The 5 most common causes of survival situations

Wilderness survival situations happen every day around the world. There is always someone stranded at sea or stuck up a cliff somewhere, and rescue organizations are permanently dispatched to find people who have gone missing. With so many people getting stuck all the time, several factors seem to pop up again and again as the most common causes of survival situations, which are listed below:

The weather

Leading as the main cause of getting people into trouble by a long shot, the weather is responsible for creating more survival situations than all the other factors combined. It is especially dangerous when either at sea or up a mountain, with an average of 50 large boats and thousands of small ones being sunk around the world each year. Another threat the weather produces is forcing people to either stay where they are, such as in a shelter in a cold weather situation or only travel at certain times, such as someone stranded in the middle of the desert traveling by night to escape the heat.

Poor planning

One of the best examples of poor planning is the story of four local men from Glasgow who decided to try and climb Ben Nevis one day. The idea was simply to just have a go at it and hope for the best, so they set off in their trainers and tracksuits and actually managed to get close to the top, which is where they almost died. A flash storm hit and they were forced to hide behind rocks to escape the wind, if it hadn’t been for an app on a phone one of them had, they wouldn’t have been able to send their location to the rescue team and would have surely died. Poor planning is also commonly seen in climbing when people run out of rope halfway up a cliff or take the wrong path.

Ego

The top of the mountain doesn’t look that high, or I can easily make it through this forest before dark are good examples of how people’s egos can get them into trouble. The most famous story of this would probably be the tale of Aron Ralston, who had to cut his own arm off to escape a canyon he fell into and became trapped. He was in an area he’d been to plenty of times before and on the day of his accident, he only had a couple of burritos, and a small bottle of water and didn’t even bother to bring a cell phone with him. He also didn’t tell anyone where he was going so no one knew where to look.

(Aron Ralston returning to the canyon he was stuck in, with his new prosthetic arm)

Underestimated terrain

The average person can walk 20 to 30 miles a day by road or flat terrain, and this drops to 5 miles per day when on a hill or small mountain range. On a clear day, you can see several dozen miles, depending on the weather and how high up you are, so it’s easy to look at an entire forest and misjudge its size or difficulty. The number of people who climb mountains or go on long journeys for the first time almost always get behind schedule, and when in a wilderness situation this can cause problems with food and supplies.

The wrong equipment

If you buy an Arctic coat off the internet and the description says it’s suitable for Arctic conditions, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be any good in “actual” Arctic conditions. Cheap equipment breaks easily and could easily leave you without a stove or torch, leading to further problems. The most dangerous activity for the wrong equipment would be mountain climbing, where cheap foreign equipment bought off the internet has cost the lives of many people in accidents that shouldn’t have happened.