Tampons aren't good for bullet wounds, but they *are* great firestarters, especially if you can coat them in candle wax or a bit of cooking oil before lighting them. You can also use them as a stage 1 filter for purifying water (it will remove particulate matter, like sand and gravel, but NOT microbes or bacteria, so the water will still need to be boiled to make it safe to drink). If you fluff them up a bit, they can fit pretty snugly in the opening of a plastic water bottle. Tampons have a place in survival kits, but their best uses aren't first aid.
No, I saw it in a cartoon once. When you’re in a falling house, wait until the last second, then step out the front door on to the ground as the house smashes behind you.
As a Canadian I was definitely taught that eating snow will hasten hypothermia. I was also taught that if you are in an avalanche to blow on the snow so it melts a bit and you can then use the direction the water droplet travels to indicate which way is down (so moving in the opposite direction is up and therefore out of the snow). You can also do the opposite with bubbles if you get stuck under the ice. Though, as disorienting as being plunged under the ice would be, knowing which way is up is the least of your worries. The shock is almost as bad as the hypothermia and a lot of people die from involuntarily breathing in water. Being Canadian is fun I swear. I love living in a country that hurts my face for 5 months. 😅 🇨🇦☃️
Come to Australia mate, Canada sounds like heaven. Nice easy temps to deal with, if it's cold put on more clothes or build a fire. hardly any nasty critters, and the ones you have are big enough to spot and avoid if you have a couple brain cells. Try avoiding our crazy critters in 48°c.
@@shaneebz5292 Don't be fooled, Canada Geese are the frozen norths counterpart to Drop Bears. Lurking around every corner and just when you think they've left for the winter the fuckers come charging out of a bush.
There is a story of Polish-Canadian girl being stuck for three days in Tatra high mountains during winter due to the avalanche risk and snow storm… they found her healthy casually waiting for the rescue team thanks to her school training and extra equipment.
You can usually tell if a large colony of bats live in a cave because they often leave a deep layer of guano on the cave floor, which is definitely not a place I wanted to seek shelter in.
One thing to note. If you're stuck in the desert and you have water such as a jug or canteen, drink it. Don't save it for later. Your body needs that water inside you not inside a container. And you're actively dehydrating. It's not going to help you later if you're dead. And plenty of people have died of dehydration with water in a container.
As an explanation for the last part, dehydration can seriously impair cognitive function, so people simply don't think about drinking their water if they're seriously dehydrated
Not quite the best idea... if you have a large amount of water and you are already hydrated and you drink all that water you will waste some of it on the ground.
Physics says it would work but you'd have to jump at the exact same force at the correct time. The one problem is any ceiling above would hit you as hard as the floor would have. Science sucks lol
Canadian here, 100% was taught IN SCHOOL like 25 years ago (early grade school) never to eat snow for hydration because of the exact same reasons listed here. Ill still take a bite once in a while just for joy though.
It is correct that ice can cool your core temperature it is beyond ludicrous to say it will dehydrate you. With the exception of perhaps the tampon advice this video has told people to do the wrong thing in every circumstance.
Depends on your acclimation, the temperature, melting method, and density of the snow IMHO. Melting compacted, heavy, wet, snow is easy with heat from your hands or another external heat source. For example the sunshine through your windshield. There are many scenarios in which using snow as a water source can save your life.
I met a guy who ended up stranded in the snow for days because of a broken leg with mountaineering equipment but no means to light a fire (ie, no wood). He ended up putting the snow in a plastic, watertight bag and putting the bag inside his sleeping bag, where it would melt based on the radiant heat he lost to the interior of the sleeping bag. Wasn’t a lot of water, but it was enough to survive until help arrived.
@@gcewing It increases the risk, but it's not directly lowering his core temperature as it would if he was swallowing it. Given that he's inside an insulated bag, there's plenty of time the waste heat from his body to restore the warmth inside the sleeping bag; especially if the bag is between his clothes and the bag-lining, and not under his clothes, directly on his skin.
@@gcewingIt’s far better than eating it. The energy loss from the body heat given off in the sleeping bag isn’t that different with or without a bag of snow. Directly ingesting it is going to have a far greater effect of heat energy pulled from the body.
My grandfather (born 1907) worked in a grocery store as a teenager. He was unpacking boxes of menstrual pads and asked his boss what they were for. His boss told him they were for polishing cars. So Grandpa took home a box and did just that. Obviously, tampons are for areas of the car that are harder to reach or need a little more scrubbing power. My great-grandfather had to explain what pads were really for so grandpa wouldn’t use them on the car again.
If you have a. the skill to trap/kill it without expending more energy than you would gain from it, and b. some equipment to cook it. Not fun to have food-borne diseases and/or parasites while having access to remedies, but it's so much worse when you do not.
Taking a rock to a lot of animals is a good way to get killed. Humans aren't particularly strong, nor particularly fast. Please don't actually try this. Many animals are extremely dangerous if in distress. Some deer for example can kick at 700PSI, and if you get hurt, whether minorly, or severely without any medical supplies, or medical knowledge on how to treat your wounds infection will become a massive risk. @@Carewolf
I had an ex girlfriend whoos dad was an elevator repair man. His pay rate was very surprising when i found out. He had an unbelievable amount of knowledge in regard to his field..and for this and due to the importance of saftey and having good people in his position, he was very well compensated. He took his job very seriously. Trust that your elevator has been maintained by someone who had thier shit together, and is beyond safe. They make $100 an hour.. and they earn that because theres a lot to know to keep people safe, and they ensure that everything is in proper working order. He was a very smart guy (and a giant at 6-8). Knowing that people like him are responsible for elevator safety and how seriously they take thier job alleviates any worry i once had.
@@paulhaynes8045 he wasn't just tall, he was massive. I'm surprised he could fit in one, lol. I heard a story that he got into a fight with another driver, who had a friend with him. He only had his daughter with him, but beat he both thier asses despite one of them hitting him in the head with a crowbar while standing on his hood ( probably couldn't reach him otherwise haha). I didn't catch how old she was at the time, but that's the story I got from her, and he confirmed it. Super chill guy.. if it happened like that he had no choice. No temper at all..
Yeah he probably wasn't making 100 an hour... unless he for some reason got a bunch of pay bumps that nobody else gets. Elevator repair says that they make less than 100k a year, so stop your BS.
@thomgizziz I repair elevators and my wage is $130 an hour. Which is just above standard rate these days so stop inserting yourself into people's comments with nothing to say except arguing. I pity your life. I hope you find something ro smile about even just on e rhis year.
@@dramatticdevon4741 Thanks dude. I saw that dude's comment and just rolled my eyes..His name is Darell, and as stated he absolutely makes 💯 an hour. Lol. Thanks for having my back.
If there was ever a time to practice cock pushups, that's it. Not only can you say you literally drilled it into the ground, but you technically followed the correct safety advice too, as well as Tenacious D. It's a win-win-win.
Hmm interesting, I referenced a Tenacious D joke involving male parts and certain exercises, which seems to have gotten my comment auto-filtered, yet I now get notifications for replies to the original comment even with mine not showing... I'll let people derive the clearly hilarious joke I made from the information here, on the basis that I doubt Simon and his team would waste their time unblocking it...they want to keep the genius of the hilarious comment hidden for their own evil schemes and not share it, I understand.
Actually the newest research suggests that lighting a fire in the back of the cage is more favorable than in the front because it creates a circular air motion drawing fresh air in.
Cave shelter pro-tip: if seeking shelter in a cave or under an overhang during a lightning storm, DO NOT sit directly in the mouth of the cave; a lightning strike on the rock face could arc and jump across the space from the roof of the opening to the floor. You don't want to be sitting there.
I love the fact that the thumbnail for this video, about jumping in an elevator, is also at the beginning of the video. Soooo many others would place it at the end. Thank you! Now, I'll watch the entire video from start to finish because I highly respect that ❤
More of this kind of video, maybe a sequal about undderated effective survival tips, like using sos pads and the square batteries can be extremely effective at lighting even damp wood, or how covering your head with a hat hood etc is actually better than leaving it exposed in a hot desert environment despite it seeming like wearing nothing or as little as possible would be better for staying cool (i don't remember how this works )
This whole video was kind of dumb. Like how often do people find caves (rarely)? How often are people stranded or lost and there is a cave nearby (almost never)? How often do elevators freefall? (Never)
@rubiconnn well the frequency of caves depends on the terrain, and survival knowledge by nature is something you learn but hopefully never have to use, the elevator one I'll give you but it's probably a common misconception among older people, after all the myth was popular enough to appear early on on mythbusters. But it's still interesting, I wasn't previously aware of the crush zone or that lying flat was better, sure I'll likely never need to apply that knowledge but this is ultimately entertainment ans at least personally I was entertained.
the covering up in hot environments works because the sun is a deadly lazer, and clothes are very effective at blocking UV light not getting severe sunburns is better than "staying cool"
As a former athletic trainer I can say that tampons can work to control nose bleeds. I wouldn’t use it for bullet wounds precisely because it just becomes soggy. In a nose the nostril would limit how much it expands but that’s about it. Don’t use them for actual wounds.
Leaving the tampon in the wrapper and using it together with a bandage to provide additional pressure on the wound is the only way I can really see a tampon being useful in first aid, doing the same thing as a rolled-up bandage. Or, like, keep proper pressure bandages in your first aid kit. My first aid instructors have always been very insistent that you never put anything in or take anything out of the patient. That will almost always make things worse. Your job is to buy the patient time for the paramedics to arrive, not cure them.
I think the mistake of using tampons for bullet wounds is also in part people forgetting that certain words in one language don't mean the same in another. Tampon is a french word for buffer and if the label of a medical gauze package includes French it will also include the word tampon. Likely American soldiers heard and say the word a lot around the French in WW1 then when they got back to the USA and heard the word used to describe feminine hygiene products they where like "did you know those are used for wounds in battle?"
3:12. First concern is shelter. Hypothermia can kill in hours. Then water. You can survive 3 days without water. Food is actually relatively minimal concern. You can last about 3 months without food. Itll suck, but you'll live.
Hours if you're lucky. If you're wet, especially in water, it can be a matter of a few minutes. And often times it's not the hypothermia, it's the stupid stuff you do because you're brain is too cold to operate properly. The survival without water can vary. My grandfather lasted roughly 2 weeks, but he was inside with properly maintained room temperature and was going to die regardless. I personally managed nearly a month on basically no food. IIIRC, it was like a cup of yogurt a day due to a bad stomach infection. I felt fine through out, so I'm wagering that something closer to 3 months would be possible, although it would come with numerous longterm health impacts. This is why it's generally body temperature before water. (And it absolutely has to be clean, diarrhea can be absolutely fatal if you're already low on drinking water) And water before food.
@@satgurs incorrect. You can still freeze to death when it's 50 Fahrenheit. Unless it's 98.6 degrees outside you're losing body heat to the environment. Shelter is always first. Thanks for playing though. Better luck next time.
4:36 smoke inhalation is probably obvious, me immediately flashes back to Clarkson's "revolutionary" camp fire in Top Gear's Australia special where he built the camp fire around their campsite. 🤣
On the topic of eating snow: *never* do this. Even if you were to assume (as Simon did for the sake of his excellent explanation) that the snow is uncontaminated by animal droppings or man-made chemicals, well, the problem is that you would really have no way of knowing for sure. Even snow that looks pristine and perfectly white could be contaminated in some way. Unless this is extremely deep snow, it would be difficult to gather any appreciable amount without also inadvertently scraping up some of the soil and dirt under the snow as well... and we all know that soil is chock-full of various types of bacteria, most of whom aren't pathogenic, but some of which are, and in some cases, lethally pathogenic like clostridium botulinum. In the absolute worst case scenario, if you have no choice, try to at least boil the water you get from melting snow before drinking it. This won't save you from chemical contaminants, but it may help protect you somewhat against the risk of contracting typhoid fever from bacteria in the snow. Ideally, though, if you must forage for drinking water far from civilisation, you would start doing so _before_ your current supply of water runs out entirely. Of course, there's the problem (as Simon mentioned) that snow is mostly air, so trying to obtain drinking water from snow is a _very_ inefficient process which is further compounded by the fact you'll have to do this whilst trying to avoid freezing to death along the way. Hopefully you have a buddy or two to help divide the labour a bit. So what's the best way to survive one of these extreme situations? Don't get into an extreme survival situation in the first place. Check the weather before you go out, and if you have any reason to doubt your safety, don't go. Above all, prepare accordingly whenever you venture out far beyond civilisation, and make sure that your friends and family know where you are going, so that if you don't return at the expected time, they'll be able to notify the authorities to send someone to find and rescue you if you get into trouble. Stay safe out there!
