Have you decided to survive?

[wax]

“Are you Glass or will you break?”
It sounds like an odd thing to ask because it wouldn’t appear to make sense, but it was one of my father’s favorite questions, and you had to know a very important story in order to understand what it actually meant. He would ask it of me whenever I was at the point of giving up on something; and it always worked, but then I know who Hugh Glass was.

If you think you are a survivalist… or if you have an interest in survival… Hell, if you are a human being above the age of ten or eleven, then you have a vested interest in knowing and gaining an understanding of the story of Hugh Glass. Understanding the story is important because it points out that human beings do not survive without choosing to do so.
“So are you Glass or will you break?”

There is a whole field of science that has studied survival. It started as a military venture a long time ago but it really got a kick in the pants after man started to fly. Something didn’t add up and the airline industry had a vested interest in finding out why.

Two men are on a plane, they are sitting in seats that have the exact same characteristics concerning survivability. They have similar builds, wear similar clothing; both are married and come from similar backgrounds. All of that is important to scientists because one is about to die while the other will live. As the plane goes down onto a snow-filled runway the pilot knows it is in trouble and gives the same warning to everyone on the plane.

The man on the left braces himself in the same manner as the man on the right, neither is killed by the impact and the plane tumbles horribly before coming to a stop. Both men have the same time to react, both have the same conditions concerning access to an exit. But by this moment there is a vast difference between the two. The man on the left has decided he is going to die while the man on the right has decided he will live. The man on the right reacts quickly, releases his restraints and claws his way toward the exit. A fireball fills the cabin of the plane from the rear and engulfs everything and everyone. The man on the left dies in his seat, the man on the right crawls his way out of the wreckage and rolls in the snow to put out the flames that cover him. Many others make it out and find themselves in the same situation as the man on the right, severe burns over large portions of their bodies. But they go into shock and die on the runway while the man on the right lives. Some of those who die have much less damage than the man on the right, but he has decided to live… and he does.

To the scientists in question of course the information gained from a decision made by the man on the right is almost useless. They were hoping to learn something about seat design or passenger placement and instead they have learned something that is much more important to mankind in general than any theory concerning safety. Some of them realized that they could start a whole new branch of study concerning the psychological components of survival, there is a great deal of technical information out there that proves my father was right, but then he had examples for his belief and didn’t need to know anymore.

It is a fact: If you remove luck and circumstance from any given situation, the majority of people will give up and die while a much smaller percentage (some estimate the magical ten percent) will survive against any odds. And there are common examples every day.

Two men go into a wilderness area alone, never a smart thing to do but both do it.
Both men get lost.
One man falls into a crevice and finds himself hanging by his right arm which is trapped.
The other finds a stream and sits down next to it to await rescue.
One will die and the other will not: But it is not the one most would predict.

The man sitting next to the stream settles down and dies in less than three days from simple exposure.

The other man uses his folding pocket knife to cut through the flesh on his arm; he snaps the bone the rest of the way and falls dozens of feet to the canyon floor. He uses his belt to stop the bleeding and then walks out of the wilderness. It takes him six days but he has refused to die.

It all sounds really simple doesn’t it?

So have you made your choice or not?

The worst insult my father could give is to say, “You would die easily.”
It was so very bad because it carried so much information about what he thought of you. You were not really human, not a legitimate homo-sapiens, nothing better than a dumb newborn animal who was created for the very purpose of feeding the predators around you. He drilled that sentiment into me and I must say that even though I am not nearly as gruff as he was it is a fact I believe in. I won’t die easily!

That doesn’t mean I won’t personally die in an emergency, there are things that simply can not be predicted. If a comet strikes the chair I am sitting on then there is not much I would be able to do about the fact of my death. But someone very much like me (perhaps a number in this very forum) would survive.
Once you make the decision it can be very liberating. I have met survivalists who are very knowledgeable about the mechanisms for survival but who would die because they believe the “End of the World” is coming… they worry about it and that shows at least a propensity to give up.

I will survive anything in whatever way I must.
I may choose to die to save those I love, but I will not die easily!
Just say it, right now as you read this, quietly to yourself.

