Survival Physical Conditioning

I'm a firm believer that 90% of survival is mental (including emotional). But there is no doubt that every survival situation creates abnormal stress on the body, so we can't ignore that as a vital factor.

You might have to run for your life while trying to calm a racing heart and lungs that are struggling keep up. You might need to use muscles that haven't been put to the test in quite a while. There's no question that being physically prepared to face a survival challenge requires additional strength and endurance. And because we can never know when something unusual is going to plunge us into a survival situation, it's a good idea to be ready to face the challenge when it arrives.

So let's talk about physical conditioning — not body-building or rigorous athletic conditioning, necessarily, but the kind of conditioning that will enable you to live through whatever you're dealing with. Here are my recommendations:

• Before engaging in any exercise program, it's a good idea to consult your health care provider to make sure there are no hidden monsters in your health profile that might rise up and kill you while you're trying to become more conditioned. 
• Assuming you get the go-ahead from your doctor, begin slowly with the changes to your daily routine. The worst thing you can do it think "if a little is good, more is better." Injuries cause major setbacks in training, leaving you worse off than before you began. So take it easy, use correct technique, and be sure to warm up before beginning the real workout, and a cool-down when you finish.
• For strength conditioning using weights or a resistance machine that simulates the use of actual weights, focus on increasing reps, not on increasing the amount of resistance (weight). Find the weight or resistance level where you can comfortably do 10 reps. Continue at that level for a week and then try 15 reps. If you have no problem with that, it's time to move up. Continue using that method, moving up in 10-pound increments when you can comfortably do 15 reps at the present weight. Work the whole body — this isn't about getting big biceps or six-pack abs, it's about conditioning the muscles of the entire body. Stagger upper-body and lower-body workouts on alternating days, giving time for the muscles to repair and rebuild before working them again. 
• For endurance conditioning, there's nothing simpler or more effective than standing up and moving. I'm talking about walking. Depending on your present condition, you might have to begin with slow, short walks. Don't worry about your starting level. You are where you are, so just deal with that and move on. Gradually increase the lengths of your walks, and maybe work on increasing your pace. If you can do power walking, that's almost as good as jogging. If you enjoy jogging, work on increasing the duration of the runs. Uphills are where the real work is accomplished, so work in some hills when you're ready. 
• Vary your endurance training by including some cycling, swimming, and trail hiking. Set some goals to work toward, like cycling for 25 miles, swimming for a mile, hiking 10 miles. When you reach those goals, set the bar a little higher and keep improving. 

The point of all this is to get you in better condition to handle emergency situations that will require more physical effort.

The hard reality is this: if you are not able to take care of yourself, you sure can't help take care of anyone else. Improving your physical conditioning is a favor not only to yourself, but also to anyone else who might depend on you in an emergency — family, friends, neighbors, the community.

Desperate Escape

What would you do to escape a raging fire? Would you jump off a 164-foot cliff?

Not long ago, a 60-year-old man, his wife and two children faced that question when a furious wildfire trapped them at the edge of a 164-foot seaside cliff.

According to reports, the family was driving home from a vacation when the fire swept across the highway. They abandoned their car and ran. They weren't alone in this situation, as approximately 150 other tourists also abandoned their vehicles to flee on foot, heading down steep hills toward the beach.

Unfortunately for the family in question, they got separated from the rest of the group and found themselves trapped between the wind-driven fire and the top of the cliff.

The deputy mayor of the nearby town (Portbou, France) told reporters, "The fire started to close in on them, and they couldn't climb up or climb down. The only way out was to jump into the sea."

So, facing the desperate situation of trying to survive the fire or jumping off the cliff, they chose to jump.

What would you have done? What would be the odds of getting out alive by jumping off the cliff?

Here's what happened —The father died instantly when he hit the rocks below. His 15-year-old daughter made it into the water, but drowned. The mother survived, but in critical condition with a back injury. The son and other daughter survived without life-threatening injury.

A wildfire is a catastrophic event that can kill you in short order if you don't do things right. It's good to know the kind of actions that will give you the best probability of survival, so you don't have to face the decision of taking a desperate, and probably lethal, gamble in an attempt to escape.

Here's the doctrine about surviving wildfire, as published by FEMA.

