“The Dance of Death”, 1493, by Michael Wolgemut, from the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel, HERE.
Have
you ever taken a calculated risk, or weighed the risks and then done something
dangerous because there was less risk, long term, by doing the dangerous
thing? Sometimes playing it safe, is
more dangerous in the end. Taking
calculated risks is a lot like dancing with death, sometimes necessary, always
risky, and the tricky part is not paying the piper!
When
I was a Scoutmaster, one of the members of the troop named Eli, once said that
he was “...doing
something stupid, carefully!” That phrase has always stuck
with me and calculated risks by their very nature fall into the category of
stupid things, which need to be done carefully.
“...doing
something stupid, carefully!”
Since
calculated risks by their nature are dangerous actions that would normally be
considered stupid, they should only be done as a last resort. But sometimes they are necessary and if you play
it safe and don’t take the risk you will end up dead anyways.
Here
are some examples, where people came face-to-face with a potentially dangerous
action and who didn’t take it and died anyways because they decided to play it
“safe”.
To drink,
or not to drink...?
In
the summer of 1990, Paul and Karen Stryker, who were hiking in the Grand
Canyon, ran out of water. They came upon
a late season creek-bed pothole, teeming with tadpoles and other life, but unfortunately,
they didn’t have any way of disinfecting the water they found. They were faced with the decision of whether to
drink and refill their water bottles with the water from the tadpole pool and
risk becoming sick from drinking potentially bad water or to not drink the
water and risk dying of dehydration. They
decided to pass by the water hole, because the water was full of polliwogs, later
Paul died of dehydration and Karen barely survived.
Survival
expert Peter Kummerfeldt summed it up best, when he said, “a doctor can fix
giardia, but he can’t fix dead”. I
have echoed this lesson of “doctors can cure a lot of things, but they can’t
cure dead”, ever since I first read it in 20051. When worst comes to worst, and you are facing
dehydration, drinking water that is actually or potentially infected with
harmful bacteria, viruses or protozoa is better than not drinking any water at
all. You most certainly will die of
dehydration if you don’t have water to drink, you only MIGHT die by
taking a chance and drinking undisinfected water2.
This
might seem like common sense, however as my daughter says, “what is common
sense to one person, isn’t common sense to another; common sense only exists in
the context of your environment”.
“A ‘turbulence’ of tadpoles”, by gailhampshire, July , 2013, from Wikimedia, HERE.
And
as an aside, tadpoles need clean, pollution-free water, since they absorb it
directly through their skin, and will die if the water is polluted, so seeing
them in a potential water source is a good thing! This doesn’t mean that there aren’t any
harmful protozoa, bacteria, or viruses in the water, only that there aren’t any
harmful pollutants dissolved in the water.
And
yes, drinking undisinfected water is generally considered to be doing something
stupid and you should always, always, always disinfect it, when possible, but
if done carefully, sometimes drinking something is better than not drinking at
all.
Should I stay,
or should I go?
Most
times when you are “misplaced” searchers will find you within the next
72 hours. In fact, Devon O’Neill, who
wrote in Outside magazine, quoted Paul Anderson, a 42-year veteran of
the National Park Service who spent 11 years as the superintendent of Denali
National Park, as saying “Our stats show 85 percent of all lost people are
found within the first 12 hours, and 97 percent are found within the first 24
hours”. What do
you do, however, if you are one of the unlucky 3% who aren’t found within the
first 72 hours3? Being “misplaced”
isn’t the same as being “lost”.
Misplaced things are almost always found, lost things never are. And when the rescuers stop looking for you,
you go from being misplaced to being lost in a hurry. If this happens, you will have to answer the
question, “Should I stay, or should I go?”.
On
July 21, 2013, Geraldine Largay was faced with this question when she stepped
off the Appalachian Trail, near Redington Township, Maine, and could not find
her way back to it. Realizing that she
did not know where she was or how to return to the trail, she set up her tent,
tried to call for help with her cell phone and waited for the rescuers to find
her. Her husband reported her missing on
July 24th and a massive search began. But searchers never found her, and eventually
they stopped looking for her, even though the search remained officially open
for two years.
Geraldine
survived for at least 26 days, before dying of starvation and exposure. She wasn’t found until October 2015, when her
remains, including her cell phone and journal, were found inside her collapsed
tent. She did everything that experts
said to do, she stopped, built a camp, called for help, and waited for the
rescuers to find her, but they never did.
She was faced with the question of “Should I stay, or should I go?”,
but she decided to play it safe and stay put, and in the end the searchers
stopped looking for her and she was never found. If she had taken a calculated risk, found where
north, south, east and west where and tried to walk out, she might have been
rescued.
