“Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World” by Joan Druett

by Leon Pantenburg

To quote the jacket liner: “Hundreds of miles from civilization, two ships wreck on the opposite ends of the same deserted island in this true story of human nature at it best – and worst.”

As a reader of this website, you have probably wondered at some point how you might react to a disaster or some emergency that plunges you into a survival situation. After all, that’s what survivalists and preppers do!  And that’s why our personal survival philosophies and mottos tends to be  something along the lines of “Be Prepared.”

Only a fool would deliberately put himself into a disaster or emergency situation to test his reactions, so the best we can do is read and try to learn from other people’s experiences. Island of the Lost  can teach you something about different human reactions to essentially the same disaster.

Auckland Island is a godforsaken place 285 miles south of New Zealand. With year-round freezing rain and howling winds, it is one of the most forbidding places on earth.

In 1864, Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four wrecked on the southern end of the island. With little more than their bare hands, the men built a cabin, and a forge to make their own tools. They remained civilized through the darkest times, and managed to build a boat and effect their own escape.

Incredibly, at the same time the Invercauld falls apart on the other side of the island and its crew of 19 arrive on shore under the same dismal circumstances. The men fight and split up, some die of starvation, and others resort to cannibalism.

Why the difference?  Musgrave’s crew followed the concepts of survival common sense to a tee. Upon being shipwrecked, they inventoried their tools, put their survival priorities in order, made a plan to be rescued, and got busy carrying out that plan.

The Ivercauld group, on the other hand, reacted as most people would. They struggled with denial, were disorganized, and never figured out what to do next. They had no real purpose or goal and their inability to focus and work together soon made a bad situation worse.

Island of the Lost takes two real-life disasters, and shows what happens when radically-different survival philosophies are applied. This book is fascinating reading, and reinforces the idea that you can will yourself to live.

Order a copy:Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World

For more related SurvivalCommonSense.com tips and stories, click on the highlighted words:

• STOP: Use this exercise to reduce stress and focus your thoughts.
• Write a note to let people know where you went, before you left.
• Take your Ten Essentials on every outing.
• Dress with the right fabrics.
• Have a plan to make a tarp shelter.
• Carry lightweight, compact firestarter.
• Find the most effective fire ignition system.
• How to make charcloth, a material that can catch a spark from any source.
• Use charcloth as an effective method of catching a spark to make a fire.
• It can kill you: Hypothermia
• Hardtack: A great emergency food
• About Leon Pantenburg

by Leon Pantenburg 

Any list you make shows your priorities, and hopefully this list will help establish some in your survival planning! 

The idea behind SurvivalCommonSense.com started several years ago. As a journalist, I was often on the scene of natural disasters, catastrophes, accidents and search and rescue missions. My observations lead me to this premise: Survival is mostly psychological.

 This is certainly no groundbreaking revelation on my part!

 “The best survival tool is between your ears,” claims wilderness survival expert Peter Kummerfeldt. This idea is further reinforced by Cody Lundin, another wilderness and urban survival expert, who maintains that 90 percent of survival in any situation is psychological.

One goal of  SurvivalCommonSense.com is to help you develop the survival mindset that will keep you alive. So, let’s start with the baseline knowledge of what happens to people, mentally, in a survival situation. Until you know what might happen in your mind, or in the heads of the people around you, there’s no way to come up with a plan to survive.

With a survival mindset, you can survive anything. Without one, you won’t!

 These five are among my favorite survival psychology books, and they deserve a place among your prepper or urban or wilderness survival tools. Here’s some good choices to get you started on creating your survival library:

Union prisoners are seen crowding near the main gate of Andersonville Civil War Prison. The prisoners had some of the psychological reactions anybody would have in an emergency!

“Survival Psychology” by John Leach

 Some 20-odd years before the rash of “reality” or “survivor” shows, or anybody had ever heard of Les Stroud or Bear Grylls,  psychological studies resulted in a book which documented people’s  reactions  in emergency situations.

“Survival Psychology” by John Leach, PhD, of the University of Lancaster, England, was a groundbreaking study, that today is a reference source for many wilderness and urban survival bestsellers. If some of Leach’s writing or thoughts sound familiar, it is because you’ve read or heard them before!

Leach studied survivors’ reactions, including those of Union prisoners at the horrific Andersonville prison during the Civil War;  to shipwreck survivors; to people who made it through plane crashes and natural disasters.

Distilled down to one sentence, here’s what Leach found: Psychological responses to emergencies follow a pattern.

Survival situations bring out a variety of reactions – including some that make the situation worse. Leach’s studies show that only 10 to 15 percent of any group involved in any emergency will react appropriately. Another 10 to 15 percent will behave totally inappropriately and the remaining 70 to 80 percent will need to be told what to do. The most common reaction at the onset of an emergency is disbelief and denial.

 “Survival Psychology” is out-of-print, as far as I know. But I’ve had no trouble getting a copy through the local inter-library loan program. Your library probably has a similar program, so check out Leach’s book. Survival Psychology

 “I Sit and Stay: A Survival Guide for Kids (and parents, too!)”  by Leah L. Waarvik Kids need to be outside. They need to be taking advantage of our great outdoors as opposed to vegetating in front of computer or TV screens. But anyone who goes into wilderness areas needs to do so safely, and  “I Sit and Stay”  teaches your children what to do if they get lost.

