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Now what would y'all use if you had to cut off your arm. Could you even do it?
Remember this story awhile ago?
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/05/03/Wo...ife__hik.shtml
"Hiking his way through a 3-foot-wide section of Utah's Blue John Canyon, Aron Ralston had no warning before the giant boulder shifted onto him, pinning his right arm in a crack in the canyon wall.
He had been stuck for four days when his water ran out. On the sixth day, the 27-year-old mountain climber knew there was only one way he could survive.
Using a pocketknife, Ralston cut off his own arm."
Godamighty, THAT takes testicular fortitude not this sleeping bear in a den stuff, if you ax me. I get light-headed just thinking about it.
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I honestly don't know if I could do something like that. Hopefully I left a detailed enough itinerary with somebody so that I would not have to even consider it.
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He did soooo many things wrong. Sooooo many. I call in GPS coordinates to my wife periodically on any alone hike I'm on. Always at the start and always at camp. If you're going to be where cell service doesn't exist then rent a sat phone. He'd still have two hands if he'd followed some simple rules.
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True, he wasn't crossing his t's and dotting his i's...but sometimes the best laid plans go awry. Question is, how many of us would be mentally and physically prepared to do what he did? After he amputated his arm he still put in a lot of strenuous work before he was rescued.
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I have no idea. Probably wouldn't know unless I was in that situation. I guess if you're convinced you are down to one and only one option or you will die then you'll execute that option. But that's just a guess. I wonder how many folks would never even consider doing what he did and it would be interesting to know what other options he had available and did think about. Someone else in that same situation could well have thought, "well this isn't so bad, I can just..." whatever and extricate themselves.