Idk man, I live in Ohio & we've been eating sno-cones we made ourselves for years. & idk what you consider extremely deep snow, but an easy 6 inches is common, and you won't get anywhere near the ground here. When you say extremely deep in thinking over 6-8 feet. That's not as common.
Honestly, last bit of advice might be the worst advice. Everyone has their own lives. Its like being afraid of skydiving bevause there's always a chance your main amd back up chutes fail. Or never climbing everest bevause you're afraid to die. The point of learning to survive extreme situations is so that you can take part in activities, amd be ready for the worst possibilities.Humanity would never have come to where we are today if everyone followed your advice
@@TenjinZekkenit’s more like not climbing Everest because there will be a blizzard or a storm or something. He ain’t saying never do any extreme sports but make sure that it probably won’t be in dangerous conditions and letting people know where you’re going isn’t exactly a bad idea in case something does happen. It isn’t bad advice to attempt to make dangerous activities less dangerous.
It doesn't have to be super deep. As long as the snow is undisturbed (e.g. not compacted as a result of something walking over it, and with no visible discoloration) and you can scoop it without scooping up dirt (which is usually pretty easy in snowy areas) you can readily collect pristine snow, which is effectively rainwater (which in turn is basically distilled water mixed with ambient air). As long as the snow is outwardly pristine, contamination only becomes an issue if the air is contaminated, in which case you're breathing in contaminants anyway.
A note on snow. It takes more than twice a much energy to melt snow as it does to raise it to body temperature. Plus what it takes to raise the temperature of the snow to the melting point. Let's say the snow is at 0 F (-18 C). Per gram it takes - 9 cal to heat the ice to 0 C - 80 cal to melt the ice - 36 cal to heat the water to body temperature Total: 125 cal Vs: Just 36 cal to heat water from 0 C.
First priority in a survival situation if you are able to breathe and are not bleeding profusely is to maintain your core body temperature. That means finding a way to stay warm in cold environments and cool in hot environments. Hypothermia or Hyperthermia will end you within minutes to hours in extreme conditions unless you can insulate yourself from them somehow. Get out of the wind and into the sun if possible in cold environments, then find a way to insulate yourself from the ground. Leaves and branches work well if you find yourself below tree line. Make a mat with them first. Do not exert yourself to the point you sweat. If you must exert yourself heavily, remove clothing so it doesnt get wet, and don it again as soon as the task is complete. Build a fire if possible. Dry out any wet clothing. Make a lean-too or dig a snow cave if possible. Find a hollow tree or a V between some rocks. Squat on your feet and huddle for warmth if you cant insulate your butt from the ground. Minimize contact with cold things. Desert survival is similar. Avoid hot things like direct sunlight and the ground or rocks that have been heated by it. Find or make shade, and only exert yourself between dusk and dawn. In either case, stay put unless you know exactly where you are, and how to to navigate back to civilization, and have the strength and equipment and supplies necessary to do so. Carry an EPIRB or a phone with satellite distress calling capabilities like the Iphone 14 and later models. Most of all, don not enter the wilderness unless you are prepared to spend at least a couple of days sleeping rough, and can summon help if you get hurt or lost. Carry a map and compass and know how to use them.
Most elevators nowadays aren't even cable lifts, They're hydraulic columns.(think an old car antenna) Even if there was a failure and the elevator started to "fall", the hydraulic column would fall so slowly that nothing would happen. They've been phasing out cable lifts for quite a few years now I think.
Hydraulic elevators have a maximum height though. They haven’t been phasing out cable(traction) lifts at all. In fact they are still the go to for high rise applications. They’ve been moving away from steel cables in some applications, using high strength rubber belts with steel reinforcement within them. But if you have a high rise thats 500ft tall, you’d need to dig a 500ft hole in the ground for your piston. Not to mention the massive tank you’d need to hold all of the oil. Plus hydraulic elevators are just too slow. Going from floor 1 to floor 60 would take you several minutes. Cable suspended traction cars are capable of going upwards of 1600 ft/min and beyond. Until we master the art of levitation, traction elevators will always be prominent in buildings taller than 50-60 feet. Source: I’m a licensed elevator mechanic.
If you have an environment where you can keep warm, such as the buried car of the man who was trapped for two months, you can put the snow into a vessel to naturally melt. Once you have enough, that would be safe. However, remember opening your "igloo" to get the snow will lose you some of the built up heat and the snow itself will cool the environment as it melts. Life is a balance. 🙂
Thank you so much for bringing up these myths. One I didn’t know personally is the eating snow one. One I’ve been trying to dispel is the tampon one. I’m an avid shooter and trained in field trauma, and this is so pervasive.
Astonishingly persistent, too. I've been shouted down for disagreeing with it, despite mine and my instructors credentials being *significantly* better (and including actual evidence) than some dumb mook who barely passed medic school and never saw an actual GSW in his entire three years of service pushing the myth.
Yeah, there was a video a while back of Russian conscripts being told by an instructor to ask their girlfriends to send them tampons for improvised medical kits for the purpose of plugging bullet wounds if they couldn't get a real one....
The shadow line technique for finding north is commonly useful when calibrating a compass. If you want your compass to point true north (and account for magnetic drift) then the shortest shadow of the day, cast by a vertical object, points north along a horizontal surface in the northern hemisphere and south in the southern hemisphere. I've used this on more than one occasion and it's also solidly reliable for determining midday, local time (as opposed to the time of the local timezone) if you're using sunsights for navigation. In the absence of functional safety systems, jumping in a falling elevator has zero effect on outcome. Even at the moment of impact, you assume the elevator's speed - the speed imparted by the jump, then, by the time you hit the deck, gravity has undone the speed change you gained from your jump and you hit the stationary floor of the elevator at the same speed as the elevator was travelling at on impact - which is exactly the same as if you'd just stood there. Caves are not the healthiest place to seek shelter. Never light a fire inside a cave. You'll burn up the oxygen - assuming that something flammable hasn't been gathering there for the past 20000 years and, well, that's one way to go out with a bang! Cave-ins are a feature of mudstone caves, generally not sandstone. If you hear a hiss or see a ghost, leave. A hiss indicates a sediment trickle which, in turn, indicates something's broken and you may not want to be around when the chickens come home to roost. Ghosts, and other locality-specific visual hallucinations, are a visual response to infrasound and infrasound, in any structure (including buildings as well as caves), is indicative of gradual structural collapse and typical of metastable structures which might hold together for years then collapse without warning. In short, if you're not a geologist, don't go deep enough into a cave to need a torch, lamp, or flame. Dehydration by snow consumption makes no sense. Snow cools you down. You don't sweat unless you reach a certain internal temperature no matter how much energy you burn. So, unless snow can elevate your body temperature it can't kill you by dehydration. Hypothermia? Yes. Definitely. Dehydration? Not in this species! Otherwise, eating icy-poles would not be a thing in the summer because it wouldn't feel refreshing or drop your core temperature - which is something that can be a problem in the cold. So, your biggest problem in a cold environment is lack of heat and if it's that cold and you can't find warmth, it won't matter either way.
@@randomname4726 I take my vow of abstinence from faith very seriously. Why should I believe in anything when belief is the basis of all deception and error? That said, can you explain how a drop in core body temperature results in dehydration given that loss of fluid due to sweating is core temperature dependent, not a function of power...? Here's a fun experiment - and I've done this a lot just as par for the course so I already know how it ends. Work up a sweat in the summer. Don't do anything extreme. You don't want to get to the point where you stop sweating or it will stuff up your experiment. Now, go indoors, take your temperature, and dry off. As soon as you've stopped sweating, take your temperature, again, then eat four icy-poles or, alternatively, drop some ice-cubes in the blender and scoff down the icy mix. Do you start sweating again? When you subsequently take your temperature, has your body temperature gone up or down? I'll take reproducible experimental evidence over a piece of paper any day...no matter how official.
Absolutely. Also, there's plenty of water in the desert if you know when and where to look. The WHEN is the most important part of any choice you make in an arid environment.
@@Mercurio-Morat-Goes-Bughunting exactly. Sometimes a piece of plastic comes in handy to get it as well. If you dont carry a small plastic bag to collect trash on your walks, it's a good safety net in an emergency for water.
@@id10t98 It doesn't need to be hard work, either - which can also be the difference between life and death in an arid environment. If the plant isn't poisonous, you can seal the bag around some clean foliage and water will collect at the bottom of the bag in the evening. No need to sweat finding stones and digging pits. The trick is to stay in the shade during the day and get things done at night.
Elevator horror stories are pretty rare nowadays, for the reasons you cite, but if you want to be freaked out read old newspapers from a hundred years or so ago about early elevator technology and it's like mass carnage. Scary stuff.
The incident in the Empire state building, where a lift fell dozens of stories comes to mind. It was completely and utterly obliterated, including its human occupants... But that was like a century or so ago, as you mentioned there were no failsafes yet back then.
With any luck we will have figured out public transportation in the future and look back at today's car accident statistics with horror about how we allowed that to continue for so long.
But mostly, because there's an astonishingly persistent myth that they're useful for gunshot wounds, and that appeals to the type of idiots who buy survival kits.
As a first responder, the breakdown of stopping life-threatening bleeds is extremely thorough and well-explained. And I loved the emphasis on identifying what will kill someone faster, bleeding or infection from unsterile packing material. People overestimate how much blood is in the human body. An average sized human being can bleed out from a severe bleed within minutes, and even if the bleeding is stopped, it’s likely the person has already gone into shock, which in its own right is maybe one of the biggest medical concepts that is misunderstood and needs its own debunking video.
4:10 I saw a video saying it’s actually worse to build the campfire at the entrance. Best to have it in the end as it will create a less toxic air flow. Still a terrible idea without a hole in the roof however
Yeah was about to comment the same, putting it in the middle or the back makes hot air/smoke to rise while cold air comes in from the entrance. Blocking off the entrance would just pump smoke into the cave, especially if the fire is too big or the entrance small.
There are a lot of considerations for whether to even use a cave as a shelter. The slope of the floor and ceiling, the direction the cave-mouth opens toward, the caves general shape and depth, and whether the cave is used by bats. If the cave is used by bats, waking them up isn't the worst thing. The worst thing is that they poop on the floor of the cave, and that poop attracts a ridiculous number of insects. Now, we'll assume the cave isn't used by bats at all. The important considerations are what direction does the mouth face, the depth of the cave, and the slope of the floor. The direction the cave faces will impact winds around the cave, which will determine how air circulates in the cave. Along with the cave's shape and dimensions, and the local geography and flora. Air flow relies on smooth surfaces, and in caves, surfaces are generally anything but smooth. These differences cause eddying in the flow, which serves as a barrier. That barrier will trap gasses produced by the fire, such as CO and CO2, and suffocate you in your sleep. Especially if the floor where you are is lower than the entrance of the cave. If you are using a cave as a shelter, putting the fire at the entrance allows the wind to pull the smoke across it and away from the people. You want to sleep near your fire for warmth. You need to know how to place a fire. Use no more than the first two or three meters of a cave, build a fire-pit, use rocks as heat-sinks and reflectors, and keep your fire small. Any fire meant for survival should always be small, just enough to keep you warm, and maybe heat some water or cook something. You aren't heating the entire cave. And you don't want to spend hours looking for fuel for your fire.
Simon's videos should be regarded as entertainment, not reliable information. He tends to put out stuff that is not well edited. His mistakes are sometimes left in the videos.
I remember learning in medic training to pack a wound with gauze then wrapping it, and taking a timed test to do that under a certain amount of time. honestly, one of the most fun tests in medic training.
I remember when in Boy Scouts, some younger scouts from a different patrol group grabbed rocks from the river to make a fire ring. No one realized their stupidity until a rock fractured and sent shards flying. Luckily, no one got hurt, but damn! The Scout Master was pissed!!!
I thought the elevators that were hoisted by a cable (the other type has a hydraulic post that is below the enclosure) lifted the thing by a leaf spring. If the cable is separated or sheared, and there's no tension pulling up on the spring, it relaxes and the ends protrude (extend) past the car and catch in the rails. Therefore, the elevator cannot freefall. You stay there and wait for the car to be lowered, or they get you out through the door in the top/ceiling of the car.
Food tip. Rub the juice or the thing on your skin. A patch test to check for allergies keeps it there for two days. If you know you gonna be stuck for a longer time, start early and start with rubbing it on, if you have no responce, keep it there for an hour, if the next day you still have no responce take it a step further. Also not fullproof but it is a bit safer then ingesting immediately.
