The way we die in the Bush (some people just give up)

Moine

Moine

Joined
Aug 15, 2003
Messages
494
Hi all,

I've also posted this thread on the Survival Chat over at the Swamp Rat forum... but I'd like to get your answers as well.

I was re-parsing randomly "Deep Survival" (from Lawrence Gonzales) this afternoon. I came across two little quotes that I'd like to discuss with you.

"The ability people possess to die gently, and often suddenly, through no organic cause is a very real one" (John Leach, Survival Psychology).

Then I read on...

"I have photos of a man who settled into a cozy bed of pine needles after removing his shoes, pants, and jacket and setting his wallet on a nearby rock. In the photos he seems so peaceful; it's hard to believe he's dead. The photos have some special significance for me, because I helped coordinate the search. Whenever I start to believe I'm some hot **** SAR expert, I pull the photos and I'm over it" (Kenneth Hill, SAR expert apparently living in Nova Scotia, Canada).

That puzzles me.

I remember SARHound telling me in a previous thread that "people die from exposure, even in the summer"...

Is it possible that many cases of so called "death by exposure" could be related to that kind of sudden death phenomenon?

How does that work?

Why do some people "just give up" like that?

I just don't get it...

Cheers,

David

PS: for those who are lucky enough to own that book, it's on page 157.
 
I liken the so called phenomenon to a terminally ill individual whose doctor just told them that there is no chance for their survival, which I feel is a big mistake. It takes the wind right outta their patients sails. Many simply give up the fight for life, lay down and die. They mentally die and then physically die. It's the same with perfectly healthy people. They tell themselves that there is no way out of a given situation and they're going to die. Then they 'give up the ghost', lay down and do just that.

In the reverse and there is always an opposite to every situation, if you give that terminally ill patient hope, their is a good possibility that their possitive outlook for recovery will actually help them to heal. Same as a possitive outlook in any given situation will help an individual to keep on trying to survive and that individual will probably succeed.
 
Moine said:
Hi all,

I've also posted this thread on the Survival Chat over at the Swamp Rat forum... but I'd like to get your answers as well.

I was re-parsing randomly "Deep Survival" (from Lawrence Gonzales) this afternoon. I came across two little quotes that I'd like to discuss with you.

"The ability people possess to die gently, and often suddenly, through no organic cause is a very real one" (John Leach, Survival Psychology).

Then I read on...

"I have photos of a man who settled into a cozy bed of pine needles after removing his shoes, pants, and jacket and setting his wallet on a nearby rock. In the photos he seems so peaceful; it's hard to believe he's dead. The photos have some special significance for me, because I helped coordinate the search. Whenever I start to believe I'm some hot **** SAR expert, I pull the photos and I'm over it" (Kenneth Hill, SAR expert apparently living in Nova Scotia, Canada).

That puzzles me.

I remember SARHound telling me in a previous thread that "people die from exposure, even in the summer"...

Is it possible that many cases of so called "death by exposure" could be related to that kind of sudden death phenomenon?

How does that work?

Why do some people "just give up" like that?

I just don't get it...

Cheers,

David

PS: for those who are lucky enough to own that book, it's on page 157.
Click to expand...


Anthony Hopkins has a great line in the movie The Edge...about how most people die in the woods from shame...being embarassed that they got into this situation, they just give up.

I am always a little shocked to see some adult that dies lost in the woods from starvation and exposure.....have we completely lost our roots???
 
"The ability to die gently through no organic cause'

I saw a documentary that had been made in the 1970's in Australia where a medical team tried to keep alive a desert Aborigine who had been 'sung to death' (also called pointing the bone). He had been told to die by the tribal elders for violating tribal law and promptly laid down and started to pass away. The doctors could not keep him alive.

I also heard a few tales from up where I used to live how aborigines would sing to death a particularly cruel landlord or policeman.
 
I can think of one "Bush" I'm willing to die in...LOL

But seriously,
Death is not necessarily a bad thing... if one wants to go, then one should.
 
I don't think people should be kept alive against their will, but that's another issue entirely. These people probably gave up the fight to survive. I suppose everyone should know a bit about living in the bush. If all this guy had were his clothes and a wallet, he obviously got REAL lost, or didn't know what he was doing. Wish this stuff didn't happen...
 
The Last Confederate said:
Anthony Hopkins has a great line in the movie The Edge...about how most people die in the woods from shame...being embarassed that they got into this situation, they just give up.

I am always a little shocked to see some adult that dies lost in the woods from starvation and exposure.....have we completely lost our roots???
Click to expand...

Tom Brown has said that if there is a grown man lost in the woods for 4 days in the cold he won't go looking for them because they are dead. But you put a child in a worse situation for a longer period of time and he'll go find them alive 95% of the time. He said this is because adults have had all their instincts taught out of them and a child has not. Where a child will get under a pile of leaves or pine straw to keep warm an adult will sit down on a stump and freeze to death simply because the child hasn't been taught to stay clean, stay out of the mud so to speak. Makes sense, a lot of the things I would do now in a survival situation I wouldn't have thought of before I stated training for such an occasion. And my mom wasn't really able to teach me to stay out of the mud...;-)

Ric
 
100% agreed, Ric. Rule followers are not high on my list when it comes to survival...

