleeping will lower your metabolism, helping you to conserve vital and scarce energy, it will decrease you level of fatigue, helping you to think more clearly and control fear, and it will increase your task efficiency when you are performing critical survival chores. 

An excerpt from the 1969 edition of Survival Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, page 1-13.

Remember “...fatigue is an enemy of survival.  Try to set up a program of rest.” a quote and an excerpt from the 1969 edition of Survival Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, page 1-14.

   

So, if you become tired, either when you have become physically or mentally fatigued, rest, take a nap!  Remember Count Rugen’s advice “Get some rest.  If you haven’t got your health, then you haven’t got anything.”

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

Notes

¹ From the movie, Princess Bride, 1987, 20^th Century Fox.  I am aware that if you can quote most of the movie from memory that you are kinda a geek, however in my defense and as someone who has studied fencing, sword fighting and stick-fighting for more than 30 years; the sword fighting is exceptional and the sword masters that they talk about while fighting at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity were real swordsmen, whose writings I have studied.

² J. Christian Gillin, “How Long Can Humans Stay Awake?”

³ In the United States, the term “standard drink” refers to a drink which contains enough alcohol to raise an average person’s BAC by between 0.02% and 0.025%.  One standard drink is considered to be one 12 fluid ounce (355 ml) of 5% alcohol by volume (ABV) beer, or one 5 fluid ounce (148 ml) of 12% ABV wine, or one 1.5 fluid ounce (44 ml) of 40% ABV (80 proof) shot of hard liquor.  So, two standard drinks will raise your blood alcohol concentration to about 0.05%, three standard drinks will raise your BAC to about 0.08%, and four standard drinks will equal 0.10% BAC, without taking size differences into consideration.  The general rule of thumb is, for an average sized American woman it takes drinking three standard drinks in an hour, and for an average sized American man it takes drinking four standard drinks in an hour to reach a BAC of 0.08%. 

Editorial Staff, “How Many Drinks Does it Take to Reach a .08 BAC?”

Patrick T. Barone, “How Many Drinks Does it Take to Get to a .05 Legal Limit?”,

⁴ A good PDF copy of the 1969, Survival Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, is available at https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QafWD_tnrQah_123Vdzf3cUpFscGc1tFZ-mbT-8cLuvT6d1JOFoeQlpZjQbXWlXEO-JRFjM2zPz-X6Onjky9dyQvtAsro4vU1ZyTDJZU2lPkGAIbXdRTWZjN_ADI4wxK69JTKD-WtXPfLP_9sXVUEJgUJUgaNEHZBDz_cCT8MAu1Gh2rvykD-jv0vtmQtE1Lk6RTR3yH4u_3X1lFrKXyAqoFohpKGI1xiMRoW0iOYD3g5JH6DHIjKdb6uFLL07Ijf42tXamK

Sources

Barone, Patrick T.; “How Many Drinks Does it Take to Get to a .05 Legal Limit?”, May 8, 2018 [BaroneDefenseFirm.com, 2020], https://baronedefensefirm.com/blog/how-many-drinks-does-it-take-to-get-to-a-05-legal-limit/, accessed February 29, 2020

Department of the Air Force, Survival Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, [US Government Printing Office, Washington DC August 15, 1969] p 1.13 - 1.15

Editorial Staff, “How Many Drinks Does it Take to Reach a .08 BAC?”, June 13, 2014, [Ignition Interlock Help, 2018] https://www.ignitioninterlockhelp.com/blog/many-drinks-take-reach-08-bac/, February 29, 2020

Gillin, J. Christian; “How Long Can Humans Stay Awake?”, March 25, 2002, [Scientific American, A Division Of Springer Nature America, Inc., 2020], https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-can-humans-stay/, accessed March 26, 2020

Grossman, Dave, Lt. Col., and Christensen, Loren W., On Combat, 4^th Edition, [KRG, LLC, 2008], p. 24

Rodulfo, Kristina; “Sleep Deprivation Is The Same As Being Drunk, Study Says”, Elle Magazine, April 5, 2016, [Hearst Magazine Media, Inc., 2020], https://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitness/news/a35349/lack-of-sleep-same-as-being-drunk-uk-sleep-study/, accessed March 24, 2020

Townsend, Stephen J., Major; The Factors Of Soldier's Load, [Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1994], p. 56, http://www.themilsimperspective.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/a284389-THE-FACTORS-OF-SOLDIERS-LOAD.pdf, accessed 02/02/2020

Vandergriendt, Carly; “How Long Can You Go Without Sleep?”, March 16, 2018 https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-sleep/how-long-can-you-go-without-sleep#what-happens-after-24-hours, accessed March 26, 2020