89 Fun Facts About Survival Skills

The US Army survival manual says not to wait for which signal before drinking, since that leads to inadequate hydration?

Thirst is a poor guide: drinking only when the urge strikes leaves you under-hydrated, so the manual says to drink at regular intervals, since even mild dehydration dulls concentration.

Which improvised shelter keeps a person warmest in deep alpine winter conditions?

A snow cave is the warmest option: dig the entrance below the sleeping platform so warm air pools, keep walls about a foot thick, and the interior holds near 0 °C while outside falls far below.

A plastic-sheet-covered pit with a cup beneath its weighted centre purifies water by which method?

Solar distillation: sunlight heats the covered pit, water vapour condenses on the underside of the sheet and drips from the weighted low point into the cup, leaving salts and microbes behind.

What is the primary function of the 'base layer' in a layered clothing system for outdoor survival?

Wool works well here because it combines wicking with water repellence and resists odour; a garment that does not move moisture is really just a mid-layer.

Under the survival 'Rule of Threes', how long can a person typically last without shelter in extreme heat or cold?

3 hours is the shelter figure; the rest of the rule runs three minutes without air, three days without water and three weeks without food, and the 'three seconds to decide' tag-on is not part of it.

In forestry and camping, what is a 'widowmaker'?

A widowmaker is a hanging dead branch or broken treetop lodged in the canopy that can drop without warning; loggers named it for the widows it made, and campers never pitch beneath one.

In a life-and-death situation, what quality is often said to separate survivors from the rest?

The will to live is the quality survival manuals single out; the US Army's FM 21-76 notes untrained people have survived on attitude alone while skilled ones who gave up have died.

How many whistle blasts in a row is the recognised mountain distress signal?

Three blasts in a row is the recognised distress call, the audible form of the 'three of anything' rule that also covers three fires or three mirror flashes; pause a minute, then repeat.

Iodine and chlorine purification tablets are considered ineffective against which waterborne protozoan?

Cryptosporidium's tough oocyst shrugs off iodine and standard chlorine doses that kill Giardia cysts; only chlorine dioxide, boiling or a filter of about one micron or finer removes it reliably.

What is the purpose of a 'go bag' or 'bug out bag' in emergency preparedness?

The 72-hour figure comes from civil defence agencies' estimates of how long it can take for organised relief to reach people after a hurricane, earthquake or flood.

What does first aid say to do first for a companion's deep, heavily bleeding cut?

Press directly on the wound first; if pressure alone cannot stop a limb bleed, a tourniquet is the next step, heading off the shock that comes with heavy blood loss.

Which natural tinder is prized in wet weather because it does not soak up water?

Birch bark is loaded with oily betulin, so it sheds water and burns with a hot, smoky flame even when pulled wet from a log; peel only loose, papery curls from a living tree.

Fatwood, kindling that lights even when wet, is resin-soaked heartwood from which tree?

Pine: fatwood forms when a dying pine's resin concentrates in the stump and taproot, leaving hard, turpentine-scented heartwood that catches a spark and burns even when wet; a few shavings light a fire many times over.

How much water or other liquid is generally needed each day in the wilderness to avoid dehydration?

4 to 6 liters covers the 2 to 3 liters an adult loses at rest plus sweat from walking, building and gathering; dark yellow urine means you are already behind.

Which fire lay, with kindling propped over the tinder against a log, is recommended in very high winds?

The lean-to lay props kindling over the tinder against a log that doubles as a windbreak, so gusts cannot scatter the flame; a tipi lay burns hotter but collapses as its sticks burn through.

What does it usually mean when a hard-shivering cold casualty stops shivering entirely?

They have passed into moderate hypothermia: shivering, the body's own furnace, shuts down near a core temperature of 32 °C, and confusion arrives with it, so the casualty cannot judge their own state.

Why is falling into a cold lake far more dangerous than standing in cold air of the same temperature?

Heat is lost much faster to water than to air, which is why immersion in even temperate water kills so quickly; getting dry and out of the wind beats almost every other first move.

In Morse code, the international distress call SOS is signalled by which pattern?

SOS is three dots, three dashes, three dots, adopted at the 1906 Berlin radiotelegraph convention because the rhythm is unmistakable; 'save our souls' was a backronym coined afterwards, and it works flashed with a torch too.

How often is the word 'mayday' repeated at the start of a radio distress message?

Mayday is spoken three times in succession so a garbled burst cannot be mistaken for ordinary traffic; Frederick Mockford coined it at Croydon airport in 1923 from the French 'm'aidez', help me.

