Deep Survival : Book Review

I finally completed the book - Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. I have already written about this book in a post titled, "Is Fatigue Physical or Psychological?" The truth is that I tore through the book, but sat it down prior to finishing the last chapter or appendix. Why would I do that? Who knows because this book is a treasure chest full of information related to survival, but it seems to be much more than just a survival "guide." In fact, I might say that if you are looking for a "how to" book on surviving in the wilderness than this might not be what you are looking for, at first.

This book takes you into the minds of survivors. It digs into what kind of mind-set and behaviors they exhibited when faced with their life-or-death situations. He pushes through the most obvious assumption that those with the most talent survive, while those with less talent do not become survivors. The stories range from climbers on Mt. Hood (an very relavant situation given the current news while I was reading the book), men lost at sea, a climber escaping an accident with broken bones and terrible weather conditions, navy fighter pilots learning to land on a carrier and many more stories that make you wonder - Could I survive in a similar situation? Am I a survivor?

The book gives you so many ideas to think about and stories to digest that I will probably be going back to the stories several more times. (I have a lot of notes and underlined texts to go back and review, hopefully gaining a deeper understanding.) Not to leave you stranded without some sort of text to think about yourself, I wanted to share the suggestions (or characteristics) he has in the appedix for survival when in trouble:

- perceive, believe, then act
- avoid impuslive behavior; don't hurry
- know your stuff
- get the information
- commune with the dead (he talks about reading accident reports, etc.)
- be humble
- when in doubt, bail out

One of the more interesting things that I remember from the book was when he wrote about young children being better at surviving then older children. This is a very interesting concept to think about if you look at a child and then think about what you perceive to be the characteristics of a survivor. Maybe some of the conditioning we've had throughout our own life puts us in a place that makes us less able to suvive, in any situation. (i.e. work, relationships, financial, triathlon ....)

This book has made me courious about the topic of suvival, so I've started reading, Into Thin Air and bought, Touching the Void (a story talked about in Deep Survival).

I want to be a survivor, but how do we know until we are faced with a survival situation? Maybe that is one more reason that I've put in an application for the North Pole Marathon entry sponsorship over at yourrunning.com.