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Man dies os dehydration on survival course
- Thread starter Roodog
- Start date
I should have mentioned as part of this training and reading is the rule which is to "conserve sweat not water". Simply put, sweat as little as you can manage by not being active during the day and drink as much water as you need/can find. No responsible person or organization that I am aware of advocates conservation of water in conditions like that.
KR
No Horned Toad, just the most hydrated out there.
Don't know about best trained or conditioned; I only chatted with a few of 'em, once.
xbxb
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"Campers are equipped with a knife, water cup, blanket and poncho and are told they could lose 20 pounds or more. Among the things they learn is how to catch fish with their hands and how to kill a sheep with a knife."
Maybe the instructors need to figure out what the water cup is for.
Maybe the instructors need to figure out what the water cup is for.
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"I really like Picts training method and wonder if that is what they were trying to do here."
Let me make it real clear that I'm not inducing dehydration. I just want them to feel it as a necessity. I get them about as thirsty as if they had played a game of soccer or done a football practice in August.
I have experienced real serious dehydration and it leaves a life-long impression. Dehydration is pure torture and you have no way to predict how each individual will react to it.
I worry about guys who seem to make it a macho thing to be able to go without water. If you need to prove you're a man by all means piss your initials in the dust. If it comes out yellow, you need water. Mac
Let me make it real clear that I'm not inducing dehydration. I just want them to feel it as a necessity. I get them about as thirsty as if they had played a game of soccer or done a football practice in August.
I have experienced real serious dehydration and it leaves a life-long impression. Dehydration is pure torture and you have no way to predict how each individual will react to it.
I worry about guys who seem to make it a macho thing to be able to go without water. If you need to prove you're a man by all means piss your initials in the dust. If it comes out yellow, you need water. Mac
Echoing a lot of what others have said, I'm not sure I see the "survival training" part of this. It sounds more like stupidity training. You've found a stream to drink from in the desert, so what's the right answer:
a) Leave the water source, don't take any with you, and walk 10 hours in the heat of the day
or
b) Stay close to the water, look for a food source nearby if you think you'll be stuck there that long, or if you need to travel, leave at night and/or use the poncho to make an emergency bladder to carry water with you until you find more.
I might pay a few thousand for guides to teach me things like b). I think any clueless person could manage to try a) on their own.
I'd really like to think I wouldn't have helped the poor fellow, because I'd have been too far away, still sitting back at the first stream, hoping this was a trick test to see who in the group was dumb enough to be talked into the wrong survival decision through peer pressure.
a) Leave the water source, don't take any with you, and walk 10 hours in the heat of the day
or
b) Stay close to the water, look for a food source nearby if you think you'll be stuck there that long, or if you need to travel, leave at night and/or use the poncho to make an emergency bladder to carry water with you until you find more.
I might pay a few thousand for guides to teach me things like b). I think any clueless person could manage to try a) on their own.
I'd really like to think I wouldn't have helped the poor fellow, because I'd have been too far away, still sitting back at the first stream, hoping this was a trick test to see who in the group was dumb enough to be talked into the wrong survival decision through peer pressure.
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Its posted here in a couple of spots I think. I was in the 75th Ranger Regiment from 04/91-01/95. I was in RFSE, I was in on the real brief rebirth of the Regimental COLT teams, and when that fell through I got rolled over into RRD on Tm 3 for my last year and three months or so. My big schools were Ranger School, SERE lvl C at Bragg and MFF. I did a lot of other little MTTs and trained with quite a few different people. No combat or deeds of daring do other than a parachute or two not wanting to open and about getting stitched by a mini gun on a range once. There was a lot of being in the right place at the right time to get to jump around like I did. I can say I was one of the first FOs in RRD which at the time was unheard of. Now compared to what the troops are doing daily it all old news and pretty ho-hum.
Thats where my main bulk of experience comes from, right now I am doing the LEO thing and I can track pretty well, but thats about it.
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I didnt get the impression you inducing dehydration. I would think the students being a little thirsty would no make them squeamish when it came time to drink water that doesnt look like it came out of a bottle. I have done the severe heat exhaustion when I was a lot younger. Its defiantly not fun and seeing someone experiencing heat stroke at the same time was pretty darn scary.
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One specialty of a fire support team is to act as a COLT (Combat Observation Lasing Team). The COLT is a high-technology observer team often called on to maximize the use of smart munitions such as the M712_Copperhead. COLTs are regularly equipped with a GLLD, a device used to assist any munition which requires reflected laser energy for final ballistic guidance.
That blip is one way to say it, the other way is to say that for four people to have to carry that much gear, optics, radios, batteries, water, and a little food should be against the law. That and we had a laser designator that was alot smaller than a GLLD which is more vehicle related than man portable
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What bugs me is that this school seems to be shirking responsibility completely. What the hell is the point of having guides if they can't keep people alive? Now I understand the importance of WS traning and I'm a big fan, but what they do seems less like training and more like some frat initiation gone wrong. Not allowing water to be carried? In what survival setting would you NOT want to bring some of the water you found with you? I suppose if you were stranded in the middle of some gigantic body of fresh water you could do without extra water but the desert? Come on.
When I hike/camp with my buddies, I advise them to carry as little as possible and personally take only the bare minimum of supplies. I tend to be the hard-ass and tell people to 'suck it up' or 'just hump' but the second someone shows any signs of serious distress, we all stop and do something about it. A couple summers back we had a guy suffer from heat exhaustion in the middle of the woods. We stopped, sat him down, and those of us with fluid still in our canteens gave up what we had (we agreed before-hand that water was absolutely necessary to add to our meager gear). I wonder if he'd still be my friend if I told him he couldn't have any water until we got to the creek a quarter mile away.