What is the recommended way out of a rip current at the beach?

Swim at a right angle to the flow, parallel to the beach: rips are typically only tens of metres wide, so a short sideways swim leaves the conveyor belt, while fighting straight back exhausts even strong swimmers.

What does a rip current actually do to a swimmer it catches?

It is a horizontal flow, not an undertow, and it releases whatever it is carrying once it loses power. The danger is panic and exhaustion, not being pulled down.

At their fastest, roughly how quickly can a rip current move?

About 2.5 m/s: NOAA puts the strongest rips at roughly 8 feet per second, faster than an Olympic freestyle sprinter, which is why swimming head-on against one is hopeless; typical rips run nearer 0.5 m/s.

Which pair of stars in the Big Dipper points the way to Polaris?

Dubhe and Merak, the two stars at the outer edge of the Dipper's bowl, are the Pointers: extend the line from Merak through Dubhe about five times their separation and it reaches Polaris, whose altitude equals your latitude.

The foil emergency blanket in most first-aid kits was originally developed in 1964 by which organisation?

NASA developed the space blanket in 1964 at its Marshall Space Flight Center from spacecraft insulation research; the metallised polyester film reflects up to 97 percent of radiated body heat back to the wearer.

To get a storm's distance in miles, divide the seconds between flash and thunder by what?

Divide by three instead and you get the distance in kilometres. Sound crawls along at roughly a mile every five seconds while the flash arrives instantly.

What does the US National Park Service advise once a grizzly has knocked you down?

Play dead, face down, hands behind the neck, for a grizzly; the advice flips for a black bear, where you should escape or fight rather than lie still.

What colour is the smoke from a standard daytime marine distress signal?

Orange smoke is the international daytime distress signal at sea: SOLAS-approved buoyant smoke canisters burn for about three minutes and stand out against blue water and white spray where a red flare would be washed out.

What nationality was Carl Auer von Welsbach, who invented the ferrocerium 'ferro rod' fire-starter alloy in 1903?

Austrian: Carl Auer von Welsbach was born in Vienna in 1858, invented the gas mantle, discovered neodymium and praseodymium, and patented ferrocerium in 1903; its sparks burn at roughly 3,000 °C.

Above what core body temperature, with confusion or other neurological signs, is heat stroke diagnosed?

Heat stroke is a core temperature above 40.0 °C (104 °F) with confusion or other neurological signs; treat with rapid cooling, ideally cold-water immersion, and take a rectal reading because oral and armpit readings lag.

Which once-popular snakebite 'first aid' step is now specifically advised against?

Cutting, sucking and tourniquets all cause harm without removing meaningful venom; keeping the limb still and getting to antivenom is what works.

Which irritant, the same one that gives chili peppers their heat, makes bear spray work?

Capsaicin: bear spray is a 1 to 2 percent capsaicinoid aerosol that fires a cloud roughly 8 metres, meant to stop a charging bear, not to be rubbed on gear or skin like insect repellent.

How long must water stay at a full 100 °C boil to inactivate most micro-organisms and viruses?

About one minute at a rolling boil is the CDC guideline, rising to three minutes above 2,000 metres where water boils cooler; longer boiling mostly wastes fuel since most pathogens die well below 100 °C.

A personal locator beacon alerts the COSPAS-SARSAT satellite system on which distress frequency?

Once rescuers are close they home in on a separate 121.5 MHz signal; the satellites can detect a 406 MHz beacon anywhere on Earth.

What does the HELP posture for someone stranded in cold water in a life jacket involve?

HELP, the Heat Escape Lessening Posture, means hugging the knees tightly to the chest with arms clamped to the sides, shielding the groin and armpits where heat leaves fastest; groups can huddle the same way.

Why is it physically impossible for a person to sink completely into quicksand?

Quicksand is roughly 2 grams per cubic centimetre against the body's 1, so by Archimedes' principle you float about waist deep; the danger is getting stuck as the tide comes in.

What is the only definite and reliable treatment for severe altitude sickness, including HACE and HAPE?

Immediate descent is the one treatment that reliably reverses HACE and HAPE; even 300 to 1,000 metres lower brings improvement, while oxygen, dexamethasone, nifedipine or a portable hyperbaric bag only buy time.

Trench foot usually sets in at what kind of temperature?

Above freezing: trench foot is a non-freezing cold injury from feet kept wet at roughly 0 to 15 °C, setting in within about half a day; the name dates from World War I trench warfare.

Which common backcountry injury is treated with the RICE protocol?

