Chapter Three
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF SURVIVAL
You’re stranded, stuck, likely alone, in a place that a few moments ago was a wonderland of adventure but now has become a living nightmare. Your next move is crucial to your survival.
But surviving in the wilderness is about more than knowledge and skill. It requires clear-headed, rational thinking, mental toughness, and a positive attitude. It requires a never-yielding will to live.
This will to live, which stems from a positive attitude, is what will keep you going and get you out alive. It’s what gets you up in the morning. It’s what makes you put one foot in front of the other when you’re completely exhausted. Fuel and maintain your will to live and you stand a very good chance of making it home. Lose it and your survival hinges on nothing more than dumb luck.
Although it may seem like some people have a genetic disposition for it, the will to live is a conscious decision. I will make it out of this. I will live. I will survive. You may be without the comforts of home, but you can work to make yourself more comfortable. You may be scared of being alone in the dark, but you can make a fire to keep the fear away. You may be hungry, but you can identify at least one or two things in the area to eat.
The importance of the will to survive is illustrated in the many tales of people with little training who have managed to see themselves through harrowing ordeals. The story of Aron Ralston is one of my favorites. Aron was an experienced outdoorsman and mountaineer, but he had had almost no survival training when, during a canyoneering trip in Utah’s Blue John Canyon in 2003, his hand and forearm got trapped under a massive boulder.
With very little water and food to sustain him, and his hand and forearm crushed, Aron spent five days trying to lift, pry, and chip away at the boulder that held him captive. Nothing worked. To his credit, he realized that the only way he would ever live to see his family and friends again was to snap the two bones in his forearm and cut his arm off, which is exactly what he did.
In that crisis, Aron had nobody to count on but himself, and his book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, vividly describes the emotional roller coaster he experienced. In the end, it was his intense will to live that saved him. I wonder how many other people would have made it through such an ordeal.
For each story like Aron’s, however, there are many sad tales of individuals who, though they were knowledgeable about the ways of the wilderness, panicked and died. It wasn’t their skill that abandoned them; it was their ability to think straight under the most stressful of circumstances. If you can maintain your composure and your will to live, you will make it through virtually any survival situation.
You can bolster your will to live in many ways, first and foremost by thinking about the people you love and for whom you want to survive. Some turn to spirituality or religion in times of great stress; you may derive comfort, confidence, and strength from prayer and meditation. Studies of survivors show that having a goal may empower them. The goal to see their loved ones again. The goal of revenge. The goal of telling of the event. Having a goal and keeping it in sight is a driving force in survival.
Make no mistake about it: when you find yourself in a survival situation you will confront stresses that can break the resolve of even the toughest individual. If you fail to anticipate these stresses, they can turn you into a mass of indecision waiting for the end to come, or worse, a panic-stricken lunatic wasting precious energy on tasks that don’t increase your chances of surviving. In survival, as in life, your attitude will affect your outcome. If you play the victim, you will be one. If you imagine yourself the hero, you will be one.
A very able-bodied woman once told me that she knew she could never handle being alone in the wilderness, and, in fact, would likely kill herself should she end up in such a situation. Clearly, she was defeated from the start. She would be much better off thinking something like this: If this trip falls apart, I know I can make it out of here. Heck, I’ll be a hero and even write a book about it! Now that’s confidence.
Stress and Stressors
MOST OF US HAVE UTTERED THE WORDS “I AM SO STRESSED!” at one point or another. Stress is a given in the modern-day world, but there are few stressors felt as acutely as those you’ll face when alone in a survival situation.
Despite the pressure it heaps upon our shoulders, stress can sometimes be a beneficial force. Stressors can stimulate us to perform at our peak level, giving us the chance not only to take advantage of our strengths but to work on our weaknesses. But stress can be as destructive as it is constructive. Too much of it can lead to distress, an unhealthy condition that may turn to panic.
Like the emotions I discuss later in this chapter, the key to succeeding in a survival situation is confronting and managing the stressors you may face. These are many and varied, and include injury and illness, hunger, thirst, the environment, cold or heat, lack of knowledge, fatigue, or negative group dynamics, boredom and depression, loneliness and isolation, a general lack of control, and of course, death.
Each of these needs to be acknowledged, confronted, and dealt with. Remember that when you’re fighting for your life, you don’t want any disadvantages at all. If there are any facing you, you can’t sweep them aside. In a survival situation, there’s no ignoring and no procrastinating.
