SAR Personal Survival

Contrary to the term "survival", the vast majority of the topics here relate less to life-threatening perils than to annoying nuisances.  Any reduction in comfort, however, is likely to pose distraction that can render your search ineffective.  You are probably less likely to notice a shadowy footprint, for example, if you are swatting mosquitoes and dodging yellow jackets!

Body Management

• HYDRATION:  regular water intake is essential.  A 1% reduction in body water causes thirst, headache and dry mouth may begin at 2% loss, a 10% loss causes serious mental impairment, and a 20% loss usually is lethal. Sustained water deprivation can trigger internal disorders, such as kidney stones.  An adult human body averages about 2/3 water by weight.  Under active exertion water loss can run up to 2 quarts (4 lbs) per hour, such that with three hours of activity a 200 lb person may exceed 2% water loss.  Drink (water, preferably with electrolyte flavorings) frequently!  This is especially necessary for bright sun, high heat, windy, or high altitude settings.

• NUTRITION:  under normal conditions an adult requires 1400-1800 calories per day, but this can escalate to as much as 3500 per day under strenuous activity in cold conditions.  Further, the kind of food affects the rate and durability of energy availability.  Carbohydrates are easiest to digest, but burn off most quickly.  Proteins take longer, and fats are slowest of all.  Be cautious not to ingest foods that might trigger adverse medical reactions.

• FATIGUE:  As nutritional and water reserves wear off, and as muscular exertion results in accumulation of lactic acid, fatigue intensifies.  Regular rest becomes necessary.  In comfortable climate on easy terrain there should be 5 minutes of rest per hour, but this frequency increases as conditions become more difficult.  Do not take longer rest breaks, as these may induce lameness by muscle stiffening; it is better to have more frequent stops than longer ones.  Sustained activity should not exceed 1/4 of a searcher's total time (i.e., no more than 6 hours per day), as beyond this physical and mental lapses seriously increase due to fatigue.

• EXPOSURE:  Excessive sun, heat, cold, wind, dust, odor, noise, irritants, aridity, and dampness diminish comfort, and will reduce effectiveness.  Periodic respites from exposure, and suitable protective barriers during exposure, usually minimize the discomfort.  Excessive exposure can become a more serious health threat, however.  Hypothermia from dampness and windchill, or conversely from excessive heat, can be exceptionally dangerous.  A person experiencing prolonged exposure must receive immediate shelter.

• ATTITUDE: The mental state of a searcher is probably the single greatest factor controlling effectiveness.  A positive mental attitude becomes optimum when a person is confident, capable, comfortable, persistent, has realistic goals, and is willing to make or accept decisions.  Preparation and training produce the familiarity that generate these six attributes of positive mental attitude.

Clothing

There are volumes of information about protective clothing, and what kind made of what materials and having what functions are appropriate for what exposure; look at any sales catalogue.  All clothing, however, serves as "the shelter you wear".  The only real functional difference between the purposes of houses and shirts is personal portability for the latter.

Rather than recite a long discourse on materials and styles that you can find elsewhere, I confine these remarks to WHAT your clothing needs to protect as you consider your selections for any given exposure. You need to keep all four essential portions of the body as comfortable and functional as possible.  Omit any one portion, and you probably have clothed the rest in vain, at least in terms of your overall effectiveness.

• TORSO:  This contains most of the body's essential organs (the brain is an exception), and serves  as the powerhouse core for the rest of the body.  

• HEAD: most important as the brain housing, but also requires protecting the major sensory (eyes, ears, and nose) and outgoing communication (mouth) organs as well.  All of these are central to your search endeavors.

• FEET: including legs.  Your feet likely got you to wherever you are, and likely will be necessary to get you back out (stretchers are not a preferable second alternative!).  

• HANDS: Including arms, these often are the most common body portion to lack protection.  These are your principle means of manipulating your tools and environment, and so must remain functional.  I have seen a person who lost several fingers to frostbite because they forgot gloves, slashed a hand artery, and did not think to use the the daypack's spare wool socks in lieu of gloves.  

Remember the acronym for selecting clothing in dirty and changeable field conditions: BUBU.  High visibility clothing (ugly!) is usually also a virtue for coordinating efforts or locating you in an emergency.  Do remember also that certain clothing in the wrong circumstances is just plain hazardous; "cotton kills" if wet and cold, and some synthetics are explosively flammable.

Personal Emergency

Occasionally a searcher (or partner) faces imminent danger, and must respond with quick appropriate reactions to avoid injury or death.  "Quick", however, does not condone "panic", which is likely to worsen the situation.  Appropriate reaction centers on the verb and acronym STOP; Stay, Think, Observe, and Plan.  With few exceptions, successful resolution of emergencies will result from this sequence of steps.

Emergencies can fall into two broad categories; those of health (some internal inducement of threat, such as a heart attack), and those of environment (an external inducement of threat, such as lightning).  Sometimes the emergency involves both health and environment, such as becoming lost (strange surroundings, coupled with psychosomatic impairment due to anxiety).  

Regardless of the emergency category, STOP enables reasoning to control responses, and avoids snap judgment errors.  Rashly treating for cardiac arrest when in fact the problem is diabetic shock, for example, probably will create an additional overdue person rather than help to find one.