(00:00:00) How do you handle yourself in an emergency? Are you the kind of person who remains calm collected was able to direct others and getting a situation under control or do you freeze and forget what it is? You should do to Aid yourself and others we're going to talk about survival this morning not only in the wilderness but in the city to with me in the studio this morning is Tim Neyland and expert in the field of survival Tim spent four years in the Air Force teaching survival skills first Pilots later to instructors who in turn taught the pilots his Tour of Duty in the Air Force included 15 months teaching jungle survival in the Philippines. He also served as a consultant on Arctic survival for a firm involved in the construction of the trans-alaska pipeline. He started the institute for survival education in Seattle in the early part of this decade and it is still functioning. He tells me along with a branch here in the Twin Cities Tim estimates that he's taught over 200 courses in survival skills. Plus another 100 or so in such outdoor activities as camping and cross-country skiing. He's currently employed by the Medtronic Corporation of Minneapolis where he works in management training Tim. Good morning, and thanks for being with us morning rich. I think what I'd like to do is ask you first to sort of create a theoretical person for us that is described some of the skills and attributes that a person should have or it's good for a person to have to survive. Well, that's a fairly wide open statement or at least have proposition here because if probably the most typical situation we might face would be some in a home environment that finds one of their own family members face with some kind of a medical emergency and they don't know what to do and it might be a point that they reluctantly get involved in doing one thing or going for help when in fact, they should be helping the child another or the adult or whatever another more common thing probably. Driving on the freeway and some people in Minnesota have been specially trained about driving in a free way to give you excitement as a driver behind him as I cut a person off at the intersection or whatever it is and you have to be really alert and able to respond to those kinds of situations because of Minor error could be a very serious consequence another one that minnesotans face quite a lot in this one. Anyone is a typical person. There is no specific typical person that happens to be everybody would be driving from here to Duluth or anyplace else in the wintertime and Minnesota gives us the challenge and since I've been in this area on a full-time basis for the last two years, I certainly feel part of this that it gives us a kind of environment that mountain climbers and Expedition errors and stuff spend thousands of dollars and travel thousands of miles to find to go to some remote Arctic area. And all we have to do is essentially go to the 7-Eleven store in the winter time, and we've got similar conditions to that. Fine by evidence by looking at all the people around that happened to live at least their it indicates this that they live from one time from one summer to the next summer that without leaving the area so that people can adapt to the area very well, but when certain troubles faced a person and they're stuck out with a little less on the need desire to have or their vehicle get stranded or they get stranded or whatever the case is then they have to start thinking about. Okay, what are the real problems that I'm facing here? Not the problems that TV might present or the radio my presenter the newspaper might present even though they'll some of those certainly very realistic but what are the real true problems here? What are the real true priorities and how do I approach the situation logically with whatever brain power you might say that I have and we can't ever go ahead. So one skill would be to be able to evaluate a situation. I think probably to be able to keep our mind under control. So we have the capacity to evaluate at a hundred percent of our normal capability, which is probably going to be reduced to some degree because we are quite In which may be an asset on the other hand but a person needs to be able to keep control over the mind and then really try to evaluate what it is for themselves and their family or other members in that situation. Do you suggest when you teach survival skills little all I want to say gimmicks that people can use a little mind tricks that that can sort of catch a person up short and say, oh now wait a minute. I'm there's a sign that Nealon told me about that I should watch for when I'm in an emergency situation. I'm kind of losing control of myself. What are some of those kinds of things one of the first things you have to do probably in any situation, we could relate to the Wilderness even though trying to wait for a Wilderness as a survival situation to occur is kind of cheating yourself because that's so far removed from most of us the airplane going down into the deep dense Wilderness or us getting lost which is generally a state of mind. Anyway, we know I'm in st. Paul and I might now know exactly where I'm at. But if I'm lost and it worked I get out of st. Paul, you know, so anyway, that's not quite as relevant but The idea of a person since we are using that environment a lot in our conversations a person needs when they realize that they've got some kind of emergency. They need to probably stop and get their mind Under full control. It's really hard when a person running around or trying to make a decision, you know, moving around really fast kind of jittery or whatever. They need to stop and even though it's unrealistic say just relax and say keep calm and everything else try to make sure that our mind gets a good chance to get fully engaged before we start doing a lot of things even though most medical emergencies require a moment of thought before you get into them. There's only there's really very few medical emergencies. It can be spotted relatively quickly that we'd move on without giving a few seconds to let our mind get under control and there's a lot of evidence indicated course, we should have our mind under control before we you know, even make a move if it's a very serious problem at