Now What? Assessing and Prioritizing
YOU MAY BE STRESSED, SCARED, PANICKY, UPSET, LONELY, and perhaps even humiliated. Don’t worry; this will pass. Let it pass right now. Relax and know that you have what it takes to get through this. Don’t focus on what is beyond your control.
Before doing anything else (assuming you’ve removed yourself from any immediate danger), you need to stop. Sit down, take a deep breath, and calm yourself. Do not move until you have allowed yourself enough time to assess your circumstances and formulate a plan. There may be no return from a silly mistake. Do not give in to feelings of panic-producing fear, guilt, and frustration. What’s done is done and cannot be undone. Recognize that you are now in a survival situation and must keep your wits about you if you are to make it back to safety.
Indeed, your brain is one of the most important tools you can rely upon. Use it!
Relieve Fear Through Knowledge
BEGIN BY ASSESSING YOUR BODY FOR ANY INJURIES and deal with those as soon as possible. Once you have taken care of yourself, assess your environment and the specifics of your emergency.
- Who knows where you were going?
- Is anyone expecting you? If so, when?
- Is it possible to walk out of your current location on your own, or will you need to be rescued to get out?
- Are you certain of the way out?
- What do you have to keep you alive?
To answer the last question, figure out what you have at hand that will help you survive. This could be equipment that you carried with you—such as a tent, a knife, and food—or aspects of your environment, such as a cave or a lake. If it’s physically possible, lay out all your immediate resources on a tarp or blanket or even the ground to get a good mental picture of what you have available. Seeing it spread out may spark ideas as to how items could work together or what you can make out of your supplies. In making these assessments, you’re providing yourself with one of the most important tools in your survival kit: knowledge.
Armed with your increasing base of knowledge, you can begin to make a plan to deal intelligently and systematically with your needs. The time you take to assess and prioritize will go a long way toward reducing your stress and any possible negative emotions, as you break your situation down into individual hurdles or challenges and see how your worst-case scenario improves:
Keeping a positive frame of mind is essential to survival, especially if you find yourself suddenly alone. Stay focused on how you can improve your situation and you’ll find the strength to go on.
Worst-case scenario: I’m going to freeze to death out here.
No, wait: there’s an old trapper’s cabin over on that hill with a stove inside it and dead trees around. So now the worst-case scenario is that I’m left out here to die alone, but at least I’ll be warm.
No, wait: my family knows that I had to be out of here within two days, and they know where I am. So now my worst-case scenario is that I’m going to be stuck for a few days alone in a cabin. But there’s wood, and I can melt snow and drink water, so I’ll be all right.
Focus on the tasks at hand and follow your plan, but also stay flexible enough to revise your plan if it isn’t working, You may need to improvise. Adaptability and ingenuity are keys to survival.
When it comes to improvising in the wilderness, you need to look at the world anew. Don’t think of objects in your surroundings in the traditional way but in terms of how they will help you on your journey to safety. That tree may be a rotting birch, but peel the bark off and you’ve got yourself one terrific roof shingle for a shelter.
On one occasion, my sister Laura and I were paddling a canoe on a pristine lake in northern Ontario. I prefer paddling close to shore, where all the action is: beaver houses, animal tracks, birds. We came to this one particularly dense section of forest. To me, it seemed enchanted, and I imagined an inspiring time walking through it and breathing in its smells. My daydream was interrupted by my sister, who mentioned how intimidating she found the thought of being left alone in such a dark and imposing-looking forest. The difference between us, of course, was our knowledge and experience. I already had a fair bit of survival knowledge, had spent time in such forests, and viewed them as a second home.
After three days of survival instruction, Laura had grown immeasurably in her comfort level with such places.
There’s also some benefit to talking out loud, whether to yourself, to nearby animals, or to the trees and the rocks. Verbalizing your predicament can help clear your head and put you on the road to survival. Remember the movie Cast Away? Tom Hanks’s character, Chuck Noland, turned a simple volleyball into his companion, “Wilson,” with whom he could talk, share his emotions, and even work out plans.
Here are the mental keys to surviving:
- Maintain the will to live.
- Confront and manage the situation.
- Acquire knowledge.
- Adapt and use ingenuity.
- Go with the flow of nature.
Prioritize
ONE OF THE MOST COMMON QUESTIONS I’m asked about survival is this: “After calming down, what should I do first?” Certain essential elements will be your primary focus during any emergency: shelter, water, fire, food, and a rescue signal. But it’s impossible to say which of these you should first focus your energies on, for it changes with every situation.