A sprained ankle is the classic RICE case: rest, ice, compression and elevation limit swelling in the first 48 hours, and twisted ankles on rough ground are among the commonest backcountry injuries.

US and New Zealand authorities recommend which three-word drill when an earthquake strikes?

Drop, Cover, and Hold: if no shelter is close, you cover your head and neck with your arms and hold your position until the shaking stops.

In 1979 Austrian Andreas Mihavecz survived how many days forgotten in a police cell without water?

18 days: Andreas Mihavecz, an 18-year-old bricklayer, was forgotten in a cell in Höchst, Austria, in April 1979 and survived by licking condensation from the walls, a Guinness record that dwarfs the usual three-day rule.

Which friction fire-making method is the most widespread among indigenous cultures?

The hand drill, a thin spindle spun between the palms on a flat hearth board, is the most widespread method, used from Australia to the Americas, because it needs no cord; the bow drill adds a bow for easier strokes.

The classic ECG sign of hypothermia is named after whom?

Osborn: the J wave named after John Osborn, who described it in 1953, is a hump at the junction of QRS and ST segment that grows as core temperature falls below about 32 °C.

In 1952 the US military developed a portable, inflatable solar still for whom?

Pilots stranded at sea: the 1952 inflatable still was a floating plastic ball about 24 inches across, with a tube in its side to draw off the fresh water that condensed inside.

Type III paracord is nicknamed '550 cord' after a minimum breaking strength of 550 what?

Pounds-force: MIL-C-5040 Type III must hold at least 550 lbf (about 250 kg) and stretch at least 30 percent before breaking; its sheath is braided from 32 strands around seven to nine inner yarns.

The first 15,000 Swiss Army soldier's knives, delivered in 1891, were made in which country?

Germany: no Swiss firm could yet make them, so the 1891 order went to Wester & Co. of Solingen; Karl Elsener, founder of what became Victorinox, then took over production and nearly went bankrupt competing on price.

The hikers' 'Ten Essentials' list first appeared in print in which book?

Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills first printed the Ten Essentials in its third edition in January 1974; the modern list is organised by function, so 'navigation' covers map, compass, altimeter, GPS and beacon.

How many principles make up the Leave No Trace outdoor-ethics framework?

Seven: the Leave No Trace principles run from 'plan ahead and prepare' to 'be considerate of other visitors', and the non-profit Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics that codified them was founded in 1994.

Which Australian TV presenter, the 'Bush Tucker Man', popularised the word bushcraft down under?

Les Hiddins, the army survival instructor who fronted ABC's Bush Tucker Man from 1988, popularised 'bushcraft' in Australia; Mors Kochanski did the same in Canada and Ray Mears later carried it into everyday British use.

Avalanche transceivers worldwide transmit on which standard frequency?

457 kHz became the single worldwide avalanche-beacon frequency in 1986, replacing the 2.275 kHz used by early units such as the Skadi; a passive RECCO reflector sewn into clothing works on a different principle.

How is a quinzhee winter shelter built?

A quinzhee is made by hollowing out a shaped pile of loose snow after letting it sit an hour or two so the crystals sinter and the roof holds; the Athabaskan word entered English around 1984.

What is the second hole of a Dakota fire pit for?

Feeding air to the flames: the second hole, joined to the fire chamber by a tunnel, draws in a steady underground draft so the fire burns hot and nearly smokeless, keeping a low profile.

In Swiss avalanche data on 422 buried skiers, survival drops from 92% at 15 minutes to roughly what after 35 minutes?

30 percent survive at 35 minutes, and in that window the cause of death is suffocation; after two hours the odds are near zero and victims die of injuries or cold instead.

Adult CPR chest compressions should be delivered at what rate per minute?

100 to 120 compressions a minute is the AHA and ERC guideline, each 5 to 6 cm deep with full recoil; pushing faster cuts the time the heart has to refill between compressions.

Urushiol, the rash-causing oil in poison ivy, is also found in parts of which fruit tree?

Mango: its skin and sap carry urushiol, as do poison ivy and the cashew shell, all in the family Anacardiaceae; that is why cashews are sold shelled and roasted and mango peel can blister sensitised lips.

The SODIS method disinfects drinking water by leaving it in sunlight in what?

Clear PET plastic bottles: SODIS relies on UV-A and heat together, so colourless, unscratched 1- to 2-litre soda bottles laid in full sun for six hours are ideal, and clear glass also qualifies.

Time magazine named which personal water filter its 'Best Invention of 2005'?

LifeStraw: its hollow-fibre membrane strains particles down to 0.2 microns by suction alone, and Swiss-based Vestergaard Frandsen designed it for humanitarian crises before hikers adopted it; Time listed it in 2005.

