He! He!
I love these debates! - to get back to the original theme of the thread...Hat's off to you 3bears for a very interesting experiment and thank you for posting your conclusions. Now I'll add my thoughts to the fray!...
As a - soon to be retired - "combat pilot" and amateur bushcrafter, I have my own views, based on experience, on the bushcraft vs survival debate...I have attended most of the aircrew survival courses (which nowadays come under the SERE umbrella) as well as general military survival courses in Jungle, Desert and Temperate environments (and a very basic Arctic course, in a Scottish winter - which I don't count - as it was informal and I am not credited with it).
Survival is what it says on the tin (no pun intended) - the postponement of death - and it's not a pleasant place to be. "Survival" totally depends on your environment. To me, bushcraft is about living - nay, thriving - away from the normal trappings of civilisation and gaining a sense of self satisfaction whilst doing so.
A lot of military training - even at the basic level - and even though a lot of soldiers don't realise it - involves divorcing the mind from the body. Take the standard army CFT - 8 miles, carrying up to 50lbs and a rifle, in under 2 hours. To a fit soldier it is a boring, mind numbing exercise - to the unfit soldier it can be torture. Success in the CFT is the same for both the fit and unfit soldier - i.e. - let your body be carried along by the rhythm of the squad and let your mind think of higher things - what you're going to do this weekend, money saving strategies, how you're going to pull that girl you saw in the club last week...anything other than how much your feet hurt etc. This translates directly to operations. As an "old soldier" it is very easy for me to say that things weren't as tough as it was in my day - and I would be wrong. I am in awe of the young men we have in the army who can patrol in theatres such as Helmand, requiring intense concentration for hours at a time, whilst carrying 100lbs + in 50〫C + temperatures. These are, so called standard infantry soldiers and not "special forces" and the point is that they are trained to put up with this level of discomfort for months at a time. One of the reasons I'm retiring is that, in my late 40's, I can no longer divorce the mind from the body - it hurts - and the brain knows it! A couple of years ago I was on a SERE level C course with an RAF navigator of similar age to me. At the end of it we both looked at each other and we didn't have to say "Never again!" - the look was enough!
The point of the last paragraph is that most military survival tins I have ever come across are designed for trained soldiers to keep the body going (their minds can go on longer than most of us). In all the courses I have been on I have only used one item from a survival tin and that was a space blanket in Arizona - when we were lying up, in open desert, after a hard march at 3:00 am without shelter - I was gibbering! - and the blanket gave me warmth - though I wasn't the least bit comfortable! With that experience in mind, I keep a "liberated" vacuum packed space blanket in my upper right hand jacket pocket - just in case! One other thing I always have with me is a button compass (on a K&M match case) - Once in the jungle I left the camp with a shovel to answer a call of nature in the early hours. When I'd finished, I realised that I had no idea where the camp was - I was completely disorientated. I could have blundered about in the dark looking for it and gotten further lost - but I remembered my training and sat until dawn (getting eaten alive in the process!) when the camp awoke and I could locate it by sound (20 yards away!) - It's always useful to know "which way is up" when you can't see!
In UK (or for me now, France) - fish hooks? Nah! I'll hike to the nearest Burger King. Signal mirror? - it's in my shaving kit. Whistle? I can blow louder with two cold fingers in my chops! The most important survival tool I have is my iPhone (with GPS included) and a power monkey charger. I appreciate that if you're going bear watching in Alaska or the Yukon then your priorities may differ (Sat phone?). I will always take my hat off to legendary educators like Lofty and Ray - but I think that even Lofty would agree that his survival tin is a scattergun design to cover as many bases as possible. If you need the reassurance of a survival tin then fill your boots - horses for courses - but from someone who has carried them in anger, as it were, I would suggest that most survival situations in Western Europe require basics like shelter, warmth (both of which include your clothes), water - and, above all, communication.
I love these debates! - to get back to the original theme of the thread...Hat's off to you 3bears for a very interesting experiment and thank you for posting your conclusions. Now I'll add my thoughts to the fray!...
As a - soon to be retired - "combat pilot" and amateur bushcrafter, I have my own views, based on experience, on the bushcraft vs survival debate...I have attended most of the aircrew survival courses (which nowadays come under the SERE umbrella) as well as general military survival courses in Jungle, Desert and Temperate environments (and a very basic Arctic course, in a Scottish winter - which I don't count - as it was informal and I am not credited with it).
Survival is what it says on the tin (no pun intended) - the postponement of death - and it's not a pleasant place to be. "Survival" totally depends on your environment. To me, bushcraft is about living - nay, thriving - away from the normal trappings of civilisation and gaining a sense of self satisfaction whilst doing so.
A lot of military training - even at the basic level - and even though a lot of soldiers don't realise it - involves divorcing the mind from the body. Take the standard army CFT - 8 miles, carrying up to 50lbs and a rifle, in under 2 hours. To a fit soldier it is a boring, mind numbing exercise - to the unfit soldier it can be torture. Success in the CFT is the same for both the fit and unfit soldier - i.e. - let your body be carried along by the rhythm of the squad and let your mind think of higher things - what you're going to do this weekend, money saving strategies, how you're going to pull that girl you saw in the club last week...anything other than how much your feet hurt etc. This translates directly to operations. As an "old soldier" it is very easy for me to say that things weren't as tough as it was in my day - and I would be wrong. I am in awe of the young men we have in the army who can patrol in theatres such as Helmand, requiring intense concentration for hours at a time, whilst carrying 100lbs + in 50〫C + temperatures. These are, so called standard infantry soldiers and not "special forces" and the point is that they are trained to put up with this level of discomfort for months at a time. One of the reasons I'm retiring is that, in my late 40's, I can no longer divorce the mind from the body - it hurts - and the brain knows it! A couple of years ago I was on a SERE level C course with an RAF navigator of similar age to me. At the end of it we both looked at each other and we didn't have to say "Never again!" - the look was enough!
The point of the last paragraph is that most military survival tins I have ever come across are designed for trained soldiers to keep the body going (their minds can go on longer than most of us). In all the courses I have been on I have only used one item from a survival tin and that was a space blanket in Arizona - when we were lying up, in open desert, after a hard march at 3:00 am without shelter - I was gibbering! - and the blanket gave me warmth - though I wasn't the least bit comfortable! With that experience in mind, I keep a "liberated" vacuum packed space blanket in my upper right hand jacket pocket - just in case! One other thing I always have with me is a button compass (on a K&M match case) - Once in the jungle I left the camp with a shovel to answer a call of nature in the early hours. When I'd finished, I realised that I had no idea where the camp was - I was completely disorientated. I could have blundered about in the dark looking for it and gotten further lost - but I remembered my training and sat until dawn (getting eaten alive in the process!) when the camp awoke and I could locate it by sound (20 yards away!) - It's always useful to know "which way is up" when you can't see!
In UK (or for me now, France) - fish hooks? Nah! I'll hike to the nearest Burger King. Signal mirror? - it's in my shaving kit. Whistle? I can blow louder with two cold fingers in my chops! The most important survival tool I have is my iPhone (with GPS included) and a power monkey charger. I appreciate that if you're going bear watching in Alaska or the Yukon then your priorities may differ (Sat phone?). I will always take my hat off to legendary educators like Lofty and Ray - but I think that even Lofty would agree that his survival tin is a scattergun design to cover as many bases as possible. If you need the reassurance of a survival tin then fill your boots - horses for courses - but from someone who has carried them in anger, as it were, I would suggest that most survival situations in Western Europe require basics like shelter, warmth (both of which include your clothes), water - and, above all, communication.
