Fact or Fiction
Always find food first
False
While food can help you stay strong and mentally sharp, you can survive three weeks without it. Water, fire, and shelter are much more important.
You can live for a long time without eating anything—up to six weeks. The average episode where people are lost is between two days and four days. In a short-term situation, the things that’ll kill you will be getting too cold—hypothermia—not drinking water and not getting enough rest to stay rational. If you take care of these things, you should be okay for 40 days.
Eat what the animals eat
False
Despite our shared biology, there’s still a massive difference between humans and other animals. Some animals might eat plants that happen to be edible to humans, but these same animals can also eat plants that are dangerous to us. Birds are the worst animals to emulate, as they gobble up a variety of berries, many of which could either nourish us or kill us. Even mammals such as squirrels, which normally eat nuts that are safe for human consumption, will occasionally munch on mushrooms and nuts that are toxic to humans. Just because an animal ate it doesn’t mean that you can.
All base layers work equally well
Not true. Cotton kills—or, at least, could lead to hypothermia if you rely on it as your primary base layer in cold weather. It’s a great fabric to wear around the house, and it has great applications in hot, dry climates. But once cotton gets wet, it loses its insulating properties. Before you even break a sweat, normal skin moisture will soak into the cotton fibers and start to cool your body through conduction. These fibers can hold up to 27 times their weight in water and then store that moisture up to eight times longer than synthetics or wool. This doesn’t just leave you feeling clammy—it steals vital heat from your core. If it’s cold enough for long johns, then it’s too cold for cotton.
3 minutes without...
oxygen
Roof before bed
False
The most important part of a shelter is building a bed that is elevated and insulated from the ground. The floor temperature is colder at night than the air temperature. In addition, dew makes the ground wet, a potentially life-threatening circumstance in cold weather. Build a roof AFTER you’ve built a bed.
An inexperienced person spends 10 hours building a roof and freezing to death on the cold ground. A smart person spends their time building a bed to insulate them from the cold ground, and getting to the roof if they have time
Fire through persistence - In other words if you try hard enough you can do it without the correct tools or skills
False.
Although you can make a fire using friction, it takes skill and training. The average person could spend all day at it and not get a spark. Learn fail-safe ways to start a fire in any survival situation.
True
Water is truly a precious resource in a desert, so, in addition to their intimidating spines, most cactus species further protect their spongy flesh with acids and potent alkaloids. These chemicals are usually too acrid for most humans to tolerate and are taxing on the kidneys if ingested.
3 hours without...
shelter in an extreme environment
Water from a clear stream is not safe to drink.
Mostly True
Despite what you see on TV shows and movies, a clear stream does not mean that the water is free from bacteria and other contaminants. The safe survivalist rule is to assume all water is contaminated until you know otherwise. Counter this by making sure that you always carry a pocket sanitizer, filter, or iodine with you, even on a short hike.
Don't drink your urine
True
Urine is full of the body’s waste products. If conditions are grim enough to inspire you to consider urine as a beverage, then you are most likely severely dehydrated. The urine of a dehydrated person should not be reintroduced into the human body under any circumstances. Pee can be handy in other ways: Use it to dampen clothing for evaporative cooling in hot climates. But it’s not safe or smart to drink it.
Ration water in the desert
False
Dehydration can lead to diminished strength and motor skills, sluggish cognitive abilities, extreme tiredness, and ultimately death. We may need to be at peak performance to accomplish the tasks of survival in tough desert conditions, and we simply can't afford to work at a diminished capacity. Take a lesson from the humble yet ornery camel. In these harsh situations, the best place to store your water is in your body, not in your canteen. You may not be able to get more drinking water in a survival situation, but you can always take steps to limit your water loss. Dress to protect against water loss, avoid activity at the hottest part of the day, and save water early and often. Don't wait until you need to conserve to start conserving.
3 days without...
water
Let a victim of hypothermia eat but not sleep
True
Normal shock treatment and hypothermia treatment are different—you don’t, for example, want to feed someone who may be going into shock because he can vomit and choke while unconscious. However, in mild to moderate hypothermia cases, high-calorie foods can be given in small, repeated doses to create metabolic heat in the victim and help him restore his own heat-generating ability.
After the shivering, confusion, slurred speech, and clumsiness of hypothermia have manifested, an exposure victim also gets drowsy. This is a serious warning sign because sleep can lead to death. Keep the victim awake as you warm him up.
You can learn what plants to eat and which to avoid in a book.
False.
A field guide may be a good place to start, but the difference between a toxic and/or fatal mushroom or berry and one that’s edible aren’t all that obvious and can’t be illustrated completely in a book or an article. Better to learn from a survival trainer or bushmaster.
False
It can be helpful but don't put all of your trust in it. Have a backup plan.3 weeks without...
food
Suck poison out of a snake bite
False
The problem with the ‘cut-and-suck’ method is that you’ve already got a wound. If you weren’t envenomated, and you have somebody sucking on your wound, then they’re adding bacteria and all the nastiness from their mouth into the wound, risking infection. Also, when snakes bite, they do inject venom into the wound. But they also, in extracting their fangs, get venom on the surface of your skin. If you suck the venom into your mouth, it’ll burn up your trachea and your windpipe, and could even damage your stomach. Now you have that to contend with, in addition to the original bite wound.
If you are bitten, you’ve got about a one- to two-hour window to get to the hospital before you start feeling a large-scale, systemic impact,” says Nester. “The best thing to do is just rinse off the wound, stay calm and slowly walk back to your vehicle or call for help to get to the hospital. Once there, you’ll probably be given some doses of antivenom, they’ll monitor you and take it from there.
Don't eat snow for hydration
True
We all know not to eat yellow snow, but what about the white stuff? Bad move. There are four classes of snowflakes and many shapes these classes can assume. But they all contain more cold air than frozen water. In any volume of snow, the air-to-water ratio is about 9:1. This means you’d need to eat about 10 quarts of snow to yield one quart of water in your belly. Forget about brain freeze—this is core freeze. If it is cold enough for snow to be present, then it is cold enough for hypothermia. Always melt snow before drinking.
Swim parallel to shore if you are caught in a rip current.
True
Swimming directly parallel to shore works best if the current goes directly out to sea. This isn't wrong, but it's good to know that many rip currents come in at an angle — your general idea should be to stay alongside the shore, but swim perpendicular to the current as much as you can "at an angle away from the current and towards the shore," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. It might be easier to swim one direction instead of the other. And don’t tire yourself out too much; it shouldn't feel as if you are going upstream. If you can't swim out, tread water until you can.
3 milliseconds without...
your mom