“They Can’t Cure Dead ©”

 

 

“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 24^th 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