Author Leah Waarvik is a search-and-rescue professional who works as part of a canine team to find missing people in the wilderness. She wrote “I Sit and Stay” after hearing stories of children who were lost and unprepared. The title says it all: Teach your lost children to stay in one place and await rescue.

Written in interesting, easy-to-understand terms, the lesson of staying-put is taught through the characters of Emma and Koa, two wilderness search-and-rescue dogs. The book also mentions and discusses three simple tools that every child (I say every person, regardless of age!) should be taught to use and carry on every outdoor excursion:

• Whistle: Always carry one on a string around your neck when hiking or camping. The child should be taught that if they get lost, they sit and blow. Rescue Howler Whistle by Adventure Medical Kits
• A pocket-sized mirror: Use this to signal search aircraft or other people. Ultimate Survival Technologies 2×3 StarFlash Emergency Signal Mirror
• A large garbage bag: With training this is to be used as a shelter. (My two cents worth is that the bag should be bright yellow or orange to aid in being found.)

After being taught how to use these items, the child should also be trained to carry these survival tools in their pockets or pack. Pockets are probably the best, since a child will probably lose their backpack before their pants! Survival Kit for I Sit and Stay A Survival Guide for Kids and Parents Too!

A survival mindset is a requirement to join this exclusive club!

“The Survivors Club” by Ben Sherwood

 Most of us can’t take all the survival field classes and seminars we’d like to, and only a fool would create a real emergency to see how he might react!

Author Ben Sherwood interviewed people who have survived everything from the World War II Holocaust to the Twin Towers tragedy on 9/11. He was seeking a common ground, a kind of definition, about why some people survive catastrophes, disasters, and emergency situations and why others don’t.

His conclusion, after extensive research, is that the most important part of survival is in your mind. And – no surprise here – you must develop a survival mindset.

So where do you begin?

According to the U.S. military, you must first decide you will survive.  The US Army Field Survival Manual, in their official instruction for how to stay alive in hostile environments, offers this advice on the very first pages:

 “Without the will to survive, your chances of surviving are greatly diminished,” the book states. US Army Survival Manual: FM 21-76 , Illustrated

The next step to surviving is to accept that whatever is happening to you is not unique. We all want to think we’re special, Sherwood, writes, but any survival situation will cause people to react in established behavior patterns. The sooner you get over being incredulous, the sooner you can start reacting in a positive way and come up with a plan.

Then, a survivor must do something. The most common reaction, regardless of the circumstances, is to do nothing, hang tight and wait for someone else to react first, or tell them what to do.

But surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of panic attacks during an emergency. Researchers examining crises as disparate as the WWII London Blitz and the attacks of Sept 11 found people rarely lose total control and run around mindlessly. Rather, most just freeze until they’re told what to do.

So we keep reading The Survivors Club, because we all want to know the secret, the one thing that can make a difference between living and dying.

What is the secret of survival? Sherwood asked Ray Smith, former Marine Drill Instructor, with 27 years on active duty in the Navy as a survival instructor. Smith is the author of  How to Survive on Land and Sea. Smith’s answer is simple.

“Faith in God,” Smith says “It’s a major factor in all survival scenarios.”

I first ran into the writings of Viktor Frankl, eminent psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, when I was in graduate school. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning remains one of my favorite books. So it was no surprise to me that Frankl was mentioned in The Survivors Club. Frankl developed a survival mindset to get through Auschwitz.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing:” Frankl observed, “The last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Purpose gives you the why – the meaning and mission – in your life. It also gives you the power to survive.

 “The Survivors Club” deserves reading and re-reading. It teaches about the most important part of any survival situation: Your reaction to what is happening to you.The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

Deep Survival is another great choice for your wilderness or urban survival library!

 Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Lawrence Gonzales

I read “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, And Why”  in a few marathon sessions. The fast-paced accounts of real life survival situations are mesmerizing. It’s a good survival mindset read and I couldn’t help wondering what I might do in some of the situations.

In the book, Gonzales mentions 12 points that disaster survivors seemed to have in common.  These points are definitely worth reading and thinking about, even if you don’t get anything else out of the book.

1. Perceive, believe: If there is any denial, it is counterbalanced by a solid belief in the clear evidence of their senses. In other words, survivors establish a survival mindset immediately. They see opportunity, even good, in their situation.
2. Stay calm (use humor, use fear to focus) In the initial crisis, survivors use fear, and aren’t ruled by it.
3. Think/analyze/plan: Survivors quickly organize, set up small manageable tasks. In other words, they’re using the STOP tool.
4. Take correct decisive action: Survivors were able to convert thoughts to action. They deal with what they can from moment to moment, hour to hour.
5. Celebrate successes: This is important to maintaining motivation and avoiding hopelessness.
6. Count you blessings: Be grateful you’re alive.
7. Play: Sing, play mind games, recite poetry, count things etc.
8. See the beauty: Survivors are attuned to the wonder of the world.
9. Believe you will succeed: All the above practices lead to the point where survivors become convinced they will prevail.
10. Surrender: Let go of your fear of dying. This is the type of thinking John Leach calls: “resignation without giving up. It is survival by surrender.”
11. Do whatever is necessary: Survivors know their abilities and don’t over or under estimate them. They believe anything is possible and act accordingly.
12. Never give up: There is always one more thing you can do.

