One of my favorite shows is called "
Man vs. Wild." Bear was in the British Special Air Service and was at one point the youngest British climbers to climb (and live to tell about it) Mount Everest, at just 23 years of age. In "Man vs. Wild" Bear is dropped into an area, such as the jungle, Sahara, swamp lands, etc, and shows you how to survive. Not that I ever plan on being lost in a swamp, but you never know! It is educational nonetheless.
Part of surviving is being willing to do things you NEVER thought you could do, but the instinct to survive is stronger than one might think... Here are some things I don't think I would be willing to do (Bear has done all of these on the show):
1) Drink the fluid from elephant dung
2) Drink my own urine
3) Sleep inside a camel (literally inside... he cut the camel's stomach and took out all of its insides... then slept inside it)
4) Cut the skin/fur from a large, rotting, smelly animal, and use it as a "blanket" to keep warm
5) Eat "sushi" (he caught a fish, and took a bite out of it right after "thumping" it on the head... he called it sushi, I call it eating a raw fish)
6) Swim in a swamp where I know crocodiles or alligators are
7) Catch, kill and eat a skunk
8) Use a urine soaked shirt as a hat to keep my head cool in the Sahara... NOT happening
9) Eat scorpions/spiders/beetles, or any other horrible looking little creepy crawler
10) Get lost in the first place without my cell phone!
Here are some things I found fascinating:
1) If you just happen to have a random potato chip in your pocket, don't eat it. You can light it on fire and use it as a match. It holds the flame because of the oil it was cooked in.
2) Dry dung is just as good as firewood!
3) If you tie both ends of a snakes skin (assuming you caught, killed and skinned the snake first) it works great as a canteen! Bear happened to keep urine in his, drinking it later. I would maybe keep water in it instead :)
4) If you magnetize a little piece of metal (like a paper clip) by rubbing it on your hair, then you put it on a leaf that is floating in a little pool of water, and over a few minutes, it will show you the North/South line
5) If you are in the Northern hemisphere, you can point the hour hand on your watch towards the sun, and North is half way between that and the 12 on your watch.
6) If you have a little piece of a granola bar left in your bag, don't eat it. Instead, use it as "bait" on a trap.
7) To determine the depth of water you need to jump into, tie some "rope" (made from whatever is available) to a rock and drop it in the water. Keep track of how much rope you are releasing before it slacks, indicating that the rock has hit the bottom.
8) Vulchers only eat fresh meat, so if they are around, the animal is probably still good to eat. And if it is a really hot area, a rock will work great for grilling yourself a zebra or camel steak!
9) To determine the flow of water in a place where the water doesn't look like it's moving, take a long stick, poke it into the ground leaving about 6 inches above the water. Tie your empty water bottle to the stick with a "rope" (See #7). After a few minutes, the bottle will have moved and you can then determine which direction the water is flowing.
10) You can make a homemade fishing net out of a Y shaped branch and a shirt! Then you can have sushi (see #5 in the first list)!