all. So a person needs to do that. We say a person for instance gets lost and again it gets back into one Geographic environment, but how does a person make themselves? Stop in Southeast Asian environment when Pilots had to eject out of an airplane and come down to the ground the key element. They had I mean there was a tremendous amount. Obviously, I don't want to simplify this but there was a lot of fright involved with that they were in a totally hostile environment geographically to him and stuff and then they were enemy forces essentially that didn't particularly like their presence. And so how does a person Force themselves to stop in an environment and get their mind in a control so that they don't end up in a prisoner of war camp or whatever the case might have been and we suggested that person to stop take a drink of water if possible calm down as soon as they're in a secure area. Anyway, I knew start letting her mind take hold of the whole situation. If a person out there in the audience today happens to be a hundred and a hundred. Normally, I won't say normally because I don't exactly what normally would be but a lot of people just carry their weapon with them if you will and I'm not sure what kind of protection from the elements are going to get if they end up getting stranded the weapon is meaningless to him. Obviously, they need to start dealing with some other things or else start dealing with the environment alone. So if they end up getting lost if you will then maybe their last resort will be to just a hug a tree the stop themselves or whatever. I jumped in at a little bit quickly. But one thing if a child or if anybody else in adult is really in kind of a state of panic and they feel it coming on and they're rated bold off through the woods. You should grab ahold of a tree not a little one that bends over underneath your weight and you take off with but a fairly good substantial size tree and sit there and then let go of it it within a few seconds or whatever if our minds under control again, and then that gives our mind the opportunity of really judging the true dangers of the situation if you will and the true resources that I in fact have to work with and there are many in a situation really isn't we could you know deal with that I'm getting kind of going on in my own here. But one typical thing that that all of us might face would be like I mentioned before driving from here to Duluth or to Rochester or wherever it might be and getting stranded because the storm gets a little bit heavy, of course in your fall time periods. You get just as cold as temperatures sometimes November December We getting it in the middle of winter, but we tend to get more snow and a lot of times we even get more wet snow or whatever and more blizzard type conditions early in the fall and then later maybe once or twice in the spring or at least early spring and when we look at that situation occurring if a person if it's unsafe to go on than a person should you know consider their their odds and the circumstance before they push on so maybe one of the Alternatives is to pull over to the side of the road the worse that could happen to a person if they dress with very little on would be to sit there with very little on in their car and shiver quite a lot and hopefully hope that the situation will Rectify itself really fast and that person like somebody come along and help them out. Right and you figure if they're stranded by the side of the road, maybe there's going to be other people Stranded by the side of the road and a lot of the people that aren't that are going on in spite of the storm possibly should be stranded by the side of the road for their own safety. But anyway, so what does that person going to do? That's that's with very little they're just stuck right there. Okay better planning ahead of time by just throwing Couple of blankets into the car what helped a lot ideally if you stuff some sleeping bags as a matter of fact in the car early in the year and some people say you can put them in the trunk just so you have access to the trunk, you know, the weather is really bad and you get wet going back to get a sleeping bag. You're going to call them into to stay dry. In order to stay warm in what clothing of course is just terrible insulation. And so maybe some kind of plastic garbage bag or rain gear whatever person get into it. They have to get into their trunk to to open it up for whatever might be really advisable in that situation to but sleeping bags or whatever would be really really good and it's and also travel with a lot of people in the car and find people that give off a lot of heat as traveling Partners. That's what and then you can hug really close to that particular person and the key element there is keeping her mind under control and then trying to retain body heat. It's not finding a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat. It's not finding a drink of water. It's not getting to the destination. So the people there won't worry and go through mental grief about wondering The heck we are or anything. It's a matter of facing the priorities keeping our body temperature as close to normal as possible. And and the importance of that I believe is in the fact that our body is made up to run on 37 degrees Celsius or 98.6 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit temperature, and that's that's really a key element there. So just keeping warm keeping warm for sure and that situation that can be not only in the winter time to the business of hypothermia can happen can hit people in the summertime to Canada. Well, hypothermia probably is yeah it can is definitely a big problem in the summertime as well hypothermia, of course for some of the radio audience that hasn't been involved in that too much before is hypo is certainly a lowering or a lower than below normal. So hypothermia is lower than the normal body core temperature everything works best at 37 degrees or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit and is our temperature drops off and you know, this is this is It's amazing to me that we've always worried about having too high of a temperature. And of course the higher you go you get into a hyperthermic hyper above-normal hyperthermic State and that's something that