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 THE ENVIRONMENT IN PERIL:

This season of Survivor was the talk of the town when it first aired. For those of you who aren’t one of the 23.7 million viewers who did watch it, the season opener had not one, but THREE people sent home. Imagine! What drama! What intrigue!

What crap. Today’s reality TV is seriously missing one key ingredient…reality. When it comes to survival in the real world, the television show has nothing on the real thing. In a thing someone would worry about is tribal councils or immunity. Personally, the only tribal council I’d be worried about is if a tribe had to decide my life or death. And the only immunity I’d be worrying about is from the nasty bugs in the food or water.

So shut off the TV, sit back with this magazine, and read on. It’s time to learn about some people who REALLY know a thing or two about being survivors in real life.

SCOTT TAYLOR
Until a few years ago, being a Canadian in another country was one of the safest things to be. Everywhere you go, all you see is smiling faces once they realize you’re not American. We didn’t have any worries. But today the world is a much diff erent place. In fact, there are some places where the good ol’ Maple Leaf can be like wearing a big red target. Just ask Scott Taylor. As a longtime journalist and editor of the Canadian military magazine Esprit de Corps, Taylor is no stranger to digging in to cover a story. But last September he had no idea that instead of just covering a story, he became the story when insurgents took him captive, believing him instead to be a spy.

Over the next fi ve horrifying days, Taylor was taken to within a breath of death more times than anyone would care to think about. Being a war journalist, Taylor would often have to be ahead of the advancing troops. In this circumstance he had planned to cover the human side of the battle; to put real names and faces to the casualties that would surely follow.

Encountering an Iraqi police barricade, Taylor asked for assistance. A senior officer directed him and a female Turkish journalist into a waiting car with four masked gunmen which at first seemed to them to be guards. And that’s when things quickly descended into hell.

As the vehicle travelled through the town, Taylor looked around and realized that the area they were travelling through was occupied by the insurgents. Upon reaching their destination, the pair was informed that they were spies and would be captives of the resistance. They were now prisoners of the rebel forces.

“There’s the initial shock, when it dawns on you that this is real,” says Taylor. “I’ve been in tricky situations before, and you can usually talk your way out of it. But the minute you realize you’re in the hands of the terrorists…it’s a sickening feeling. There were different stages at different times. There was a sensation of thinking that you’re going to die, which wells up a sort of a panic. And then when you know you actually know you’re going to die, it’s like the bottom of your gut drops out. There’s a huge gap between thinking you’re going to die, and knowing you’re going to die, and the ability for your brain to react.”

Over the next few days, Taylor was beaten and informed a number of times that he was to be taken out to be executed. While his commando training while in the Army earlier in his life enabled him to outwardly show composure and not show fear, your mind threatens “Once you’re given enough time, once they pronounced that they were going to kill me the following morning, I had all those hours to lay there and you make your peace. I mean, that’s all you can do.”

Being in a survival situation with another person isn’t like on the show. “(In real life)…you don’t get to vote the guy off ,” says Taylor. “There’s a sense of responsibility because the Turkish journalist was there, and she was younger and female. She spoke their language, so she had a lot better idea of what was going on so I wasn’t completely in a bubble, and she looked to me for reassurance that everything was going to be okay. Which is kind of bizarre, coming from a guy with a sandbag over his head and handcuff ed in the corner. But that expectation that I would have that resolve probably helped me maintain it.”

“The guy on death row, they only take him to be executed once. If the rope breaks, or the electric chair doesn’t go off , they don’t do it to him again, just because of the mental trauma that they inflicted on the guy. Well, I was at the rope six times. Right up against the wall, with a gun to my head, taken outside to be killed, showing me my grave, getting ready to cut my head off . And they’d tell you each time, when we come through that door, we’re going to cut your head off , and then they’d come through that door…”

“The one night they were going to cut my head and his (a captured UNICEF worker) head off , and they showed us the grave where we were going to be put and he started to break down beside me. And we hadn’t really chatted, but I just took his hand. It’s just bizarre, human compassion with a complete stranger, but you’re going to die with him…at that moment, I wasn’t closer to anybody in the world than to that guy but to this day I don’t even know his name.”

After several more days, Taylor was eventually released from captivity. His experiences show us that in real life, people need to stick together, no matter what the circumstances. Unlike on the show where everyone is making secret alliances …

ARON RALSTON
Now here’s a guy who knows a thing or two about determination and survival. Perhaps you remember him from the news a few years ago…

Aron Ralston is what you’d call an extreme sports lover. He’s hiked some extreme environments, and climbed some of the most challenging mountains in North America. He’d even lived through an avalanche a few years before we met him.