Juliane Koepcke survived a 1971 air crash and walked 11 days through whose rainforest?

Peru: LANSA Flight 508 broke up in a storm over the Peruvian Amazon on 24 December 1971, and Koepcke, the sole survivor, followed a stream for days using skills learned at her parents' Panguana research station.

Which two survivors of the 1972 Andes crash completed the trek over the mountains to find help?

Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa set out on 12 December 1972; Antonio 'Tintin' Vizintín turned back after three days so the food would stretch, and on day nine the pair met Chilean horseman Sergio Catalán.

Poon Lim's 133 days on a raft began when what sank his ship in 1942?

A German submarine, U-172, torpedoed the British cargo ship SS Benlomond in the South Atlantic on 23 November 1942; Poon Lim, a steward, drifted 133 days until Brazilian fishermen picked him up.

Mauro Prosperi was lost for nine days in the Sahara in 1994 while competing in which race?

Marathon des Sables, the roughly 250 km stage race across the Moroccan Sahara: a sandstorm blew the Italian policeman off course in 1994 and he was found nine days later across the border in Algeria.

After 14 months adrift in the Pacific, where did fisherman José Salvador Alvarenga wash up in 2014?

The Marshall Islands: Alvarenga's boat grounded on Ebon Atoll in January 2014, 438 days after leaving Chiapas, Mexico, in November 2012; he lived on raw fish, turtles, birds and rainwater and counted moons to track time.

Aron Ralston, the climber portrayed in 127 Hours, was pinned by a boulder in which US state?

Utah: Ralston was trapped in Bluejohn Canyon, near Canyonlands National Park, for 127 hours in April 2003 before breaking his forearm, cutting it free with a dull multitool, rappelling 65 feet and hiking out.

Mauled by a bear in 1823, Hugh Glass crawled some 200 miles to which frontier post?

Fort Kiowa, a trading post on the Missouri in present-day South Dakota: Glass's six-week crawl was first printed in the Philadelphia Port Folio in 1825 and later inspired Man in the Wilderness and The Revenant.

What was Beck Weathers's profession when he survived being left for dead on Everest in 1996?

Pathologist: Beck Weathers, a Dallas pathologist, lost his right hand, fingers and nose to frostbite; his memoir Left for Dead describes the depression that drove him to climb, and his story runs through Into Thin Air.

Shackleton's 1916 open-boat voyage in the James Caird sailed from Elephant Island to where?

South Georgia: the 1,300 km crossing of the Southern Ocean in April–May 1916 was chosen over the nearer Falklands because it ran with the prevailing westerlies rather than into them; the six men landed at King Haakon Bay.

Under what pseudonym did Chris McCandless, subject of Into the Wild, travel to Alaska?

Alexander Supertramp was the name he used from 1990; he hitchhiked north in April 1992 and holed up in Fairbanks Bus 142, an abandoned shelter on the Stampede Trail by the Sushana River.

Who wrote the 1987 young-adult wilderness novel Hatchet?

Gary Paulsen wrote Hatchet, which earned a 1988 Newbery Honor and spawned four sequels, The River, Brian's Winter, Brian's Return and Brian's Hunt, all following 13-year-old Brian Robeson.

Joe Simpson's Touching the Void recounts his crawl back to base camp after a fall on which peak?

Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes: after the 1985 first ascent of its west face, Simpson broke his leg, Yates was forced to cut the rope as he was dragged off, and Simpson crawled out of the crevasse.

On the survival show Naked and Afraid, two strangers meet undressed and must last how many days in the wilderness?

21 days is the task; each of the two survivalists may bring one useful item, typically a machete or a fire starter, and they meet for the first time already naked.

Which Arctic explorer described 'rabbit starvation', the illness from eating only lean meat?

Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Canadian-born explorer who lived years on an all-meat Inuit diet, described rabbit starvation: without fat or carbohydrate the body cannot handle so much protein, and people sicken despite full stomachs.

Lofty Wiseman, author of The SAS Survival Handbook, joined the SAS at 18 from which unit?

The Parachute Regiment: Wiseman passed SAS selection at 18, reputedly the youngest ever, served 26 years and published the SAS Survival Handbook in 1986, the year after he retired.

Which 5,000-year-old ice mummy was found carrying amadou, the 'tinder fungus'?

Ötzi, the Alpine ice mummy found in 1991, carried pieces of amadou, the spongy inner layer of hoof fungus, alongside flint and traces of pyrite, showing he made fire by striking sparks into it.