I'm struggling with a few of the conclusions: First the advice to better not eat anything other animals eat and just stick to drinking water. I know from personal experience that indeed you can survive on water only but it has a significant impact on your energy and wellbeing. Considering that you're lost in the wilderness this is far from ideal and can create a life threatening situation. I have also observed monkeys eating certain legumes and followed suit which turned out to be fine. In a survival situation this could potentially save your life. I'd argue it would be worth trying a small amount first and determine how your body responds. Being able to find something to eat seems crucial to me for survival. Second is the advice to not eat snow for hydration. Although I understand the risks involved, it seems clear to me that the example given of the man who survived two months while eating snow proofs that it can be a life saver. Without water a human cannot survive much longer than a week, so him surviving two months on snow proofs that he got hydrated while overcoming the downsides. Because of this I doubt the conclusion that the energy expenditure caused severe dehydration. I suspect that taking small amounts at a time would allow your body to recover without serious complications. it seems a risk worth taking over not surviving from dehydration.
The people who say you can survive x amount of days without food often seem to forget that this only applies if you aren't moving. If you are moving, because, for example, you're lost in the wilderness and are trying to find your way out of the wilderness, well then you won't survive much more than a week without food, and you'll be forced to slow down considerably after two or three days at most.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 Well, you'd be better of staying still than blundering around the wilderness in random directions, because that's more predictable for search parties.
He didn't actually spend 2 months stuck in his car. He was discovered on February 17th 2012. On the 28th of December, he drove a few metres. He also celebrated New Year's Day with energy drinks and vodka. And in mid January he attempted to walk to the nearest supermarket but gave up after falling 3 times in 10 metres. And he did melt the snow before drinking it.
Also with tampons, the cotton can become loose and small pieces can become trapped in the wound and cause massive infections. The only thing you’d want less than a massive wound is a massive wound that’s infected and hurting even more because of it
Yep. There's common advice for people with fresh piercings that boils down to not use cotton balls / qtips for cleaning piercing wounds for that exact reason. The little fibers get everywhere, including into wounds where they hinder healing or even trigger infections because they provide an easy spot for bacteria to gather.
There should be a disclaimer for the don’t eat snow… You shouldn’t eat snow if you’re stationary and trying to stay warm, then you should be drinking water, preferably boiled and still relatively hot…. That’s a super important distinction. But if you’re active and staying warm through movement and work, eat as much snow as you’d like, BECAUSE it’ll cool your body down and the goal is to avoid sweating at all cost when you’re working or being active out in the cold.
You really shouldn't have to pack a wound (Chapter 4) unless it's in the crotch area or armpits. The best thing you could learn to do is how to apply a tourniquet or fashion one from a shirt, belt or bandana and a stick. In the case of gut wounds use a clean dry pressure dressing and do not try to stuff intestines back inside a abdominal cavity. Chest wounds you would like to have a seal dressing (can make one with a ziploc bag and tape) while monitoring for pneumothorax. I could go on and on about battlefield care
I knew all of these already except for the tampon one. I'm surprised to think that people have thought of using them for such a thing. Great video with good information, wish it was longer with more scenarios.
I heard that for the fire in a cave it’s actually the opposite because heat in the entrance would make the part of the smoke that gets inside to accumulate instead of escaping. It’s an interesting point about the heat expansion of the rocks though. Seems like it’s a gamble either way.
Idk where I learned this (probably on tv) but if you have 2 plastic bags (water tight) and you need to drink snow, you can pee in one of the bags and use the other to collect snow. The warmth from the pee will melt the snow and you can drink.
I don’t know if my son watched this video, but we were in an elevator (which he hates anyway) and as we were stepping out of it he told me that if it fell we shouldn’t jump. 😂 He is on the ASD spectrum, so it’s not unusual for him to pop off with things that seem to come out of nowhere. Anyway, he explained it pretty well. I’m impressed! 💜
Ive survived an elevator fall. The air bag thing is real and i felt it. Happened so fast i barely had time to think. I was a kid playing around with an elevator having a game with friends racing each other to the bottom and after like the 4th time it happened and i just remember feeling butterflies in my tummy and then a feeling like standing on an inflatable matress after you let the air out. The doors opened and the floor was a good few feet misaligned with the ground floor. I had to jump down. And i looked up at my friend who was coming down the stairs (we where racing) and he has like "How did you get so fast?". I hate elevators to this day.
Another elevator survival tip: Do not attempt to leave an elevator that is stuck/malfunctioning/misaligned; call for help and/or use the emergency phone inside the elevator to call for help and wait until firefighters or some other personnel arrive and only exit when they say it's safe. If you're inside an elevator that's stuck and it suddenly drops again, you're probably going to be okay because of all the other safety systems. But if you're attempting to climb out and it sudden drops, you get cut in half. You might feel silly just standing there waiting for possibly hours when the door is open and you could easily climb out, but it's not worth the risk.
@sykes1024 Yeah. Wish someone told me that as a kid. I do remember my parents mentioning something like that after the fact, though, and then everyone saying, l was so lucky i didn't get cut in half. You know how it goes with all the neighbors talking about something big that just happened 😅.
It wasn't an air bag. It was some sort of an emergency brake that stopped the elevator. Elevator shafts are not airtight, so such a pocket would not stopped elevator completely, just slightly slowed down the final impact, it would not be a few feet high (air compresses quite effectively) and finally once the door was open, even if the shaft has been airtight (which it isn't), the "air bag" would leave through the door and the elevator would have fallen to the ground.
For years I've argued that lying flat in a falling elevator was your best bet, glad to hear the experts (there are experts in elevator fall physics?!) back me up.
The elevator advice seems bad. 1) there is 0% chance that you are going to be able to lie on the floor of a falling elevator. You don't have time to react and you're going to be floating off the floor, probably up against the ceiling for most of the journey 2) You don't want your legs to act like a crumple zone? Just take the impact directly to your vital organs and head? 🤔
@@CleverAccountName303 If you're able to stand at all, standing with knees and hips lightly bent seems the best choice. They are our bodies' built in shock absorbers, even if they won't be able to do enough to save us in this scenario.
If you get urinated on by a jellyfish you must sting the affected area. A stinger is a cooking device commonly used by prisoners to cook food in the prison sink. They often make jellyfish urine stew followed by stinging themself.
As a lift engineer myself they are very safe the brake can only lift if there is power to it, in a power cut the brake wont be able to pull the relay in that tells the control panel to lift the brake in the first place so dont fear, and 1 of those steel cables is strong enough to hold the lift on its own plus the device under or on top of the lift that is also a brake will pull in if the lift travels fast then the speed it is set to. Lifts are safer than driving a car
Regards to the elevator I don't think everybody knows that fact that they are traveling at the same exact speed that the elevator is dropping. So the elevator and the human are traveling at the same rate accelerating at the same time prior to that. Ergo lay flat just like gravitron carnival rides
The elevator falls first. So you are not going to be touching the ground in a free fall situation. Even if you are only one centimeter off the floor, you have no control to maneuver yourself. The elevator will start to slow down very slightly from the air pressure buildup, which gives you about 1/10000 of a second to collect yourself and get in the "right" position. Good luck Bad advice about spreading out the impact anyway. We are not a balloon, we have more important areas in our bodies than other areas. You don't want your legs to act like a crumple zone? Just take the impact directly to your vital organs and head? 🤔
@@johndinner4418 Ribs pulverisation vs broken spine and broken ribs. Great choice, isnt it? At least laying on spine will preserve your face somewhat for identification.
Trees can give shelter, but *light no fire* close to one - without checking for snow load on branches above. Collapsing half-slushy, warmed snow will snuff a fire, wet the burnables, AND cool you off.
The cave thing actually happened where I live several years ago. I live in Minneapolis/St. Paul (Minnesota, USA) and the Mississippi River cuts through both cities, with sandstone bluffs on both sides. Of course there are caves. Some were even used by famous gangsters of the 1920s and 30s for their criminal activity, but that a whole history unto itself. Some kids were partying in one of those old caves. They lit a fire. Three died from the CO poisoning and two survived. Two other young men had to be rescued when they went into a different cave entrance down one of the bluffs, but the cave itself was 100 feet below that entrance. Fortunately they survived. There’s many more stories of incidents involving the caves in this area going back to before Minnesota was a state.
One morning, my car was absolutely *buried* under the snow...I got enough off to open the driver side door (yes, I DID clear it properly before driving off!) and dang - it was *warm* in there! Proof that igloos are a good idea.
I live in very clean environment with not much pollutants. Don't eat snow. If you throw a snowball, made from freshly fallen snow on to a hot sauna fireplace, it'll smell bad. You can instantly tell there is something iffy. I've teached my kids to not eat snow by this, and by melting a bucketful of snow. It has all sorts of.... Stuff in it. Little particles of different colors etc.
@@Ksoism so, actually not a very clean environment. Microplastics are everywhere these days, even the Antarctic, but visible particles and also smoke particles aren't a thing of clean environments.
The problem with elevators, is they typically fall UP, not down. The counter-weight is heavier than the car and contents. To fall down, an elevator would need to lose both braking and cables. To fall up, you just need to lose brakes.
RE: Falling Elevators - the good guys at “Well There’s Your Problem…” covered a similar situation on their episode about a ski lift that was cut by a US pilot hotshotting. The only survivor of the crash was a young girl who somehow managed to be on top of all the other occupants in the lift. So get everyone to lie down, and lay on top of them. Then prepare to be covered in blood. As for the cave situation, when I imagine living in a cave, the fire is always located outside the entrance. Maybe it’s just from playing too much D&D growing up, but that’s where my mental cavemen always built their caves.
Regarding being lost in the woods, learn about the local flora and fauna, before you go anywhere, dress for the weather and carry the things you really need, including the means to protect and help yourself.
6:38 ironically amanita muscaria is a delicious mushroom if you prepare it right, barboil it twice or three times than fry, grill or pickle it for later use
You can melt snow with the radiant heat from your body when moving. I.E: you filled a canteen and placed it in your pocket when making movement. Possibly a camelback or something in a backpack. If you're taking off layers to stay cool and avoid sweating, consider putting that excess thermal energy to better use.
For a fire in a cave you need to avoid smoke and the ideal location for that is in the middle of the cave with room to walk around it. Also caves sometimes have flammable gasses which can explode, which seems more likely than a cave in from a fire.
Jumping inside an elevator in free fall will not negate the downwards velocity of the jumper so they slam into the roof and the freefall speed of an elevator is less than the terminal velocity of a human so they won't float inside of one. Ofcourse even with perfect timing the jump won't help since the human is still falling at the elevators terminal velocity..
You can use your body to melt snow and drink it, just depends on the situation. I did it on a survival course I took in the winter. With all the heat I was generating over the two days from all the wood I was cutting down and lugging around on my own to build my shelter, and then later smoke signal, and also to supply for a fire, I was burning a lot of calories and generating a ton of heat. So much so that I eventually had to remove my toque and walk around with my jacket open. Temps weren't super cold though, about -5 to 0 degrees celsius. It would probably be a different story in -30 or -40 temps as I know some folks had to deal with. Point is, in my situation, packing snow in to my water canteen then putting it under my shirt to melt it wasn't exposing me to hypothermia as I was already boiling up from the 2 days straight of tree cutting and moving them. Of course, a fire to melt the snow and ice is always best, but you can use your body heat IF you aren't at risk from hypothermia by doing so. You just gotta be the guy doing all the work to work up all that extra heat. ;) That all said I did break the rule and eat a bit of clean snow, but that was more for relief from all the heat I was working up. I melted as much of it as possible to drink later.
I'm pretty dumb and flunked physics back when I was in school, but is it even possible to jump if you're in a falling elevator? Wouldn't you be in a non gravitational state while you're falling? I mean you can let go of the rail or whatever you're clinging on to that prevents you from flying up into the ceiling I suppose but that's not jumping. Can someone enlighten me on this?
If you live in a place where theres a possibility that you might get stuck in your car in the snow, you should carry a few tealights (the short, round candles) and some matches. A tealight or two burning on the dashboard will produce enlugh heat that you won't freeze, and it would likely melt some snow for you - not quickly though.
As an amateur mycologist (study of fungi), besides the obvious problem of mushroom identification being difficult, even for experts sometimes, a less well known reason not to eat any mushrooms you find is because even most "edible" species are only fully edible _once cooked_ . Many perfectly "edible" [when cooked] species are at least going to give you GID (gastro intestinal distress, like gas or diarrhea) which wastes energy and/or hydration to fight, and there are even some mushrooms that are commonly eaten all over the world that are seriously poisonous if eaten raw. As good as they taste cooked, and as fascinating as I find them in general, mushrooms are just always going to be a truly terrible choice compared to just about anything else for anyone starving in the woods.
