The problem with survival situations is that the vast majority of people don't expect to be placed in one and aren't prepared for it. It's not exactly something you'd "expect"!
Some of us deliberately put ourselves in situations where we know there will be certain consequences if things don't go to plan so we prepare for what we hope will be the worst case. Most people, however, think it won't happen to them, or even consider, "what if...".
I've travelled the world by sea, land and air since leaving school and couldn't even guess how many vocational survival courses (survival at sea, desert; helicopter, ship, lifeboat, car/truck mechanics; first aid, firefighting, etc) I've taken, or more to the point, been forced to take. It's usually fun once you get there but they're normally done in your own time rather than the company's, and that's always a bummer!
Most survival courses concentrate on surviving the initial crisis, ie, the impact of a plane or chopper crash and abandonment of whatever vessel. In the offshore oil industry it has become standard practice to refresh every couple of years and it becomes instinctive after a while to pay attention to your orientation to the nearest exit and any other aspect giving the slightest advantage, like how many seat-backs from the door you are and how to get the doors open! The really important realisation is that the whole is composed of individual stages, each of which must be overcome.
If you fail in one stage of the initial crisis, ie; forgetting your seat-belt is still buckled: no matter how fit or strong... the rest is purely academic!
I take commercial flights regularly and have to say that every time I fly, I can't help noticing those who have heard it all before and prefer their newspaper to the in-flight briefing, and thinking to myself, "I've seen tougher men than you screaming in panic."
I have, in my day, abandoned a ship, 2 drilling rigs, and spent some time in a life-boat, thankfully only about 24 hours. I worked with a guy who spent 3 days floating alone in a life-jacket in the South China Sea and have spent the night in a boat looking for someone who fell overboard in the Arabian Sea. We never found him and to my knowledge, no trace was ever found. In another incident, abandoning a rig off the coast of India, one guy slipped when getting into a boat at sea level and by the time we got him in-board something had bitten off a bum-cheek.
There's a well known story of a Chinese cook who survived alone in a lifeboat for something horrible like 70 days after a ship of the Ben Line sank at sea in the Far East. Other survivors swore that there were others in the boat with him when it was last seen and he was accused of cannibalism. Huh, Orientals! No Brit would ever do such a thing! The fact remains though, that he lived while the ones you'd expect to survive, the sailors, didn't. But the ascent of the least expected individuals in such circumstances is by no means unique.
If I've learned anything it's that you can practice and drill until doomsday, but it's still the small things that count. Practice and familiarity improve your chances of course, training for the event if you want to brood on what might go wrong, but it's the slips, missed steps, inattentiveness and panic that will remove you most quickly from the gene-pool, physically fit or not, and I'm convinced that the same is true for the longer term.
Some of us deliberately put ourselves in situations where we know there will be certain consequences if things don't go to plan so we prepare for what we hope will be the worst case. Most people, however, think it won't happen to them, or even consider, "what if...".
I've travelled the world by sea, land and air since leaving school and couldn't even guess how many vocational survival courses (survival at sea, desert; helicopter, ship, lifeboat, car/truck mechanics; first aid, firefighting, etc) I've taken, or more to the point, been forced to take. It's usually fun once you get there but they're normally done in your own time rather than the company's, and that's always a bummer!
Most survival courses concentrate on surviving the initial crisis, ie, the impact of a plane or chopper crash and abandonment of whatever vessel. In the offshore oil industry it has become standard practice to refresh every couple of years and it becomes instinctive after a while to pay attention to your orientation to the nearest exit and any other aspect giving the slightest advantage, like how many seat-backs from the door you are and how to get the doors open! The really important realisation is that the whole is composed of individual stages, each of which must be overcome.
If you fail in one stage of the initial crisis, ie; forgetting your seat-belt is still buckled: no matter how fit or strong... the rest is purely academic!
I take commercial flights regularly and have to say that every time I fly, I can't help noticing those who have heard it all before and prefer their newspaper to the in-flight briefing, and thinking to myself, "I've seen tougher men than you screaming in panic."
I have, in my day, abandoned a ship, 2 drilling rigs, and spent some time in a life-boat, thankfully only about 24 hours. I worked with a guy who spent 3 days floating alone in a life-jacket in the South China Sea and have spent the night in a boat looking for someone who fell overboard in the Arabian Sea. We never found him and to my knowledge, no trace was ever found. In another incident, abandoning a rig off the coast of India, one guy slipped when getting into a boat at sea level and by the time we got him in-board something had bitten off a bum-cheek.
There's a well known story of a Chinese cook who survived alone in a lifeboat for something horrible like 70 days after a ship of the Ben Line sank at sea in the Far East. Other survivors swore that there were others in the boat with him when it was last seen and he was accused of cannibalism. Huh, Orientals! No Brit would ever do such a thing! The fact remains though, that he lived while the ones you'd expect to survive, the sailors, didn't. But the ascent of the least expected individuals in such circumstances is by no means unique.
If I've learned anything it's that you can practice and drill until doomsday, but it's still the small things that count. Practice and familiarity improve your chances of course, training for the event if you want to brood on what might go wrong, but it's the slips, missed steps, inattentiveness and panic that will remove you most quickly from the gene-pool, physically fit or not, and I'm convinced that the same is true for the longer term.