Cheers,

David
 
"I am always a little shocked to see some adult that dies lost in the woods from starvation and exposure.....have we completely lost our roots???"

yes. a lot of people have, completely in every way shape and form. when you go to a preschool class for a day and hear the teacher ask each student "what do you and your mom/dad like to do together?"

and you get 3 or 4 kids per class say "my mom likes to come home and go into her bedroom and watch t.v. alone..." and thats it. thats what that kid gets. ya, we've lost our roots. how is that kid going to grow up to know how to survive in the woods alone? cause i can tell you, i didnt learn anything about that in school, and i didnt learn it at home...

i feel that a lot of the death without cause comes from blind depression, the kind where you lock out other possibilities, to the point of blindness. even if you see water, you dont think of the fact that there may be fish in it, its not even there anymore. its just you, and a downward cycle of end scenario logic that slowly loses possibilities. when you force out options, you leave yourself open to very simple deaths, like the common cold to a person suffering from aids. if you make yourself stop shivering and moving, you'll die in 45 degree weather given what would have been very promising circumstances.

depression is a powerful thing...
 
"Depression is a powerful thing"

True... But depression does have a cause. Bad thinking habits. Too much comfort. Too much people swallowing blindly the "truths" that are rammed down our throats every day.

Freedom is the answer. Free thinking. Freedom of mind. Innovation. Imagination.

Get rid of the old, useless, dangerous dogma. Think for yourself.

Cheers,

David
 
This is an excellent thread.
to answer your question; Why do people perish in the woods?

We are not all equal!

Makes me think of Dylan Thomas's poem "Do not go gentile into that good night". "Rage Rage against the dying of the light"


gives me chills just thinking of it.
 
As stated earlier, most people die of exposure, i.e. hypothermia, even in the summer months. Statistically, hypothermia is the #1 killer of lost people in the wilderness, however it was their mind that got them there for those that know they are in a survival situation usually panic.

The father of a positive mental attitude is SKILL.
The mother of a positive mental attitude is CHOICE. (happy or miserable, heaven or hell)

This is a good thread… Let’s keep it going.

If you were in a survival situation in say a temperate forest (any season), would you panic if you were without your BOB or SURVIVAL PACK? Could you survive a month with just a knife, or no knife? What skills do you have, as you need to procure SHELTER, WATER, FIRE, and FOOD? What are your priorities? Give us your plan?
 
Like Anthony Hopkins said of most people who die in the wilds in "The Edge", "They die of shame, they think 'how could I let this happen?', 'how could I have gotten myself into this?' So they sit down and they die, because they didn't do the one thing which would have saved their lives...thinking."

I think that's pretty true. Most people tend to let panic get the upper hand.

I would just hope that if it was me lost in the wilds, I'd have my knife and ferrocerium rod with me as I'm not very good at friction firelighting!
 
Down in Brazil I often take groups of city kids out for their first expereince in
the wildrness. It is amazing to me how they are totally unaware of the simple rythems of life such as hunger and thirst and sunrise and sunset.

In the civilized world these things are subject to your every whim. Water and food are there for the taking, literally at your fingertips. The sun never really sets. As soon as it gets dark the house and street lights come on. We have no sense of distance when everything is one or two "busses" away or a short drive in the car.

The kids would look at me like I was crazy trying to hurry them through some task or trail because we had to set camp before it got pitch dark. I would tell them when it was going to rain and when it was going to stop. The first day I did this thye thought I was nuts, then they thought I was a prophet. The simple fact is that it had done the same thing for two weeks and we were in a stable weather pattern, they just had never actually noticed it.

At one point three kids got totally soaked, along with all their bedding. They were in that sit down and die mode. I made a big fire (1 meter flame) with some of my more enthusiastic kids and we dried all their stuff in a about a half hour while they were off co-miserating. When they got back they had a little chat with me that they had to give up and go home because all their stuff was soaked. I showed them the dry stuff and they agreed to follow my original instructions.

I find that it takes about three days and nights for them to begin to adapt to the inflexible cycles of real life. It is a huge mental hurdle for some people to cope with actual darkness they can do nothing about or walk a kilometer to fill water containers. They fear everything that moves.

It is not hard to imagine people who have no clue as to what they need nor what nature demands and provides just sitting down and giving up. For most people their number one and number two NEEDS are comfort and ease. Nature provides very little of either. Mac
 
I would agree with most of you. It is my philosphy that about 9/10ths of everything you do comes down to a mental aspect.

In the case of survival, though there is definatly something to the notion that people just give up, I would say that abject stupidity or at least severe ignorance kill as many people as attitude does.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top