I take a three-pronged approach to prioritizing my needs:
- 1. Deal with any emergencies: Your situation is the emergency. But if there are pressing safety and/or health concerns, deal with them immediately. In some cases, the weather presents an emergency, so building a short-term makeshift shelter is critical.
- 2. Signal for rescue: Why is this number two? Survival is about getting home, the sooner the better. Rescue is crucial, so start making a signal as soon as possible.
- 3. Plan for long-term survival: I classify everything after those first two steps as long-term survival. Why does this come third? Well, you wouldn’t want to go to the effort of making a shelter and gathering cattails to eat, only to see a plane fly overhead and realize you could have been rescued if you’d built a signal fire to attract attention.
Whatever tactic you choose, you will improve your chances of success if you’re realistic about your prospects for rescue and set an appropriate time frame for your ordeal in the wilderness. Don’t lay the groundwork for what may become bitter disappointment by telling yourself you’re going to be rescued in two days when more likely you’ll be on your own for two weeks. The old adage “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” is a valuable one to keep in mind. You’ll find it much easier to adjust to pleasant surprises than to unpleasant ones.
Reacting to a Survival Situation
HOW WILL YOU REACT TO A WILDERNESS EMERGENCY? The answer to this all-important question is as individual as you are. It’s impossible to predict exactly how you will react. Don’t feel weak, ashamed, or guilty for having conflicting feelings! If anything, these responses help illustrate your humanity, and it’s that humanness that will give you the tools to survive.
It may even help you, in the long run, to break down for a short time and release destructive emotions. Most grown men (even the macho ones) will admit to crying at some point during a survival ordeal. And all of them recognize afterwards that shedding those emotions enabled them to “give their heads a shake” and pick themselves up, ready to carry on. Sometimes a good screaming or crying fit is all you need to turn your dejected mental state into a determined (“enough of this feeling sorry for myself”) state.
In fact, these emotions, while initially disconcerting, may actually motivate you to find a way out of your situation. Some people have been embarrassed by the mistakes they made that left them in a life-threatening situation but used that feeling—and the desire to make up for that mistake (and possibly to regain their good name)—to get themselves to safety.
Of all the emotions that prove motivational, none is as powerful as love. With love set squarely in your sights, you will make it through your ordeal, to see your spouse, children, family, and friends again.
Panic
Panic is a common yet debilitating reaction that affects many, particularly in the early stages of survival ordeals. Panic can be especially dangerous in a group setting, since it’s contagious and spreads rapidly.
Physiologically, it can be a motivating force in that it speeds up our body processes. But panic can also use up incredible amounts of energy, which is why people invariably feel exhausted after these episodes.
The most common response to panic is to move now and move fast. So you start thrashing through the bush, running in the sand, or paddling feverishly up the river hoping to come across something familiar to you. These are dangerous reactions, however, unless you have to get out of that spot immediately for safety reasons.
Instead of fleeing instantly, stop, calm yourself down, and assess. And then make a plan. Knowledge is power. When you assess your situation, you’re giving yourself knowledge and therefore the power to control your fate. Resist panic; it will do nothing to help you.
Fear and Anxiety
Fear and anxiety are close cousins of panic, but with important distinctions. Unlike panic, which tends to overwhelm a person like a wave, fear and anxiety take slightly longer to cultivate. No matter how tough you may be, there will likely come a point during a survival situation where you will be scared and/or anxious.
Remember that fear is a normal reaction and can be helpful if kept under control—it adds a dash of caution to circumstances where recklessness could lead to injury or mistakes. But allow it to overcome you and it can be a paralyzing force, impeding your ability to perform the essential tasks of survival. It can send you running through the woods blindly looking for a way out of your living nightmare. Make every effort to keep fear from turning into panic.
Anxiety may actually help to motivate you since it sets in motion an instinctual drive to “make things right.” Focusing on survival-related tasks will reduce your anxiety little by little, increasing your sense of well-being and decreasing your fear.
STROUD’S TIP
In a survival situation the following symptoms are more likely signs of panic than of a heart attack. They will subside once you begin to gain control over your situation:
- dizziness and blackouts
- racing heartbeat
- sweaty palms
- back and neck pain
- headaches
- shaking
- hives
For most people in survival situations, fear strikes in the middle of the night, when complete darkness has fallen and the area around you is filled with strange, discomforting sounds. One of the little tricks I’ve come up with to minimize my fear is to prepare for it.