"The Unthinkable" is a thought-provoking look at what happens during emergencies, before help arrives.

 “The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why”  by Amanda Ripley

Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, writes about the human psychological reaction to disasters. Ripley covered some of the most devastating disasters of our time, and retraces how people reacted. She interviews leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists and other disaster experts. She comes up with the stunning inadequacies of many of our evolutionary responses.

 Ripley’s book is not about disaster recovery: It’s about what happens in the midst  of one – before emergency personnel arrive and structure is imposed on the loss. Ripley describes a “survival arc” everyone must travel to get from danger to safety.

  If you’ve ever thought about a disaster and possible reactions to it, then you’re on the right track. Ripley starts the survival arc process with the thought “I wonder what I would do if…”

 Here’s the survival arc progression, according to Ripley, of a typical reaction to a disaster situation:

 Denial: This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening to me.

 Deliberation: We know something is terribly wrong, but don’t know what to do about it.

  The Decisive Moment: You’ve accepted that you are in danger, deliberated the options and now it is time to take action. 

 Anybody with a “Be Prepared” mentality hopefully moves quickly through the initial denial phase. We’ll also hope that you have read and studied survival techniques so you will be able to deliberate effectively and move on to the decisive moment phase. 

 But even if you think you’re prepared mentally for surviving a disaster,  “Unthinkable” is a book you need to read.  You must understand what goes on in your head during a disaster before you can use your tools. You’ll need information and techniques to respond correctly.

 Some of that information can come from “The Unthinkable.” The book’s information is a powerful survival tool.

Recommended Reading:
Surviving a Wilderness Emergency
Build the Perfect Survival Kit

When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikes
98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive

Other Survival Books

For more related SurvivalCommonSense.com tips and stories, click on the highlighted words:

• STOP: Use this exercise to reduce stress and focus your thoughts.
• Write a note to let people know where you went, before you left.
• Take your Ten Essentials on every outing.
• Dress with the right fabrics.
• Have a plan to make a tarp shelter.
• Carry lightweight, compact firestarter.
• Find the most effective fire ignition system.
• How to make charcloth, a material that can catch a spark from any source.
• Use charcloth as an effective method of catching a spark to make a fire.
• It can kill you: Hypothermia
• Hardtack: A great emergency food
• About Leon Pantenburg
  .

by Leon Pantenburg

Here’s the scenario: Warning sirens are blaring. You have 15 minutes to evacuate. What will you do? By the time the evacuation starts, it’s already too late. Being prepared makes the difference between survival and disaster.

Can’t happen to you? Then here are two words to remember: Hurricane Katrina. How much warning did New Orleans have, and how many people still got caught?

Then consider: FEMA states nine out of 10 Americans live in an area that is vulnerable to some natural disaster such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis and floods. And what about those potential disasters nobody can predict, such as pandemics and terrorist attacks?

By the time most people in a disaster area figure out they need to leave, Williams writes , it’s probably already too late.  Plan on traffic jams, broken-down vehicles blocking traffic and clogged highway arteries out of cities.  If they can get on the highway at all, most of the  people will get  as far their car goes before running out of gas.

Where will all these ill-prepared people go? If their only survival training or preparation was watching “Survivorman,” or “Man Vs. Wild” they may have some vague idea of  living off the land. For lack of a plan or better idea, many of them will head for the nearest wilderness area.

Williams has written four other survival-related  books, and maintains  the “Bug Out Survival” blog. In a nutshell, Williams’ concept of bug out survival is to be prepared for a disaster, and be ready to leave your home if events seem to call for an evacuation.

Williams’ latest effort lays out and starts the foundation for Bug Out Survival by helping the reader put together a “Bug Out Bag.” Most preppers or survivalists have some variation of this collection. The premise is that you have a portable, personalized kit with the tools needed to remove yourself from a bad situation.

This bag will be part of a bigger, more comprehensive plan to relocate to a safer, more isolated area, where you will be able to outlast the disaster. Possibly, you will have a retreat already scoped out and ready to occupy.

But coming up with this big plan takes planning, training and motivation, and Williams takes you through that process step-by-step. Start with the right gear, based on your skills, abilities and needs. Don’t buy a commercial kit and leave it unopened in your pack: Williams suggests you make your own kits, with individualized quality materials. Leatherman 830039 New Wave Multitool with Leather Sheath

I have probably too many guns and knives, have my own opinions about the best choices Cold Steel 38CK SRK Survival Knife and consider them part of the survival equation. But I also get tired of many survivalists’ pre-occupation with weapons, webgear, tactical equipment and doo-dads.  According to some of these “experts,” a prime concern is to have enough magazines and ammo for the inevitable firefight with looters.

While Williams does make some practical suggestions about survival firearms, his common sense philosophy is that you should be aware of the situation, and should have left the area ahead of potential confrontations. Practical firearms he recommends are lightweight, easy to carry and conceal, and make sense for your area.

A great portion of the book lists public wilderness areas, and suggests parks, national forests and natural areas where you might get away from the crowds and off the beaten path. While applauding all attempts to be prepared for potential disasters, I am lukewarm, at best, about the concept of heading out into the wilderness to survive a catastrophe.

