Pamela Sullivan, from a “Girl Tells Of Struggle For Survival”, September 20, 1971, Daily News, HERE.
When
it comes to survival; training and having the proper tools isn’t enough, more
important by far is the will to survive.
You must never give in. In the
immortal words of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, at Harrow School, on
October 29, 19411, “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never – in nothing,
great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honour
and good sense. Never yield to
force. Never yield to the apparently
overwhelming might of the enemy”
Pamela
Sullivan, who was 18 in 1971, never gave in.
In her written statement, after she was rescued from the Three Sisters
wilderness of central Oregon, she recalled thinking “I just wanted to
live. I kept thinking of home and my
parents and all of the people I love. I
wouldn’t allow myself to die”. And
she didn’t die, because thinking of her family and wanting to live is what
drove her on, even when her two companions succumbed to hypothermia, aggravated
by fear and depression.
The Will To Survive...
An excerpt from Survival: Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, 1969, by the US Air Force, page 1-6.
Many
people who spend time in the outdoors become fixated on having the best or latest,
new-fangled survival gadget and reading all the latest survival books, and
while all of that is helpful, it is not what is going to save you in wilderness
survival emergency. According to a
Stanford Research Institute study on success, which in a wilderness emergency
is survival, success is 88% attitude and 12% training or education. This statistic is echoed by Gene Fear, who
was quoted in “Kids Can Survive In the Wild” by Steve Scarano, as saying “Survival
is 80 percent attitude, 10 percent equipment and 10 percent skill”2. So how do you improve your will to survive?
The
first thing that you must do is to not give into fear and anxiety. Conscious fears, which are fears of a real
event or a possible event, can be a good thing, as it can sharpen your mind and
help you avoid the very real possibilities for disaster before you. However unconscious fear, or anxiety, is
something that is to be avoided as it will sap your mental strength and dull
your ability to deal with real world problems as they confront you. Anxiety is often created in your mind as part
of a negative-what-if feedback loop, this loop or spiral, is created when
someone assumes that the worst will happen or when you believe that you’re in a
worse situation than you really are, or when your mind exaggerates the
difficulties that are in front of you.
It is also called “catastrophizing”, by mental health care
providers.
 |
Excerpts from Survival: Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, 1969, by the US Air Force, page 1-9 to 1-10.
Many
survival experts suggest that you include a picture or pictures of your family,
or your children and other loved ones in your survival kit, to motivate you to
never give up. Many survivors of
wilderness emergencies, besides Pamela Sullivan, credit thinking of their
family as the thing that kept them motivated to survive, having some pictures
with you will be more inspiring and make it easier to stay motivated and keep
from giving in to fear and depression.
Lastly,
there are two other survival lessons that can be learned from this tragedy,
besides the importance of never giving in.
In the article Pamela mentioned having a wool cap and apparently her two
companions did not.
Survival
lesson number one is heat loss from your bare head can be 50%
at 40oF or 4oC and 75% at 5oF or -15oC,
and if you are wet you will lose even more.
Having a knit cap in a pack or a pocket, rain or shine, summer or winter
can save your life! I always carry a
knit cap with me whenever I go out into the wilderness.
Survival
lesson number two is you must be careful of wet weather, and not only when the
temperature is low. Hypothermia, the
dangerous lowering of the body’s core temperature can creep up on you3. Apparently in Ms. Sullivan and her companions’s
case, they and their equipment had gotten soaked, and they had waited too long
before finding or returning to shelter.
Wearing wet clothes will increase the conductive heat loss you
experience, since water conducts heat away from your body 25 times faster than
air. Because of this, wet clothes will
pull your body heat away from you by conduction far faster thank inf they were
dry. Also, wet clothes will increase the
evaporative heat loss you experience, and evaporation is a very effective way
of getting rid of heat. And lastly wet
clothes, because the tiny air trapping spaces, or loft, are now filled with
water, are less insulative than if they were dry.
The entire a “Girl Tells Of Struggle For Survival”, September 20, 1971, Daily News, can be read HERE.
Remember,
in survival, or in anything really, never, never, never...never give in!
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Great Rolling Balls of
Garter Snakes©”, where we will talk about Garter Snakes, hibernation and just
what were they doing in that writhing ball of snakes!
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 “Prime Minister Winston
Churchill's address to Harrow School on October 29, 1941”
2 “Kids Can Survive In the Wild” by Steve Scarano, was
originally printed in the Family Safe magazine, before being reprinted
in October 1989 edition of Scouting magazine and can be found HERE
3 Hypothermia is a condition where your body’s
core temperature decreases, and when this begins you need to watch for what
Matt Heid, the author of “Warning Signs of Hypothermia: Know Your “Umbles”,
calls the “umbles”; the fumbles, stumbles, mumbles and grumbles.
Mild hypothermia, which is when your core body
temperature drops below 98.6oF and begins to drift down to 95o
F (37oC descending to 35oC). The symptoms of mild hypothermia are intense,
but controllable shivering, cold and numb hands, or as Matt Heid says, “the
fumbles”.
Moderate hypothermia is when your core body
temperature falls below 95oF and descends towards 90oF
(35oC to 32oC) and its symptoms are uncontrollable
shivering, confusion and movements that become slow and labored, or what Matt
Heid calls, “the stumbles, mumbles and grumbles”.