If you are in a vehicle:

• This is dangerous and should only be done in an emergency, but you can survive the firestorm if you stay in your car. It is much less dangerous than trying to run from a fire on foot.
• Roll up windows and close air vents. Drive slowly with headlights on. Watch for other vehicles and pedestrians. Do not drive through heavy smoke.
• If you have to stop, park away from the heaviest trees and brush. Turn headlights on and ignition off. Roll up windows and close air vents.
• Get on the floor and cover up with a blanket or coat.
• Stay in the vehicle until the main fire passes.
• Stay in the car. Do not run! Engine may stall and not restart. Air currents may rock the car. Some smoke and sparks may enter the vehicle. Temperature inside will increase. Metal gas tanks and containers rarely explode.

If You Are Trapped at Home:

• If you do find yourself trapped by wildfire inside your home, stay inside and away from outside walls. Close doors, but leave them unlocked. Keep your entire family together and remain calm.

If Caught in the Open:

• The best temporary shelter is in a sparse fuel area. On a steep mountainside, the back side is safer. Avoid canyons, natural "chimneys" and saddles.
• If a road is nearby, lie face down along the road cut or in the ditch on the uphill side. Cover yourself with anything that will shield you from the fire's heat.
• If hiking in the back country, seek a depression with sparse fuel. Clear fuel away from the area while the fire is approaching and then lie face down in the depression and cover yourself. Stay down until after the fire passes!

Create a "Safe Room"

Unfortunately, home invasions are becoming ever more popular among punk criminals who feel like they can get away with breaking into someone's house, terrorizing them (or worse), and stealing whatever they can get away with. 

That's why it's not a bad idea to consider building a "safe room" in your house. Think of a "safe room" as the ultimate refuge from outside attack. Of course, a determined criminal with all the tools of the trade available can break into just about anything. But unless you're a high-profile target, there's probably no motive for a high-tech assault on your property. If you are a high-profile target that would be ripe prey for hostage-takers looking to collect a hefty ransom, you should really pay attention here.

For most folks, the likely event is that someone(s) will smash down your door and come inside to steal your stuff. While they're stealing your stuff, you don't want them to be assaulting your wife and children (or you for that matter). That's why you would use a "safe room" where they can't get to you.

In a minute, we'll talk about what makes a good "safe room" but right now consider the time element. You need to be able to get into the "safe room" before the bad guys get to you. That means some kind of advance warning system like motion-sensors that trigger lights and sirens (the sound of barking dogs, or a shotgun shell being jacked into the chamber and a snarling voice that says "come on punk, make my day"). This takes some planning and coordination, because you don't want to scare the crap out of your guests when they arrive for an evening dinner. But you do want the system to be active when you're not expecting anyone.

If you have defensive weapons close at hand, when someone breaks through the door, you might be able to solve the whole problem right there, or at least hold them at bay while you make your way to the "safe room."

So, no matter how you do it, let's assume you have time to get to your "safe room." Now let's talk about that place. Ideally, it should be an interior room where there are no windows or doors to the outside of the house.

The walls and doors should be hardened against attack. That means the walls are made of concrete, and each door is steel.

Every door leading into the room (yes, you might have more than one door — using a secondary as a "backdoor" escape route) should be able to be secured with multiple locks (lockable from the inside only) that deadbolt into a steel frame.

The room should be supplied with provisions that will last a week or more for every occupant. That's food, water, sanitary supplies (including toilet facilities), the ability to cook, medical supplies, and communications with the outside world so you can call for help. Basically, it's a house within a house, totally independent of outside needs.

You should have a cache of weapons and ammunition in the safe room, in case you need to fight your way out or someone manages to break in and you need to defend the room.

It's a good idea to have a filtered vent for air, with the inlet concealed so it can't be used against the occupants.

And finally, the ultimate "safe room" might have an escape tunnel that leads to the edge of your property, emerging under the concealment of bushes or some other clever disguise.

Never, under any circumstances, reveal the fact that you have a "safe room" to anyone. Loose lips sink ships.

Survive A Shooting

So there you are, sitting peacefully in a "gun free" zone, minding your own business. Suddenly, someone with criminal intent, taking advantage of the fact that this is a gun free zone so he can operate without threat to himself, opens fire.

How do you get out of that alive?

The fact is, criminals don't obey the law. Duh! So they don't care whether or not a zone has been officially declared "gun free." They carry guns because they intend to use them in criminal activity. If you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you end up a victim. End of story.

Except that really ought to be the beginning of the story, not the end. This is where we ask ourselves why law-abiding citizens are denied the right to defend themselves against the lawless. The Second Amendment clearly gives citizens the right to bear arms, so what gives with these "gun free" zones that effectively deny us our Constitutional rights?