In the few hours before dusk, I take time to scan my surroundings, imagining what they will look like once darkness falls. Later that night, I realize, “I’m in the exact same spot with the exact same surroundings, only they’re dark.” It may sound like a simplistic solution, but it works for me, and I’m in the dark a lot out there!
The key is not to let fear and anxiety take control of you. Acknowledge your fear and anxiety—and the normalcy of your reaction—but stop there. Don’t give in to them. Recognize that with every effort you make toward your own survival, your fear and anxiety will diminish. Bravery and courage are based not on fearlessness but on healthy fear.
Anger and Frustration
I am fortunate in that I do not get terribly frightened in survival situations, but I can’t claim I don’t feel my share of anger and frustration. These emotions almost always come from the awareness that I’ve made mistakes or haven’t anticipated events. When I feel anger or frustration coming on, I remind myself to back off and reassess, because there is always another answer.
The danger in succumbing to anger is that it makes you lash out. You take your anger out by breaking a branch against a tree when you should be dealing with your immediate survival needs. Not only will you waste time by lashing out, you’ll waste valuable energy and perhaps sustain an injury as well. Frustration and anger tend to result in impulsive reactions, irrational behavior, and poorly thought-out decisions. In some cases, these emotions might even cause you to throw up your hands and declare, “I quit!”
To deal with these feelings, take the same tack as with most of the other emotions we’re discussing here: stop, calm down, and dedicate your physical and emotional energy to formulating a plan for getting yourself out of the emergency.
Having said that, for some, there is a benefit that can be derived from anger, assuming that they can keep their anger level at a minimal, simmering level. They use anger to fuel their will to live: they’re angry with the person responsible for getting them into the situation and want to get back at them. There’s the story of Hugh Glass, an early American fur trapper whose two travel companions left him to die after a grizzly bear attack. Fueled by his hatred of the men who abandoned him, Glass traveled some 200 miles (322 km)—with a broken leg—to safety.
Real-World Survivors
Stay Calm, Stay Alive
Necessity really is the mother of invention. This is a lesson Jonathan Clement, a 13-year-old Calgary teenager, learned the hard way. Little did he know that when his father, Gerry, took him on his first bow-hunting trip, a freak accident would harm his dad—but that Jonathan’s own quick thinking would save his father’s life.
Gerry and Jonathan had set out to explore the headwaters of Oldman River in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, but soon after their adventure began, Jonathan accidentally launched an arrow into his father’s leg. When Gerry looked down at his thigh, it was spurting blood “like in a horror film. I knew [the arrow] had hit an artery and I was in major trouble, but my little guy, almost immediately, kicked into survival mode.”
Though Jonathan had inadvertently caused the injury, his actions afterward demonstrated his steady resolve to set things right. Upon seeing the fountain of blood, he instantly removed one of his dad’s socks and created a makeshift tourniquet to stem the flow. When asked how he’d known what to do, Jonathan said he’d seen the technique on TV: “I knew because I watched a show called Survivorman, where a guy’s out in the wilds for days.” I’m sure that Jonathan’s father had never suspected television could be so educational!
With the tourniquet in place, the young teen helped his father walk back to their campsite, which was over a mile away. As relieved as they were to get behind the wheel of their pickup truck, misfortune soon struck again. During their drive for help, the truck’s undercarriage got stuck in the rocky terrain, and Jonathan and Gerry were forced to make their way back to camp on foot. Gerry was still losing a lot of blood, so his son carefully guided him back to their site.
Soon after they arrived, Gerry fainted, hitting his head as he fell. All the while, Jonathan remained calm, though he admits he was worried about his father’s condition. “Once we got a fire going, it was better,” the boy recalls. “My dad was pretty cold, but I was okay.” >>
The two spent a grim night by the campfire, hoping that the bleeding would slow down and that someone in the area would spot the smoke. As his father dozed, Jonathan took it upon himself to wake up every few minutes and check on his dad, to “make sure he was snoring.”
At daybreak, with no help in sight and his father’s condition worsening, Jonathan set out for help, knowing full well that he’d be crossing the heart of bear country. Despite the danger, he traveled on foot for over three miles before eventually stumbling upon other campers, who were able to help him and his father to a hospital.
