#1
Don’t. Touch. Anything.
Just call 911.
#2
Don't do that. There's a reason people in warm climate places chill in the middle of the day while the highest temperatures pass .
#3
While most outdoor trips end with great photos and tired legs, the life-threatening risks are very real.
Between 2007 and 2024, there were a total of 4,213 casualties at US National Parks.
The majority were due to drowning or car accidents whereas some were from poisoning or animal encounters.
Officials said half of these were unintentional — mainly caused by people being careless.
There were over 5 billion recreation visits to National Parks during that time frame.
“There is not a ‘most dangerous national park.’ Parks have hazards. Hazards are potential sources of harm. Some hazards, like wildlife, rocky terrain, heat, high elevation, rip currents, naturally exist in the environment at the park,” according to the National Park Service.
#4
#5
Seriously, Bear Grylls would almost always eat whatever he caught raw. Hell, I'm pretty sure he even did it with a bat once.
Please do not do this. If you're in a survival situation and managed to catch something, cook it first. You don't want to be in a survival situation AND get sick/get a parasite.
#6
Research shows that Americans are more interested in getting outside than ever.
The outdoor industry represented $696.7 billion of the nation’s gross domestic product in 2024.
Boating and RVing dipped slightly when compared to 2023, and snow sports and equestrian activities remained roughly the same. Hunting and trapping saw significant growth, while climbing, hiking, and tent camping also saw a bit of growth.
Hiking ranks as the second most popular outdoor activity in the US, just behind walking for pleasure.
US hiking-related injuries totaled 124,000 emergency department visits in 2022.
#7
#8
First, the absolute most important step is the one they always skip, open the airway. Air MUST be able to move freely in and out of the lungs or everything else is pointless. Best is to have one person hold the person's head, extend the neck, and monitor the airway.
Second, compressions must be hard and fast, much harder than they ever do on TV. Compress about 1/3 of the chest (about 2 -3 inches on an adult), and to the beat of "Staying Alive." Real CPR breaks ribs.
Third, skip the breathes. This one is going to get me a lot of push back from well meaning people, but, I'm telling you, if you like the person you're trying to save skip the breathes. For three main reasons.
1. Even the best CPR will only restore about 10% of normal blood flow, just enough to keep the heart and brain alive. As long as you have an airway, far more than 10% of normal air movement will be restored just due to compressions alone.
2. Compressions build up blood pressure gradually, and only restore cerebral and cardiac perfusion after about a dozen compressions. Stopping compressions for even a moment causes that pressure to drop to zero and you have to start over.
And 3. Air forced in through the mouth is much more likely to end up in the stomach than the lungs, which causes vomiting, aspiration, and a 300% increase in mortality. .
#9
This sounds obvious, but people seem to regularly pass away from heat/cold in places like national parks when they could definitely have survived. Their vehicles are almost always found first.
If you’re heading into the wilderness, there’s always a chance you might run into a snake — unless you’re in New Zealand.
Globally, up to 5.4 million people are bitten by snakes every year. Around 1.8 to 2.7 million of those bites lead to serious illness, and as many as 138,000 people pass away from complications.
Snakebites also cause hundreds of thousands of amputations and other permanent disabilities annually.
This makes those movie scenes even more questionable, where the main character gets bitten and the hero immediately starts sucking the venom out of the wound.
In reality, this trick can actually make things worse by introducing bacteria into the bite.
#10
#11
#12
Experts say watching shows and movies about survival skills and real survival are two very different things.
You could even head out into your backyard and practice lighting a bow drill fire, and that would be fun. But imagine trying to do the same thing when you’re freezing, soaked through, and completely drained.
“You haven’t eaten a thing on days on end. And if you don’t get this fire going, you’re gonna die of hypothermia. That is terrifying. It is not fun. It’s not a situation you wanna be in,” says Jim Baird, a Candian survival expert and adventurer.
“So what happens is that somebody can learn a lot of different really cool survival situations, survival skills, bushcraft skills. But if they’re never actually using them in a real scenario, in a scenario where they can’t just walk back to their truck or walk back into their house instead, if it starts raining, they’re never actually gonna learn the actual mindset that survival actually takes,” he adds.
#13
Nope. There have been cases where a victim called 911 and acted like they were ordering a pizza while the predator was with them, but the 911 operator picks up that something is wrong via their training in dealing with these situations, not because the caller ordered a large pep with extra cheese. "Do you realize you've called 911?" "Yes, when will the pizza get here?" stuff like that. I've seen actual charts claiming mushrooms means this, peppers means that, etc. Operators are not trained on a secret pizza code lol.
#15
Anyway so I was visiting Jakarta, got sick, and somehow decided that drinking alcohol will solve my belly problems.
I’d had way too much to drink and somehow ended up at a street stall eating durian with a bunch of locals. If you’ve never had durian, imagine a fruit that tastes amazing but smells like a gym bag that achieved sentience.
Anyway, I’m sitting there sweating, drunk, convinced I’ve cracked the code to tropical living: beer + durian = perfect night.
One of the guys looks at me and says, “You know you’re not supposed to drink alcohol with durian, right?”
Apparently it can mess with your blood pressure and make you feel like you’re overheating. Which explained why I suddenly felt like my organs were trying to escape through my pores.
Long story short: I stumbled back to my hotel feeling like a microwaved corpse and spent the next few hours lying on the tile floor questioning my life choices.
Moral of the story: alcohol does not fix your belly, durian is not a responsible drunk snack, and sometimes survival advice is really just **nature waiting patiently for you to be stupid.**.
A lot of people also imagine that if they ever got stranded in the wild, they’d start pulling off big survival projects, like building a raft, crafting tools, and maybe even putting together a snug shelter inside a tree.
But these kinds of projects take a lot of energy, and energy means food.
And when you’re out in the wild, getting enough calories in the first place can take hours, or even days.
“It doesn’t matter how good you are, if there’s a finite amount of resources in your immediate area, no matter how good you are, you can’t manifest any more calories that are gonna be harvest-able, so you really are limited to that reality, when you’re out there in a survival situation. So sometimes you just… You have to adapt, you have to do the best you can with what you have,” says Baird.
#16
In all seriousness, it can cause a bad infection and can make treatment delayed, especially if Dave adds in some tongue action.
#17
#18
A lot of survival tricks can actually put you in more danger if you don’t know the science behind them.
FDA Commissioner Dr Robert Califf identified health misinformation as a leading cause of premature casualties and a primary factor in the US having a life expectancy 3–5 years lower than other high-income nations.
78% of social media users have seen fake news shared, with 30% admitting to sharing it themselves, according to a survey.
63% of these people said they came across false information online at least once a week.
#19
#20
No, you can't. Unless the water is still and your air intake is well above the waterline, your vehicle is screwed and now you're stranded in the middle of it.