A map of where Geraldine Largay’s remains were found, from “Hiker Who Died After Getting Lost on Appalachian Trail Left Journal for Loved Ones: 'When You Find My Body, Please Call My Husband”, by Char Adams.
Self-rescue
or walking out, is generally not considered to be a smart decision, and the
question “Should I stay, or should I go?” is a tough question to
answer. No matter what, you don’t want
to try to walk out too soon, because if you move you are simply making it
harder for the searchers to catch up with you, if they are still looking, that
is. However, if they have stopped
looking, then you, you are on your own and will have to self-rescue. For more on walking out, read “Should I Stay,
or Should I Go, and the 72-Hour Rule©”, HERE.
In
the northeast of the United States, walking east or following rivers and waterways
downstream, often will bring you to towns, villages or roads since the country
was settled from east to west, along waterways.
In this case, if Geraldine had started walking east or south, or if she
had even walked downhill to the nearest valley bottom from where she had set up
camp, she would have crossed either the Appalachian Trail or a road and she
would have been able to rescue herself.
In
the end, sometimes to survive a wilderness emergency, you will have to weigh
the risks between two bad alternatives and decide on one of them. Remember the saying, “doctors can cure a
lot of things, but they can’t cure dead”, and that sometimes taking a
calculated risk is better than playing it safe.
So, hopefully you will never be faced with choosing between two bad
alternatives, but if you are, take Eli’s advice and do something stupid,
carefully!
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “You
Know It Is Spring, when the Buzzards Return©”, where we will talk about one of
the sure signs of spring, buzzards circling overhead!
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
Peter Kummerfeldt is a 71 year old survival expert who graduated from the Air
Force Survival Instructor Training School and later was an instructor at the
Basic Survival School, in Spokane, Washington, in the Arctic Survival School,
in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the Jungle Survival School, in the Republic of the
Philippines. Also, Peter was the
Survival Training Director for the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado
Springs, for twelve years (from Peter Kummerfeldt’s biography at “OutdoorSafe
with Peter Kummerfeldt”, found HERE)
“Canyon Missteps, Lesson:
Respect For Danger” Popular Mechanics, Volume 182, Number 8, August 2005, page
67, https://books.google.com/books?id=69IDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA67&dq=%22Canyon+Missteps%22+Popular+Mechanics,+August+2005&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjJ2_Czyo73AhUahHIEHYouCgQQ6AF6BAgCEAI#v=onepage&q=%22Canyon%20Missteps%22%20Popular%20Mechanics%2C%20August%202005&f=false, accessed April 12, 2022.
2 For more on water disinfection and boiling,
read “Water Disinfection: When is boiled, boiled enough…? ©”, HERE, “True or False, You Should Drink Water From The Spring Where Horses
Drink?©”, HERE, and “Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble...The 5 Stages of Boiling©”, HERE.
3 Remember,
sometimes it takes a while before anyone realizes you are missing, and some
police departments have a policy of waiting an additional 24 to 72 hours before
they begin to look for a missing person.
So, keep this in mind before you bug out.
4
There is no shame in being misplaced, because even Daniel Boone was “bewildered”
once for three days (for more on this read “Being Bewildered and Bending the
Map©”, HERE).
Sources
Adams, Char; “Hiker Who
Died After Getting Lost on Appalachian Trail Left Journal for Loved Ones: 'When
You Find My Body, Please Call My Husband”, updated May 26, 2016, [© 2021
Meredith Corporation], https://people.com/celebrity/hiker-who-died-on-appalachian-trail-kept-journal-of-the-ordeal/,
accessed September 2, 2021
“Canyon
Missteps, Lesson: Respect For Danger” Popular Mechanics, Volume 182, Number 8,
August 2005, page 67
Ghiglieri, Michael P.,
and Myers, Thomas M.; Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon, Expanded and
Revised Second Edition, [Puma Press, Flagstaff, AZ, 2012] page 85 to 87.
O’Neill,
Devon “How Backcountry Search and Rescue Works”, Outside, March 4, 2016,
[© 2021 Outside Interactive, Inc.], https://www.outsideonline.com/2059616/how-backcountry-search-and-rescue-works,
accessed 10/09/2018
Wikimedia, “A '
turbulence' of tadpoles”, by gailhampshire, July , 2013, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tadpoles#/media/File:A_'_turbulence'_of_tadpoles_-_Flickr_-_gailhampshire.jpg,
accessed April 14, 2022
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