My husband got to spend some time in the Maine woods in December courtesy of the Navy’s SERE school, followed by the prison camp experience for extra fun. Not recommended.
My idea of roughing it is slow room service.
My best friend and I saw rapidly rising floodwaters among hundreds of thousands of acres as an opportunity to have some old-fashioned Louisiana fun. We took a very small boat to the edge of the floodwaters in one of his pastures and the plan was to ride the currents through the woods until we hit the main river channel a few miles away.
We started this brilliant plan about 4 pm on a very chilly January day (for Louisiana at least). Needless to say, the plan went wrong very quickly because we couldn’t control the boat. The powerful flood currents pulled us into trees and everything else. We finally capsized after a couple of hours trying to get to either dry land or the main river channel where there weren’t many obstacles.
It was already dark by then and we were chest deep in dangerously cold water but we hiked on trying to find an edge or anything could save us. We walked and walked and then walked some more through thick trees, brambles, fallen logs and across large holes that we couldn’t see until we went under.
The only thing that kept me going was that my friend kept lying to me claiming that he knew exactly where we were and dry land was only a couple of hundreds of yards away but it was a lifesaving lie because I wanted to believe it. He got hypothermia much faster than I did and his legs kept giving out sending him under and making him even more cold. I got hypothermia as well later but we could manage a few steps at a time.
Suddenly, we saw a faint light off in the distance and tried our best to get to it. The water started getting more shallow very slowly and then an edge with a clearing came into view. On a small hill sat a mobile home with the porch light on. We eventually reached the water’s edge and tried to run to the trailer but couldn’t because our legs didn’t work. We both fell down repeatedly trying to reach the door but eventually made it half crawling and the rest stumbling and falling down.
We collapsed on the old wooded steps and knocked at the bottom of the door. An old woman answered the door fairly quickly, took one look at us and told us to get inside. We didn’t have to explain much because it was obvious that we were in really bad shape but she knew frontier medicine. She stripped us down and put us both in a warm bath (modesty was the least of our worries at the time). It took us a couple of hours to warm up enough to be become somewhat functional again but it muscle control started to come back slowly.
We had to call my friends uncle to come pick us up because we were miles away from the starting point and it turned out that we were in the water for about three hours. I cleaned myself up further at my friend’s house, went home and never told my parents what happened and neither his uncle nor the savior lady told anyone either.
However, years later, some hunters called my friend and wanted to know how and why a boat with his name painted on the side ended up so deep in the woods. He never could get it back out again and it is probably still there leaving people that stumble across it scratching their heads.
That little adventure was in my top 3 closest brushes with death and could have easily gone the other way if just one other little thing had gone wrong. I still hate even moderately cold water with a passion to this day.
I don’t think Gerber was ever a “top tier cutlery company”. They’re best remembered for the Mark II dagger, which was essentially an updating of the Sykes-Fairbairn fighting knife, and their unnecessary and clunky folding version of the Applegate-Fairbairn knife, both of which were largely sold to would-be commandos who’ve never actually used the knife for the intended purpose (one hopes, anyway). I had one of their EZ Out one hand folders which was too soft to keep a good edge and which I tossed after the Santoprene pads started peeling off. I do have one of their wood mauls, which is pretty good on soft wood but needs regular edge dressing and is not the equal of my Gränsfors Bruks splitting axe.
To be fair, SERE training is more about the “evasion” and “resistance” portions than survival and evasion. It is intentionally designed to not be very fun, to the point that there have been a number of lawsuits on the DoD for excessive conditions. Actual backwoods survival is more about finding resources (food, clean water, shelter) and conserving your energy. The military doesn’t really train for that because it isn’t expected that a solider or airman behind enemy lines is going to stay put for long, hence the emphasis on evasion and resistance.
Stranger
If all you know is the mkII and anything produced post 1987, you dont know the knives that put Gerber on the map.
I used to work for the command that ran the SERE school. There’s plenty in the manual about finding food and water, identifying plants, dressing game, etc. but yes, in actual practice they wear you out just enough in the first phase to make the second phase particularly trying.
There’s also another survival school you get to go through earlier in training, but that one’s in Florida so at least you don’t freeze your ass off to boot.
I’ve been good and lost on probably 5-8 times, as in ‘I’m just trying to find a road’. I’ve had Search and Rescue looking for me twice. I saved myself on all occasions, paid the S/R bill on both times and, later, volunteered with them.