thermometers address and medicine is addressed for a lot of years. And that in fact is a medical emergency when our temperature gets too high. You've got a cool app person off right away. So if you ever find someone excessively hot, you got to cool them off immediately. Hypothermia is not a medical emergency as is a sunstroke heatstroke or hyperthermia were just talking about but nonetheless, it's a real thing that happens and as our temperature drops just as little as three or four degrees of person in fact becomes mentally inefficient and right now, you know, we would hope to think that were reasonably clever people and as soon as our temperature drops to 93 94 95 degrees not only is there this possession this mental possession of having cold all around us and you this is miserable type of a feeling it. Yeah. I'm getting scared here, you know, this isn't normal and stuff, but it's a factor of mine because of the Does our body work best at 98.6 degrees therefore our mind at 95 94 93 just can't function as well as it functions at 98.6 degrees. Look. Well. I mean there's a lot of examples of watching. I want to I want to go back and ask you about the mental attitude seems to keep coming up and I guess I want to I want to get back to that in just a moment, but I want to remind listeners that if you have a question about survival either in the city or in the wilderness that you'd like to ask Tim Neyland this morning, you can do that by calling us at two to one 1550. That's two two one one five five zero in the Twin Cities area. If you live outside the Twin Cities, but in the state of Minnesota, you can call us toll-free on our wats line. And the number for that is one 865 to 9701 865 to 9700 and the Twin Cities area number. Once again is 2211550 Tim. I want to ask you do you think do you encourage people? That you teach about survival to to think about survival in their everyday lives It's a beautiful morning outside people may be driving up to Duluth for the weekend right now and listening to us. Do you encourage people to think about? Well, what if kind of situations to prepare themselves mentally? Is there any worth in that? Sure, I mean, that's sure there's a lot of evidence to indicate, you know that as we perceive and go through something in our minds that can override a lot of experience that we have to gain when we're right in there and that and that situation itself. So mental exercises obviously are always pretty valuable. If a person is always thinking on a negative trip to what happens if I'm faced with this or that or whatever and that gets depressing. It's better not to do that. Even though I don't think that's realistic option for most of us. Most people can handle that fairly. Well one thing it does it helps to generate self-reliance with yourself and your family members because you can work that out with families and driving from here to the to Duluth you can Prairie area or water oriented area and of course water submersion a Fisher person tips over out there somewhere in any one of the Lakes. We have some our winner and within a few tens of minutes, you know, 20 30, 40 minutes the situation could become very extreme and if a person's a mile or two from Shore and tries to swim to Shore and a lot of the larger colder Lakes we have and there's very little temperature change and Superior Michigan or someplace like that between summer and winter just in the first few centimeters or inches or whatever the case is, but generally not very much at all and the hypothermia or whatever can take hold very fast. So first really has to weigh that person that climbs into a boat takes off and doesn't have life jackets or personal flotation devices. If you're into jargon pfds for their children, then there are taken a heavy calculated risk period and so they had to think about that well ahead of time instead of letting the boat tip over once and gain the experience and then come back in and did some Consulting with the city one time. It had people that went out and gathered that water water samples and stuff in fairly cold type. And it was it's amazing when you see a boat tip over and so we did that to give them the experience at the same time. I'm not suggesting we can always do that. But that's really a possibility. Can I clear up a couple of things to earlier that gain some experience that when I talk about hugging a tree for instance when there's a lightning storm stay away from the trees. First of all, I'd like to clarify that because I'm not suggesting a person that you know, or don't fly kites in the other normal things that we try to stay away from doing in those circumstances. And as far as a heat source is concerned in a car or anywhere in a confined environment never have any kind of fuel burning because you end up consuming the air that you need for breathing to generate and keep that fire going and I'm not a believer in having any kind of a candle or anything else burning inside of a car and people talk about in cars leaving their vehicle running for a period of time and you can do that. Even the Shell Answer Man. If you will has come out with some suggestions that are really viable. I know I have a Volkswagen bus and I've never put an assisted heater. In that particular thing and I've learned more into winners inside of a vehicle. I think the most people earn in a lifetime driving from place to place and I insulate my seats with either newspaper or that's another thing too. I'm getting off the subject of I think that's good. I'd like to talk we can get back to that. I think we have a caller on the line. And so if we do let's let's go to that caller. We're listening for your question. Good morning. (00:16:18) Good morning. I'm wondering also about this being cold in the car. And then the wintertime there. It used to be that the people would say never fall asleep. Always stay awake. Just fight your hardest to stay awake you fall asleep and you freeze to death and just recently I've heard people say don't worry about going to sleep. You can save your energy that way that's true. Never freeze to death. You'll wake up (00:16:46) first. Well, there's you know, that that brings back a whole whole lot of things you're talking about right now because we're living in basing a lot of our Surgeons right now on not