I’ve hunted, fished, backpacked and canoed in many of the areas Williams mentions, and I would caution: Beware. Just because you go to an isolated area with abundant fish and wildlife, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to live off the land. Just because there is the potential for foraging, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to survive doing it.

I have hunted weeks in some of these recommended areas without getting a shot at a big game animal. And if you’ve never been skunked fishing, then you don’t get out on the water much.

Another caution about these suggested locations: If you read this book and decided to head for a published wilderness area, probably a lot of other people will, too. The traffic jams around some of these areas may be incredible!

Another consideration should be time of year. Where I live in Oregon, the Cascades are under several feet of snow for about half the year. This will require specialized tools, clothing and gear, that wouldn’t be appropriate the rest of the year. Make your Bug Out plan practical.

Williams hits all the right buttons, as far as I’m concerned, with his approach to disaster planning. Like any survival manual or guide, read “Bug Out” with a grain of salt. One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to surviving a disaster, and some of Williams’ premises or advice might not work for your situation.

But the book does give solid suggestions for surviving a potential disaster, and reading it may make a difference in your survival planning!

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=35256&html=ppbs/35256_2268.html?p_bkslv

Recommended Reading:
Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It’s Too Late

Surviving a Wilderness Emergency
Build the Perfect Survival Kit

Are you prepared?
multitools
disaster survival books

• STOP: Use this exercise to reduce stress and focus your thoughts.
• Write a note to let people know where you went, before you left.
• Take your Ten Essentials on every outing.
• Dress with the right fabrics.
• Have a plan to make a tarp shelter.
• Carry lightweight, compact firestarter.
• Find the most effective fire ignition system.
• How to make charcloth, a material that can catch a spark from any source.
• Use charcloth as an effective method of catching a spark to make a fire.
• It can kill you: Hypothermia
• Hardtack: A great emergency food




• About Leon Pantenburg

Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It’s Too Late

by Leon Pantenburg

I Sit and Stay: A Survival Guide for Kids (and parents, too!)  by Leah L. Waarvik

 It didn’t take but an instant for our family backpacking trip to turn into my worst nightmare. One moment, my son

"I Sit and I Stay" is a practical book about how to keep your children safe in the event they get lost in the outdoors.

Dan, 16 months old at the time, was playing as we set up camp. The next, despite the close supervision of four adults, he had vanished.

We immediately split up to look for him. Out of the corner of her eye, my wife Debbie caught a flash of Dan’s bright red jacket as he vanished over a small hill. She collared him before he could get any further. Dan thought the chase was part of the game.

Kids need to be outside. They need to be taking advantage of our great outdoors as opposed to vegetating in front of computer or TV screens. Hiking, biking and enjoying our parks and wilderness areas are natural cures for the childhood obesity epidemic. And if the kids aren’t taught to appreciate the outdoors at a young age, who will take care of the parks and wilderness areas in a few years?

But anyone who goes into wilderness areas needs to be safe, and  “I Sit and Stay”  teaches your children to be safe if they get lost.

Author Leah Waarvik is a search-and-rescue professional who works as part of a canine team to find missing people in the wilderness. She wrote “I Sit and Stay” after hearing stories of children who were lost and unprepared. The book is intended to initiate a discussion between adults and children about the main teaching points. The title says it all: Teach your lost children to stay in one place and await rescue.

Written in interesting, easy-to-understand terms, the lesson of staying-put is taught through the characters of Emma and Koa, two wilderness search-and-rescue dogs. The book also mentions and discusses three simple tools that every child (I say every person, regardless of age!) should be taught to use and carry on every outdoor excursion:

• Whistle: Always carry one on a string around your neck when hiking or camping. The child should be taught that if they get lost, they sit and blow. Rescue Howler Whistle by Adventure Medical Kits
• A pocket-sized mirror: Use this to signal search aircraft or other people. Ultimate Survival Technologies 2×3 StarFlash Emergency Signal Mirror
• A large garbage bag: With training this is to be used as a shelter. (My two cents worth is that the bag should
  

  This adult is using a 55-gallon trash can liner for an emergency shelter. With training, a child can do likewise. (Peter Kummerfeldt photo)

  be bright yellow or orange to aid in being found. Before doing wilderness survival training for kids, I go in to the local Les Schwab tire store and get donations of their bright yellow plastic tire bags. The store will give a tire bag to anyone who asks, and there is no excuse for a child being without one. You can probably find a similar situation in your area!)

After being taught on how to use these items, the child should also be trained to carry these survival tools in their pockets or pack. Pockets are probably the best, since a child will probably lose their backpack before their pants! Survival Kit for I Sit and Stay A Survival Guide for Kids and Parents Too!

Then, prepared with this training and survival tools, the kids are taught a simple rhyme:

If I’m lost and can’t find my way,

I sit and stay. I don’t run away.

Emma and Koa are on their way.

Here’s some additional tips from the Deschutes County (Oregon) Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue for keeping kids safe outdoors:

• Everybody stays together.
• Teach the children that if they get lost or separated, to sit down, stay put, drink water and eat their snacks.
• Look bigger for searchers: Your waiting space, if possible, should be near an open space. Blow your whistle if you hear or see anybody!
• Don’t lie down on bare ground.
• Stay away from large rivers and lakes.

