Get Ready For Lost: Essential Survival Skills – Part 1

Lost will be on in just a few hours, and this season is proving to be more action- and adventure-packed than ever. To get ready, we thought we'd share a few survival skills so that if your aircraft goes down (as seems so common these days), you'll hopefully find yourself in a tropical island paradise using these handy skills from ADVENTURE. Or, if you're lucky enough not to have a plane crash in your future, at least the s'mores will wow your friends.

#1 Build a Signal Fire

“Understand that from the air you’ll be a tiny dot,” says
John Dill, who has been a Yosemite Search and Rescue team technician for 30
years. “You’ve really got to call out.” And, as cellular service is spotty at
best in the wilderness, a signal fire is the easiest method to improvise when
you need help. Remember that during the day, the point isn’t the fire itself,
but the column of smoke that billows from it. Choose a location where the plume
can rise beyond the forest canopy, and feed the flame green matter, wet leaves,
and rotten wood. Conversely, at night the flame’s the thing: Make it big and
bright—extra dry leaves for fuel can’t hurt—and in a clearing so it’s highly
visible and unquestionably distinct from campfires. Or build a few flames in a
row (just not in a bed of pine needles, Pyro). If it’s too windy, flash your headlamp
(especially at night) or, during the day, drape a brightly colored parka over a
bush or rock rather than risk a wind-borne spark igniting your camp.

#2 Make New Friends

Befriending locals anywhere, from a Penan encampment in Borneo to a Vodou temple in Haiti, can be about as easy as cozying up to your significant other’s parents, with perhaps more potential for screwups and physical discomfort. “Look for that gesture that allows you to break down the inherent barrier between local people and an outsider,” says anthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis, who has lived with indigenous peoples from the Arctic to the Amazon. “Often, that’s a simple willingness to share the physical reality of peoples’ lives, be that sleeping beside them on the stony ground, or sitting out a cold rainstorm.” And be prepared to roll the intestinal dice. “I’ve been offered food that was almost certain to give me amoebic dysentery or giardia,” says Davis. “And I always ate it. You can treat the parasite, but you can never overcome the distance created by a refusal of generosity.”

#3 Make a Better S’more

For all the care some take in toasting their marshmallow,
let’s face it, the chocolate makes the s’more. And what if that chocolate came
already attached to a cookie, so you wouldn’t have shards of crumbling starch
stabbing you in the cheek as you try to tongue the ooey-gooey center? Then
you’d have the perfect, or rather, parfait, s’more shortcut: Le Petit Écolier
cookies.

Excerpted from "Ready For Almost Anything" by Melissa Wagenberg (February 2005)