Wilderness Preparation for Kids

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Ah, camping in the National Park.  Warm days and cold nights.  Birds chirping, chipmunks scampering, and a brook bubbling nearby.  Peace and tranquility.  A stark contrast to the chaos of your hectic work and kids' schedules.  For the first time in months, you sit down to read a book.  You glance over to your smiling spouse doing the same.  You catch a glimpse of your two kids playing near the tent.  Time slows down.

Sometime later, your daughter disturbs your serenity, "Colton's gone."
"What do you mean Colton's gone?  Where is he hiding?"
Now, you see on her face and hear in her voice real concern,  "He's gone."

Your son is missing.  What should you do?

Hasty Search

Once you realize your child is missing, actively search, not become a missing person yourself.

Activate Search & Rescue

If you do not find your child quickly, get help.  Search & Rescue (SAR) volunteers would rather be recalled knowing your child is found safe versus losing precious search time while you 'make sure' the child is actually missing.

Preparation

Before you and your family venture out, train and equip each family member to deal with becoming lost and spending an unexpected night alone in the wilderness.  Basic training and equipment greatly increase the odds of surviving the ordeal.     

Stop Moving.  The moment you realize you're lost, find a safe spot^1, and stop moving. This helps rescuers find you faster.

Build a Nest.  Make a nest of boughs², pine needles, leaves, or anything else to keep you directing off the ground.  Sitting directly on the ground sucks the heat out of your body.³  A small foam pad works great.  

Emergency Shelter (immediate action shelter⁴).   Put on your whistle (see below), climb into your emergency shelter, and sit in your nest on a foam pad or your backpack. 

Whistle.  Once in your shelter, start blowing your whistle every 10 minutes or so.  The sound of a whistle carries much further than your voice. 

Water.  Carry at least a quart; more if you are in an arid environment. 

Food.  A favorite candy bar or two will do two things for you:  1) help maintain a positive attitude, and 2) stoke your body's internal furnace generating heat from within.  

Something from home.  A small toy or stuffed animal can do wonders for maintaining a positive attitude.

Footnotes

¹Choose a spot clear of potential falling objects from the environment (branches, trees, rocks, etc.)
       

²Boughs: It could be pine, spruce, fir, etc.

³Conduction:   The transfer of heat through direct contact with an object.  Heat flows from the warmer object to the cooler one.  If you sit on the ground, heat conducts away from your body and into the ground. 

⁴An immediate action shelter is a windproof, waterproof barrier that traps your body's heat.  Choose a blue shelter to maximize your visibility to SAR.

Survival Gear
Whistle
Immediate Action Shelter (adults)
Immediate Action Shelter (children)

98.6F - Cold Weather Clothing

Excerpts from our new book The Handbook for Survival Sense in the Outdoors

Virtually every process in the body, including problem solving capabilities, tie directly to proper body temperature.  Maintaining thermal balance (98.6°F) remains one of the most important personal goals in any survival situation.  Given the human body’s narrow functional temperature range of about 12 degrees (+/- 6°F), self-help becomes impossible below 92°F and above 104°F.

Proper Clothing for Cold

Try to protect areas of the body that lose a lot of heat when exposed, and protect the extremities (hands and feet) critical to solving survival problems.  Pay close attention to the head and neck, the sternum, the lateral sides of the body, the groin, the hands, and feet.

     1.   Wearing clothing in layers helps insulate and ventilate as necessary.  

           (Many thin layers work better than one thick layer.)

           a.   Base layer:  non-cotton long underwear

           b.   Insulation layer:  fleece or wool work well

           c.   Environmental layer:  windproof / waterproof (breathable)

     2.   Avoid constricting garments, especially at wrist, neck, waist, ankles, and feet.  

           (Constriction tends to cause cold hands and feet.)

     3.   Keep clothing as dry and clean as possible.

           4.   Wear darker colors in winter climates.  (Dark colors absorb heat energy from the sun.)

           5.   A warm head usually means warm feet as well.  (Warm cold feet by putting on a hat.)

           6.   Never overheat from excessive activity without shedding layers.  

                 (Try not to get wet from perspiration on the inside of clothing.)

      Order yours here:  The Handbook for Survival Sense in the Outdoors

Physical Fitness + Proper Nutrition = Increased Survivability (and More)

Busy schedules make it challenging to live a healthy lifestyle. Yet, I believe the benefits of physical fitness and proper nutrition justify your time commitment. Below are three benefits from living a healthy lifestyle:

1) Feel better.
Speaking personally, when I feel better, I am an improved husband, father, and teacher.

2) Live Longer.
There are no guarantees, but all things being equal, physical fitness and proper nutrition keep you healthier longer.

3) Increase survivability.
In a survival situation, your odds for survival are better when you're healthy. You have more options. A perfect example is my friend who was able to walk down dozens of flights of stairs in order to escape out of the North Tower on 9/11. Those who were unable to walk down the stairs perished.