The idea behind jumping in an elevator was originally to jump just before the elevator strikes the ground. So you could offset your fall using the elevator floor as a springboard. However, it was also a joke because there is no way you could determine when the elevator was about to impact, and it failed to account for any other hazard that may occur within a freefalling elevator.
There was a study done about the fire in a cave. You actually would want to put the fire towards the back. If you put it towards the front yes some smoke will get out but most of it will be blow into the cave. If I make the fire towards the back the wind getting blown into the cave will act as a filtration system. But still don’t recommend doing it.
I was looking for a comment like this, because lighting the fire in the entrance would fill the cave faster with carbon monoxide than lighting it in the back of the cave, because lighting a fire in the back will cause a draft from the entrance that clears out the carbon monoxide, but will also be not as helpful in "heating up" the cave. People living in the cave apparently lit a fire in the center of a cave to have a compromise between draft, heat and CO buildup
If you are stuck in one spot I can see how eating snow would be bad, but what about if you are actively hiking through the environment? Sure the hydration benifits would be tiny, but your body would already be running hot from the exertion, so it seems like melting the snow wouldn't require additional energy and might even result in less water lost through sweating too.
As to the snow thing. You can use your body to warm up the snow as long as it's only waste heat from within your shelter that's heating it up. If you can wrap up warm and let the snow melt very slowly in a container for some time -- it'll be a lot safer than eating the snow.
Having just read through the comments (there are a LOT more than YT tells you!), just about every one of these is hotly disputed! It seems lying down in the lift is the only one that makes sense - but is probably the least likely 'tip' you'll ever need to know! Also, however dangerous lifts might be in theory, stairs are far more dangerous - often lethal. If you want to dramatically improve your chances of survival, dont use the stairs (and stay out of kitchen snd bathroom!).
I've been in a falling elevator. Stomach in my mouth for a half second then it stopped on the emergency brakes between floors. Old building in NYC. Tried the emergency button, no response. Pressed the next floor button, and it dropped again and stopped on brakes. OMG! Then doors opened even though floors were not aligned and we jumped out totally terrified.
not so long ago i learned that putting a fire close to a entrace is a fatal mistake. you block air ventilation and will suffocate. best is to put it in the center because this way the hot air can vent out of the upper half of the entrance and fresh air can flow in on the bottom half. this won't happen if you put the fire at the entrance. you will block air flow in the cave while smoke from the fire will still enter it. at least that is what i learned about the perfect fire placement in a cave, but i am no expert
0:35 - Chapter 1 - Don't jump in a falling elevator 3:10 - Chapter 2 - Don't light a fire inside a cave 5:30 - Chapter 3 - Do not rely on animals to tell you what you can eat 7:10 - Chapter 4 - Don't put up tampons in bullet wounds 10:15 - Chapter 5 - Do not eat snow for hydration
I mean technically, if you hit it at the right split second in the right elevator fall, you can lessen your impact from fatal to nonfatal, but not only is there not enough information to know precisely when to jump, but even with the precise information, you're significantly more likely to bounce off the ceiling and hit the ground even harder. You can think of it as like those chuck-e-cheese ticket games where, if you hit it at the precise moment, you win the jackpot, but just like these games being completely rigged, you don't know to know how far below the bottom-level of ground-floor the elevator stops at.
The snowed-in guy didn’t eat snow according to himself. He had a small field kitchen in his car where he melted it. Or at least most of it, his last month alone was apparently a bit hazy.
Snow can still contain parasites and bacteria even when it looks fresh. If you're able to melt the snow with fire, it's better to bring it to boiling first before consuming if viable. "Silver tea" also helps fighting hypothermia so also consider drinking it while still relatively warm (or above body temperature).
On the last one: That only applies if you're staying in one place and not doing anything. If you're walking and active, you generate body heat quickly. You can easily wind up sweating. Cold is ome thing. Wet and cold is dangerous. Sweating is bad. Movies & video games where people get their feet wet in the cold... Yeah, in real life, you don't get your feet wet in the cold unless it's necessary. Anyway, the point is that in reality, thermal management may make eating snow necessary. To keep your body heat down to minimize sweating. How much energy does it actually take anyway? I've always wanted to the math and check if these ideas are valid. I've been told not to drink very cold water when working in the heat because it takes too much energy to for the body to warm it up. I've been told similar myths about it taking too much energy to digest food. What I do know is legit it that you can't survive long without water. Apparently, you have at most 2 days, maybe 3 if you're very lucky. Then cramps and stuff. You're alive, but not functional enough to get the water you need. Without actual hard evidence I have a hard time buying into this idea that it takes too much energy to equalize temperatures. If anything, the hazard is hypothermia if you're not active. If you're active, "cotton kills." Because it absorbs water and holds it. When you stop and cool-down, you're in dangerger without a fire or warm-up.
I once made a really big sale on the top floor of a new city skyscaper. I am told that Australians tolerate faster elevators than most nations, so what happened next was just that bit worse. The moment the doors closed and I was out of sight, I did a little jump of celebration. The elevator bgan moving while I was in the air and I was pinned to the ceiling by the shoulders. I don't recall how long I was up there, but I remember looking down at the floor, my arms and legs flailing around uselessly. I dropped down at some point and landed uneventfully. Don't try this at home folks.
Last known elevator accidents are 100 years old, only recent ones are mine and construction related. The only mistake to avoid is trying to get out of a stuck elevator, it can move suddenly.
In a dome-shaped cave it would actually be better to light the fire at the back wall, as this would create better air flow. Things are obviously different if the cave is a long tunnel.
Actually you should NOT make the fire at the cave entrance, because the draft will pull the smoke into the cave and not outside of it. The best way is to make the fire near the middle back of the cave. The smoke will rise and be sucked out of the cave as warm air will want to rise and leave and new fresh cool air will circulate inside. A side benefit of this is that the walls will reflect the warmth from the fire back at you so you get warm faster and more evenly.
One caveat to eating snow is if you're moving around. If you're walking around or building a shelter and this raises your core temperature enough to start sweating, you're better off eating snow to keep cool. If you sweat, you die.
If you're at risk of dehydration, and have no way of melting snow without using your body heat, eating snow can save your life. Dehydration slows down your metabolism more than the energy expenditure of melting snow. In other words, you'll gain more warmth than you lose. The increased expulsion of water from breathing and sweating will be a result of producing more heat, which is well spent water; in fact, that's what will save your life. Avoiding excessive sweating, when lost in a snowy wilderness, is fairly easy, by the way. The main loss of water would be from urination. However, metabolism isn't all that affects urination; the degree of hydration is even more important. If you risk dehydration, the body will use the absolute minimum required to expel waste products. In other words, the body will contribute to you getting a net positive effect on your hydration from eating snow. The fact that snow is mostly air isn't a problem. There's likely to be plenty of it around, and it can be compressed quite a bit. All of that said, if you're only slightly thirsty, don't eat snow. If you have means of melting the water without using your body heat, do that. Don't eat any snow with any coloration; above all, avoid pink snow, as that may contain toxic algae. I'll just assume that everyone knows why they should stay clear of yellow snow... Also avoid disturbed snow, snow near animal (or human) tracks, and snow under trees or other places where birds may have been active. My sources: Experts on safety and survival in the Norwegian mountains during winter (e.g. sports physiologists, medical biologists, medical doctors, rescue organizations, government institutions). This is pretty much a scientific discipline of its own, in Norway. For millennia, we've crossed mountains in the winter because we had to, and now we're doing it for fun, so we take an interest in knowing how to survive there.
Infecting a wound can be super dangerous. If it's a flesh wound it is as you say and infections can be treated easily with antibiotics, but getting a bone infected isn't as easily treatable and can lead to amputation
Keeping your fire close to the cave entrance also means that rescuers can see it and the smoke too!! And as a PSA, you can eat pine needles. Even if you can't identify anything else in the outdoors, you should be able to recognize pine trees.
2:30 Seems lying flat would increase the chance of hurting your internal organs. Landing on your feet may destroy your legs/back, but still think that is more survivable than taking the hit to your stomach. Like when jumping into water or from something high onto the ground you would never want to land flat.
If you're stood up you'd crumple like a wet lawn chair as your shins would fly through your knees and your head would impact the floor at half the speed of sound. If you're on the floor trying to guard your head, the force would be spread across the body and yeah maybe rupture organs, but you'd still have a higher survival rate.
Tampons aren't good for bullet wounds, but they *are* great firestarters, especially if you can coat them in candle wax or a bit of cooking oil before lighting them. You can also use them as a stage 1 filter for purifying water (it will remove particulate matter, like sand and gravel, but NOT microbes or bacteria, so the water will still need to be boiled to make it safe to drink). If you fluff them up a bit, they can fit pretty snugly in the opening of a plastic water bottle.
Tampons have a place in survival kits, but their best uses aren't first aid.
the medics used the menstrual pads for wounds not tampons!! i knew 2 medics from the war and got it from them!!
Actually, tampons soaked in wax make a good emergency fire starter. But if I had a choice, I'd refer my propane torch.
Petroleum jelly is excellent for starting a fire. A little on some cotton can get a fire going in no time.
I've seen hand sanitizer used as well; it's basically alcohol in gel form.
fun fact when I was a child I saw these in my mothers bathroom and asked what they were. she said they were to stop bullet wounds.
No, I saw it in a cartoon once. When you’re in a falling house, wait until the last second, then step out the front door on to the ground as the house smashes behind you.
As a Canadian I was definitely taught that eating snow will hasten hypothermia. I was also taught that if you are in an avalanche to blow on the snow so it melts a bit and you can then use the direction the water droplet travels to indicate which way is down (so moving in the opposite direction is up and therefore out of the snow). You can also do the opposite with bubbles if you get stuck under the ice. Though, as disorienting as being plunged under the ice would be, knowing which way is up is the least of your worries. The shock is almost as bad as the hypothermia and a lot of people die from involuntarily breathing in water.
Being Canadian is fun I swear. I love living in a country that hurts my face for 5 months. 😅
🇨🇦☃️
Sounds like a real hoot 😅
Come to Australia mate, Canada sounds like heaven. Nice easy temps to deal with, if it's cold put on more clothes or build a fire. hardly any nasty critters, and the ones you have are big enough to spot and avoid if you have a couple brain cells. Try avoiding our crazy critters in 48°c.
Don’t forget to keep your stick on the ice. 🇨🇦👍
@@shaneebz5292 Don't be fooled, Canada Geese are the frozen norths counterpart to Drop Bears. Lurking around every corner and just when you think they've left for the winter the fuckers come charging out of a bush.
There is a story of Polish-Canadian girl being stuck for three days in Tatra high mountains during winter due to the avalanche risk and snow storm… they found her healthy casually waiting for the rescue team thanks to her school training and extra equipment.
You can usually tell if a large colony of bats live in a cave because they often leave a deep layer of guano on the cave floor, which is definitely not a place I wanted to seek shelter in.
Lol
Considering the fumes from it are deadly, I agree.
But then you could make Gunpowder!
I don't know how. I just know Saltpeter is involved, and it's found in Bat Guano.
Yes, you are very likely going to smell them long before you see any visual signs.
guano is good for firestarting
One thing to note. If you're stuck in the desert and you have water such as a jug or canteen, drink it. Don't save it for later. Your body needs that water inside you not inside a container. And you're actively dehydrating. It's not going to help you later if you're dead.
And plenty of people have died of dehydration with water in a container.
As an explanation for the last part, dehydration can seriously impair cognitive function, so people simply don't think about drinking their water if they're seriously dehydrated
Not quite the best idea... if you have a large amount of water and you are already hydrated and you drink all that water you will waste some of it on the ground.
A better way to phrase that would be drink it when you feel thirsty
It's called rationing
@@yasininn76 Rationing water in a desert usually hurts you rather than helping.
I always thought that the idea to jump in a falling elevator (or crashing airplane) was intended as a joke
I mean, if you're in a plane crash, there's not really much you can do anyway, surely?
It's a child's logic: if you jump you hang still in the air
Physics says it would work but you'd have to jump at the exact same force at the correct time. The one problem is any ceiling above would hit you as hard as the floor would have. Science sucks lol
@@sd-ch2cq please explain.
You would have to be a stump to think this was a good idea.
Canadian here, 100% was taught IN SCHOOL like 25 years ago (early grade school) never to eat snow for hydration because of the exact same reasons listed here. Ill still take a bite once in a while just for joy though.