I used some of Waarvik’s suggestions on Memorial Day weekend to help teach about 50 kids wilderness survival at the third annual Central Oregon Shooting Association Youth Safari. Ranging in age from kindergarten to early teen, these kids readily absorbed Waarik’s common sense survival tips.

Afterward, parents commented  that the lesson was clear and valuable, and wondered where to get a copy of  Waarvik’s publication.

The book is an easy read, and well-illustrated with great drawing and photographs. It would make a great bedtime book, particularly before an outing or at camp.

And what if the unthinkable happens, and you end up at the incident command post waiting for your child to be found? It may be comforting to know the youngster has been trained, has the correct tools, and is somewhere, patiently waiting for Emma and Koa!

Recommended Reading:
I Sit and Stay: A Survival Guide for Kids (And Parents Too!)

Survival Kit for I Sit and Stay A Survival Guide for Kids and Parents Too!

Surviving a Wilderness Emergency
Build the Perfect Survival Kit

Related Product links

outdoor survival books

For more related SurvivalCommonSense.com tips and stories, click on the highlighted words:

• STOP: Use this exercise to reduce stress and focus your thoughts.
• Write a note to let people know where you went, before you left.
• Take your Ten Essentials on every outing.
• Dress with the right fabrics.
• Have a plan to make a tarp shelter.
• Carry lightweight, compact firestarter.
• Find the most effective fire ignition system.
• How to make charcloth, a material that can catch a spark from any source.
• Use charcloth as an effective method of catching a spark to make a fire.
• It can kill you: Hypothermia
• Hardtack: A great emergency food
• About Leon Pantenburg

by Leon Pantenburg

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why By Amanda Ripley

This is a  fact: Nine of 10 Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquake, tornado, hurricanes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow you may have to make significant decisions to save yourself and/or your family.

Most Americans live in some area with great potential for a natural disaster to occur.

 It may be in an urban or  wilderness survival situation. Or you may have run to the grocery store for a gallon of milk when the earthquake or tornado hits. Regardless of where or when the incident occurs, you will have to take decisive actions to survive.  

But the overwhelming response, of the great majority of people, to that concept is something along the lines of:…I, personally, will not be affected by any of those emergencies…. And even if a disaster happens, it somehow won’t threaten or engulf  me or my family… But if it does, there’s nothing I can do anyway, so there is no need to prepare…

 This is denial. If that continues to be part of your mindset, then you have just gotten into the first phase of a deadly, downward behavior progression that could cost your life.

 In “The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why” Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, writes about the human psychological reaction to disasters. Ripley covered some of the most devastating disasters of our time, and retraces how people reacted. She interviews leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists and other disaster experts. She comes up with the stunning inadequacies of many of our evolutionary responses.

 Ripley’s book is not about disaster recovery: It’s about what happens in the midst  of one – before emergency personnel arrive and structure is imposed on the loss. Ripley describes a “survival arc” everyone must travel to get from danger to safety.

 The survival arc’s three chronological phases of denial, deliberation and the decisive moment make up the structure of the book. And while the path to survival may resemble a roller coaster rather than an arc, Ripleys writes, it’s rare that anyone gets through a disaster without passing through these main stages at least once.

 If you’ve ever thought about a disaster and possible reactions to it, then you’re on the right track. Ripley starts the survival arc process with the thought “I wonder what I would do if…”

Prepare mentally before hand, so when a disaster does occur you'll have a plan of action.

 Here’s the survival arc progression, according to Ripley, of a typical reaction to a disaster situation:

 Denial: This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening to me. It’s all a bad dream. I’m imagining this. In a moment everything will be all right.

 Denial is the most insidious fear response of all.

 “The more I learned, the more denial seemed to matter all the time, even long before the disaster, on days that passed without incident,” Ripley writes.

 Denial can manifest itself in delay.  Or it can cause people to freeze or become immobile in disbelief. Many, if not most, people shut down in a crisis, quite the opposite of panic. Denial can paralyze you.

 Deliberation: We know something is terribly wrong, but don’t know what to do about it.

 How do you decide? The first thing is the realization that nothing is normal. We all think and perceive things differently. We become, Ripley claims, superheros with learning disabilities. At this point, you need to have some training, or prior “What If?” planning  to fall back on.

 The overwhelming tendency will be for your mind to go blank, and you won’t have clue on what to do next. Let’s hope you learned the STOP mindset  exercise. (See story link below). Your brain may be like the computer that has lost all its connections. Remember STOP as one of those vital links. Embed the acronym, and how to use it, into your psyche.

To get through the deliberation phase and on to the decisive moment, you will have had to rely on your survival mindset and prior training.

 The Decisive Moment: You’ve accepted that you are in danger, deliberated the options and now it is time to take action. 

 If you’re in a group, about 75 to 80 percent of the crowd will do nothing, according to John Leach in “Survival Psychology.” Another 10 to 15 percent will do the wrong thing, and only about 10 percent will make the right decisions. And these people who react appropriately will do so because of previous training.

 Anybody with a “Be Prepared” mentality hopefully moves quickly through the initial denial phase. We’ll also hope that you have read and studied survival techniques so you will be able to deliberate effectively and move on to the decisive moment phase. 