[wax]

Most people bought into the liberal garbage their biology teacher taught them about a human being weak in comparison to other animals. You know you have heard it. Compared to a bear a human is helpless in a natural environment.
Dolphins and whales are just as smart as people.
But my personal favorite must be “Without tools man is nothing!”
Really… man is never “without tools” and that is why we came down from the trees and hunted the flat-faced bear to extinction. That is how we know that whales not only make a good meal but can provide us with many other things. And whales might be smart but not smart enough to get away from my boat!
Don’t fool yourself kids, an adult human being is the most dangerous animal that has ever existed… nature might produce something better someday, but it hasn’t yet!

So would you die easily?

The K2 event took out all land animals bigger than a goat. It killed the dinosaurs and close to 75 percent of everything that lived.
Had man been alive at the time he would have survived.
It seems impossible almost doesn’t it? Yet it is the absolute truth.
We might not have been allowed to develop because of dinosaur oppression but had we developed they wouldn’t have stood a chance against us!
How do I know man would have survived?
Common sense really, and an understanding of what man actually is.
Man is an apex predator who has reached the top because we have mastered the art of adaptation, mastered it above the level of any other animal that has ever lived.
People who choose to die do not give themselves the credit they deserve.
Crocodiles and turtles survived the dinosaurs being wiped out and so would we, because “crocs are good eatin’ and turtle soup will get you by”.
People just don’t stop to think about what man is so they get confused.
Polar bears are tough puppies to be sure, but toss one into the middle of the Sahara and give it a few months. Man survives there quite well! Sidewinders pass through the desert sands with ease and they are nothing to mess with, but whip one out of a plane in Gnome Alaska in January and just sit there and watch it for awhile; you can do that because man survives there quite well… but the snake won’t for long.

Because people get confused about what man is you hear things like, “save the Bengal Tiger because it is an apex predator and losing it will destroy the eco-system.”
Huh… you are kidding right?
“Well yea, if the tigers die then the deer population will increase and the fauna will grow out of control and the beetles will.. ”
Hold on a minute… do you mean to say that if we kill off the tigers there will be more deer to hunt and eat?
I used to wear a t-shirt to school that read, “Kill all of the whales, free shrimp for everyone!” You can guess that some didn’t like it much.
Now don’t get me wrong, conservation is important and it makes sense to preserve species when it can be done. But we shouldn’t pretend we are somehow saving nature by doing it.
Am I getting off topic and simply rambling? I hope you don’t think so dear reader (though I have a habit of long posts I assume in my own pomposity that you have been salivating to read anything I post) because the topic is, have you decided to survive.
Part of that decision involves an understanding that you not only might, but have a right to. You are the product of many thousands of years of struggle and perseverance. If you choose to be, you are the most formidable form of predator that has ever been produced. You are as close to a “God” that nature can get!
No environment that nature can produce can stop you.
No eco-system can contain you.
No situation that you could ever face can doom you (no… I won’t get into each supposed global destruction scenario at this time. Was that a sigh of relief I just heard?)
If you decide now to survive, you can face anything.
Decide now that you will not die easily!

And that brings us back to Hugh Glass, and why the lessons he can teach are so important to you and I as humans. Every conversation I have ever had concerning survivalism and being prepared devolves into a Christmas list.
Things to have “for” survival:
Sleeping bag
Tent
Five thousand gallons of water
AK47 with 10,000 rounds of ammunition
A GI Joe with a Kung Fu grip…

I won’t continue because you all know exactly what I am talking about. And I don’t point out the list as a way to make fun of it in any way; it is a universal mechanism that all people use to think about something very important: but it is a diversion at best.
What is being addressed of course is not survival but comfort.
Making the decision to survive involves understanding what it takes to survive.
And most modern humans have lost track of that.

You can go three days without water; water is very important!
Understand how to get it… and understand that people can drink some things that are about as far as one can get from what modern man normally considers water and still survive. If the choice is between dying from dehydration and sipping brackish water with chunks of poop floating in it, you dear reader will drink. Because you have decided to survive, and once that choice is made you will not die easily.

It takes an extremely long time to starve to death. So long in fact that there is a modern myth concerning food; this exists largely in the western world alone. Food is important, but it is a lesser consideration concerning survival.
Shelter… fire… give me a break! Oh… that was almost heresy wasn’t it?
But then you don’t know Glass yet do you?

