People who've survived horrific survival situations all have one thing in common: they never gave up. They never stopped wanting to live. That's your first and most important survival tool. It's one that can never leave you if you don't let it go. It's a piece of kit you can't buy; it can't be taken from you; only you can give up.
A Story
You're flying happily along in your Cessna 172, admiring the beautiful countryside, when you hear something that makes your heart skip a beat. Your attention immediately narrows to the noticeably rougher-running engine--your eyes instinctively moving to the engine instruments.
One look at the oil pressure indicator causes a lump in your throat. The rising oil temperature gauge verifies what the pressure tells you--the engine is losing oil.
Looking through the windscreen, your landing choices are good. But you're not over or near a populated area. In this part of the country, you're going to be going it alone for a while before help arrives. You've already got a good landing area picked out and made when your engine finally seizes, but the landing is a bit harder than you imagined. As you touch down, the left main wheel is torn away from the fuselage as the airplane nearly cartwheels to a stop. You're down, but just.
Quickly jumping out of the plane, you're thankful there is no fire. But there is fuel leaking, so you do need to keep your distance. Thinking quickly, you reach through the baggage door knocked ajar by the 'landing' and grab your survival kit. You also grab the coat you placed over the back of your seat after takeoff. With the airplane leaking fuel, it will provide little in the way of safe shelter. It's just you, your coat and your survival pack. Are you prepared?
If you have one of the many survival kits on the market, one of the first things you're going to become familiar with are trash bags and space blankets--especially if you're cold. Do you think now, having just survived a forced landing, with your heart racing and your adrenaline pumping, is the time to learn how to build a lean-to out of pine boughs?
First Aid
No discussion of survival should happen without the topic of first aid. As with stoves and just about any other gear on the market, first aid kits are seemingly as numerous as the stars. You can get kits that cover everything from partial amputations to severe bleeding to broken bones and deep cuts. The basic aim of first aid is to stop or slow the progression of a patient's decline and prepare them for transport to a medical facility. Broken bones, for example, are not usually fatal. They can, however, cause damage that can lead to permanent impairment or even death, as is the case with broken bones in the spine. Preventing further injury should be the aim of any first responder; be they a person on the street or a professional.
The aim of a first aid kit is to be able to address the most common types of ailments encountered for the conditions in which it will be used.
According to a World Health Organization publication titled Delivering Post-Crash Care, most first aid kits contain items unnecessary or even dangerous to a patient:
"Conventionally, first aid to an injured person includes resuscitation, dressing of wounds and splintage. In principle, resuscitation at the crash site is similar to what takes place at the hospital.
The “ABC” of resuscitation includes:
• maintenance of a clear Airway;
• establishment of Breathing;
• establishment or assessment of Circulation.
Experience has shown that most of the medicines, antiseptics, bandages and implements usually found in first aid kits are not necessary for first aid. In fact, if you do not use bandages and dressings promptly, they usually gather dust containing all kinds of bacterial spores and, if the air is damp, they will even grow fungi. Some bandages and dressings are sold in sterile bags. These, too, may grow harmful organisms if they are not checked regularly for damage and for expiry dates. A clean cloth would be safer and better. The following items could be useful while you are administering first aid:
• a set of large safety pins to make slings and splints;You may have to accept that there could be injuries to members of your party that may be untreatable in the field. That's the risk of getting off of your couch. Some traumatic injuries are ultimately unsurvivable even if a person survives the initial impact sequence. No first aid kit can save people from all possible combinations of trauma.
• a pair of tweezers to take out splinters and thorns;
• a pair of scissors to cut cloth bandages and dressings;
• soap to wash wounds, to remove grease and dirt, and to wash your hands after you have administered first aid. "
Your One Gallon Survival System includes simple instructions on assessing and treating injury in the field. In addition, you'll have the basic tools necessary to treat for the most common types of injury you may encounter. It is by no means comprehensive or exhaustive, and you should always obtain proper training from qualified instructors in order to better prepare yourself. Here is an example of the information contained in the Wilderness First Aid Reference Cards:
"Wound CleaningAfter First Aid, it's Time to Treat for Exposure
Partial thickness:
• Soap and water wash
• Scrub to remove particles
• 10% Providine Iodine (PI)
• Keep moist
• Dress lightly
Full thickness, low to moderate risk:• Clean w/in 2 hours of bleeding end• Bring edges toward(not touching) each
• Clean around area with 10% PI
• Pressure flush with drinkable water in
short bursts along axis
other and hold in place with an occlusive
dressing and/or steri-strips etc.
Full thickness, high risk:
Clean as previous, PLUS:
• Remove dead skin and tissue
• Remove foreign material
• Finish flushing process with 1% PI
solution (strong tea or amber beer color)
• Do not close in field
• Pack with thin layers of gauze
soaked in 1% PI Remove and
repack bid
• Dress with several layers of gauze.
