Share Your Real Life Survival Stories

reply to post by silent thunder


Yes. That's what survival is all about. It's not necessarily about buschcraft or the best survival gear or knowing how to gut a monkey (or whatever they decide to gut).

It's about surviving it. Whatever it may be!

Best of wishes to you!

I haven't really got any amazing survival stories, but i have certainly changed my way of thinking after a routine journey last year went very wrong indeed.

I was travelling north by train to see my girlfriend, it was raining a bit but nothing major. The train guard announces that further along the journey, there was....and i quote..."A bit of flooding" at a particular station but probably nothing to worry about.

Then a couple of hours later, we get another announcement saying that the flooding was worse than expected, so they would stop at the next station and bus us through to the next city, and we could continue with our journey. So they did.

The bus took us through a now badly flooded area which took 5 hours to reach the city where we were supposed to catch the next train. What they failed to tell us though, was that the city was flooded so badly, that the only thing moving was rescue helicopters and fire trucks. The whole city, including the train station and any way out was completely flooded.

It was a major incident, and we were advised to go find a rescue centre for the night. It was raining heavily, and after a few yards i was soaked, but i found a rescue centre.

However, i had a little dog with me, and the idiots inside refused me entry because of the dog. I was turned away from 2 rescue centres, and was about to set up a makeshift shelter in an empty rubbish skip when a policeman asked what i was doing. He was great took me straight to a rescue centre and got me in there, dog too.

Many people were stranded that night, a couple died and many were injured and lost vehicles and homes.

So now if i travel by train on a long journey, i have the basics to set up a shelter with hot food and water. I won't ever take it for granted that a rescue centre will help me.

I don't expect anyone to look after me if things go pearshaped, because when youput all your trust in others, it gets dangerous when they don't come up with the goods.

CX.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


Great story. Do you know what happened to the attackers guns?

I realize this happened in real life, but it's a very thrilling story.

Also, why wasn't he allowed to own a gun?

My temperature was 108... my kit was a bag of ice

Originally posted by paranoiaFTW
My temperature was 108... my kit was a bag of ice

What caused the fever?

Like I've said before it's interesting how many of the stories are to do with urban survival. Despite all the learning we do about surviving in the wild - the urban environment seems to hold one of the worst risks - man.

In supplement to learning wilderness survival we should not forget urban skills - escape and evasion, urban climbing, lock picking, unarmed combat.

Well my story's one of those...

At the end of a night out when I was about eighteen, we ended up in one of the take-aways in town which was the norm. My friend was good friends with the owner and they would often playfully argue with one-another, but sometimes, to an outsider it could have sounded more serious than it was.

This was one of those nights.

A group of men overheard the "arguing" and decided to get themselves involved. All hell broke loose - chairs flying everywhere, and as a very inexperienced and downright scared teenager I tried to stay out of it, which was fine until my friend grabbed a kitchen knife from over he counter and started waving it around at everyone like an idiot. People started shouting "he's got a knife!" and it got worse. The knife ended up on the floor. My "friend" ran outside and jumped in the car and everyone drove off without me! Friends. The men were still really pissed off and their attention turned to me. One of them grabbed the knife and tried to seperate the two halves of my brain. I dodged - blocked - and the knife broke in two as it slammed into the wall next to my head. I shoved my attacker into the servery and fled upstairs to the toilets, locked the door, climbed out of the window and... leapt! Whack! I crashed onto the flat roof the next floor down jumped the next one and started running as soon as my feet hit the ground. They saw me and started giving chase, determined to have blood - but fuelled by adrenalin I was like a rocket and several alleyway sprints later I was on safe territory. Heart thumping.

No need to say that my so called "friends" had a bloody good roasting.

But at least I didn't end up on a surgeon's table or worse.

That was one of the things that inspired me to the more urban skills that I mentioned.

These days I'm a bit more adept at all of them, the main change I made was to learn a good (non-sporting) martial art and am still persuing the other skills.

Though that situation was caused by my stupid friend taking things too far, I think that when the shtf we will find ourselves in many situations like this as tempers run high - people will be our worst enemies.

Take care of yourselves and your loved ones.

Learn the most appropriate skills to do the job.



[edit on 13-9-2009 by Stanton Dowd]