Severe hypothermia begins when the person’s
core body temperature drops below 90oF (32oC). At this point the person becomes confused,
their muscles become rigid, and walking becomes impossible, their heart and
respiration rate both decreases, and they may become unconscious. If the person’s core body temperature continues
to decrease, they will go into cardiac arrest and likely die.
In the past, the best practice for treating
moderate to severe hypothermia was to put the hypothermic person inside a
sleeping bag and warm them up with direct skin-to-skin contact. However, according to author Rick Curtis, in “Hypothermia:
Field Assessment and Treatment”, as reprinted from The Backpacker's Field
Manual, the current best practice for treating moderate to severe
hypothermia is as follows:
“Make sure the patient is dry and has a
wicking inner layer next to the skin to minimize sweating. Use a plastic garbage bag as a diaper to
prevent urine from soaking the insulation layers. The person must be protected from any moisture
in the environment. Use multiple sleeping bags, blankets, clothing, foam pads,
etc. to create a minimum of 4 inches (10 centimeters) of insulation all the way
around the patient, especially between the patient and the ground. Use foam pads to insulate the person from the
ground. Include an aluminum space
blanket to help prevent radiant heat loss if you have one. Wrap the entire ensemble in something
waterproof like a tarp or tent rainfly to protect from wind and water. Your patient will look like she is in a giant
burrito with only her face exposed.”2.
Additionally, Rick Curtis, says that even
though the hypothermic person’s stomach has shut down and therefore will not be
able to digest solid food, like a PowerBar®, it can still absorb dilute sugars
and water, and this will give the person the energy necessary to rewarm themselves. Give the person a diluted mix of warm water
and sugar or Jello® every fifteen minutes, if they are conscious and able to
swallow. Do not give the person alcohol,
because it is a vasodilator and will increase heat loss, or drinks containing
caffeine, which is vasoconstrictor, that will increase the chances of
peripheral frostbite.
The best field test to assess if someone is
hypothermic, is to have the person walk 30 feet in a straight line, if they are
unable to walk that distance without weaving or stumbling, then they might be
hypothermic. Per Rick Curtis, in “Hypothermia:
Field Assessment and Treatment”, another way to assess if someone is
hypothermic is to ask them a question that requires higher thinking, such as counting
backwards from 100 by 9: if they are hypothermic, they won’t be able to do it.
An
excerpt from “Test Your Survival Knowledge, Part Three ©”, which can be found HERE.
Sources
Department
Of The Air Force, Survival: Training Edition, AF
Manual 64-3, [Headquarters, US Air Force,
Washington, DC, August 15, 1969], page 1-6 https://books.google.com/books?id=UaapWEpqo4cC&pg=RA1-SA4-PA3&dq=Survival:+Training+Edition,+AF+Manual+64-3&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinjcSEzPzvAhWNF1kFHX3ZAOUQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=Survival%3A%20Training%20Edition%2C%20AF%20Manual%2064-3&f=false,
accessed April 13, 2021
Gillman, Steven; Backpacking
Survival Kit, [BoundaryWatersCanoeArea.com, © 2014 E Warren Communications], http://bwca.cc/activities/hiking/articles/backpackingsurvivalkit.html,
accessed April 13, 2021
“Girl Tells Of Struggle
For Survival”, September 20, 1971, Daily News, [Bowling Green, Kentucky], page
9, https://books.google.com/books?id=0rsdAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA36&dq=%22girl+tells+of+struggle+for+survival%22&article_id=7072,3837868&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4jaSkoOrvAhWDMlkFHZX5A44Q6AEwAHoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q=%22girl%20tells%20of%20struggle%20for%20survival%22&f=false, accessed April 6, 2021
“Prime
Minister Winston Churchill's address to Harrow School on October 29, 1941”, http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~jcslee/poetry/churchill_nevergivein.html#:~:text=Never%20give%20in.-,Never%20give%20in.,overwhelming%20might%20of%20the%20enemy,
accessed April 6, 2021
San Pascual, Jeanne; “Why
Attitude Is The Most Important Thing In Success”, February 26, 2015; [© 2021
The Thought & Expression Company, LLC], https://thoughtcatalog.com/jeanne-san-pascual/2015/02/why-attitude-is-the-most-important-thing-in-success/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20Stanford%20Research,attitude%20and%20only%2012%25%20education,
accessed April 13, 2021
Scarano,
Steve, “Kids Can Survive In the Wild”, Scouting, October 1989, Vol. 77,
No. 5, [Boy Scouts of America, Irving, TX], https://books.google.com/books?id=oz06AQAAIAAJ&pg=RA11-PA36&dq=%22steve+scarano%22+%22richard+sparks%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6s72aybnhAhUSrVkKHV7cBjcQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=%22steve%20scarano%22%20%22richard%20sparks%22&f=false,
accessed April 14, 2021
Survival kit Items –
PHOTOS, [© 2019 Off Grid Survival], https://offgridsurvival.com/photos/,
accessed April 13, 2021
Curtis, Rick; “Hypothermia: Field Assessment and Treatment”, reprinted
from The Backpacker's Field Manual [© 2015 Outdoor Ed LLC], https://www.outdoored.com/articles/hypothermia-field-assessment-and-treatment, accessed September 18, 2020
Heid, Matt, “Warning Signs of Hypothermia:
Know Your “Umbles”, February 11, 2014, AMC Outdoors, [© 2020 Appalachian
Mountain Club], http://www.outdoors.org/articles/amc-outdoors/warning-signs-of-hypothermia-know-your/, accessed December 7, 2017
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