Into the woods we go.
In part one of this series, we’ve acknowledged that it’s not feasible to survive for extended durations in a populated area through the home or bugout location. But what about out in the wild? I’ve heard it said many times that if you ask someone about their preparedness plan, it probably goes something like “I’ll probably just go out to the woods and live off the land.”.
It’s not really a plan though, and if you attempt to run an operation like this on your own, without extreme skill and a lot of luck, you’re most likely going to be the first one to die.
The Case for Alone Style Survival
“But what about Alone?” I hear those of you who partake in survivalist media screaming at me. And to that I say: “What about it?”. Alone, for those of you who are not aware, is a series of shows featuring trained survivalists in austere environments pushing themselves to the limits of survival. And no offense my friends, but that is neither us, nor likely to be applicable to us (outside of the worst case scenario where most of us end up very dead.)
The truth of the matter is, we all have to share resources, territory, and that wide open space that is nature with each other, and that presents all kinds of risks and difficulties. Surviving on your own, in a world full of potentially starving hostiles or friendlies, makes navigating the territory of wilderness survival much more difficult than merely running off into the wild and disappearing without a trace. Are the people you encounter friend or foe? Do you see them before they see you? Do they attack you from a point of dominance? Do you attack them? Do you sustain injury? Does that injury get infected?
The second flaw in this plan, is that the cast members of Alone suffer an insanely high attrition rate, even at their high skill level, and require frequent medical and mental evacuations from their solitude. After only a few days without food, you will feel the mind and body altering effects of malnutrition, increasing your odds of injury as your body cannibalizes itself. The physical cost of long term survival ultimately resolves itself in one of two ways: physical attrition in the form of malnutrition, or physical attrition in the form of injuries sustained. Neither of these issues can be resolved without a secondary team available to support medical treatment. In other words: You Die.
Ultimately, unless you perform flawlessly and with incredible luck, no amount of planning and kit is going to help you survive in the wild, even for a short duration. In Part One of this series, we discussed the limitations of solo survival at home, and in Part Three we’ll discuss the limitations of solo city survival, so stay tuned for that, and in Part 4 we’re going to talk about solo survival in a vehicle and the limitations that apply.
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