News you don’t want to have to use
“How to Survive 75 Hours Alone in the Ocean.”
After reading the article, I’d say the gist of it is try not to get yourself into that situation in the first place.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Sometimes you don’t get to choose.
Which is why I learned how to tread water for days.
Or, drown proofing.
Because I was in the Navy. And I was going to survive.
tA chartered fishing boat sank some years ago off Cabo San Lucas. The water was 80 degrees. They were all in life jackets but had no raft. They were found about ten hours after sinking. All were dead.
My first rule: Don’t go out on the ocean.
Hypothermia sucks big-time. I got it in ’75 by spending too much time in College Creek (behind and nextdoor to the Naval Academy) playing in a game of “The Battle of Salamis” (Annanoplace in May, water not exactly warm yet), attempting for twenty minutes not so to upright an overturned canoe as the fight raged on around us. Damned lucky to have friends there with more brains than I to force me out of the water, since I didn’t have any idea what was going on: never had heard of hypothermia at the time.
or so (not “not”)
Kate, I hear you sister. Dallas isn’t exactly the center of the continent. But it’s far enough away from the coast to suit me. One of my admirals decided to cross the T of a Typhoon. We didn’t make it.
It takes a lot to crush the steel of t he front end of a United States Navy Aircraft Carrier. But that storm had what it took. Thank God it didn’t have more.
Recently we had the 20th anniversary of JFK Jr. accidental death in a plane. By accounts he was addicted to risk and it’s not surprising that risk caught up with him.
A few of his classmates from Andover were similarly inclined. One drowned with his wife and child, while sailing. His boat was found perfectly intact. Best guess — he persuaded his family to take an impromptu dip without backup, as was his habit, and a current swept them away from their boat.
https://nypost.com/2019/07/06/the-shocking-recklessness-that-killed-jfk-jr-and-2-of-his-friends/
I’m impressed the guy kept it together for 75 hours. Given he was an experienced diving instructor, but still…
I’m fond of the lost-in-the-wilderness film, “The Edge,” with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. Hopkins is an ultra-rich, polymath who says early on:
…most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame.
I would imagine some panic as well. In any event I’m sure psychology is as important as the physical game in such extremity.
I read about an older woman who died hiking the Appalachian Trail. She lost the trail and couldn’t find it again. When they found her, however, she was only twenty-five yards, or some number heartbreakingly small, from the trail.
I remember the account about that woman. If only she had had a whistle like a ref’s whistle. I have been thinking of getting such a whistle.
Get mirror Francesca. When you are swimming you’ll just wear yourself out blowing But on a mirror you can flash an aircraft at 35k feet. But. Get both.
I don’t walk ten feet away from the truck without a chart,compass, sheath knife, Swiss Army knife or Case Ranch, a canteen or water bottle, binoculars, candy, three ways to start a fire ( the mirror comes handy for that and it comes with my compass) and a hound.
I smoke cigars maybe three times a year, But I carry matches and a lighter all the time.
I’m a belt and suspenders kind of guy.
Right, but what about those people who crash down an embankment? A whistle would have been so useful.
I don’t walk ten feet away from the truck without a chart,compass, sheath knife, Swiss Army knife or Case Ranch, a canteen or water bottle, binoculars, candy, three ways to start a fire ( the mirror comes handy for that and it comes with my compass) and a hound.
stephen.polito: What contingencies are you preparing for? No disrespect intended.
I take it you are a trucker and might be anywhere in the highway system.
Maybe he was ‘born to be hanged’?
Tempest reference – couldn’t resist!
63 degree water? Ouch! I remember that shock feeling growing up on So Cal beaches. Not fun. Hawaii mo bettah. Warm clear water and none of that stinky seaweed that wraps around your legs, either.
You know what they say; Never turn your back on the sea. It can be merciless and I have seen it take even the the strongest and most experienced water people. This guy was incredibly lucky. Broke rules #1* and #1** and still lived to tell the tale.
*#1. Never leave your craft!
**#1 Never surf, dive, swim alone!
Maybe he was ‘born to be hanged’?
Tempest reference – couldn’t resist!
63 degree water? Ouch! I remember that shock feeling growing up on So Cal beaches. Not fun. Hawaii mo bettah. Warm clear water and none of that stinky seaweed that wraps around your legs, either.
You know what they say; Never turn your back on the sea. It can be merciless and I have seen it take even the the strongest and most experienced water people. This guy was incredibly lucky. Broke rules #1* and #1** and still lived to tell the tale.
*#1. Never leave your craft!
**#1 Never surf, dive, swim alone!
Sorry for the double post. Multitasking.
But GPS CAN be “hacked” or “jammed” so that it is no longer reliable (AKA, no longer “works”).
Usually done for military reasons.