only the wives tales or whatever. They're commonly called but premonitions people have in the movie industry almost in the things they told us about and so starting in some situations from Ground Zero. We have to reorient ourselves to certain basic premises. Now, I'm not trying to simplify this but I slept all last winter no matter how cold it was and I did okay at doing that now if I didn't spend very many nights in my vehicle however, now if I was out in my vehicle and it was extremely cold if I could fall asleep, especially when this first happened or within the first few minutes or whatever the case is I wouldn't or even the first few half hours or hours even I probably wouldn't have any problem the problem occurs when a person is physically exhausted and they've expended almost all the energy they have through normally through shivering and of a person fell asleep in that particular situation, then it would be much much more critical but generally speaking if a person had the ability to fall asleep, it is a good way to conserve energy normally as you fall asleep your metabolism, not normally your Blossom does fall art metabolism Falls in North America generally anyway and are met and that's our rate of heat production in the way things are going on inside of our body and you'll find that with that drop in metabolic rate that we have when our temperature drops a little bit. We'll all of a sudden wake up as we get cold a good example. That's when a person is lucky enough to take a little nap before Sunday afternoon dinner and they're laying on the couch and when a person normally wakes up after an hour or two or sleeping there a little bit colder yet if you take a slip a newspaper a blanket and put it over us to make up so that we've got the capability of holding in the less amount of heat essentially were producing. We're in pretty good shape. The point is that we will normally wake up because our body would start shivering, so it's a good question though. (00:18:37) Okay. Thank you very much. (00:18:39) Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for calling. Once again. We are taking phone calls on Survival questions this morning here on NPR and with us in the studio is Tim Neyland who is a survival expert and if you'd like to ask him a question you can do so by calling 221. One five five zero that's two to one 1550 in the Twin Cities area. If you live outside the Twin Cities, but in the state of Minnesota, you can call us toll-free at 1-800-669-9133 on the line. Go ahead we're listening for your (00:19:11) question is yes, I do a lot of winter backpacking good and I use the polar guard bag. Okay, which is good down to about zero (00:19:20) that depends but go (00:19:21) ahead. Yeah when when the weather dropped I've been having an ongoing debate with my friends as to whether it's better to bring more clothes into the bag or to strip down and get the heat up in the bag. And I've wondering what he had to say, whether it's good to drag a down vest in the bag with you or if that cuts the heat off from the rest of your body. (00:19:48) Now, you're going to get into a debate here or pretty heavy situation with a lot of people a night when I'm in a winners camping situation. I try to start with very little on and try to make the maximum use of the bag and the other material I have around me if the important thing even though they're different materials that give you better insulation or poor insulation. If you will or heat retention, that's how it'll look great too, you know per inch of Loft that you might have say and polar guard and your hall of fellow and you're down and a lot of other materials and won't getting it to me discussions here because this is a more General type program in that is you want to allow your body heat, of course fill it up as much as possible when it gets really cold. Let's say you have a four pound which I expect you at least have that three and a half four pound four and a half pound polar guard bag. And if you get cold, you take your Park and just lay it right over the top of the And that way you're not compressing any of the insulation. It's within the bag itself. And then if you find you're still cold, generally what I do if I do sleep in long underwear as I'll reach out and I'll pull in another garment. Like if you have dry clothes, especially not damp clothes or whatever by the time you pull those inside the bag and put them on you've generated a lot of internal body heat again, that'll give you a couple good extra hours right there. There's a lot of things that you can do on that basis but to summarize that I start generally very little on and then I start to building as the night goes on or putting it over the top of me the more you stuff inside your bag, of course, the less value of the insulation is going to have you might gain some from that overall, but you're going to compress some of the original loft of the sleeping bag itself. So you don't necessarily have to put something on you can put it over your bag to sure as a matter of fact. Yeah, you you huddle together pretty closely and you know, you can do as you want with that thought about hugging together a lot of other people. I'm not talking about inside sleeping bags. Just put the sleeping bags close to each one another and make sure that you've got good insulation underneath you. A couple of ventilator blue foam or a couple of good pads underneath you were really the key to that to insulation of course, which I'm sure that you're doing. Anyway, if you've done any long-term backpacking, okay, does that help you out at (00:21:49) all? Yes, it does. I think I won the bet. Well, I don't (00:21:53) know. Thanks for calling we should probably mention too that loft is sort of another term for thickness isn't it? Right? It is it is a such a thickness the amount of distance between the inside layer of material on the outside layer material and sleeping and if you bought with your laying on top of it, by the way for those learned that really early for you people that are wanting getting in the backpack and even state campground camping. I went out one time and thought I'd be a hero and do a little winter camping scrape a little snow off the ground put a piece of plastic up and you're probably really like the shape. I was