What are the chances of dying in a survival situation?

The reason they are called survival situations in the first place is because there’s a reasonable chance you could die, which means that if you’re in one then you probably aren’t just lost in the woods. The trick is to get out of these situations as quickly as possible with all your limbs still attached, but if you can’t, what are the chances of dying in a survival situation?

Here are a few different scenarios and the chance you have of dying in them. In each scenario, we’ll assume you were stranded there with no equipment and only basic clothing (jeans, t-shirt, standard jacket).

Desert – Vast and arid

Untrained – 24 to 48 hours
Expert – 3 to 7 days

When in a desert with no supply of water the biggest danger is overheating, causing you to sweat and lose important moisture you can’t easily replace. An untrained survivor wouldn’t recognize the edible types of cacti that contain water or the methods used to trap condensation or find water around plants. They also wouldn’t know how to slow down their moisture loss with methods like peeing on a piece of clothing and wrapping it around their heads.

Direction would be a big problem with the untrained survivor not knowing how to find North without a compass or directional aids used by local tribes like walking towards where the clouds form first thing in the morning. However, there’s always the chance that no matter how well you are trained, if the resources simply aren’t there you can only slow down the inevitable.

Arctic – Far north extreme climate

Untrained – Probably less than an hour, depending on the wind
Expert – Less than 1 week

If you’re wearing regular clothing in -20°C air temperature with 30mph wind speed then you can die in under an hour. It would take someone with experience to know that you must immediately get out of the wind and find proper cover. Anyone untrained would freeze to death quickly as soon as a blizzard hit, but a person of knowledge would probably be able to make a quick shelter capable of keeping off the wind and would know to pack it with spruce bows or some kind of material to sleep on and protect from the cold floor.

No matter how much someone knows, if you don’t have the clothing or the means to start a fire then you’re still going to freeze to death, it would just happen slower with frostbite creeping its way up your body gradually instead of flash freezing in the wind. Finding some flint to make a fire or things to eat in the snow is near impossible and digging with your bare hands would do more harm than good.

Jungle – Dense and vast rainforest

Untrained – Less than 2 weeks
Expert – Several weeks or more

The problem with the rainforest is that you can’t see any of the wild food there because of the trees. The jungle is home to everything from mustard to wild pigs, but finding and catching them would be almost impossible if you don’t know what you’re doing. The single biggest threat in the rainforest is infection which isn’t just caused by wounds, but mostly from mosquitoes who find you an easy meal at night with no net to protect you.

Someone untrained would probably just keep walking along a stream until they starved or died from disease, but the trained survivor would have a distinct advantage. Knowing how to make cords made from fibrous plants would allow you to make a fire bow and build small noose traps for animals.

The principle for weaving leaves and sticks can be applied anywhere in the world, and a professional would know how to make a proper shelter, find food, and create smokey fires to ward off insects. It doesn’t matter how careful or well-trained someone is, it only takes one bad insect bite to start an infection that your skills won’t be able to deal with.

Mountains – Snow-capped

Untrained – Less than 5 days
Expert – Long enough to make it out of the range

The main problem with mountains is accidents, with the need for thirst and food coming second to avoiding falling over a 500 ft cliff. Someone untrained would not know how to determine their direction and would most likely make themselves even more lost, and the problem of freezing on the peaks could kill you faster than an accident would.

A single slip can cause a broken ankle which is pretty much a death sentence when lost up a mountain. Avoiding such dangers would give you long enough to make your way off the slopes, but no one is ever completely safe from accidents.

Open Ocean – Small survival raft with no gear of any kind

Untrained – Less than one week
Expert – Less than one month

When in the middle of the ocean there’s no chance to use your skills to find food that simply isn’t there. The only reason a trained survivor would last longer comes with knowing how to make use of every single bit of moisture while doing absolutely nothing else. Sitting there and not moving all day may be boring, but it will mean you lose calories and moisture slower. Knowing that licking the inside walls of the raft at dawn when the condensation forms can help you last a tiny bit longer. Ultimately if it doesn’t rain for long enough you’re going to die of thirst no matter what, making surviving at sea mostly down to luck.

There is the story of a man named Salvador-Alvarenga who became stranded at sea with no equipment and managed to survive for 438 days in a small raft. He survived by catching sea birds and some of the smaller fish that gathered in the shade under his boat, but he was close to death when he was saved and also lost his fishing partner near the start of his ordeal.