For example, at the onset of the Second Gulf War by the US. Also: https://taskandpurpose.com/russian-hacking-gps-navigation-gnss
“Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why,” by L. Gonzales. Great read.
Barry Meislin:
Indeed GPS can be jammed by ground based transmitters and the US gov used to routinely degrade the signal quality to reduce accuracy to non-DOD users (selective availability it was termed). To get around that GPS-based land surveyors would use differential correction methods (set up a local transmitter on a known benchmark to send out a compensating signal). It appears that the US military has invested a lot to deal with the GPS jamming problem, for example using inertial navigation systems as a compliment in some weapons systems. Inertial navigation systems used to be too large (systems used in nuclear submarines) for use in a precision guided ordnance. Not the case today.
But to Yammer, GPS and inertial guidance systems are like gyroscopes in a way; they cannot work.
#1. Never leave your craft!
Molly Brown: After learning to surf in Florida, I too was shocked how nasty cold the water was in SoCal. As to your craft rule, Martin Sheen agrees:
Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were going all the way…
–“Apocalypse Now”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbFvAaO9j8M
Not everyone can be Poon Lim, survivor extraordinaire. Francesca, the whistle you want is a Fox 40. An earsplitting design. I love them, traffic can hear those over almost anything
http://thescuttlefish.com/2010/11/hms-friday-the-longest-survival-at-sea/
Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were going all the way…
About 25 years ago there was a coastal race by small sailboats. It was/is held in the spring when the water off the California coast north of Point Conception is really cold. They had a sinking, the details of which I don’t recall. The crew was three and they went into a raft about 11PM. One guy was wearing wool shirt and pants. He was the only one alive when they were found in the morning.
I read these accounts because I was a sailor of small boats (up to 40 feet) until a few years ago.
It’s easy to get lost, even where you should not be able to.
I was about 21 years old or so … college age anyway. Was checking out the new hunting property in Northern Michigan by myself. All wooded, glacial moraines, one identical ridge after another.
With a paved road only three miles to the east, and forest trails only a mile in almost any direction, I nonetheless got turned around on one of those clear but completely overcast August afternoons.
Figuring to slow-walk out of my predicament by setting what I thought was a beeline east, after about 40 minutes or an hour I came out into a huge and completely unexpected meadow in the middle of nowhere. I thought “This can’t be here! How the hell did I get to this strange place? I should be at the big valley trail!”
I basically lost my nerve, and turned around, and uncertainly tracked back the way I came to what I figured, or hoped, was the ridge I first descended from.
I climbed it and then after forcing myself to just stand there for some time trying to calm, I eventually recognized a clump of tall, thin, Ironwoods, down in a hollow. And if it really was that same pure stand of Ironwoods down in the hollow, then at the far side of the stand was a two track trail I knew. Luckily, it was the same stand of young trees.
Later, after a creeping, half mile descent east along the nearly invisible two track through the property’s narrow outlet valley, I turned the car southward onto a more traveled and public “fire trail” through the “big valley”, and toward an actual graded country road just a couple miles further south. Again, driving very slowly and with the windows open, a quarter mile or so down the fire trail, I realized that an elevated grassy field now immediately on my right (to the west) was the same “big meadow” that so shocked and confused me when I came out of the woods from the west and unexpectedly stepped into it. The reason I could not then see the car tracks I was now idling along, was because the intervening grass in the valley was too tall. If I had earlier walked maybe another 200 feet east, I would have walked right onto it.
So, an old lady, by herself, in a real or very near to real, wilderness?
I never go into the woods without a compass anymore, unless the day is crystal clear and going to remain so.
huxley; Francesca; DNW:
Here’s the piece I wrote about the woman who got lost hiking and died.
There was a sad case a few years ago in the Puget Sound area (Maple Valley Highway, State Route 18). A young woman was reported missing. She was missing for more than a month IIRC.
Her car went off the shoulder down the embankment into the brush. She died of exposure//hypothermia in the car IIRC. It was a wet Washington winter. The road is a major route.
Her car went off the shoulder down the embankment into the brush. She died of exposure//hypothermia in the car IIRC.
om: I was a Sunbelt kid — all California, Texas and Florida. When I learned to read well enough, I kept running into the phrase, “died of exposure,” and I couldn’t figure it out. I thought it was a euphemism for a disease people didn’t want to mention specifically. I stopped thinking about it.
Years later, after living in Massachusetts, I realized that in some places just being outside could kill you if you gave it enough time.
I grew up in the Yukon Territory. We never drove anywhere without winter sleeping bags, food, matches, stove, rifle, etc. At -40 you don’t have a choice.
I’ve read a lot of backpacker & hiker “tragic death” stories over the years, and one of the recurring keywords was the victim being out “alone”.
OCB: I’ve had romantic thoughts of moving to Alaska. I’m sure I have no idea.