It is correct that ice can cool your core temperature it is beyond ludicrous to say it will dehydrate you. With the exception of perhaps the tampon advice this video has told people to do the wrong thing in every circumstance.
@@apathyguy8338did you even listen to any evidence given or just take the topics at face value?
I'm a New Englander and we were taught the same thing in elementary school
Depends on your acclimation, the temperature, melting method, and density of the snow IMHO. Melting compacted, heavy, wet, snow is easy with heat from your hands or another external heat source. For example the sunshine through your windshield. There are many scenarios in which using snow as a water source can save your life.
Ok then how did that guy who was trapped in his car survive on snow
I met a guy who ended up stranded in the snow for days because of a broken leg with mountaineering equipment but no means to light a fire (ie, no wood). He ended up putting the snow in a plastic, watertight bag and putting the bag inside his sleeping bag, where it would melt based on the radiant heat he lost to the interior of the sleeping bag. Wasn’t a lot of water, but it was enough to survive until help arrived.
The energy to melt the snow still came from his body, though, so not much better than just eating it, I think.
@@gcewing It increases the risk, but it's not directly lowering his core temperature as it would if he was swallowing it. Given that he's inside an insulated bag, there's plenty of time the waste heat from his body to restore the warmth inside the sleeping bag; especially if the bag is between his clothes and the bag-lining, and not under his clothes, directly on his skin.
Just so long as he skipped the yellow snow.
It's information for American viewers.
@@gcewingIt’s far better than eating it. The energy loss from the body heat given off in the sleeping bag isn’t that different with or without a bag of snow. Directly ingesting it is going to have a far greater effect of heat energy pulled from the body.
My grandfather (born 1907) worked in a grocery store as a teenager. He was unpacking boxes of menstrual pads and asked his boss what they were for. His boss told him they were for polishing cars. So Grandpa took home a box and did just that. Obviously, tampons are for areas of the car that are harder to reach or need a little more scrubbing power.
My great-grandfather had to explain what pads were really for so grandpa wouldn’t use them on the car again.
this right here is why we need unisex sexual education
@@SlipNperiodSlideFuck no, I wanna see more people cleaning cars with tampons, that shit's hilarious
In a falling elevator, anyone who lights a fire to melt snow will live to regret it.
Especially if they fart.
I'm in a falling elevator right now, asking UA-cam for tips.
well, obviously you shouldn't light a fire in a falling elevator. It will use up all the oxygen inside and you will suffocate. 😇
It’s ok as long as you start the fire by lighting the tampon
But they _will live_
"observe how other animals eat"
Now that you have found another animal, eat it.
thanks for the videos, this one has all good points
If you have
a. the skill to trap/kill it without expending more energy than you would gain from it, and
b. some equipment to cook it. Not fun to have food-borne diseases and/or parasites while having access to remedies, but it's so much worse when you do not.
@@Smilley85
If you are close enough to study it, maybe just throw a stick at it.
Oh @@Smilley85yes, the proper tools are necessary
I was trying to be funny, but U R right, it would be serious business!
@@Alias_Anybody Sure if you are feeling fancy. You could also just use a rock.
Taking a rock to a lot of animals is a good way to get killed. Humans aren't particularly strong, nor particularly fast. Please don't actually try this. Many animals are extremely dangerous if in distress. Some deer for example can kick at 700PSI, and if you get hurt, whether minorly, or severely without any medical supplies, or medical knowledge on how to treat your wounds infection will become a massive risk. @@Carewolf
I had an ex girlfriend whoos dad was an elevator repair man. His pay rate was very surprising when i found out. He had an unbelievable amount of knowledge in regard to his field..and for this and due to the importance of saftey and having good people in his position, he was very well compensated. He took his job very seriously. Trust that your elevator has been maintained by someone who had thier shit together, and is beyond safe. They make $100 an hour.. and they earn that because theres a lot to know to keep people safe, and they ensure that everything is in proper working order. He was a very smart guy (and a giant at 6-8). Knowing that people like him are responsible for elevator safety and how seriously they take thier job alleviates any worry i once had.
At that height he literally wouldn't be able to jump in most elevators!
@@paulhaynes8045 he wasn't just tall, he was massive. I'm surprised he could fit in one, lol. I heard a story that he got into a fight with another driver, who had a friend with him. He only had his daughter with him, but beat he both thier asses despite one of them hitting him in the head with a crowbar while standing on his hood ( probably couldn't reach him otherwise haha). I didn't catch how old she was at the time, but that's the story I got from her, and he confirmed it. Super chill guy.. if it happened like that he had no choice. No temper at all..
Yeah he probably wasn't making 100 an hour... unless he for some reason got a bunch of pay bumps that nobody else gets. Elevator repair says that they make less than 100k a year, so stop your BS.
@thomgizziz I repair elevators and my wage is $130 an hour. Which is just above standard rate these days so stop inserting yourself into people's comments with nothing to say except arguing. I pity your life. I hope you find something ro smile about even just on e rhis year.
@@dramatticdevon4741 Thanks dude. I saw that dude's comment and just rolled my eyes..His name is Darell, and as stated he absolutely makes 💯 an hour. Lol. Thanks for having my back.
If I ever find myself in a falling elevator, I'm going to stand on my head. To see how far I will be driven into the ground.
If there was ever a time to practice cock pushups, that's it. Not only can you say you literally drilled it into the ground, but you technically followed the correct safety advice too, as well as Tenacious D. It's a win-win-win.
"Don't worry, he fell into this perfectly him shaped hole!"
Hmm interesting, I referenced a Tenacious D joke involving male parts and certain exercises, which seems to have gotten my comment auto-filtered, yet I now get notifications for replies to the original comment even with mine not showing...
I'll let people derive the clearly hilarious joke I made from the information here, on the basis that I doubt Simon and his team would waste their time unblocking it...they want to keep the genius of the hilarious comment hidden for their own evil schemes and not share it, I understand.
Respect
I have a feeling your head would end up coming out of your arse, but it would be an interesting experiment I must admit 😆
Actually the newest research suggests that lighting a fire in the back of the cage is more favorable than in the front because it creates a circular air motion drawing fresh air in.
this !!!
Yeah, I was going to write this! You are very true, they have found scorch marks at the very back of caves where ancient Humans dwelled.
@@lylemitchell1991 Also heat is traveling in cave longer this way so less heat is lost and cave is more bearable to be in.
See, this is why I have trouble listening to advice from the experts ..... cos for all I know they'll change there minds next week. LOL
Cave shelter pro-tip: if seeking shelter in a cave or under an overhang during a lightning storm, DO NOT sit directly in the mouth of the cave; a lightning strike on the rock face could arc and jump across the space from the roof of the opening to the floor. You don't want to be sitting there.
well shie, then where do you sit if you also want to make a fire for warmth/food? Just cry?
The back of the cave is fine, just don’t sit directly at the opening if there’s a lightning storm going on
I love the fact that the thumbnail for this video, about jumping in an elevator, is also at the beginning of the video. Soooo many others would place it at the end. Thank you! Now, I'll watch the entire video from start to finish because I highly respect that ❤
More of this kind of video, maybe a sequal about undderated effective survival tips, like using sos pads and the square batteries can be extremely effective at lighting even damp wood, or how covering your head with a hat hood etc is actually better than leaving it exposed in a hot desert environment despite it seeming like wearing nothing or as little as possible would be better for staying cool (i don't remember how this works )
This whole video was kind of dumb. Like how often do people find caves (rarely)? How often are people stranded or lost and there is a cave nearby (almost never)? How often do elevators freefall? (Never)
@rubiconnn well the frequency of caves depends on the terrain, and survival knowledge by nature is something you learn but hopefully never have to use, the elevator one I'll give you but it's probably a common misconception among older people, after all the myth was popular enough to appear early on on mythbusters. But it's still interesting, I wasn't previously aware of the crush zone or that lying flat was better, sure I'll likely never need to apply that knowledge but this is ultimately entertainment ans at least personally I was entertained.
@@rubiconnn But they were all fairly well-known survival tips, and all of them properly corrected.
I'm sorry you're so sheltered.
the covering up in hot environments works because the sun is a deadly lazer, and clothes are very effective at blocking UV light
not getting severe sunburns is better than "staying cool"
As a former athletic trainer I can say that tampons can work to control nose bleeds. I wouldn’t use it for bullet wounds precisely because it just becomes soggy. In a nose the nostril would limit how much it expands but that’s about it.
Don’t use them for actual wounds.
Leaving the tampon in the wrapper and using it together with a bandage to provide additional pressure on the wound is the only way I can really see a tampon being useful in first aid, doing the same thing as a rolled-up bandage. Or, like, keep proper pressure bandages in your first aid kit.
My first aid instructors have always been very insistent that you never put anything in or take anything out of the patient. That will almost always make things worse. Your job is to buy the patient time for the paramedics to arrive, not cure them.
I think the mistake of using tampons for bullet wounds is also in part people forgetting that certain words in one language don't mean the same in another. Tampon is a french word for buffer and if the label of a medical gauze package includes French it will also include the word tampon. Likely American soldiers heard and say the word a lot around the French in WW1 then when they got back to the USA and heard the word used to describe feminine hygiene products they where like "did you know those are used for wounds in battle?"
Like quicksand, I was told falling elevators would be a much more common hazard.
And lava. I practiced avoiding lava when I was a kid.
3:12. First concern is shelter. Hypothermia can kill in hours. Then water. You can survive 3 days without water. Food is actually relatively minimal concern. You can last about 3 months without food. Itll suck, but you'll live.
Hell, the average American will make it about a year, provided they could get salt and a few vitamins.
@@kerim.peardon5551 straight facts
Hours if you're lucky. If you're wet, especially in water, it can be a matter of a few minutes. And often times it's not the hypothermia, it's the stupid stuff you do because you're brain is too cold to operate properly. The survival without water can vary. My grandfather lasted roughly 2 weeks, but he was inside with properly maintained room temperature and was going to die regardless. I personally managed nearly a month on basically no food. IIIRC, it was like a cup of yogurt a day due to a bad stomach infection. I felt fine through out, so I'm wagering that something closer to 3 months would be possible, although it would come with numerous longterm health impacts.
This is why it's generally body temperature before water. (And it absolutely has to be clean, diarrhea can be absolutely fatal if you're already low on drinking water) And water before food.
Shelter is only the first concern in extreme conditions. Typically, you'd want water first.
@@satgurs incorrect. You can still freeze to death when it's 50 Fahrenheit. Unless it's 98.6 degrees outside you're losing body heat to the environment. Shelter is always first. Thanks for playing though. Better luck next time.
I was really hoping to see Simon test out these survival tips himself.
Of course, it wouldn't be a fair test as Simon is invincible.
He could get one of his writers to test them for him.
Simon's beard is all the protection he needs from the elevator impact.
and has infinite clones apparently
Nah, he's not as invincible as Chuck Norris.
... right? {Shudders in self-doubt}
Some crazy simping going on here. Go get a girlfriend dude.
4:36 smoke inhalation is probably obvious, me immediately flashes back to Clarkson's "revolutionary" camp fire in Top Gear's Australia special where he built the camp fire around their campsite. 🤣
I was thinking, has he seen tiktok videos? Nothing is obvious anymore. Unless you have common sense, which very few people have these days😂
I love that episode.
Hammond: What is this?
Clarkson: Crocodile ear
Hammond: It’s hairy
Clarkson: Crocodiles have hairy ears.
@@alwynsmit3546 The only funny thing is that you think common sense means anything...
On the topic of eating snow: *never* do this. Even if you were to assume (as Simon did for the sake of his excellent explanation) that the snow is uncontaminated by animal droppings or man-made chemicals, well, the problem is that you would really have no way of knowing for sure. Even snow that looks pristine and perfectly white could be contaminated in some way. Unless this is extremely deep snow, it would be difficult to gather any appreciable amount without also inadvertently scraping up some of the soil and dirt under the snow as well... and we all know that soil is chock-full of various types of bacteria, most of whom aren't pathogenic, but some of which are, and in some cases, lethally pathogenic like clostridium botulinum.
In the absolute worst case scenario, if you have no choice, try to at least boil the water you get from melting snow before drinking it. This won't save you from chemical contaminants, but it may help protect you somewhat against the risk of contracting typhoid fever from bacteria in the snow. Ideally, though, if you must forage for drinking water far from civilisation, you would start doing so _before_ your current supply of water runs out entirely.
