The Survivalist Challenge, A test of survival skills in the wild. Most people think of surviving as something they do everyday some people associate it with great struggles or a means of testing ones willingness to endure. For most though it would probably be associated with adventure movies or drama packed reality TV. For the sake of this blog and it’s contents. We would like to keep it real. It’s easy to get caught up in what the Television portrays as a survival situation but you have to remember that most of TV is about the hype. They would rather sell you adventure with no authenticity and a lot of excitement than reality and boring facts that might actually save your life (despite the fact that it is called reality TV). To keep a truly authentic situation you would need to skip past the theatrics and head to the heart of what our concept of a survival situation is. So, what exactly would make an excellent survivalist challenge?

Their is no good way to simulate an actual survival situation so you’re just going to have to suspend your disbelief. Why, because the idea in the first place of a survival situation is rooted in the idea that a person must overcome a set of circumstances or face immanent danger. How could you simulate this without violating/jeopardizing your own personal safety or the personal safety of others? For example, to simulate a plain crash in a remote area you would have to beat someone up then drag them behind a motor boat for an hour and dump them off in the middle of a remote lake? Obviously these circumstances are not except able. However, there are many ways to practice these situations without putting yourself in danger.

The method that I came up with for developing a survivalist scenario requires a five step planning process.

1) Develop a scenario: be it Hollywood based or your own invention of a survival situation. Describe the event in detail but be sure not to make it too complex. Also, you may want to keep in mind the individual or “survivee” has to survive at the end of this adventure. Something for starters could be surviving a snow storm like Luke Skywalker did in Star Wars.

2) Realize the obstacles: Make a list of obstacles that the individual will have to overcome in order to survive their situation. Be detailed and describe acceptable results of the situation/s being completed. Like what the person would have had to have done to complete the scenarios previously developed. Think of them as goals. For example: “survived a snow storm” is too vague but “spent the night outside in -10 degree weather with only a knife and a blanket” is better. Good would be “outside from 9:00pm-9:00am the next morning in, -10C degree weather moderate snow fall, winter clothes on with a blanket and a knife,”

3) Quantize the goals: Distinguish between ascertainable goals and highly achievable goals. Get rid of anything that is impossible in respect to human limitations as well as legality as well as get rid of anything that’s too easy. Take what you have left and put a numerical value and/or parameters to it. You need something you can measure. So as in the “survived a snow storm” scenario. You could make a stipulation that a person must stay X amount of time in Y amount of temperature with Z equipment. Obviously you don’t want to make it too easy thus negating the survivees ingenuity as well as eliminating any amount of adventure out of the situation.

4) Methods of simulation: Think of way that you could simulate each situation with the resources available to you. Remember this is a controlled simulation, you must make sure that what you are doing is safe. There are a lot of easy ways to do this. It will be important to practice a lot of common sense. Since you cannot accurately depict a survival situation why jeopardize yourself attempting too. Controlled means planned. So for each goal you must provide an alternate and fail safe plan/solution should the survival situations and/or scenarios not work out. This means if you someone intends to stay out all night in -10C snow storm they will need to have immediate access to safety (i.e. a warm house, emergency phone, etc…) as well as assistants checking to make sure this person does not push themselves to far and hurt themselves and/or accidentally injure themselves. It requires a lot common sense on the part of the survivee and the assistants. If you don’t know then don’t do it.

5) DO IT: Find a group of willing participants and do it!