Jonathan’s poise under frightening circumstances helps show that survival isn’t about macho gestures but about staying calm and using your head. Gerry Clement, a proud father whose life was saved by his son’s good judgment, says his boy was “an absolute hero.”
Loneliness, Boredom, and Depression
Let’s face it, if you’re alone in the wilderness doing nothing for days on end, it can get very, very boring in no time at all. Boredom can then bring on negative, introspective thoughts, which in turn can lead to depression.
When people feel depressed, they start to give up. Their focus shifts from improving their situation to convincing themselves that there is nothing to be done. The problem with these two emotional states, and depression in particular, is that they are insidious—they creep up on you. Add to the mix the fact that you’re probably hungry and tired, maybe injured and scared, and it’s easy to see how depression can take hold. Don’t let it, for it will only eat away at your will to live.
Remember that it’s normal to feel miserable in a survival situation, especially during the first few days. Your success in defeating this misery rests squarely on your ability to be proactive and do something, anything, to better your situation. Even if it’s only adding one bough to the roof of your shelter, add it. Even if it’s making just one deadfall trap a day, make it.
Activity bars the mind from negative thoughts, staving off loneliness, boredom, and depression. There will always be something new and helpful you can do to improve your circumstances, and planning and completing each task will help to break the monotony of your ordeal. Each successive accomplishment will better your attitude.
Having said that, be careful not to go to the other extreme and try to take on the whole world at once, which may be overwhelming. Take one step at a time. There is surprising comfort in tucking into a little shelter at night with a flame nearby, knowing your world to be only that which exists a few inches in front of your face. Pull your coat over your head and face and know that for the moment, that is your own small world. You control it and it is safe.
Guilt
Guilt is a common response in a survival situation, especially in the case of an accident that has resulted in loss of life. As one of the survivors (or the only survivor) of an accident, a person undoubtedly will be burdened with guilt over being spared while others died. It is natural to feel this way.
But guilt, like most of the other emotions I describe in this chapter, can be channeled for the betterment of your situation. Use it as motivation to try harder. Perhaps you were spared for some greater purpose in life. Live to carry on the work of those killed, or to tell their stories to their loved ones.
Man Versus Nature
SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO CHARACTERIZE THE QUEST FOR SURVIVAL in a wilderness setting as a battle between man and nature. Others like to anthropomorphize nature as an omniscient and benevolent woman that will look after them as long as you give her the proper respect. These are the same people who say you should try to “become one” with nature. At best, “becoming one” with nature is a bad cliché. At worst, it leads you into a passive mind-set, which can get you into real trouble.
Several years ago, my wife, Sue Jamison, and I spent an entire year living in the bush and replicating life as it was lived 500 years ago: no metal, no matches, no plastic, and no nylon. While we hunted, fished, and foraged, and lived in a way similar to that of native peoples hundreds of years ago, we never felt like we were one with nature. It’s just not like that out there. Survival can be harsh at the best of times. If you become one with anything or anyone while you are trying to survive out there, it is with yourself.
Nature is neutral. It doesn’t want to help you, and it doesn’t want to kill you. Yet there is a positive energy in the wilderness that can be emotionally and spiritually uplifting, and can fill you with strength to carry on and complete the tasks that you need to, even in the worst survival scenarios.
Survival is not about “man versus wild.” Nor, at the other extreme, is it about “becoming one” with nature. The key to survival is the middle ground of “going with the flow” of nature. There is a time to push against the rain and a time to wait it out. There is a time to travel hard and a time to hunker down. There is a time to let go of emotions and there is a time to buck up and straighten your back against your troubles.
But make no mistake about it. Nature must be respected, watched, listened to, and considered constantly, if you expect to survive.
Group Versus Solo Survival
MOST ASPECTS OF SURVIVAL ARE EASIER when more than one traveler is present, but the group dynamic may well prove most beneficial when it comes to the psychological aspects of survival. You can derive significant comfort from the presence of other people in what may be the most trying moments of your life. And you can boost your feelings of self-worth and confidence by comforting those in your group who need support.
Of course, there’s another side to this. Not everything is rosy within a group. Panic is frighteningly contagious and can spread like wildfire.
The solution is to acknowledge a strong and effective group leader. Most groups will not be proactive enough to actually elect a leader; one typically emerges naturally. A strong, competent, and confident leader will help quell the fears and doubts the group may be feeling, and will focus each individual’s efforts on the tasks necessary for survival.