Opinions On The Best and Worst Season For Surviving?

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beckerhead

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Feb 11, 2005
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What do you think is the worst/best season of the year for getting by? Here in Arkansas our winters are cold, but not fierce like up north. But, the summers can be truly hellish. I would take fall or winter anytime. other thoughts?
 
Well,I would say Winter can cause the most difficulties in day to day survival for various reasons.Extremes of any type of weather can be problematic.
 
Here in the Boreal forest of Maine, I'd say the easiest time would be late summer. It's fairly dry, but there is still plenty of water around, the woods abound with food, and the insects aren't quite so fierce as they are in late spring/early summer. The worst would probably be early spring. It's raw, cold, and worst of all, wet.
 
Lets say you are in your car. All alone...No extra clothes, No gear at all, and you car stops and you begin to walk to get help...

winter kills...
I think right now if I went out side without a shirt on I would last about 15 min before I would need to go to the hospital....25 min and I would be dead.

so winter kills.

Summer is hot, spring is wet, fall is windy,but if Im in good shape, then no matter how baddly Im prepared I can live and walk to get help. But in the winter, people that try to "walk to get help" are in a lot of danger.

Each year around here some fool tries to walk a 1/4 mile into the teeth of a winter snow storm and is found 3 days later bent over in the ditch.

Winter kills...
 
I'd have to say winter for sure. I live in Maryland and the winters aren't bad by "up north" standards, but I'd still say thats the worst time of year to get into a bad situation outdoors. I used to live in Wyoming...and that is just no-brainer!
 
In Pennsylvania you have a pretty easy time from late spring to late fall. In early spring you get these cold drenching rains that make life tough. In August the springs are pretty dry in the higher elevations but you almost always have water up there if you search for it. In the fall it gets pretty cold at night but you also have a thick carpet of fresh leaves for making a debris shelter.

The winter is very hard there, from a survival perspective. You don't often get enough snow to make an easy show shelter and the forest debris is often frozen into a sheet of ice. Winter could easily kill you there. Late winter sometimes produces deep snow but not ever year. I hate march in PA, everything turns to mud, the forest floor is ofen so soggy you can't stand it, nothing is growing yet.

Here in central Brazil I would have to say to two extremes we get make life difficult. Right now its the tail end of rainy season. We just came off a week of constant rain and cool temps. Now its sunny, humid and on its way to the high 80's. On the other end of the year we will go more than 100 days with no rain at all and eveything turns brown and dead. The springs get very dry and water can be very hard to find. The north east part of my state turns into a dust-bowl. The northeast part of the country is extremely dry and unproductive. Mac
 
From what I have read, the native Americans used to call winter " the hungry time", and that was when game was relatively plentiful. Even if prepared for the cold an extended unplanned winter outing could be debilitating or fatal.
Summer in a desert environment could be worse, due to water shortage.
If you could arrange to be in a green belt along a river or good size stream most times could be relatively good except durring extended freeze cycles.
Enjoy!
 
Where I live the worst would be the winter. The temptures rarely fall below freezing but the amount of rain that we get soaks everything. One would be hard pressed to find dry stuff to start a fire. Knowing this Im usually overkill on tinder and fire making supplys. The best would be the summers. Still damp from fog but many edible plants to be found if one knows them. Water is very easy to find. All of this applys to the coast here. If one was to head over the coast ranges different rules apply.
 
During rainy season here it is common to get steady soaking rain for more than a month. It once took me half an hour to get a fire going and used up an entire votive candle to cook the tinder. Mac
 
Great info guys. my reasons for cooler seasons are that here in Arkansas our winters are really pretty mild by most standards. finding water would be no problem, also hickory nuts, muscadines, persimmons are good and ripe. And where you find persimmons & muscadines you also find ole' mr. possum. Plus crawfish, & freshwater mussels are to be found everywhere I've been in the state. pine knots (that may be an Arkansas name), are as common as dirt, so fire would be a no brainer. Some other things we have in great abundance are ticks (lyme disease), chiggers (insane itching), mosquitos (aggravating + west nile), and acres of poison ivy, poison oak, sumac, and nettle. So yes if I got to pick my "poison" it would be fall or winter without a doubt.
 
Central Texas? It can be uncomfortably hot or cold. I'd rather be hot anytime as my having worked outdoors most of my life developed my heat tolerance. I detest cold weather and intensly abhor snow which I rarely have to deal with for more than 12 hours. Even in 'winter' if I am outdoors doing something I usually need no more than a sweatshirt or jean jacket. We occasionally get 'northers' or ice storms either of which changes the odds greatly though they last only a few days tops. Darn it.
 
Environment (humid/dry/rain/snow/relief/vegetation/trees/no trees), time of day, and terrain can have an impact, too. Any conditions that make it more difficult to supply your basic needs (fire/shelter, water, food), whether extremnely hot or cold, can be a problem. So, yes, winter kills if it's a) wet hypothermic conditions hovering around and above 32 deg F, or way below zero, and yet a lovely summer day in Death Valley, with almost no cover, etc., can ruin your health pretty quickly, too. Add in an injury or two and it gets even more interesting.

~B.
 
Except for the deserts, I'd say the middle of winter, both short term and long term, especially in higher latitudes.

Short term, the cold is, of course, the biggest ennemy. But with a good shelter and fire you can keep going a few weeks, even without food.

Long term, though, you spend much more energy producing heat, moving from point A to point B, and doing everything... and the food is very scarce. Basically you have little or no vegetal food available. If you can kill a fat cariboo you might be able to survive... but even cariboos get pretty lean by that time. So long term survival in winter is very hard. I know only one person who did survive a whole winter on his own with only a ka-bar and a small PSK, and he gets all my respect. I'm not sure I could do it.

If you can pile up some energy rich food (fat, sugar, flour) before winter, it changes many things... but this is not survival anymore. It's just living in the bush.

Cheers,

David
 
Here on the central coast of good ol' Kalifornia, summers get hot (117+) and water can be difficult to locate for those that aren't familiar with the area.
Winters are relatively mild as compared to farther north, but weather can turn sour and stay that way, causing any waterways to crest their banks.

For the best time, I pick spring for it's abundance of new growth (food) and available water. This time of year it can get nice and it's warm and sunny as I type this and it's supposed to be in the 80s all week long. Yep, spring is the best time around here.
 
Given ample opportunity a person can fail to survive in any situation, but winter and extreme cold will kill a person the quickest. Next would be summer and extremely quick dehydration. Spring and fall? Like summer and winter, it all depends on where you are. It is a serious hazard when people travel or vacation in climates for which they are unprepared or unaware, most of the time things work out okay, but things can go really wrong really really fast.
 
Wow, I can honestly say that my belt kit and my skills would be maxed out in a freakin' Siberian winter. Its a good idea to see how one can make his/her kit, and skills not only as multi-purpose as possible, but also as adaptable as possible.
 
Mid to late spring and mid fall as opposed to winter and summer every time. MD can be very unpredictable, but those times are my favorite times of year.
 
Hmmm, a very interesting question. I live in New Mexico, which has varied terrain. For the most part, it's semi-arid, with little or no water readily available. In the mountains, things can be a bit easier, unless you are talking severe winter cold. So, I think the easiest time to survive around here would be early to mid autumn, in the mountains. Plenty of vegetation game to trap/snare, and water is available, at least, to be collected. The most difficult time would be in the dead heat of summer in the most arid parts of the state. Winter could also obviously be difficult in the mountains, but it hasn't been getting as cold around here as it used to.
 
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