Where do you start?   With your doctor's help, design a healthy lifestyle specifically for you. Then start. Start small if needed, but for heaven's sake, start.

You, your family, your friends, and coworkers will all benefit.

Start now.

Chris

Water Balance

We need water to live.  In fact, 65% of our weight originates from nothing but water.  

Water makes up the largest component of blood.  Water carries the heat necessary for thermoregulation; water removes wastes from the body; water lubricates organs and joints; and water provides the necessary environment for all the body's chemical reactions.  Therefore, to function properly, the body needs to continuously maintain proper water levels.  Survivors accomplish this by focusing on replacing their water losses with similar water gains to maintain balance.

Under normal conditions, an average person loses approximately 1.5 liters of water per day (for our discussion, quarts and liters fill up approximately the same volume).  Specifically, our bodies lose about 0.5 liters through the skin, about 0.5 liters through the lungs, and about 0.5 through urine every day.  Conversely, our body usually gains around 0.5 liters from the metabolism of food leaving us with a normal drinking requirement of about 1.0 liter of water per day.

Environmental conditions, level of activity, diet, or illness can affect the water balance in our body.  Hot environments pull water from our body via sweat.  Add in exercise, and we can lose up to two liters of water per hour.  Additionally, very cold dry environments pull as much as 2 liters of water per day from our bodies simply through breathing.  Protein-rich foods extract water from the body as well.  Urea, a toxic by-product of protein metabolism, requires additional urine production in order to be expelled from the body.  Illnesses causing vomiting or diarrhea speed up water losses, threatening the balance even more.  Any of these factors easily tip us into a water deficit (or dehydration) unless we replenish the lost water immediately.   

   

Under normal circumstances, we simply replenish the water by drinking more.  Problems arise, however, if the water deficit occurs when a natural disaster, emergency, or accident at sea prevents ready access to safe drinkable water.  Therefore, it is critical to plan and prepare for our water needs before a crisis hits.

First Aid Training

In discussing our requirements for survival, we need to acknowledge a few painful details about survival scenarios. Unfortunately, emergencies and injury often go hand in hand. Depending upon the scenario, first aid potentially interacts with or influences all the survival priorities.  

Injury and illness interfere with the functioning of the body and mind.  For example, while some injuries clearly limit mobility and physical function, some injuries also produce pain, a serious distraction at best, and at worst, it completely short circuits rational thinking.  A high fever or other illness potentially produces similar negative effects.

The rules for dealing with injury and illness change dramatically when definitive care lies several hours, if not days or weeks away. This delay in care usually results from either a remote location or a large-scale disaster which then disrupts response infrastructure. 

Therefore, Survival U recommends first aid training for everyone.  In particular, seek out a curriculum that applies to remote or isolated situations (i.e. without the option of immediate 911 phone response).

The Wilderness First Responder program fits this description nicely. The curriculum usually breaks into a mixture of classroom and practical exercises which take place over a formal 70-hour course. Many outdoor recreation programs at universities and colleges offer such courses, as well as the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) and the Wilderness Medical Associates (WMA) among others.

Positive Mental Attitude

Positive Mental Attitude (PMA), at the most basic, never means simply keeping a rosy outlook, or even enjoying the experience.  Rather it means taking positive steps toward a constructive or beneficial outcome.  The concept of PMA encompasses two major components for the potential survivor.

The first component of PMA is the psychology, or Will to Survive, of the survivor.  This involves all aspects of psychology under the survivor's control.  His / her internal motivation, desires, hopes and sense of self-worth constantly battle with the negative psychological impact of fears, insecurity and the imagination concerning the unknown.

Almost universally people believe they possess a strong Will to Survive. However, survival statistics from emergencies and disasters prove that large numbers lose their Will to Survive when faced with truly difficult situations.  The same research demonstrates the difficulty of identifying or predicting a strong Will to Survive ahead of time.  Those characteristics we think are useful to identify potential survivors usually fail to predict the actual survivors of an emergency.  Survival U's approach to PMA seeks to reliably support the Will to Survive with Awareness and Preparedness (see previous post It Can Happen to You!).  Keeping survival skills sharp and maintaining quality equipment displace reliance on luck and improvisation.

The second component of PMA narrows in on the physiology of the human machine.  The brain and body, to function properly, require a specific set of environmental conditions and supporting essentials.  We require a narrow temperature range, oxygen, proper hydration, access to energy, and the ability to rest and recuperate.  Put plainly, the body requires these things to stay alive.  Provide these and the body lives.  In an emergency, a focus outside of this set of requirements, or a focus on the wrong priority opens the possibility for a negative outcome, injury or even death.  Survival U practices guarding our brain’s ability to solve the complex problems of any situation. 

Follow us as we explore all the aspects of awareness and preparedness.