 But even if you think you’re prepared mentally for surviving a disaster,  “Unthinkable” is a book you need to read. The book  is not about stockpiling food, tools, weapons or prepping.

You must understand what goes on in your head during a disaster before you can use your tools. You’ll need information and techniques to respond correctly.

 Some of that information can come from “The Unthinkable.” The book’s information is a powerful survival tool. It should be in your prepper or survival library.

     “This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning. History does not end so. It is the way its chapters open.” St. Augustine.

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why

 For more related SurvivalCommonSense.com tips and stories, click on the highlighted words:

• STOP: Use this exercise to reduce stress and focus your thoughts.
• Write a note to let people know where you went, before you left.
• Take your Ten Essentials on every outing.
• Dress with the right fabrics.
• Have a plan to make a tarp shelter.
• Carry lightweight, compact firestarter.
• Find the most effective fire ignition system.
• How to make charcloth, a material that can catch a spark from any source.
• Use charcloth as an effective method of catching a spark to make a fire.
• It can kill you: Hypothermia
• Hardtack: A great emergency food
• About Leon Pantenburg

Recommended Reading:

Surviving a Wilderness Emergency
DEEP SURVIVAL

Survival books  

       “Surviving a Wilderness Emergency: Practical advice on what to do when you find yourself in trouble in the backcountry” by Peter Kummerfeldt

Peter Kummerfeldt

  This book should be required reading for anyone who ever ventures off the pavement. After extensive testing of the gear and techniques mentioned in the publication, I recommend this publication as the go-to book for wilderness survival.

Kummerfeldt stresses practical methods of surviving, not obscure, primitive skills and  his techniques, advice on survival systems and kits and common sense approach to wilderness emergencies could save your life.

His DVD “Skills of the Survivor,” sponsored by the National Bowhunters Education Foundation is great, too, and both are well-worth inclusion in any outdoors library.

Kummerfeldt grew up in Kenya, and came to America in 1965, where he joined the U.S. Air Force.  He is a graduate of the Air Force Survival Instructor Training School and served as an instructor at the Basic Survival School, Spokane, Wash.; the Arctic Survival School, Fairbanks, Alaska; and the Jungle Survival School in the Philippines. He served for 12 years as the Survival Training Director at the U.S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Colo.

Today, Kummerfeldt travels widely, promoting the concept of  practical wilderness survival. I met him several years ago at the Deschutes (Oregon) County Sportsman’s Expo after attending one of his seminars. My motivation for going was more curiosity than anything else – I had been knocking around the western mountains on big game hunting  and backpacking trips for decades, and was confident there wasn’t much more  for me to learn about survival gear. I was also heavily involved in my sons’ Boy Scout troop and went camping and backpacking at least once a month. I enjoyed testing and trying out new techniques and equipment. I thought I knew a lot, but one sign of a survival mindset is your willingness to keep learning!. 

I sat spellbound through his seminar on “Survival Myths,” then attended every other seminar he did that day. Afterward, we chatted at his booth, and I bought a copy of  “Surviving a Wilderness Emergency.”  That night, I went home and threw away a lot of the survival stuff I’d carried for years.

For the past few years, Kummerfeldt has been one of my valued sources for stories regarding some aspect of wilderness survival. He does extensive testing of new products, and if  there is something new in the survival market, Kimerfeldt probably has experience with it. I’ve personally used many of his techniques and recommendations when teaching adult leaders and Boy Scouts wilderness skills, and his instructional DVD is part of our troop’s teaching library.

Kummerfeldt is also a featured guest author for SurvivalCommonSense.com and his expertise and superb photography skills are greatly appreciated!

       Check out his website

Recommended Reading:
Surviving a Wilderness Emergency
The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

Desert Survival Skills by David Alloway

by Leon Pantenburg

 Whenever someone writes a book on wilderness survival, the general public seems to assume that the writer is an expert.  But the skeptical newspaper man in me always asks: Says who?  What wilderness? What are his/her credentials?

The Nalgene, center, is my primary water bottle. The two soft, roll-up water containers are carried in my pack as backups.

Does the writing show some common sense? Will my BS alarm start to sound when reading?

David Alloway, author of Desert Survival Skills,  has experience and the survival skills, and his book is worth reading, even if you don’t live or recreate in an arid area. Alloway is an interpretive naturalist at Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas,  and has practiced arid land survival techniques in the United States, Mexico and Austraila for over 20 years.

Alloway himself became the first non-Australian to complete the 200 K Pilbara Trek in Western Australia. He holds certificates in emergency medicine, search and rescue and swift water rescue. Subsequently, Alloway writes from a hands-on experience background, and the book is excellent information for anyone  who ever goes into wilderness areas.

Now, the desert rats know that the arid places have a unique beauty that frequently inspire pinch-me-I-can’t-believe-I’m-here moments. These times, and a multitude of intangibles, cause people to return to the desert. These folks have probably learned many of Alloway’s skills.

So why should the average person read a book about desert survival? One axion of survival common sense is that Mother Nature can become a harsh witch within a matter of minutes and try to kill you. Those who venture into any wilderness must be prepared for a harsh, unforgiving environment. There are consistant patterns in surviving any emergency, be it urban or wilderness survival, and a survival mindset is necessary to get through anything!