When I hike/camp with my buddies, I advise them to carry as little as possible and personally take only the bare minimum of supplies. I tend to be the hard-ass and tell people to 'suck it up' or 'just hump' but the second someone shows any signs of serious distress, we all stop and do something about it. A couple summers back we had a guy suffer from heat exhaustion in the middle of the woods. We stopped, sat him down, and those of us with fluid still in our canteens gave up what we had (we agreed before-hand that water was absolutely necessary to add to our meager gear). I wonder if he'd still be my friend if I told him he couldn't have any water until we got to the creek a quarter mile away.
Someone mentioned seeing hikers carrying an empty AquaFina water bottle. 16oz of water for a day hike! When my son was in fifth grade the 3 classes were planning for a 12 mile hike from the campground to the pickup point. The mother in charge allowed no more than 16.9oz of water to be carried by each kid. She wanted to inspect each student's day pack before they left on the hike to make sure no extra water was being carried.
I called BS on this one and had the rules changed though I had to go to the principal. As it turned out the day was warm and all the water was consumed. We had cold watermellon slices and ice creambars waiting for the kids when they finished and believe me they needed them.
Last weekend the scouts did about 10 miles in 96oF. I carried a 3 liter Camelbak and a 1L Nalgene bottle to mix up Gatorade. This week I bought a 6L Camelbak bladder for the BFM.
Last night I also bought Nuum and Elete electrolyte replacers. I have never heard of either one. Nuum is packaged in a tube like Airborne and Elete is a liquid in a dropper bottle. My google-fu is week right now so I haven't looked these up yet but does anybody have experience with either product?
I called BS on this one and had the rules changed though I had to go to the principal. As it turned out the day was warm and all the water was consumed. We had cold watermellon slices and ice creambars waiting for the kids when they finished and believe me they needed them.
Last weekend the scouts did about 10 miles in 96oF. I carried a 3 liter Camelbak and a 1L Nalgene bottle to mix up Gatorade. This week I bought a 6L Camelbak bladder for the BFM.
Last night I also bought Nuum and Elete electrolyte replacers. I have never heard of either one. Nuum is packaged in a tube like Airborne and Elete is a liquid in a dropper bottle. My google-fu is week right now so I haven't looked these up yet but does anybody have experience with either product?
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Hey Buddy
Don't trust the skin test on other people. Yourself and kids, as long as you have done it before on them, ok. But everyones skin is different, also the reason we don't use cap refill on adults anymore.
Big things, drink before you feel you need to. And always have water. We run on alot of people in the winter with dehydration. Most people day to day run on the border of dehydration and it doesn't take much stress to push them over the edge.
KR1 and someone else brought up the the effects.
What is the saying: an once in prevention a pound of cure. It takes twice as long to truely rehydrate as it does to dehydrate.
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Keep in mind that there are two phases of dehydration. It starts in the blood. Your body regulates the water content of your blood to keep it at the proper mix. As you dehydrate your blood concentrates until it starts getting out of that optimal range.
When this occurs the body will then try to bring the blood back into balance by robbing water from your organs and you pass from blood dehydration to tissue dehydration. Getting water back into the bloodstream is relatively quick, getting it to rehydrate tissues takes alot longer.
The brain will drive you to drink when the blood needs water. At that point if you are trying to ration water and start drinking the hollywood capfull you are doing absolutely nothing to solve the problem. You will soon pass into tissue dehydration and that is pure torture.
The brain suffers especially as it is largely made of water. That's why people go loopy when they suffer tissue dehydration.
As has been said most people live prepetually in a state of blood dehydration. You should drink enough to keep your urine clear or nearly so. That should be your starting point if you are intentionally headed into the wilderness.
In any group of people you very well may have someone who is on the verge of blood dehydration right at the start. These people don't see the need to drink in normal life and they certainly won't want to carry water on a hike. They are a walking disaster.
The guy who died in the BOSS course represents the end stage of tissue dehydration. He probably had borderline dehydration when he started and a 10 hour bake did him in. Mental toughness isn't going to overcome anything when the brain has turned into a rasin. Mac
When this occurs the body will then try to bring the blood back into balance by robbing water from your organs and you pass from blood dehydration to tissue dehydration. Getting water back into the bloodstream is relatively quick, getting it to rehydrate tissues takes alot longer.
The brain will drive you to drink when the blood needs water. At that point if you are trying to ration water and start drinking the hollywood capfull you are doing absolutely nothing to solve the problem. You will soon pass into tissue dehydration and that is pure torture.
The brain suffers especially as it is largely made of water. That's why people go loopy when they suffer tissue dehydration.
As has been said most people live prepetually in a state of blood dehydration. You should drink enough to keep your urine clear or nearly so. That should be your starting point if you are intentionally headed into the wilderness.
In any group of people you very well may have someone who is on the verge of blood dehydration right at the start. These people don't see the need to drink in normal life and they certainly won't want to carry water on a hike. They are a walking disaster.
The guy who died in the BOSS course represents the end stage of tissue dehydration. He probably had borderline dehydration when he started and a 10 hour bake did him in. Mental toughness isn't going to overcome anything when the brain has turned into a rasin. Mac