May place 10% PI between layers,
but not directly on wound
• Consider splinting if wound is over a
joint."
It only takes three hours to die of exposure! People are threatened by exposure long before they become dehydrated or hungry enough to care. The first order of business is to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer--regulate core body temperature. Do you know how to build a lean-to or properly pitch a tarp shelter? Are you going to be able to do it after having just crash-landed on a scorching hot day or freezing cold night? Would you rather just have your equipment start working for you immediately? Me too. That's why we designed the One Gallon Survival System. It's designed for rapid deployment by inexperienced people requiring only gross motor skills in order to achieve immediate protection from the deadly elements of exposure.
Our bodies gain and lose heat through five separate but interlinked mechanisms:
1) Conduction
2) Convection
3) Radiation
4) Respiration (breathing)
5) Perspiration (sweating)
Conduction occurs between any two adjacent objects; the warmer object looses heat to the cooler object. You feel this on your butt when you sit on the cold ground. The only way to stop conduction is to place insulation between objects of differing temperature.
Convection occurs in fluids (water) and gases (air). As they warm, they become less dense and more buoyant, causing them to rise. As they cool, they become more dense and sink. Warm air in your coat will escape through the collar, being replaced at the bottom with cold air, unless you block the opening. It is through convection that liquids and gases transfer their heat to their surroundings. Mechanical convection occurs when the wind blows over objects--causing them to lose their heat to the air. This is called wind chill, and must be stopped with wind proof gear to prevent rapid heat loss from your body. This happens in water too, only at a much faster rate.
Radiation occurs when a warm body transfers infrared radiation to cooler objects. You've felt this affect when standing in front of a fire. You've also felt it when your warm body loses heat into space when there is no cloud cover on a clear night. Space blankets are good radiant and convective barriers, preventing much of these two types of heat loss.
Respiration is the act of breathing. Our bodies must warm and humidify outside air before it enters our lungs. As we exhale, we lose both water vapor and heat. Both the heat loss and water vapor can prove deadly in cold weather. Conversely, the loss of water vapor can become a problem in a dry desert on a scorching day.
Perspiration is when you sweat. Sweating is the body's way of cooling off from excessive heat generation. Combined with extremes of heat, cold or humidity, perspiration presents many obstacles to staying well hydrated, warm, dry or all three.
In order stay alive, you must understand and manage the above five elements of heat loss. If you don't, and you lose the will to live, you'll die. Period. Notice I mentioned the will to live.
Survival Kits vs. A Survival System
Survival kits exist to help you cope with the wild while you await rescue. The problem with many survival kits is that, unless you're a hardcore survivalist with weeks worth of training under your belt, you're going to find it difficult to make yourself comfortable, let alone stay alive. When's the last time you improvised both a shelter and a fire out in the wild? Have you ever spent a night outside in a trash bag? When's the last time you made a feather stick and lit it with a fire steel in a gale?
If you've ever been in a car accident, or suffered major trauma, take that experience and imagine throwing yourself immediately into the wild with nothing more than a survival kit to keep you going while you await rescue for 72 hours or more. What is going to keep you alive that first and subsequent nights? That's the thinking behind the One Gallon Survival System.
The One Gallon Survival system is designed to provide a simple and immediate barrier to the five mechanisms of heat transfer, from timberline to shoreline. Whether you are stranded in the Desert Southwest, the rainy Northwest, Rocky Mountains, Appalachians or the Everglades; you will have the tools necessary to provide a modicum of protection in order to increase your chances of survival.
Making The Big Three Work For You
In backpacking, the three heaviest items are known as 'The Big Three;' backpack, shelter and sleeping system. There are many backpacks on the market that weigh more than the entire One Gallon Survival System. We've utilized an ultralight backpack from Terra Nova called the 20L Elite. Made from high quality ripstop nylon, the Elite only weighs 7.4 ounces--less than half a pound.
When thinking of emergency outdoor shelters, most Americans think of tents, tarps, bivy sacks and plastic tube tents. But there is one shelter that provides the protection of a tent and the light weight of a bivy sack--for multiple people. Made from high quality silicone-impregnated nylon (silnylon), the Terra Nova 2 and 4-man bothy bags both weigh less than a can of Coca-Cola! Bothy bags are rapid-deploy (seconds) shelters that provide an immediate reduction in radiative, convective, resperitive and perspirative heat loss. You just need to put something between your butt and the ground to cover all five mechanisms. Bothy bags don't require pitching, poles or stakes--they are supported by their occupants. When the time comes to pack them up, they quickly fold into their own attached stuff sack which doubles as an adjustable vent during deployment. As Cody Lundin says in his book 98.6 Degrees--The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive, you need to use equipment that utilizes gross motor skills because fine motor skills are the first to go in a survival (panic) situation.