But, if you’ve ever felt drawn to the wide-open arid spaces, you will need specific survival skills. And even if you don’t plan on getting out of the car,  large parts of the west  are desert, with many miles between gas stations. All it will take is your vehicle breaking down in an isolated stretch and Presto! You are in a survival situation!

I love hiking and hunting in the desert and my first desert hike was in Death Valley in the late 1970s.  Being raised in the midwest, the desert  fascinated me. But it didn’t take long to realize that different survival skills are needed in dry areas. Equipment-wise, you’ll still need the Ten Essentials  and much of the same gear you’d need  in different environments.

Alloway writes a great section on what gear to carry for desert sojurns. He also believes strongly in carrying a pocket-sized survival kit along with the rest of your gear!

The difference between hiking in the desert, as opposed to other areas,  is water. In the desert, you can’t  plan on

Leon, and his hiking partner John Nerness, were miles away from water in this Death Valley "forest" campsite. The hike occurred during Christmas of 1977.

 finding a place to  re-supply. You can plan on needing a minimun of one gallon per day, and a weight cost of about eight pounds per gallon. Subsequently, for one three-day Death Valley hike , I started out with 24 pounds of  water, in addition to everything else!

 It is fitting that Alloway lists water as the top priority of desert survival and devotes some 30 pages to the subject of how to find it.  In the discussion, Alloway tells how to possibly fix a broken windmill to produce water,  ways to break into an irrigation water line, potential locations where water might be near the surface, and places to look  for moisture.

My BS alarm starts going off when people promote solar stills as a way to gather water in the desert. You build one by digging a hole about a cubic yard in size, then follow the directions in virtually any survival manual.  My experience, after helping build several, is that  solar stills don’t work. 

I wish they did. Before deer or elk season opened, I’d build several throughout  my desert hunting areas, and use them to replenish water bottles. Or, the guys in my hunting camp would construct several stills around base camp, and never have to ration water for cooking or washing.  In most cases and scenerios, in my opinion, you are wasting energy and precious sweat to build a solar still.

Alloway agrees, to a point. He writes that solar stills: “…are almost a cult item in survival lore.” In all Alloway’s survival classes, they build a solar still. Apparently, the idea is to show that they can’t be depended on to supply adequate water in the desert. Under ideal circumstances, they might produce a cup, up to a record quart, of water per day, Alloway writes, but some stills produce nothing. 

I appreciate writing based on fact and experience and that’s why I recommend Desert Survival Skills. Reading Alloway’s book is a great place to start learning about desert survival and developing  a survival mindset for that environment.

Recommended Compasses:

Brunton Classic Compass
Suunto A-10 Compass
Suunto MC-2G Global Compass
Silva Starter Compass

Recommended Reading:
Desert Survival Skills

The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

For more related SurvivalCommonSense.com tips and stories, click on the highlighted words:

by Leon Pantenburg

The Survivors Club by Ben Sherwood

One of the most important goals of survival common sense is to help you develop a survival mindset. Essentially, that means you must have a rational plan to deal with, get out of, or find a way to survive, a life-threatening predicament. Bottom line: You must know what to do next.

Most of us can’t take all the survival field classes and seminars we’d like to, and only a fool would create an emergency to see how he might react. And may God  preserve and protect  the people who rely on the “survival” or “reality” shows to learn survival skills!  I fervently hope these folks never have to use what they learned on prime time!

But the rest of us can read and study, and hopefully get an insight into how we might act under extreme stress. That knowledge is a tool we must use, and it must be included in every survival kit.  The Survivors Club is a book that presents some of this critical information.

Author Ben Sherwood interviewed people who have survived everything from the World War II Holocaust to the Twin Towers tragedy on 9/11. He was seeking a common ground, a kind of definition, about why some people survive catastrophes, disasters, and emergency situations and why others don’t.

His conclusion, after extensive research, is that the most important part of survival is in your mind. And – no surprise here – you must develop a survival mindset. Otherwise, all the training and tools in the world are worthless.  Check out his book at Amazon.com for only $8.  The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

So where do you begin?

According to the U.S. military, you must first decide you will survive.  The US Army Field Survival Manual is their official instruction for how to stay alive in hostile environments amd offers this advice on the very first pages:

“The experiences of hundreds of servicemen in WWII and Korea prove that survival is largely a matter of mental outlook, with the will to survive the deciding factor.

“Without the will to survive, your chances of surviving are greatly diminished,” the book states. You can buy the book on Amazon for only $10. US Army Survival Manual: FM 21-76 , Illustrated

The next step to surviving might be to accept that whatever is happening to you is not unique. We all want to think we’re special, Sherwood, writes, but any survival situation will cause people to react in established behavior patterns. The sooner you get over being incredulous, the sooner you can start reacting in a positive way and come up with a plan.

Then, a survivor must do something. The most common reaction, regardless of the circumstances, is to do nothing, hang tight and wait for someone else to react first, or tell them what to do.

Psychologist John Leach, author of Survival Psychology, calls this syndrome the “Incredulity Response.”

Leach says people tell themselves: “This isn’t really happening.” The stress of the crises, Leach notes, causes people to lose the ability to make decisions. They turn into statues.

