Thursday, December 13, 2007 - The Rule of Threes

The Rule of Threes

In the realm of wilderness survival instructors often talk about the Rule of Threes.

You can survive…

Three Minutes without AIR.

Three Hours without SHELTER

Three Days without WATER

Three Weeks without FOOD

Of course these times are relative to many factors.  People have survived longer than “3” in each of the categories, but essentially after these times you will be in dire straits and need additional assistance to overcome the threat.  The rule of threes helps a survivor to organize his priorities and determine his next course of action based on his needs and limited resources.  In other words, you don’t worry about food no matter how hungry you are if you don’t have adequate shelter and water.

One phenomenon I have observed leading groups of both Brazilians and Americans here in tropical Brazil is what I call “Gag Reflex Dehydration”.   This happens when people refuse to drink because they don’t trust the water.  Americans are especially prone to this as we are filled with a cultural resistance to drinking water from third world sources.

Finding and treating water is an essential survival skill.  Serious dehydration is sheer misery and rapidly degrades your ability to function.  Creating and maintaining the ability to hydrate in the bush is a foundational skill that allows you to enjoy the back country with a wider margin of safety.

One of the ways I overcome this with the groups I lead into the wilderness is to hike them in with no water in their canteens. I learned early on that if I allow people to enter the bush with squeaky clean bottled water that they will attempt to drink only that water for the duration of the course!  Now we hike in dry.  After explaining the rule of threes to them we sit down and evaluate what we need.  Of course water is on all of their minds as we haven’t had a drink in many kilometers. (They don’t know it but I’ve been hiking them directly to a steady source of water)

We then filter and fill our water carriers from a creek or waterhole and treat it chemically with 2% Tincture of Iodine, 5 drops per liter/quart, wait a half hour before drinking.  This treated water tastes like band-aids with a slightly earthy aftertaste.  We also discuss boiling, and chlorine as additional methods of treating water.

Each pair of guys is responsible to carry and maintain a heavy duty 5-liter water bag for the duration for the trip.  This reinforces the quantity of water you should expect to need in order to stay hydrated.  Countless times I have encountered groups in the bush with a few half liter bottles scattered among the group and they think their needs are covered.

Once the group learns the system and gets into the habit of fending for themselves regarding their water supply it just becomes one more task in the daily routine of taking care in the bush.  I get a kick out of how much attention to detail they demonstrate from start to finish.  There is a period of a few hours it seems that they will pay close attention to any rumble of the stomach, but when nothing bad happens they start to drink freely and the lesson was a success.

This is all preparation for setting the hook so to speak.

“You guys spend so much time taking care not to put anything impure in your stomachs but you give very little attention to what you put into your minds. You will walk far out of the way to get to cleaner water, and only put the very best you can find through your filter.  You carefully treat it to kill anything harmful in it and wait, thirsty, while the bad stuff is dying off.  You pay close attention after the fact to make sure it isn’t having a negative impact on your health.  Your stomach has far less of an impact on your life than your mind yet you will allow anything to flood into your heads with little or no consideration or forethought.  If you won’t check your sources, if you don’t have any concept of purity in the first place, and don’t use discrimination and discernment, then how do you plan to survive in life?”

It generally gets kind of quiet after that for a while.  It often leads to some frank discussions.  The bush is a great classroom, a distillation of the basics of life.  Fire, water, shelter, compass navigation, emergency signaling, etc. all have wider applications to surviving out of the bush as well.  I am so glad that I don’t golf.  Mac