[wax]

Glass was born in 1783, and like all men of his time left childhood long before anything even jokingly considered adulthood today. He decided (or circumstance dictated) that he would make a life on the ocean and by the age of fifteen was already pirating English ships with his captain along the coast. People today forget that our modern concept of “childhood” is well… modern.

He went west after the War of 1812 but he was still a sailor, he manned long-boats on the Missouri River by 1823 for the company of William Ashley and Andrew Henry. One day, near Mobridge, SD overland toward Yellowstone.

Just south of a more modern (but I am sure Glass wished it was there then!) Lemmon, SD, Glass surprised a grizzly bear and her two cubs while scouting for the party. Using only his knife and bare hands, Glass wrestled the full-grown bear to the ground and killed it, but in the process he was badly mauled and bitten. No… I don’t mean cut in a few places. A man with a knife and no assistance fighting a grizzly bear must understand the sacrifice required for survival. It is great, but must be given because you have chosen to survive.

His companions arrived on the scene to see a bloody and badly maimed Glass barely alive and the bear lying on top of him. They bandaged his wounds the best they could and waited for him to die. They assumed it would happen quickly but it didn’t. Henry asked for volunteers to stay until Glass was dead and then bury him. John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger agreed and immediately began digging the grave. But after three days Glass was still alive when Fitzgerald and Bridger began to panic as a band of hostile Indians was seen approaching. The two men picked up Glass's rifle, knife and other equipment and dumped him into the open grave. They threw a bearskin over him and shoveled in a thin layer of dirt and leaves, leaving Glass for dead.

After awhile he regained consciousness to a very real survival situation. He was alone and unarmed in hostile Indian Territory. He had a broken leg and his wounds were festering. His scalp was almost torn away and the flesh on his back had been ripped away so that his rib bones were exposed. The nearest help was 200 miles away at Ft. Kiowa. His only protection was the bearskin hide.

Glass set his own broken leg and on September 9, 1823, began crawling south overland toward the Cheyenne River about 100 miles away. Fever and infection took their toll and frequently rendered him unconscious. His wounds of course became maggot infested, but that is a good sign as nasty as the thought might be because the maggots cleaned any infection that might develop. He got water from morning dew and any depression he passed. He ate bugs and any berries or roots he chanced by, and once he had the luxury of chasing off two wolves from a downed bison calf and eat the raw meat.

It took Glass two months to crawl to the Cheyenne River. There he built a raft from a fallen tree and allowed the current to carry him downstream to the Missouri and on to Ft. Kiowa, a point about four miles north of the present-day Chamberlain.

Glass eventually returned to the Upper Missouri where he died in 1833 in a battle with hostile Indians. No one knows exactly how he was killed but I can point out one fact that is obvious: He didn’t die easily!

I was forced to memorize his story as a child concerning dates and locations but it has been a long time so anyone with a correction is welcome to present it. I’m sure one could “Google” him; there is a monument to him located on the shores of the Shadehill Reservoir southwest of Shadehill, SD.

I say I was forced to memorize it, but I think every adult human should.
If you decide to die there is absolutely nothing that can be done to save you, but if you decide to live… well… I wouldn’t bet against you.

In an emergency, no matter what that emergency might be, gather everyone around you and force them to make a decision. Do you want to live or do you want to die?
It would appear to most to be a stupid question but of course you know that it is not!

[WileyCoyote]

Nice job, Wax.
I like the story about Glass; would you believe I had never heard it before?

And I agree; so many times as the children were growing up they had liberal teachers who tried to convince my kids that "It takes a village" and all of that dependent, whiny sorrowful crap. I had to keep teaching them that survival was all about planning, preparation, knowledge, critical thinking - and attitude! Now that they are all adults, the thing that impresses most people about them is - their determined attitudes.

[Txanne]

Wax,

Provacative thoughts!!

I had to make that very decision this past winter:

And you have to dig into yourself--the core of being human.

I survived primative off grid living for 10 years---simply moving back into the [[[civilized world----dumbs us down--we begin to depend on the [[it takes a village]]edits for our lives.


Thank you

annie

[bookwormom]

thanks for posting wax


this also prompts some personal questions that are none of my business, so I refrain
.
quote:
If you decide to die there is absolutely nothing that can be done to save you, but if you decide to live… well… I wouldn’t bet against you.