Of course, there's the problem (as Simon mentioned) that snow is mostly air, so trying to obtain drinking water from snow is a _very_ inefficient process which is further compounded by the fact you'll have to do this whilst trying to avoid freezing to death along the way. Hopefully you have a buddy or two to help divide the labour a bit.
So what's the best way to survive one of these extreme situations? Don't get into an extreme survival situation in the first place. Check the weather before you go out, and if you have any reason to doubt your safety, don't go. Above all, prepare accordingly whenever you venture out far beyond civilisation, and make sure that your friends and family know where you are going, so that if you don't return at the expected time, they'll be able to notify the authorities to send someone to find and rescue you if you get into trouble.
Stay safe out there!
Growing up in Wisconsin, every kid I know would always eat snow, all winter long. Nobody that I ever heard of got sick from eating it.
Idk man, I live in Ohio & we've been eating sno-cones we made ourselves for years. & idk what you consider extremely deep snow, but an easy 6 inches is common, and you won't get anywhere near the ground here. When you say extremely deep in thinking over 6-8 feet. That's not as common.
Honestly, last bit of advice might be the worst advice. Everyone has their own lives.
Its like being afraid of skydiving bevause there's always a chance your main amd back up chutes fail. Or never climbing everest bevause you're afraid to die.
The point of learning to survive extreme situations is so that you can take part in activities, amd be ready for the worst possibilities.Humanity would never have come to where we are today if everyone followed your advice
@@TenjinZekkenit’s more like not climbing Everest because there will be a blizzard or a storm or something. He ain’t saying never do any extreme sports but make sure that it probably won’t be in dangerous conditions and letting people know where you’re going isn’t exactly a bad idea in case something does happen. It isn’t bad advice to attempt to make dangerous activities less dangerous.
It doesn't have to be super deep. As long as the snow is undisturbed (e.g. not compacted as a result of something walking over it, and with no visible discoloration) and you can scoop it without scooping up dirt (which is usually pretty easy in snowy areas) you can readily collect pristine snow, which is effectively rainwater (which in turn is basically distilled water mixed with ambient air). As long as the snow is outwardly pristine, contamination only becomes an issue if the air is contaminated, in which case you're breathing in contaminants anyway.
A note on snow.
It takes more than twice a much energy to melt snow as it does to raise it to body temperature. Plus what it takes to raise the temperature of the snow to the melting point.
Let's say the snow is at 0 F (-18 C). Per gram it takes
- 9 cal to heat the ice to 0 C
- 80 cal to melt the ice
- 36 cal to heat the water to body temperature
Total: 125 cal
Vs: Just 36 cal to heat water from 0 C.
First priority in a survival situation if you are able to breathe and are not bleeding profusely is to maintain your core body temperature. That means finding a way to stay warm in cold environments and cool in hot environments. Hypothermia or Hyperthermia will end you within minutes to hours in extreme conditions unless you can insulate yourself from them somehow. Get out of the wind and into the sun if possible in cold environments, then find a way to insulate yourself from the ground. Leaves and branches work well if you find yourself below tree line. Make a mat with them first. Do not exert yourself to the point you sweat. If you must exert yourself heavily, remove clothing so it doesnt get wet, and don it again as soon as the task is complete. Build a fire if possible. Dry out any wet clothing. Make a lean-too or dig a snow cave if possible. Find a hollow tree or a V between some rocks. Squat on your feet and huddle for warmth if you cant insulate your butt from the ground. Minimize contact with cold things.
Desert survival is similar. Avoid hot things like direct sunlight and the ground or rocks that have been heated by it. Find or make shade, and only exert yourself between dusk and dawn.
In either case, stay put unless you know exactly where you are, and how to to navigate back to civilization, and have the strength and equipment and supplies necessary to do so. Carry an EPIRB or a phone with satellite distress calling capabilities like the Iphone 14 and later models.
Most of all, don not enter the wilderness unless you are prepared to spend at least a couple of days sleeping rough, and can summon help if you get hurt or lost. Carry a map and compass and know how to use them.
Most elevators nowadays aren't even cable lifts, They're hydraulic columns.(think an old car antenna) Even if there was a failure and the elevator started to "fall", the hydraulic column would fall so slowly that nothing would happen. They've been phasing out cable lifts for quite a few years now I think.
Hydraulic elevators have a maximum height though. They haven’t been phasing out cable(traction) lifts at all. In fact they are still the go to for high rise applications. They’ve been moving away from steel cables in some applications, using high strength rubber belts with steel reinforcement within them. But if you have a high rise thats 500ft tall, you’d need to dig a 500ft hole in the ground for your piston. Not to mention the massive tank you’d need to hold all of the oil. Plus hydraulic elevators are just too slow. Going from floor 1 to floor 60 would take you several minutes. Cable suspended traction cars are capable of going upwards of 1600 ft/min and beyond. Until we master the art of levitation, traction elevators will always be prominent in buildings taller than 50-60 feet.
Source: I’m a licensed elevator mechanic.
Never saw one. Ever. Kinda stretch for "most", not to mention the fact that they are just not good.
If you have an environment where you can keep warm, such as the buried car of the man who was trapped for two months, you can put the snow into a vessel to naturally melt. Once you have enough, that would be safe. However, remember opening your "igloo" to get the snow will lose you some of the built up heat and the snow itself will cool the environment as it melts. Life is a balance. 🙂
Thank you so much for bringing up these myths. One I didn’t know personally is the eating snow one. One I’ve been trying to dispel is the tampon one. I’m an avid shooter and trained in field trauma, and this is so pervasive.
Astonishingly persistent, too. I've been shouted down for disagreeing with it, despite mine and my instructors credentials being *significantly* better (and including actual evidence) than some dumb mook who barely passed medic school and never saw an actual GSW in his entire three years of service pushing the myth.
Yeah, there was a video a while back of Russian conscripts being told by an instructor to ask their girlfriends to send them tampons for improvised medical kits for the purpose of plugging bullet wounds if they couldn't get a real one....
The shadow line technique for finding north is commonly useful when calibrating a compass. If you want your compass to point true north (and account for magnetic drift) then the shortest shadow of the day, cast by a vertical object, points north along a horizontal surface in the northern hemisphere and south in the southern hemisphere. I've used this on more than one occasion and it's also solidly reliable for determining midday, local time (as opposed to the time of the local timezone) if you're using sunsights for navigation.
In the absence of functional safety systems, jumping in a falling elevator has zero effect on outcome. Even at the moment of impact, you assume the elevator's speed - the speed imparted by the jump, then, by the time you hit the deck, gravity has undone the speed change you gained from your jump and you hit the stationary floor of the elevator at the same speed as the elevator was travelling at on impact - which is exactly the same as if you'd just stood there.
Caves are not the healthiest place to seek shelter. Never light a fire inside a cave. You'll burn up the oxygen - assuming that something flammable hasn't been gathering there for the past 20000 years and, well, that's one way to go out with a bang! Cave-ins are a feature of mudstone caves, generally not sandstone. If you hear a hiss or see a ghost, leave. A hiss indicates a sediment trickle which, in turn, indicates something's broken and you may not want to be around when the chickens come home to roost. Ghosts, and other locality-specific visual hallucinations, are a visual response to infrasound and infrasound, in any structure (including buildings as well as caves), is indicative of gradual structural collapse and typical of metastable structures which might hold together for years then collapse without warning. In short, if you're not a geologist, don't go deep enough into a cave to need a torch, lamp, or flame.
Dehydration by snow consumption makes no sense. Snow cools you down. You don't sweat unless you reach a certain internal temperature no matter how much energy you burn. So, unless snow can elevate your body temperature it can't kill you by dehydration. Hypothermia? Yes. Definitely. Dehydration? Not in this species! Otherwise, eating icy-poles would not be a thing in the summer because it wouldn't feel refreshing or drop your core temperature - which is something that can be a problem in the cold. So, your biggest problem in a cold environment is lack of heat and if it's that cold and you can't find warmth, it won't matter either way.
It cracks me up that you don't believe in snow dehydrating you. Facepalm.
@@randomname4726 I take my vow of abstinence from faith very seriously. Why should I believe in anything when belief is the basis of all deception and error?
That said, can you explain how a drop in core body temperature results in dehydration given that loss of fluid due to sweating is core temperature dependent, not a function of power...?
Here's a fun experiment - and I've done this a lot just as par for the course so I already know how it ends. Work up a sweat in the summer. Don't do anything extreme. You don't want to get to the point where you stop sweating or it will stuff up your experiment. Now, go indoors, take your temperature, and dry off. As soon as you've stopped sweating, take your temperature, again, then eat four icy-poles or, alternatively, drop some ice-cubes in the blender and scoff down the icy mix. Do you start sweating again? When you subsequently take your temperature, has your body temperature gone up or down?
I'll take reproducible experimental evidence over a piece of paper any day...no matter how official.
Drinking pee in a desert, or at all.
Pee is very salty and actually dehydrates you quicker.
Salt pills are taken so to help hold water and add electrolytes. Football players do it in summer camps all the time.
Absolutely. Also, there's plenty of water in the desert if you know when and where to look. The WHEN is the most important part of any choice you make in an arid environment.
And you can only drink it for about a day at the most. Even then you're risking kidney failure as your body is trying to get rid of it.
@@Mercurio-Morat-Goes-Bughunting exactly. Sometimes a piece of plastic comes in handy to get it as well. If you dont carry a small plastic bag to collect trash on your walks, it's a good safety net in an emergency for water.
@@id10t98 It doesn't need to be hard work, either - which can also be the difference between life and death in an arid environment. If the plant isn't poisonous, you can seal the bag around some clean foliage and water will collect at the bottom of the bag in the evening. No need to sweat finding stones and digging pits. The trick is to stay in the shade during the day and get things done at night.
Elevator horror stories are pretty rare nowadays, for the reasons you cite, but if you want to be freaked out read old newspapers from a hundred years or so ago about early elevator technology and it's like mass carnage. Scary stuff.
The incident in the Empire state building, where a lift fell dozens of stories comes to mind. It was completely and utterly obliterated, including its human occupants... But that was like a century or so ago, as you mentioned there were no failsafes yet back then.
I've work bank 🏦 security Mellon HQ freights 1990s. Feel a elevator drop 5-6 floors! 🥹
It's the same thing for plane crashes. Boeing crashes not withstanding, it's gotten downright rare for a commercial jet to crash.
With any luck we will have figured out public transportation in the future and look back at today's car accident statistics with horror about how we allowed that to continue for so long.
@@heroponriki5921 Yep. Citizen-controlled private vehicles are relatively dangerous way of transport yet completely normalized
7:07 they are often included in survival kits as they contain a lot of cotton wool in a small package and so are good for starting fires.
But mostly, because there's an astonishingly persistent myth that they're useful for gunshot wounds, and that appeals to the type of idiots who buy survival kits.
As a first responder, the breakdown of stopping life-threatening bleeds is extremely thorough and well-explained. And I loved the emphasis on identifying what will kill someone faster, bleeding or infection from unsterile packing material. People overestimate how much blood is in the human body. An average sized human being can bleed out from a severe bleed within minutes, and even if the bleeding is stopped, it’s likely the person has already gone into shock, which in its own right is maybe one of the biggest medical concepts that is misunderstood and needs its own debunking video.
4:10 I saw a video saying it’s actually worse to build the campfire at the entrance. Best to have it in the end as it will create a less toxic air flow. Still a terrible idea without a hole in the roof however
Yeah I saw that one too. Simon here actually giving people some accidental dangerous tips, oops!
Yeah was about to comment the same, putting it in the middle or the back makes hot air/smoke to rise while cold air comes in from the entrance. Blocking off the entrance would just pump smoke into the cave, especially if the fire is too big or the entrance small.
I saw it to only yesterday, 25 myths you believe are true.
There are a lot of considerations for whether to even use a cave as a shelter. The slope of the floor and ceiling, the direction the cave-mouth opens toward, the caves general shape and depth, and whether the cave is used by bats. If the cave is used by bats, waking them up isn't the worst thing. The worst thing is that they poop on the floor of the cave, and that poop attracts a ridiculous number of insects.
Now, we'll assume the cave isn't used by bats at all. The important considerations are what direction does the mouth face, the depth of the cave, and the slope of the floor.
The direction the cave faces will impact winds around the cave, which will determine how air circulates in the cave. Along with the cave's shape and dimensions, and the local geography and flora. Air flow relies on smooth surfaces, and in caves, surfaces are generally anything but smooth. These differences cause eddying in the flow, which serves as a barrier. That barrier will trap gasses produced by the fire, such as CO and CO2, and suffocate you in your sleep. Especially if the floor where you are is lower than the entrance of the cave.
