Originally Posted by
kyratshooter
Sad thing but the only people I know of that just jump into a real survival situation feet first, on purpose, with no prep to training, seem to be English. "I nave never been camping, hiking, never even walked the dog in the park, but I want to get into this survival thing, where can I go to survive?"
Most other people work their way into the minimal gear thing a little at a time and have some outdoor experience before they go out. We do it for recreation.
Yep, that is what we do. It is a "sport" just like being in the X games. You train, you practice, you go out and push your limits and do things others do not, but it is not SURVIVAL. You did all of it on purpose no matter how much or how little gear you take.
Then there are the people that get into situations of life or death struggle without intention. They may have some outdoor training or they may have none, but in either case they never intended to be SURVIVING in the first place. That was not their intent and they do not consider it a sport.
Very few of us "in the sport" die.
Often those placed in real survival situations do just that, they die.
I feel some sadness and a good deal of pity for those that die due to unintentional situations. Sometimes I wonder what they were thinking, why they did what they did, and why they had not even the most basic skills. But they never intended the incident that killed them to occur, never thought it was possible.
Is that naive? Possibly it is. But we live in an age when not many people get into their vehicle for the drive to work and expect to be lost in the wilderness, desert, or mountains before we reach our destination. Those of us that do prepare for such things are pidgin holed as a little bit weird.
That is why we have many sections/sub-forums here, dividing the categories of homesteading, disaster preparedness, woodcraft and wilderness survival.
Part of it is to deal with the unexpected, part is to deal with sport or lifestyle choices we have made.
But all of us that have been here for any length of time have some kind of bell that goes off in our heads that makes us scream out at newbies, "This could kill you! You are going to die!" when we hear some of their off the wall crazy @$$ plans.
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