That question should be the beginning of the story. How did we get to this point? And how do we change it?

But I digress. Actually, I want to touch on the subject of how you can save your own life when some lunatic opens fire in a crowd. There are strategies you can use to give yourself a better chance of survival.

The first strategy is to shoot the bad guy — but since, in this example, you're a law-abiding citizen and are in a "gun free" zone, that one is off the list.

As an aside, let me say that one option is to avoid "gun free" zones. If a building is so designated, let whomever is in charge of that place know that you don't feel safe there, so you're going to take your business elsewhere. If enough people boycotted the "gun free" zones, there might be a shift toward a more sane policy.

Okay, back to the business at hand.

If you hear gunfire, start moving. A moving target is harder to hit than one that is standing still. And the best kind of movement is erratic, unpredictable, bobbing and weaving, shifting directions, ducking for cover, and putting distance and hard objects between you and the shooter.

An alternative is to rush the shooter, preferably while his attention is distracted in another direction. This only works if you're already close to the shooter and you don't have to climb over a bunch of obstacles to get to him. If you can get to him in two heartbeats, take him down hard, get control of the weapon and strip it out of his hands. What you do with him after that is up to you, but leaving him without eyesight, functional limbs, consciousness, or the ability to breathe is something to consider.

This is, after all, your life or his. Think about it — if you live, you can carry on doing good things in the world — if he lives, he's likely to do this bad stuff again, perhaps killing innocent women and children.

Where's the justice or the mercy in that?

True Survival Story

The location posted at the head of the news story caught my eye — Boulder, Utah.

Boulder was the nearest village to our cave (seen here at left) when we spent a year living in the southern Utah wilderness doing primitive survival research. So it was only natural that a flood of memories filled my brain as I read the story of a 28-year-old man from Colorado Springs being lost in that desert for 3 weeks…and barely surviving.

After William LaFever was found by search and rescue teams, sheriffs spokeswoman Becki Bronson had this to say about the region. "It's some of the most rugged, unforgiving terrain you will find anywhere on Earth, jagged cliffs, stone ledges, sandstone, sagebrush, juniper."

This is slickrock country, where breathtaking sandstone cliffs rise hundreds of feet above the desert floor, where intermittent streams and permanent rivers cut through the rock to form deep canyons.

To outsiders, this place appears inhospitable, and yet it is a landscape that supported whole communities of life for thousands of years. This is where the ancient Anasazi lived in cliff dwellings built into caves and beneath rock overhangs.

This is where we spent a year in the wilds, Becky and me and two small children ages 1 and 3. Having lived there, I can attest that it is a land that can kill you quickly, if you fail to respect it. But it is a land that will give you everything you need to live, if you understand it.

The episode related in the news story started when William called his father to say he was hiking in the Boulder area with his dog, and that someone had stolen some of his equipment and he had run out of money. His father told William to catch a ride to Page, AZ where there would be money waiting for him.

But rather than catch a ride, William decided to hike the 90 miles to Page, following the winding path cut by the Escalante River until he reached Lake Powell, then hope to catch a boat to Page.

Well, that didn't go as planned. Ninety miles is a long hike at any season, but in June a hike like that in this desert can be a killer. Especially if you're unequipped. Especially if you're not highly skilled at desert survival. Especially if you're alone.

And, as it turned out, it nearly killed William.

When William failed to show up in Page, as his father expected, a search was initiated. Sheriffs deputies and the Utah Highway Patrol helicopter began searching along the Escalante River. But deputy Ray Gardner said he was not expecting a good outcome. "We had no idea if William had stayed along the river or decided to leave, got a ride with someone, or was lost somewhere other than along the river. We flew without any expectation of finding anything at all."

William had set out along the river and hiked until he ran out of food. His dog abandoned him and was never found. Eventually, William decided to start leaving some of his gear beside the trail, to lighten his load. When he was discovered, All he had was the clothing and shoes he was wearing. He had hiked about 40 miles and was still 5 miles short of reaching Lake Powell. When the helicopter passed over, William was so weak he couldn't stand and was barely able to wave his arms.

Deputy Gardner said, "We were absolutely dumbfounded to learn that it was William and that he was alive. You've seen pictures of starving people from other countries; in all my career I have never seen someone so emaciated. I feel certain that in another 24 hours he would not have been alive."

Lessons for us are clear.

Don't hike alone.

File a hike plan with people you know and trust, and then stick to it. If you decide to change the plan, let those people who have your plan know about the changes. 