If you are using a cave as a shelter, putting the fire at the entrance allows the wind to pull the smoke across it and away from the people. You want to sleep near your fire for warmth. You need to know how to place a fire.
Use no more than the first two or three meters of a cave, build a fire-pit, use rocks as heat-sinks and reflectors, and keep your fire small. Any fire meant for survival should always be small, just enough to keep you warm, and maybe heat some water or cook something. You aren't heating the entire cave. And you don't want to spend hours looking for fuel for your fire.
Simon's videos should be regarded as entertainment, not reliable information. He tends to put out stuff that is not well edited. His mistakes are sometimes left in the videos.
I remember learning in medic training to pack a wound with gauze then wrapping it, and taking a timed test to do that under a certain amount of time. honestly, one of the most fun tests in medic training.
And to use gauze because it wouldn't leave tiny fibers behind.
I remember when in Boy Scouts, some younger scouts from a different patrol group grabbed rocks from the river to make a fire ring. No one realized their stupidity until a rock fractured and sent shards flying. Luckily, no one got hurt, but damn! The Scout Master was pissed!!!
I thought the elevators that were hoisted by a cable (the other type has a hydraulic post that is below the enclosure) lifted the thing by a leaf spring. If the cable is separated or sheared, and there's no tension pulling up on the spring, it relaxes and the ends protrude (extend) past the car and catch in the rails.
Therefore, the elevator cannot freefall.
You stay there and wait for the car to be lowered, or they get you out through the door in the top/ceiling of the car.
After bingeing on Simon's older vids, I came here to present day and realized his glasses coordinate perfectly with his beard. Naturally. Much love.
The elevator trick has Bugs Bunny written all over it.
I think it only works if you can open the door when it hits bottom, and land on the floor just outside ...
@@VosperCDN😂😂😂
Or Wile E Coyote.
What's DOWN, Doc?
Never ride in an Acme elevator.
Never use river or beach rocks to build a fireplace, they explode
Food tip. Rub the juice or the thing on your skin. A patch test to check for allergies keeps it there for two days. If you know you gonna be stuck for a longer time, start early and start with rubbing it on, if you have no responce, keep it there for an hour, if the next day you still have no responce take it a step further.
Also not fullproof but it is a bit safer then ingesting immediately.
I'm struggling with a few of the conclusions:
First the advice to better not eat anything other animals eat and just stick to drinking water. I know from personal experience that indeed you can survive on water only but it has a significant impact on your energy and wellbeing. Considering that you're lost in the wilderness this is far from ideal and can create a life threatening situation. I have also observed monkeys eating certain legumes and followed suit which turned out to be fine. In a survival situation this could potentially save your life. I'd argue it would be worth trying a small amount first and determine how your body responds. Being able to find something to eat seems crucial to me for survival.
Second is the advice to not eat snow for hydration. Although I understand the risks involved, it seems clear to me that the example given of the man who survived two months while eating snow proofs that it can be a life saver. Without water a human cannot survive much longer than a week, so him surviving two months on snow proofs that he got hydrated while overcoming the downsides. Because of this I doubt the conclusion that the energy expenditure caused severe dehydration. I suspect that taking small amounts at a time would allow your body to recover without serious complications. it seems a risk worth taking over not surviving from dehydration.
The people who say you can survive x amount of days without food often seem to forget that this only applies if you aren't moving. If you are moving, because, for example, you're lost in the wilderness and are trying to find your way out of the wilderness, well then you won't survive much more than a week without food, and you'll be forced to slow down considerably after two or three days at most.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 Well, you'd be better of staying still than blundering around the wilderness in random directions, because that's more predictable for search parties.
He didn't actually spend 2 months stuck in his car. He was discovered on February 17th 2012. On the 28th of December, he drove a few metres. He also celebrated New Year's Day with energy drinks and vodka. And in mid January he attempted to walk to the nearest supermarket but gave up after falling 3 times in 10 metres.
And he did melt the snow before drinking it.
Also with tampons, the cotton can become loose and small pieces can become trapped in the wound and cause massive infections. The only thing you’d want less than a massive wound is a massive wound that’s infected and hurting even more because of it
Yep. There's common advice for people with fresh piercings that boils down to not use cotton balls / qtips for cleaning piercing wounds for that exact reason. The little fibers get everywhere, including into wounds where they hinder healing or even trigger infections because they provide an easy spot for bacteria to gather.
Don’t put quick clot in a gunshot wound if you can avoid it, it has to be cut out once it sits. Use gauze to stuff the wound.
There should be a disclaimer for the don’t eat snow… You shouldn’t eat snow if you’re stationary and trying to stay warm, then you should be drinking water, preferably boiled and still relatively hot…. That’s a super important distinction.
But if you’re active and staying warm through movement and work, eat as much snow as you’d like, BECAUSE it’ll cool your body down and the goal is to avoid sweating at all cost when you’re working or being active out in the cold.
In any of these videos you are going to have a laugh out loud moment and the slide with the putting a tampon in a bullet wound did it for me.
You really shouldn't have to pack a wound (Chapter 4) unless it's in the crotch area or armpits.
The best thing you could learn to do is how to apply a tourniquet or fashion one from a shirt, belt or bandana and a stick.
In the case of gut wounds use a clean dry pressure dressing and do not try to stuff intestines back inside a abdominal cavity.
Chest wounds you would like to have a seal dressing (can make one with a ziploc bag and tape) while monitoring for pneumothorax.
I could go on and on about battlefield care
I knew all of these already except for the tampon one. I'm surprised to think that people have thought of using them for such a thing. Great video with good information, wish it was longer with more scenarios.
I heard that for the fire in a cave it’s actually the opposite because heat in the entrance would make the part of the smoke that gets inside to accumulate instead of escaping. It’s an interesting point about the heat expansion of the rocks though. Seems like it’s a gamble either way.
Idk where I learned this (probably on tv) but if you have 2 plastic bags (water tight) and you need to drink snow, you can pee in one of the bags and use the other to collect snow. The warmth from the pee will melt the snow and you can drink.
I don’t know if my son watched this video, but we were in an elevator (which he hates anyway) and as we were stepping out of it he told me that if it fell we shouldn’t jump. 😂
He is on the ASD spectrum, so it’s not unusual for him to pop off with things that seem to come out of nowhere. Anyway, he explained it pretty well. I’m impressed! 💜
Ive survived an elevator fall. The air bag thing is real and i felt it. Happened so fast i barely had time to think. I was a kid playing around with an elevator having a game with friends racing each other to the bottom and after like the 4th time it happened and i just remember feeling butterflies in my tummy and then a feeling like standing on an inflatable matress after you let the air out. The doors opened and the floor was a good few feet misaligned with the ground floor. I had to jump down. And i looked up at my friend who was coming down the stairs (we where racing) and he has like "How did you get so fast?". I hate elevators to this day.
Another elevator survival tip: Do not attempt to leave an elevator that is stuck/malfunctioning/misaligned; call for help and/or use the emergency phone inside the elevator to call for help and wait until firefighters or some other personnel arrive and only exit when they say it's safe.
If you're inside an elevator that's stuck and it suddenly drops again, you're probably going to be okay because of all the other safety systems. But if you're attempting to climb out and it sudden drops, you get cut in half.
You might feel silly just standing there waiting for possibly hours when the door is open and you could easily climb out, but it's not worth the risk.
@sykes1024 Yeah. Wish someone told me that as a kid. I do remember my parents mentioning something like that after the fact, though, and then everyone saying, l was so lucky i didn't get cut in half. You know how it goes with all the neighbors talking about something big that just happened 😅.
It wasn't an air bag. It was some sort of an emergency brake that stopped the elevator.
Elevator shafts are not airtight, so such a pocket would not stopped elevator completely, just slightly slowed down the final impact, it would not be a few feet high (air compresses quite effectively) and finally once the door was open, even if the shaft has been airtight (which it isn't), the "air bag" would leave through the door and the elevator would have fallen to the ground.
For years I've argued that lying flat in a falling elevator was your best bet, glad to hear the experts (there are experts in elevator fall physics?!) back me up.
Distributing the weight more lessens the impact areas force.
Nah, this is nonsense
The elevator advice seems bad. 1) there is 0% chance that you are going to be able to lie on the floor of a falling elevator. You don't have time to react and you're going to be floating off the floor, probably up against the ceiling for most of the journey 2) You don't want your legs to act like a crumple zone? Just take the impact directly to your vital organs and head? 🤔
@@CleverAccountName303 If you're able to stand at all, standing with knees and hips lightly bent seems the best choice. They are our bodies' built in shock absorbers, even if they won't be able to do enough to save us in this scenario.
If you get urinated on by a jellyfish you must sting the affected area. A stinger is a cooking device commonly used by prisoners to cook food in the prison sink. They often make jellyfish urine stew followed by stinging themself.
As a lift engineer myself they are very safe the brake can only lift if there is power to it, in a power cut the brake wont be able to pull the relay in that tells the control panel to lift the brake in the first place so dont fear, and 1 of those steel cables is strong enough to hold the lift on its own plus the device under or on top of the lift that is also a brake will pull in if the lift travels fast then the speed it is set to.
Lifts are safer than driving a car
If you jump in a lift that isn’t falling, it triggers the lifts emergency brake. Trapping you in the lift.
Use this knowledge with care.
What nonsense, People with kids would be stuck in lifts all the time.
@@a_921 try it when you’re in a rush. I dare you.
Regards to the elevator I don't think everybody knows that fact that they are traveling at the same exact speed that the elevator is dropping. So the elevator and the human are traveling at the same rate accelerating at the same time prior to that. Ergo lay flat just like gravitron carnival rides
The elevator falls first. So you are not going to be touching the ground in a free fall situation. Even if you are only one centimeter off the floor, you have no control to maneuver yourself. The elevator will start to slow down very slightly from the air pressure buildup, which gives you about 1/10000 of a second to collect yourself and get in the "right" position. Good luck
Bad advice about spreading out the impact anyway. We are not a balloon, we have more important areas in our bodies than other areas.
You don't want your legs to act like a crumple zone? Just take the impact directly to your vital organs and head? 🤔
@@CleverAccountName303 Is that laying on your stomach or on you back?
@@johndinner4418 Ribs pulverisation vs broken spine and broken ribs. Great choice, isnt it? At least laying on spine will preserve your face somewhat for identification.
Trees can give shelter, but *light no fire* close to one - without checking for snow load on branches above. Collapsing half-slushy, warmed snow will snuff a fire, wet the burnables, AND cool you off.
The cave thing actually happened where I live several years ago. I live in Minneapolis/St. Paul (Minnesota, USA) and the Mississippi River cuts through both cities, with sandstone bluffs on both sides. Of course there are caves. Some were even used by famous gangsters of the 1920s and 30s for their criminal activity, but that a whole history unto itself.
Some kids were partying in one of those old caves. They lit a fire. Three died from the CO poisoning and two survived. Two other young men had to be rescued when they went into a different cave entrance down one of the bluffs, but the cave itself was 100 feet below that entrance. Fortunately they survived. There’s many more stories of incidents involving the caves in this area going back to before Minnesota was a state.
2 months trapped in a snow-covered car…
The stench inside the vehicle must have been absolutely insane.
One morning, my car was absolutely *buried* under the snow...I got enough off to open the driver side door (yes, I DID clear it properly before driving off!) and dang - it was *warm* in there! Proof that igloos are a good idea.
I live in very clean environment with not much pollutants. Don't eat snow.
If you throw a snowball, made from freshly fallen snow on to a hot sauna fireplace, it'll smell bad. You can instantly tell there is something iffy. I've teached my kids to not eat snow by this, and by melting a bucketful of snow. It has all sorts of.... Stuff in it. Little particles of different colors etc.
Micro-plastics?
@@dinazina55 for sure, and particles from burning wood, (diesel) exhaust...
@@Ksoism so, actually not a very clean environment. Microplastics are everywhere these days, even the Antarctic, but visible particles and also smoke particles aren't a thing of clean environments.
@@tealkerberus748 True, I was meaning it as clean in the sense of modern global urban environments. But yeah, nowhere is clean anymore.
The problem with elevators, is they typically fall UP, not down. The counter-weight is heavier than the car and contents. To fall down, an elevator would need to lose both braking and cables. To fall up, you just need to lose brakes.
RE: Falling Elevators - the good guys at “Well There’s Your Problem…” covered a similar situation on their episode about a ski lift that was cut by a US pilot hotshotting. The only survivor of the crash was a young girl who somehow managed to be on top of all the other occupants in the lift. So get everyone to lie down, and lay on top of them. Then prepare to be covered in blood.