One day he decided to take a little excursion in Ohio to relax.This trip included a 20 km bike ride followed by an equally long hike through a canyon area. Call it the “road less traveled”. Unfortunate for him that he broke a cardinal rule in dealing with the great outdoors: always tell someone where you’re going. And that mistake almost cost him his life.

In periods of heavy rain the canyon was prone to flooding, with waterfalls carrying everything in its way, including large boulders. When the large rocks come to a narrow point, they often get stuck. It was about half-way through the hike that Ralston came to a boulder like this.

With confidence in his experience and judgment, Aron decided to use this rock as a handhold. Not the best choice - the rock moved. It came to rest on his right arm and pinning it in place. You could say that in doing so, the handhold held him.

After trying to lift a 90 kilogram rock off , he realized that he was in it for the long-haul. Trying to conserve water, he rationed his supply for days, until it ran out. In an effort to keep hydrated, he eventually began to drink his own urine. After five long days and longer nights, he decided to do the unthinkable: he placed a tourniquet around his arm, took out his pocket knife and began to cut his hand off

After severing his limb, Ralston was able to then carefully rappel and hike out the 10 kilometres to where his truck was parked. After reaching his truck, he was able to reach rescuers who were searching the area for him having been alerted by his friends after not turning up for work. Once at the hospital, Aron proceeded to calmly detail his adventure.

Rescuers said that it was fortunate that Ralston was able to cut his arm off , as the boulder would have made it impossible for the searchers to see where he was.

And the lesson we can take from all this? Missing work can save your life. We’re kidding. The real lessons we can learn from this are that going into a dangerous situation without letting anyone know your game plan is just not a smart thing to do. We can also see that anticipating problems can help pull you through whatever might happen.

VICTOR YAZYKOV
It takes skill to sail a sailing yacht solo. It takes some special talent to sail that same racing yacht around the world. Solo. Now imagine you, sailing around the world, solo, and find yourself needing to operate on yourself. Without anesthetic. Didn’t think so.

It had been a childhood dream to sail around the world. And now during the 1998 ‘Around Alone’ yacht race, 50 year old Victor Yazkov was one of 16 competitors who attempted to sail around the world over four months, solo. The race has four legs to it: Charleston, S.C. to Cape Town; Cape Town to Auckland; Auckland to Punta del Este; and finally finishing at  Charleston.

For the first few weeks, things were manageable. He started the race late, due to a hurricane in the area. The autopilot broke, as well as the engine. But these were nuisance problems; he could continue the race without these things. He still had his connection to land through a computer he brought along.

A greater concern was his right elbow. While it was sore after bruising it before he set sail, it hadn’t been a real concern. But now it had swollen to nearly five times the normal size. He decided to email for help.

Back on shore, the doctor checked out the prognosis. The elbow had turned red and there was no feeling in Yazkov’s elbow. He was aware of the limited medical equipment on board the ship, and wrote up instructions for how to drain the potentially fatal abscess, with no pain medications, since this would dull his senses, which would have to remain sharp.

Yazkov received the instructions and started. He had to move quickly; the longer he took to cut, the more the cut would take. Once the cut was made, the infection began to ooze out. It also began to bleed. A lot. He put the gauze into the wound as instructed to wick out the fluids.

Yazkov became concerned. The bleeding hadn’t stopped for a while now, and was getting over both himself, the table, and the floor. Desperate, he took bungee cords and made a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. It stopped, but so did all feeling in his arm, which turned white. He emailed the doctor back to ask what has gone wrong.

The doctor realizes what is happening…Yazkov unintentionally is killing his arm with the bungee cords. He stopped blood from coming out, but it’s not getting to the rest of his arm, which still needs blood to survive. The doctor tells him to release it. He also wonders what is causing all the bleeding. Then he realizes that the sailor must have been taking aspirin for pain. But this also has the side effect of thinning the blood, keeping the blood from clotting.

The doctor informs Yazkov to place his arm in a sling and get some rest. After some time, the doctor and the sailing board email to see if he’s okay. They wait. And wait. And then they wait some more.

After 10 hours, a reply comes through. His arm has colour, and is getting feeling back. He’s out of the woods, and lives to sail another day. The so-called ‘reality-television’ show isn’t anything like real life. Survivors? The TV contestants have nothing on the real thing. So here’s a message to all the reality TV shows…Get real.