It's harder than I thought.....

[ahoragi]

My buddy and I have been talking about surviving in the wild the past couple years. A little over a year ago we came up with a plan to do a "survival" trip, consisting of surviving out there for four days and 3 nights with nothing but a fire starter, knife, machete, some paracord, and a few cans of food, and a date was scheduled.....and that just happened to occur two weeks ago.

Even after all the research, planning, and practicing...we ended up leaving on day 2. Nature beat us.

Despite quitting....I have gained so much more respect for mother nature and all those indigenous tribes who do this every day. I also formed this "bond" with nature that I cannot explain, that has me extremely excited for the next trip out, which will be our chance to redeem ourselves. We decided to attempt it again on August 30th. I am counting the days......


Has anyone else tried to survive out there? (and i'm not speaking of "camping" in the wild)

[Niri Te]

At 13, I and my friends would disappear into the woods, carrying no more that our Bows and arrows, a knife, a magnesium fire starter, an Axe, and a water skin or Canteen, as well as a fork and spoon. (It was kind of a rite of passage thing, that all of us would do for several weeks). None of us came back hungry, but we all "Buffed Up" pretty nicely. You CAN learn do this, we each were trained by our elders HOW for years, before we were allowed to try it.

[Marvellous Chester]

Lots of respect to you for attempting this

I have lived outdoors on the bare minimal in the past, although I didn't go into it with the mindset of 'survival', I thought of it more as living my normal life, just outside of the house and in a new location I don't want to sound like a patronizing git but trying something like this with the idea of 'me vs nature' in my experience makes it far less enjoyable and it becomes a case of 'x hours until I have beaten this and can finally go home'. Don't think that nature beat you, more that she educated you in her ways so that the next time you do this you will last longer.

Once I get my sleeping arrangements sorted out, have some shelter and the fire is going, I always feel just as if not more comfortable than if I was in my living room.

May I ask what it was that made you leave? Did the weather take a turn for the worst or something like that?

[ahoragi]

Originally Posted by The Silver Stag

Lots of respect to you for attempting this

I have lived outdoors on the bare minimal in the past, although I didn't go into it with the mindset of 'survival', I thought of it more as living my normal life, just outside of the house and in a new location I don't want to sound like a patronizing git but trying something like this with the idea of 'me vs nature' in my experience makes it far less enjoyable and it becomes a case of 'x hours until I have beaten this and can finally go home'. Don't think that nature beat you, more that she educated you in her ways so that the next time you do this you will last longer.

Once I get my sleeping arrangements sorted out, have some shelter and the fire is going, I always feel just as if not more comfortable than if I was in my living room.

May I ask what it was that made you leave? Did the weather take a turn for the worst or something like that?

It was a combination of things. It was in the 80's all week up until that very day we were heading out where it went down into the 60's/30's. I figured it wouldn't be much of an issue as long as we had fire and shelter. But the night before we left, I had to work and it just happened to be the busiest day of the month where I had 3x the work load. So come morning, I was so tired and beat from work. I usually sleep around noon till 8pm but on Day 1 I got zero sleep. We got out there and found a spot around 1pm and that didn't leave us much time to get what we needed done. I ended up not sleeping the entire day and we did not get a shelter built so there was no sleeping all night either. Temps dropped down to the 30's and we were both chilled to the bone all night long. So I was awake for 32 hours, my buddy 24 hrs, and I had ticks digging into to me getting ready to steal my blood. Having no energy to walk the distance to the water source to boil water, we decided to call it quits and attempt this again while we are well-rested. I took the day before our next trip off so i do not repeat the situation.

Mentally I thought I could overcome the little obstacles in my way but it was too much for my body to handle. In some ways it's good we left because I learned that I had deer ticks on me and they start sucking blood within 24 hours. The risk of Lyme disease increases at that moment.

[Marvellous Chester]

Originally Posted by ahoragi

It was a combination of things. It was in the 80's all week up until that very day we were heading out where it went down into the 60's/30's. I figured it wouldn't be much of an issue as long as we had fire and shelter. But the night before we left, I had to work and it just happened to be the busiest day of the month where I had 3x the work load. So come morning, I was so tired and beat from work. I usually sleep around noon till 8pm but on Day 1 I got zero sleep. We got out there and found a spot around 1pm and that didn't leave us much time to get what we needed done. I ended up not sleeping the entire day and we did not get a shelter built so there was no sleeping all night either. Temps dropped down to the 30's and we were both chilled to the bone all night long. So I was awake for 32 hours, my buddy 24 hrs, and I had ticks digging into to me getting ready to steal my blood. Having no energy to walk the distance to the water source to boil water, we decided to call it quits and attempt this again while we are well-rested. I took the day before our next trip off so i do not repeat the situation.

Ah, I see now. I doubt anybody in the world would have felt up for it after something like this If you're taking the day off before going next time I'm certain it will work out better. Arriving at the site feeling rested and having those extra few hours in the morning to get everything ready will make all the difference.

Mentally I thought I could overcome the little obstacles in my way but it was too much for my body to handle. In some ways it's good we left because I learned that I had deer ticks on me and they start sucking blood within 24 hours. The risk of Lyme disease increases at that moment.

Oh yes, those little blood sucking buggers I think if they have been attached to you for less than 8 hours the risk of getting Lyme Disease is pretty minute and of course not all ticks carry it, but always best to pull them off you as soon as possible.

[Moco Loco]

Where do you live and where did you go for this survival trip? "Survival" is really vague and techniques vary a lot based on the environment. Hopefully your next trip goes better.

[ahoragi]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

Where do you live and where did you go for this survival trip? "Survival" is really vague and techniques vary a lot based on the environment. Hopefully your next trip goes better.

I live near Pittsburgh, PA but our trip was 2 hours north in the forest region of Franklin, PA.

We only called it survival because we were basing this off a "crisis" scenario where we had to retreat to the forest to live off the land. It was mainly to train us to be prepared to live in the wild when the "poop" hits the fan. But for me, it was more of experiencing and living with nature because I'm the nature boy of us two LOL.

I did get some pictures if you all wanna see?

[Human No More]

Pictures would be interesting.

Going out there with nothing is always going to be hard - remember that most humans didn't do that historically either, but got established in an area to some degree, so they always had the option of consolidating there when necessary.