As for the cave situation, when I imagine living in a cave, the fire is always located outside the entrance. Maybe it’s just from playing too much D&D growing up, but that’s where my mental cavemen always built their caves.
Regarding being lost in the woods, learn about the local flora and fauna, before you go anywhere, dress for the weather and carry the things you really need, including the means to protect and help yourself.
6:38 ironically amanita muscaria is a delicious mushroom if you prepare it right, barboil it twice or three times than fry, grill or pickle it for later use
You can melt snow with the radiant heat from your body when moving. I.E: you filled a canteen and placed it in your pocket when making movement. Possibly a camelback or something in a backpack. If you're taking off layers to stay cool and avoid sweating, consider putting that excess thermal energy to better use.
For a fire in a cave you need to avoid smoke and the ideal location for that is in the middle of the cave with room to walk around it. Also caves sometimes have flammable gasses which can explode, which seems more likely than a cave in from a fire.
Jumping inside an elevator in free fall will not negate the downwards velocity of the jumper so they slam into the roof and the freefall speed of an elevator is less than the terminal velocity of a human so they won't float inside of one. Ofcourse even with perfect timing the jump won't help since the human is still falling at the elevators terminal velocity..
Re tampons: they're great for starting fires. Set up your sticks/wood for the fire with kindling, light the tampon, and stick it under the firewood
Also not a bad idea to fill an elevator with tampons, just in case.
The fact that the elevator jump was ever proposed makes me feel good about my understanding of physics.
You can use your body to melt snow and drink it, just depends on the situation. I did it on a survival course I took in the winter. With all the heat I was generating over the two days from all the wood I was cutting down and lugging around on my own to build my shelter, and then later smoke signal, and also to supply for a fire, I was burning a lot of calories and generating a ton of heat. So much so that I eventually had to remove my toque and walk around with my jacket open. Temps weren't super cold though, about -5 to 0 degrees celsius. It would probably be a different story in -30 or -40 temps as I know some folks had to deal with.
Point is, in my situation, packing snow in to my water canteen then putting it under my shirt to melt it wasn't exposing me to hypothermia as I was already boiling up from the 2 days straight of tree cutting and moving them. Of course, a fire to melt the snow and ice is always best, but you can use your body heat IF you aren't at risk from hypothermia by doing so. You just gotta be the guy doing all the work to work up all that extra heat. ;)
That all said I did break the rule and eat a bit of clean snow, but that was more for relief from all the heat I was working up. I melted as much of it as possible to drink later.
I'm pretty dumb and flunked physics back when I was in school, but is it even possible to jump if you're in a falling elevator?
Wouldn't you be in a non gravitational state while you're falling?
I mean you can let go of the rail or whatever you're clinging on to that prevents you from flying up into the ceiling I suppose but that's not jumping. Can someone enlighten me on this?
If you live in a place where theres a possibility that you might get stuck in your car in the snow, you should carry a few tealights (the short, round candles) and some matches. A tealight or two burning on the dashboard will produce enlugh heat that you won't freeze, and it would likely melt some snow for you - not quickly though.
Fire in an enclosed space is a bad idea.
@@varuugyou aren't wrong, but I think I'd rather die from carbon monoxide poisoning than freezing to death
@@ChristineNighting "Sleep is the brother of death."
I never used a tamon as an Army medic, but I've seen and used kotex pads for a helmet insert for bleeders.
As an amateur mycologist (study of fungi), besides the obvious problem of mushroom identification being difficult, even for experts sometimes, a less well known reason not to eat any mushrooms you find is because even most "edible" species are only fully edible _once cooked_ . Many perfectly "edible" [when cooked] species are at least going to give you GID (gastro intestinal distress, like gas or diarrhea) which wastes energy and/or hydration to fight, and there are even some mushrooms that are commonly eaten all over the world that are seriously poisonous if eaten raw. As good as they taste cooked, and as fascinating as I find them in general, mushrooms are just always going to be a truly terrible choice compared to just about anything else for anyone starving in the woods.
The idea behind jumping in an elevator was originally to jump just before the elevator strikes the ground. So you could offset your fall using the elevator floor as a springboard. However, it was also a joke because there is no way you could determine when the elevator was about to impact, and it failed to account for any other hazard that may occur within a freefalling elevator.
There was a study done about the fire in a cave. You actually would want to put the fire towards the back. If you put it towards the front yes some smoke will get out but most of it will be blow into the cave. If I make the fire towards the back the wind getting blown into the cave will act as a filtration system. But still don’t recommend doing it.
I was looking for a comment like this, because lighting the fire in the entrance would fill the cave faster with carbon monoxide than lighting it in the back of the cave, because lighting a fire in the back will cause a draft from the entrance that clears out the carbon monoxide, but will also be not as helpful in "heating up" the cave.
People living in the cave apparently lit a fire in the center of a cave to have a compromise between draft, heat and CO buildup
If you are stuck in one spot I can see how eating snow would be bad, but what about if you are actively hiking through the environment? Sure the hydration benifits would be tiny, but your body would already be running hot from the exertion, so it seems like melting the snow wouldn't require additional energy and might even result in less water lost through sweating too.
As to the snow thing. You can use your body to warm up the snow as long as it's only waste heat from within your shelter that's heating it up. If you can wrap up warm and let the snow melt very slowly in a container for some time -- it'll be a lot safer than eating the snow.
Mythbusters did the jumping in an elevator Myth.
The dummy didn't survive... spectacularly.
The crash WAS however VERY satisfying.
Having just read through the comments (there are a LOT more than YT tells you!), just about every one of these is hotly disputed! It seems lying down in the lift is the only one that makes sense - but is probably the least likely 'tip' you'll ever need to know!
Also, however dangerous lifts might be in theory, stairs are far more dangerous - often lethal. If you want to dramatically improve your chances of survival, dont use the stairs (and stay out of kitchen snd bathroom!).
They wouldn't be disputed if people didn't think they were true.
I've been in a falling elevator. Stomach in my mouth for a half second then it stopped on the emergency brakes between floors. Old building in NYC. Tried the emergency button, no response. Pressed the next floor button, and it dropped again and stopped on brakes. OMG!
Then doors opened even though floors were not aligned and we jumped out totally terrified.
What about Maxi pads?
not so long ago i learned that putting a fire close to a entrace is a fatal mistake. you block air ventilation and will suffocate. best is to put it in the center because this way the hot air can vent out of the upper half of the entrance and fresh air can flow in on the bottom half. this won't happen if you put the fire at the entrance. you will block air flow in the cave while smoke from the fire will still enter it.
at least that is what i learned about the perfect fire placement in a cave, but i am no expert
0:35 - Chapter 1 - Don't jump in a falling elevator
3:10 - Chapter 2 - Don't light a fire inside a cave
5:30 - Chapter 3 - Do not rely on animals to tell you what you can eat
7:10 - Chapter 4 - Don't put up tampons in bullet wounds
10:15 - Chapter 5 - Do not eat snow for hydration
I mean technically, if you hit it at the right split second in the right elevator fall, you can lessen your impact from fatal to nonfatal, but not only is there not enough information to know precisely when to jump, but even with the precise information, you're significantly more likely to bounce off the ceiling and hit the ground even harder. You can think of it as like those chuck-e-cheese ticket games where, if you hit it at the precise moment, you win the jackpot, but just like these games being completely rigged, you don't know to know how far below the bottom-level of ground-floor the elevator stops at.
The snowed-in guy didn’t eat snow according to himself. He had a small field kitchen in his car where he melted it. Or at least most of it, his last month alone was apparently a bit hazy.
Snow can still contain parasites and bacteria even when it looks fresh. If you're able to melt the snow with fire, it's better to bring it to boiling first before consuming if viable. "Silver tea" also helps fighting hypothermia so also consider drinking it while still relatively warm (or above body temperature).
On the last one:
That only applies if you're staying in one place and not doing anything.
If you're walking and active, you generate body heat quickly.
You can easily wind up sweating.
Cold is ome thing.
Wet and cold is dangerous. Sweating is bad. Movies & video games where people get their feet wet in the cold...
Yeah, in real life, you don't get your feet wet in the cold unless it's necessary.
Anyway, the point is that in reality, thermal management may make eating snow necessary. To keep your body heat down to minimize sweating.
How much energy does it actually take anyway?
I've always wanted to the math and check if these ideas are valid.
I've been told not to drink very cold water when working in the heat because it takes too much energy to for the body to warm it up.
I've been told similar myths about it taking too much energy to digest food.
What I do know is legit it that you can't survive long without water.
Apparently, you have at most 2 days, maybe 3 if you're very lucky. Then cramps and stuff. You're alive, but not functional enough to get the water you need.
Without actual hard evidence I have a hard time buying into this idea that it takes too much energy to equalize temperatures.
If anything, the hazard is hypothermia if you're not active.
If you're active, "cotton kills." Because it absorbs water and holds it. When you stop and cool-down, you're in dangerger without a fire or warm-up.
I once made a really big sale on the top floor of a new city skyscaper. I am told that Australians tolerate faster elevators than most nations, so what happened next was just that bit worse. The moment the doors closed and I was out of sight, I did a little jump of celebration. The elevator bgan moving while I was in the air and I was pinned to the ceiling by the shoulders. I don't recall how long I was up there, but I remember looking down at the floor, my arms and legs flailing around uselessly.
I dropped down at some point and landed uneventfully.
Don't try this at home folks.
Last known elevator accidents are 100 years old, only recent ones are mine and construction related. The only mistake to avoid is trying to get out of a stuck elevator, it can move suddenly.
In a dome-shaped cave it would actually be better to light the fire at the back wall, as this would create better air flow. Things are obviously different if the cave is a long tunnel.
Actually you should NOT make the fire at the cave entrance, because the draft will pull the smoke into the cave and not outside of it. The best way is to make the fire near the middle back of the cave. The smoke will rise and be sucked out of the cave as warm air will want to rise and leave and new fresh cool air will circulate inside. A side benefit of this is that the walls will reflect the warmth from the fire back at you so you get warm faster and more evenly.
One caveat to eating snow is if you're moving around. If you're walking around or building a shelter and this raises your core temperature enough to start sweating, you're better off eating snow to keep cool.
If you sweat, you die.
If you're at risk of dehydration, and have no way of melting snow without using your body heat, eating snow can save your life. Dehydration slows down your metabolism more than the energy expenditure of melting snow. In other words, you'll gain more warmth than you lose. The increased expulsion of water from breathing and sweating will be a result of producing more heat, which is well spent water; in fact, that's what will save your life. Avoiding excessive sweating, when lost in a snowy wilderness, is fairly easy, by the way. The main loss of water would be from urination. However, metabolism isn't all that affects urination; the degree of hydration is even more important. If you risk dehydration, the body will use the absolute minimum required to expel waste products. In other words, the body will contribute to you getting a net positive effect on your hydration from eating snow. The fact that snow is mostly air isn't a problem. There's likely to be plenty of it around, and it can be compressed quite a bit.
All of that said, if you're only slightly thirsty, don't eat snow. If you have means of melting the water without using your body heat, do that. Don't eat any snow with any coloration; above all, avoid pink snow, as that may contain toxic algae. I'll just assume that everyone knows why they should stay clear of yellow snow... Also avoid disturbed snow, snow near animal (or human) tracks, and snow under trees or other places where birds may have been active.
My sources: Experts on safety and survival in the Norwegian mountains during winter (e.g. sports physiologists, medical biologists, medical doctors, rescue organizations, government institutions). This is pretty much a scientific discipline of its own, in Norway. For millennia, we've crossed mountains in the winter because we had to, and now we're doing it for fun, so we take an interest in knowing how to survive there.
Infecting a wound can be super dangerous. If it's a flesh wound it is as you say and infections can be treated easily with antibiotics, but getting a bone infected isn't as easily treatable and can lead to amputation
Well if it was bad enough to get *bone* infected...you are lucky to be alive at all.
Keeping your fire close to the cave entrance also means that rescuers can see it and the smoke too!! And as a PSA, you can eat pine needles. Even if you can't identify anything else in the outdoors, you should be able to recognize pine trees.
2:30 Seems lying flat would increase the chance of hurting your internal organs. Landing on your feet may destroy your legs/back, but still think that is more survivable than taking the hit to your stomach. Like when jumping into water or from something high onto the ground you would never want to land flat.
If you're stood up you'd crumple like a wet lawn chair as your shins would fly through your knees and your head would impact the floor at half the speed of sound. If you're on the floor trying to guard your head, the force would be spread across the body and yeah maybe rupture organs, but you'd still have a higher survival rate.