Rounding out The Big Three items in the One Gallon Survival System, we've chosen the Blizzard Survival bag. The Blizzard bag is a three-layer laminated mylar-type sleeping bag with large air channels that provide a good degree of insulation. Alone, the Blizzard bag is wind and waterproof, but combining it with the microclimate already in place within the bothy bag dramatically increases its effectiveness. And, at only 13 ounces, it is light enough to carry anywhere.
All told, the weight of The Big Three in the One Gallon System is less than two pounds for a Solo System and 2.8 pounds for a Duo System. A Quadro System (4-person) would only add another 1 pound 10 ounces to the total pack weight.
With Shelter Taken Care of, You Need Fire and Signaling
Any kit assembled for survival should include the following three basic items:
1) Shelter
2) Fire
3) Signaling
Fire
Fire starting can come in any number of forms; from the basics of rubbing two pieces of wood to liquid fuel and pressurized gas and everywhere in between, we've got any number of systems from which to choose. The problem in today's market is finding a system tailored to the unique needs of survival.
In our search for the ideal system we looked for simplicity, ease-of-use, light weight and efficiency. There are numerous titanium alcohol stoves and cooksets on the market that weigh in the sub 1 ounce category. There are a myriad of wood-burning stoves that are both light weight and compact. Some canister stoves weigh less than two ounces without a fuel canister. All of these stoves call with their siren song--beckoning the weary buyer. We had to look past all of these traits in order to find the ideal system. We found it in the Jetboil Sol Advanced cooking system.
Although there are competing stoves that are lighter, no other combination of stove and cookset matches the ultimate efficiency of the Jetboil. Not only does it use isobutane canisters, but it is easy to light with its piezo-electric push-button ignitor, in keeping with the gross motor skill requirement of a survival situation. Because the Jetboil is designed from the ground up as a complete stove-cookset system, it turns its fuel into warm water faster than any other system on the market while burning less fuel doing so. This translates into warm bodies which translates into life. With its 100-gram fuel canister, the Jetboil won't last forever, but it will buy time to get through that first 24-72 hours; time that will allow you to acclimate to your situation and prepare other methods of fire creation.
Included in your One Gallon System are a fire steel, lighter and two match vaults with cotton-Vaseline tinder and regular strike-anywhere matches. Combined with your Helle bushcraft knife, you should be able to get a fire going no matter how bad you initially might be at doing so. If you're so inclined, you might even try lighting a fire with the Fresnel lens contained in the sewing kit!
Signaling
With first aid, shelter and fire taken care of, you can begin to focus on getting the attention of your potential rescuers. Let's just hope you at least took your cell phone with you, and you've turned it completely off before embarking on your journey in order to preserve battery life. Signaling is the last of the survival basics. To that end, we're planning to include the incredible Star Flash retro-reflective signal mirror along with a Jetscream whistle.
Signal mirrors are highly effective because they contain a reflective surface that allows the user to exactly pinpoint the flash from any light source on a target. The Starflash signal mirror included in the One Gallon System can be seen for dozens of miles, making it an absolute necessity.
The Jetscream whistle preserves your voice and allows you to summon help with the simple act of blowing. At 122db, the Jetscream whistle is perhaps one of the loudest whistles on the market. Combined with your cell phone and Starflash mirror, you should not have any trouble getting the attention of rescuers.
One added feature of the Terra Nova backpack supplied with the system is that it contains an integrated whistle in a clip on the chest strap--a nice addition if there are two or more people in your party.
Survival Kit or Survival System?
The following is a list of aviation-related survival kits on the market. It is by no means comprehensive, but please take a moment to look at their contents and prices; then ask yourself if they adequately meet the requirements set forth above. Would you trust your life to the items you see in these kits?
Doug Ritter Ultimate Survival Pak: $2450 (!!??) for two people, 22.6 pounds; $3250 for four, 38.6 pounds
Doug Ritter Survival Vest: $999-$1099 (!!)
Aviation Survival: Monstrously overpriced kits from Ultimate Survival Technologies
Prepared Pilot Wilderness Aviator Survival Kit: $495
Prepared Pilot Pocket Pack: Re-branded Adventure Medical Kits Pocket Survival Pak
AST Overwater: Various kits from $35-$389
Aircraft Spruce Crash Kits: From $150-$1200 dollars. They have Bibles because you'll need them with their junk supply lists.
MayDay Industries Survival Kits: Not aviation-specific, but extremely cheap
Wise Food Supply Deluxe Survival Kit: Mostly food; weighs 27 pounds.