This mindset can be fatal. Leach later wrote: “Denial and inactivity prepare people well for the roles of victim and corpse.”

But surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of panic attacks during an emergency. Researchers examining crises as disparate as the WWII London Blitz and the attacks of Sept 11 found people rarely lose total control and run around mindlessly. Rather, most just freeze until they’re told what to do.

So we keep reading The Survivors Club, because we all want to know the secret, the one thing that can make a difference between living and dieing.

What is the secret of survival? Sherwood asked Ray Smith, former Marine Drill Instructor, with 27 years on active duty in the Navy as a survival instructor. Smith is the author of  How to Survive on Land and Sea. Smith’s answer is simple.

“Faith in God,” Smith says “It’s a major factor in all survival scenarios.”

Smith feels so strongly about that concept that he thinks it should be in the first chapter of any book on survival. In military parlance, Smith claims, faith is a “force multiplier,” a factor that multiplies your strength and efficiency.

Sherwood also interviewed Dr. Al Seibert, one of America’s foremost authorities on survival psychology. Siebert believes one of the most critical skills is what he terms “serendipity talent.”

“When disaster strikes,” Siebert claims, “life’s best survivors not only cope well, they often turn potential disaster into a lucky development.”
Serendipity is not good luck, he adds, but rather it is a skill that can be developed. The process of turning adversity into advantage occurs with amazing speed. In his mind, Siebert said the words “serendipity” and “survival” are interchangeable.

I first ran into the writings of Viktor Frankl, eminent psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, when I was in graduate school. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning
remains one of my favorite books. I’ve given copies to people in jail, to folks with life-threatening illnesses, to people facing crises of faith and for no particular reason at all. (It’s another book you should read!)

So it was no surprise to me that Frankl was mentioned in The Survivors Club. Frankl developed a survival mindset to get through Auschwitz.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing:” Frankl observed, “The last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Quoting 19^th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche, Frankl added:  “He who has a ‘why’ to live for, can bear with almost any ‘how.’”

Purpose gives you the why – the meaning and mission – in your life. It also gives you the power to survive.

I usually prefer to review older books that aren’t in the limelight, because there is a lot of good information out there that shouldn’t be overlooked. And, as soon as a book makes some list, it seems like every professional reviewer takes a crack at it.

But “The Survivors Club” deserves reading and re-reading. It teaches about the most important part of any survival situation: Your reaction to what is happening to you.

Read it, absorb the information and learn.

The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

By Leon Pantenburg

A good way to prepare for potential emergencies is to read and learn from informative books with practical, usable information. “Camping’s Forgotten Skills: Backwoods Tips From a Boundary Waters Guide” by Cliff Jacobson is one of those literary resources that should be part of any survival or prepper library.

The book was first published in 1992. Author Jacobson is an Eagle Scout, a teacher and guide in the Boundary Waters. He has written 11 other wilderness-related books.

Jacobson writes that it’s important to have high tech equipment, and know how to use it. But (and here’s where we get into the survival common sense philosophy) what happens if you become separated from your stove when your canoe capsizes? How will you repair a large tear in your tarp or tent fly? Can you start a fire to prevent hypothermia?

This book is full of old tried-and-true techniques of camping and wilderness survival and grownup Boy Scouts will recognize some of the techniques. The book shows such skills as how to make a lean-to and bed out of pine boughs. And it’s interesting to see how to make a reflector oven out of a metal rectangular gasoline or vegetable oil.

Other little-used skills include improvising camp implements out of tin cans, a packsack out a leg from a pair of jeans, and a tent from a tarp.

But, you might think, I already have the gear and set-up for  wilderness survival and shouldn’t need to improvise anything. Why read this book? Isn’t the common sense approach to have the gear and know how to use it?

The common sense answer is: When it comes to saving your life, you can’t know enough. This publication fits into the “Be Prepared” mantra of the Boy Scouts, and improvisation in making or repairing equipment is something everyone interested in wilderness and/or urban survival should know.

Realistically, there isn’t enough real wilderness left to spoil any of it, no matter how remote the area. Go camping in some reasonably popular public campsite and make a bed of boughs, or a shelter by cutting down a tree, and you’ll get some infuriated wacko (like me!) in your face.

But it is possible that you end up with bits and pieces of equipment when your canoe capsizes in the middle of trackless wilderness. Or you may have to flee an office building that’s on fire or collapsing because of an earthquake.

In these similar survival situations, the only tools you will have are what you’ve got and what you can improvise. This book can teach you some skills that may prove to be invaluable.

Now, maybe your idea of survival is to go primitive. Your survival kit will consist of a survival knife knapped out of chert, and you’ll rub two sticks together to make fire. You will forage and hunt for food, and become one with nature in the tradition of the original inhabitants of this country.

Good luck with that. I admire people with the time and dedication to learn and preserve those aboriginal skills. But this book is not for you.

The rest of us can learn something from “Camping’s Forgotten Skills.” Camping’s Forgotten Skills: Backwood Tips from a Boundary Waters Guide

(I borrowed a copy of “Camping’s Forgotten Skills” through the local library’s interlibrary loan program, but copies are available through Amazon.com  and other bookstores

. The ISBN number is: 0-934802-79-3. In used paperback, it will cost about $5, plus shipping.)