Outside of ROTC training, I did it for a couple months by choice. I needed to get my head around some things and went into a whole lot of nothing I know about for a couple months. I had a small pack of basic supplies but foraged 95% of my food and built my own shelter. Anything serious and 5 hours in a straight line would have gotten me out of it but for the time I was there I didn’t see anyone else.
May have to do it again some day before I die.
My biggest wilderness worry was not about being attacked by animals. Really, I had two main fears:
(1) animals, particularly bears, trashing my stuff when I wasn’t around (I took the usual precautions and ran a very clean camp - all edible garbage burned or buried etc. - but with bears you never know - they trashed our cabin a couple of times, even though there wasn’t anything like food stored there: one bit into an aerosol muskol sprayer, and I hope that taught it to leave our shit alone); and
(2) Idiot hunters shooting at me. That happened once when I was a kid, walking with my grandmother. Fortunately, he was a bad shot.
About 20 years ago give or take a student in one of these FLorida training schools died of hypothermia.
Shagnasty’s story is both chilling and telling.
I live in the deep south. ANY snow is a rarity. Its down right warm here compared to most other places. The temperature doesn’t drop like a rock after sunset like it does in the desert or the mountains.
But the number of people down here who don’t take hypothermia seriously boogles my mind, particularly if water is involved.
I once got hypothermia once (well several times actually). In July, in 80 something degree rain. 80 degree rain? Heck that almost sounds pleasant. Trust me, when you are wear a t short and shorts and that 80 degree rain is being blown around by 50 mph winds it aint so warm anymore.
Another time I am pretty damn sure I would have died from hypothermia if someone else wasn’t with me (I had actually gone into the not cold anymore, just gonna to go to sleep and not wake up phase).
Needless to say I don’t screw around when it comes to anything that might involve water, getting cold, or hypothermia.
This accident happened not far from my grandparent’s cottage (well, “not far” in northern Quebec terms. 
), and it made a big impact on us: I was 11 at the time, and it was big news in that time & place.
Re: Fun
If it’s fun, it’s not a survival situation. It’s camping.
Another good example.
Here is the story I think I was remembering. FOUR of them died. If these young Army Ranger candidates can die from an afternoon in 50 degree water and 40 degree air, what chance do us mere mortals have?
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/4-Soldiers-Die-Of-Exposure-During-Training-3044433.php
Once is bad luck, but twice??? WTF happened??
QtM, who has only crashed an airplane once. (so far)
To be fair, there just isn’t time in a one week course to learn a significant amount of survival skills, and as noted previously, the expectation is that a downed pilot or soldier behind enemy lines is going to be doing more moving and evading than living off the land. You can’t really learn survival skills out of a book or by demonstration any more than you can learn to drive or fight; they have to be practiced, and it is surprisingly difficult and time consuming to put the theoretical knowledge of building shelters, starting fire, or foraging for food into practice. Since there isn’t a lot of military utility in these skills the training just doesn’t focus on it.
Stranger
Define “wilderness”. When Reagan appointed James Watt as Secretary of the Interior, someone pointed out that Watt’s idea of a wilderness was a parking lot with no lines painted on it.
Mine is not being able to walk out due to injury where I would have to activate my PLB. I really don’t want a ride home in the orange helicopter.
I’ve never had to. As a hobby I’ll head out into the white mountains of NH with a backpack to hike for a week. I’m not at the hardcover survivalist level, I carry supplies. If I found myself trapped in the wilderness without supplies I imagine I’d do better than most.
Spent a week canoeing on the The Boundary Waters, which straddles the Ontario-Minnesota border. Summer of 1991, I believe. There were four of us: me, my friend, his father, and his grandfather.
I guess it was fun, but I wasn’t an outdoorsy guy, and certainly missed the creature comforts of home. Like, uh, showers. Portaging the canoes for a mile was rather grueling, and the mosquitoes were so thick that we each wore a net over or head the entire week. The fishing sucked, and we didn’t bring enough food. Was very happy when it was over.
Thats also why they design their survival packs with everything one would need in terms of food, water filtering, protection from elements, etc…
I’m no survivalist, but I’m also not a city-bred idiot who thinks hamburgers are bred in styrofoam containers. I’ve camped and hunted and hiked. So I might be ok for a few days. I always carry extra meds and layers. And matches and plastic bags. Handy little things.
Also, after seeing Les Stroud eating carcasses, I now carry non-perishable food in the back of my car in case I’m stuck somewhere. I really don’t want to have to eat moose fat cooked into a disgusting “stew”.