Appendix B

KEY WORD S.U.R.V.I.V.A.L.

The keyword SURVIVAL is a military acronym used to help troops prioritize and organize themselves should they find themselves cut off from anyone who could help them and need to survive in the wilderness and orchestrate or facilitate rescue, either by helping themselves to be found or by navigating their way back to safety, living off the land until they do.

Use the keyword SURVIVAL as soon as you identify that you are in a real-world survival situation. Each letter in the word SURVIVAL stands for a different rule.

S—Size up the situation. Inventory your equipment. Consider who is with you, and your familiarity with the environment you are in.

U—Undue haste makes waste. You don’t want to make hasty decisions in a survival situation. Hasty decisions are often careless ones and carelessness in a survival scenario can be deadly. Take it slow and think out every move you make out.

R—Remember where you are. One of your first priorities in a survival situation is to know your location on the ground. If you don’t know where you are, it is extremely difficult to figure out where you are going. If you want to have any chance of moving to safety and facilitating your rescue, the worst thing you can do is to wander aimlessly through the wilderness.

V—Vanquish fear and panic. Fear is nature’s way of telling you to stay alert and pay attention to your surroundings. Fear can be a good thing at healthy levels. It is when you allow fear to debilitate your actions that it becomes panic. Panic is the worst possible thing you can do in a survival scenario. The main reason people panic is fear of the unknown. The best way to combat and control your fear is to have the courage to face it and recognize it. Once you understand your fear, you will be able to better control it and not let it develop into panic.

I—Improvise. In a survival situation, you may have very few resources to use to help you to survive the situation that you are in. It is imperative that you look around you and use every tool and resource that you have at your disposal for as many different purposes as you can think of. Don’t let anything go to waste.

V—Value living. Never give up! Facing a survival scenario may be the hardest thing you have ever done, as well as the most physically and mentally demanding situation you have ever found yourself in. If you don’t value your own life enough to drive forward through adversity, then there is a real possibility that you will die before effecting self-recovery or being rescued.

A—Act like the natives. Look around you. No matter what environment you are in, there are native people, animals, and plants that are not only surviving but thriving. If you want to survive, pay attention to how they find food, water, and shelter, and how they adapt to their environments in order to survive.

L—Live by your wits (but for now, learn basic skills). As far as living by your wits, all humans have a “sixth sense,” or a little voice inside of your head that alerts you to danger and lets you know when to keep your head on a swivel. The key is to learn to listen to that little voice instead of suppressing it like so many of us do. Learn basic survival skills. Trying to learn survival skills after you have found yourself in a survival scenario is not the way to go about doing things. You should read books, watch videos, take classes, and practice your bushcraft skills to the point where your survival instincts and knowledge base is ready to tackle any survival situation or scenario that life has to throw at you.

Photo Credit: GettyImages