Snow blindness is essentially a sunburn of which part of the eye?

The cornea: snow blindness is photokeratitis, a UV burn of the cornea's surface cells, the same injury welders call arc eye; pain starts hours after exposure and clears within a day or two once the eyes are covered.

Before it became a repellent, DEET was first tested as what?

An agricultural insecticide: Samuel Gertler of the US Department of Agriculture developed DEET in 1944 and first tested it as a field pesticide; it entered Army use in 1946 after the jungle campaigns, mixed 75/25 with ethanol as 'bug juice'.

Acorns must be leached before eating to remove which bitter compounds?

Tannins: these astringent polyphenols bind proteins and irritate the gut, so acorns are soaked or boiled in several changes of water until the bitterness goes; cattle and horses that gorge on acorns can be poisoned.

Ten-year-old Tilly Smith cleared a Phuket beach before the 2004 tsunami thanks to what?

A school geography lesson: two weeks earlier her teacher in Surrey had shown the class footage of a sea receding before a tsunami, and her warning is credited with saving about 100 people at Mai Khao Beach.

More than half of US flash-flood deaths happen to people doing what?

Driving through flooded crossings: the National Weather Service says over half of flood drownings are vehicle-related, since 12 inches of moving water floats many cars and two feet carries off most SUVs and pickups.

Firefighters' fire shelters are layered from aluminium foil, fibreglass and what?

Woven silica: the new-generation shelter adopted in the early 2000s laminates aluminium foil to woven silica outside and to fibreglass inside, reflecting radiant heat; US wildland crews have been required to carry one since 1977.

Extending the Southern Cross's long axis how many times points near the south celestial pole?

4½ times: extend the line from Gacrux through Acrux about four and a half times its length to reach the south celestial pole; a perpendicular from between the Pointers, Alpha and Beta Centauri, crosses there too.

Disposable air-activated hand warmers get their heat from the oxidation of which metal powder?

Iron: oxygen and moisture turn finely divided iron powder into rust, an exothermic reaction that salt and activated carbon speed up; Japan's 1923 Hakkin-kairo instead burned benzine vapour over a platinum catalyst.

The 'safety match' works because which ingredient was moved from the head onto the striking strip?

Red phosphorus: the safety match keeps it on the striking strip, away from the potassium chlorate head, so the match only lights when the two meet; Gustaf Pasch patented the idea in 1844 and Johan Lundström refined it in 1855.

Why was Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk left alone on a Pacific island in 1704?

He asked to be put ashore: Selkirk judged the Cinque Ports unseaworthy and demanded to be landed; the ship later sank, and he spent four years and four months on Más a Tierra before Woodes Rogers rescued him in 1709.

The first wind-chill tables were worked out by Paul Siple and Charles Passel while stationed where?

Antarctica: in 1940 at Little America, on the US Antarctic Service expedition, Siple and Passel timed how fast water froze in a plastic cylinder exposed to wind; the US National Weather Service adopted their tables in 1973.

A sustained wet-bulb temperature above what is thought fatal even to fit people resting in shade?

35 °C wet-bulb, the threshold from Sherwood and Huber's 2010 study, is where even a fit person in shade can no longer shed heat and begins absorbing it, a fan notwithstanding; it equates to a heat index near 71 °C.

Traditional Inuit snow goggles cut glare using what instead of lenses?

Narrow carved slits: the goggles, carved from driftwood, bone, walrus ivory or caribou antler, fit tightly so the only light reaching the eye passes through a thin slit, which also sharpens vision like a pinhole.

The name of pemmican, the dried-meat travel food, comes from a Cree word meaning what?

Fat: pemmican comes from the Cree pimîhkân, built on pimî, fat or grease, because rendered tallow binds the pounded dried meat and berries into a food that keeps for years; the Lakota call it wasná.

Which of these is one of the worst places to shelter from a tornado?

Under a highway overpass: the narrowed space beneath the deck speeds up the wind and funnels debris into it, and three people sheltering under overpasses died in the 3 May 1999 Oklahoma outbreak; a ditch is the recommended fallback.

'Bivouac' reached English via French from a Swiss German word meaning what?

Beiwacht, literally 'by-watch', was the additional guard a force posted to keep an encampment alert; the word travelled on with the British Empire's troops.

Why do mainstream experts reject the 'Universal Edibility Test' promoted in a few survival books?

Tiny doses of certain plants can still kill: a single bite of water hemlock root can be fatal, no more than the test's swallowing step, and some toxins act only after the waiting periods, so a 'pass' proves little.