Survival in Extreme Situations

Survival in Extreme SituationsPart 1: The Wild. How to Stay Alive When Help Is Far AwayA Research CourseVita HarwoodSeries 'In Twelve Evenings' BOOK What Do I Already Know About This?Test your knowledge!Why, in the same disaster, does one person survive and another not?It is rarely the strongest or the bravest. More often it is the one who stops in time, knows the order of simple tasks and refuses to give up. The good news is that almost all of this can be learned at home, on a quiet evening, long before you ever need it.Survival in Extreme Situations. Book 1: The Wild is a short course in twelve lessons, one for each evening. It takes you into the forest in winter and summer, across desert and steppe, up into the mountains, out to sea and onto a desert island, and shows what really keeps people alive when help is far away.Inside you will discover:• why most people in a disaster don’t panic but freeze, and what to do in the first ten minutes• what goes in your pack, and the one free item people forget most often• how to find and purify water, and why a crystal-clear mountain stream can make you ill• how to light a fire in a wet forest, build a shelter that keeps you warm and make sure rescuers see you• when to stay put, when to move, and how to find north without a phone• how cold, heat, bears, snakes and ticks really behave, and which popular myths are wrong• why experienced climbers make fatal decisions, and how a turnaround time can save your life• why drowning is silent, how to escape a rip current and how to live on a life raft• which wild food is worth the effort, and which mushroom no hunger can excuse• first aid when the nearest doctor is hours or days awayEvery lesson tells the true story of someone who came through: Ernest Shackleton on the Antarctic ice, Aron Ralston in a Utah canyon, Juliane Koepcke walking out of the rainforest after falling from the sky, Joe Simpson crawling down a glacier on a broken leg, and others. Their stories are told honestly, mistakes included.