I heard something similar from a natural, herbalist doctor who has had a fantastic record in curing terminal cancer patients.

Humanity survived off grid for the longest of times. It is just lately that we have become so dependent and soft.
When I was a child we had nothing of what seems so important today. My folks had the knowledge of how to make a good life that way in a climate where they joke that it it is 8 month winter and 4 month cold. Be in touch with your roots. More than anybody I think about my two grandmothers. Two women I deeply respect and honor. Each had nine children and nothing that seems necessary today. When I was born my mother made diapers out of an old sheet that my father got in trade for making something for someone. It did not hurt me. My grandfather said, water has to run to a house and the people made pipes out of straight long pines and fit them together. the water from a spring ran day and night into a stone trough and I can still hear the sound, it was nice to go to sleep by it. better than any of the walkmans or whatever they have now.
My grandmother cooked on a stove, inside, that was laid up of brick and clay, had a bake oven in it and a sheet of cast iron on top for cooking on it. it was whitewashed on the outside, but some folks with money actually had tile on the outside. some stoves were bigger, like on bigger farms, we just were small homesteaders, there the stove was part of the wall, and in the entranceway you would stoke it and there was also an iron kettle that was built into the stove, like a rendering or wash kettle . that way you had hot water and also potatoes were cooked in there en masse, as chickens and geese and the hog if there was one, got cooked potatoes in winter with a few hands of shredded up grain.
this was not surviving in a dire emergency, but living day today using your wits, the knowledge of how to do and make things you learned from your parents and family, having no money, using what nature gives you. We had a "writer" who lived with my family for a while who documented our way of life. In one story he has a grandfather talk to his grandson, "look at the mountain son, it gives us everything we need. indeed, our house is built from the rocks, and the trees on it, your great grandfather hauled them down fromon the sled that was made of an ash tree that grew on the mountain. the feed for our goats grows in the windbreaks, and mushrooms we get from the forest to last all winter (we ate a lot of mushrooms, I counted 19 varieties that we still eat) Look here come your sisters and their baskets are full of berries. Grandmother will put them up in crocks and in winter they will taste good. Yes, and what we do not eat we can sell and you get a pair of britches to wear to school when you start first grade this fall.And look at the firewood stacked against the house to keep the cold out and to heat the house when the snow comes. ...(as best as I can remember)
The only things we bought at the store were soap, salt some sugar, matches, ( I know wax, what a waste of money)
they also must have bought lamp oil.
Lately I have been thinking a lot more about my roots, because even though I have more land than my grandparents had, if we had to depend on our place right now we would starve. Our potato crop failed. we have no grains that we planted, no lentils. However, my land is worn out and I have to work hard to restore some fertility to it, I don't know if it will ever get healthy. the land of my ancestors had been farmed for over a thousand years and they used methods to maintain health and fertility. I remember when "nitrogen" came in bags to our remote village. Grandmother never used it.

My husband and I are dependent on water that has to be pumped up 173 feet by an electric pump. I am not up to snuff when I think of grandmother. And my husband, sweet and good though he is, he has not learned anything from his ancestors but shoot a gun. WE have to learn a lot of things by hard knocks. and we are alone, grandmother would come and tell us when she needed us to do for her, I have to do it all by myself. As a twelve year old I learned to cut the wheat with a scythe, and the clover, the other day I sharpened my scythe on the little anvil my grandfather used for the same purpose, but my brother has grandfather's hammer (you use a hammer to get a scythe sharp).
I learned that planting potatos the way my folks did will not necessarily work here, I have to learn new things.
well, I better scoot, I just checked in to post a question about alternative potato growing techniques and got sidetracked and sentimental, so please excuse.

[wax]

BWM- this also prompts some personal questions that are none of my business, so I refrain

Wax- By all means, ask away.
I think I have shown by posting "My Story So Far" that I am open to not only disclosing but discussing aspects of my life which some others would consider very "personal".

Asking anything at all will not be met with a negative response... though I reserve the right to simply with-hold anything I do not feel like discussing of course.

I am not so much an "open book" as an encyclopedia concerning notable events and my own perceptions of them.

So far, I have with-held at least one or two events which are simply too painful to post at this time; maybe someday but not yet.

So again by all means --- ask away.