Prepare yourself with more than sufficient food and a water purification system that will see you though to the end of the expedition. Don't expect Mother Nature to feed and care for you along the way. 

If you become lost or disabled, stop and make camp, then activate signaling strategies to help searchers locate you. 

Employ good survival technique to protect your core temperature, your energy and hydration.

To me, the desert around Boulder, Utah is a fantastic place. The scenery is straight out of a postcard, and the isolation is profound. It is one of my favorite places on Earth. It invites adventure seekers to come and explore. But it also demands respect, good judgment, and skill if you want to go there and come out alive.

Mystery

In 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared during an attempted flight around the world.

For the past 75 years, what happened to them has been an ongoing mystery. For all these years, it's been anybody's guess what happened.

Did they crash into the ocean and simply disappear?

Did they crash near an island, make it to shore only to be taken in by natives where they remained, unable to make contact with the outside world?

The truth has never been discovered…but researchers are getting closer all the time.

Clues recently found on the island of Nikumaroro (a tiny spot of uninhabited land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between Australia and Hawaii) have given researchers hope to understand what happened to the ill-fated duo.

Archaeologists recently discovered fragments of objects that might have belonged to Earhart. Specifically, shards of glass that seem to have come from jars of cosmetics. If it turns out that these bits of glass can be linked to Earhart, then the mystery will be somewhat closer to a conclusion.

But to me, that isn't the most interesting aspect of this find.

Five pieces of glass belonging to one of the jars were found. Four of them were located close to each other, while one shard was about 65 feet away, and it showed signs of having been put to use as a cutting or slicing tool.

That would indicate Earhart or Noonan, or perhaps both, survived the crash of her airplane, made it to shore, and lived for a while, improvising tools from what they had available.

It's all still speculation, but it does bring up the importance of being able to improvise needed materials in a survival situation.

What can you do with that rock, this stick, those bits of trash that were left behind by someone else (or perhaps drifted in on the tide)?

Native peoples all over the world understand out how to use the natural resources in their areas to accomplish the tasks of living day to day.

To them, it isn't a survival problem any more than operating your electric can opener is for you.

To them, it's just life.

But hand a person from a true primitive culture an electric can opener and watch the bewilderment on his face.

He would have no more idea how to use that contraption to break into a can of food than most modern men would have trying to discern how to gather food from a jungle.

It's not that they're smarter than we are because they know their way around a jungle…nor that we're somehow superior to them because we are mechanized. It's all about knowing what to do with the resources at hand in any given situation.

That's sometimes what separates survivors from non-survivors.

If Earhart and Noonan were clever enough to use a shard of glass as a cutting tool, it says something about their survival knowledge.

What really happened on Nikumaroro is still a mystery. Maybe someday we'll know the rest of the story. But in the meantime, we can take a small lesson from what has been found. Always be thinking about how you can improvise what you need from what you've got available.

Survive An Alligator Attack

Kaleb Langdale has a story to tell about surviving an alligator attack. Seventeen-year-old Langdale was swimming in the Caloosahatchee River in Florida when the attack took him by surprise, ripping his right arm off just below the elbow.

The 11-foot gator lunged at him during the swim, and he felt the pressure of the jaws clamping down on his arm. The alligator instinctively began to do a death roll to drag his prey to the bottom of the river to drown.

Bones in Kaleb's arm cracked like dry twigs, and the violence of the death roll tore his arm off until all that kept it attached was a dangling tendon. "I still couldn't break free, because I was still attached to the tendon," Kaleb told reporters. "Then the gator did another death roll, and I kicked my way out of it."

Rescuers rushed Kaleb to the hospital, where he was stabilized, but there was no hope of reattaching the lost arm. Florida Fish and Wildlife officials said a hunter tracked down the gator, killed it, and found the arm still inside.

Kaleb Langdale was clearly lucky. Loss of half an arm, while tragic, is nothing compared with the loss of your life. And it could have gone that way so easily. 

So, what is the best way to survive an encounter with an alligator or crocodile?

If you see a crocodile or alligator that has not been made into shoes or a purse, the best survival tactic is to run. They are quick, but probably won’t pursue very far.

If you are caught, try to gouge the gator's eyes and thrust your fingers (or a stick or knife) into its snout to discourage the attack.

If the croc or alligator has you in its jaws and begins a death roll on dry ground, roll in the same direction with the animal. Don’t fight the direction of the death roll or it will tear off pieces of your body.

In the water, roll with the animal and attack the throat, eyes and nose.

Above all, don’t give up — keep fighting.