really proud of that had a little a frame there and I took this new $40 down sleeping bag. This was a couple years ago, obviously and I climbed inside of that and it was thoroughly amazed about how warm I was on top. I was really impressed with my abilities and I even dosed often within just a few minutes. I woke up and all of a sudden my Odious maximize my rear end if you will started really losing heat to the ground really fast and I started thinking about this whole thing and I realized that all I had underneath me was a piece of plastic and I had two pieces of nylon and a bunch of crushed duck feathers and I had nothing else at all. I had I had newspaper which is good for reading possibly among sleeping at the same time as you're sleeping, but it's kind of messy so we don't do that obviously because we never want to leave any trace on the environment but getting a good commercial Pat some people use air mattresses and air mattresses are not the best insulators are being better than laying on the ground, but they're not the best insulator. Okay. Looks like we have some calls and does will go to the next caller right now. Good morning, and we're listening for your question. (00:23:21) Good morning turned in late. I'm not sure if you've discussed this or not, but I'm just wondering with your experience in survival. What would you say would be the most important characteristics that a person would need to survive? (00:23:38) Keep that was question. We did address that a little bit earlier, but I did want to make a clarification point I think it's PMA and that term is kicked around a lot in the midwest that's positive mental attitude and the positive mental attitude that I'm talking about is not toward financial success or directing our life toward something that might be the ideal that some people might have but I'm talking about basic mind control. Everybody's going to have a mental attitude no matter what happens. We're going to have a mental attitude. So instead of having just a mental attitude. Let's keep it on a positive vein and it isn't saying that all we need to do is smile to get through a rougher detailed circumstance. What it means is we let our mind do the best we can of trying to analyze what the true problem is and then looking around us and finding a real resources at hand. And then we use those resources to solve the problem at hand all the survival training and all of the equipment in the world makes no difference at all to the individual that doesn't have their mind under control and to the individual that has Nothing, but as a reminder control the odds are in your favor. (00:24:41) Hey, thank you very much. I ripped the I'm writing a paper and serve all good. And that's one of the questions that I have been used in interviews and they people from I've interviewed people from all walks of life and all kinds of survival including survival through a dependency on drugs. That's right. And everyone says the same basic thing (00:25:07) that's that's very true. It's a matter of fact, I think it even applies to work environments and everything else that you have a choice of being a crank if you will and some of that tolerates it or we have a choice of going in there and being a little bit positive or whatever the case is, you know, and kind of putting ourself into our work can and everything else as well as putting herself into our family and whatever you think is very important to us in a priority (00:25:28) basis that (00:25:29) students also there's a there's a good book I should mess. There's a good book put out by a man by the name of Jean fear called surviving the unexpected Wilderness emergency and Jean I work pretty close together in Washington state and he is the book does cover a lot of the aspects on mental attitude. And so that might be a resource you can find most of the mountain chops and a lot of the bookstores have that particular publication. What was the title that he had surviving the unexpected Wilderness emergency and there's another Professional Organization on search and rescue that is and there's some credible people in that this called the National Association of search and rescue and it has a lot of information. It's very relevant to city and natural disaster and person made disaster or man-made disaster type situations of people get into. Okay. Good good. Let's get to our next questioner. Good morning. We're listening for your for your (00:26:17) question morning. I have two questions. First one is when I'm out driving and doing little errands around my body stays warm, but my hands my fingers get off the cold, right? What's a good hand where for that I used to wear mittens, but it's when you drive (00:26:35) well first of all, Probably the best way to keep your hands warm is not going out in the area at all and getting in a situation where we're going to lose the amount of circulation necessary in our fingers to keep warm. That's an absurd answer and I apologize why don't apologize it because that's kind of the base that we're talking about. We always have options to keep doing the things you're doing right now is you probably have to analyze why your hands get really cold and generally hands get cold because of blood doesn't flow so readily to the most distant areas of the body a specifically the fingers the ears the cheeks the nose and the toes and more specifically the toes and fingers. And so what a person needs to do is before their hands ever to note the first detection of cold as get some insulation around him. The warmest are putting two fingers together one another together with each other and by way of a mitten that's not always the most practical and second. Best of that is a FiveFinger type glove the very expensive ski gloves in my opinion only sometimes our And so that they look really good. So as a person has cold hands a person will say they really look good with her cold hands as opposed to be in the appropriate kind of insulation for the sit for the purpose at hand. Sometimes the inner shell of wool and then an outer shell of leather that's loose fitting over the top as a very good combination for driving and the Mitten is even better than that and if that isn't good enough for you, I think if you if you looked in one of the normal Publications about backpacking for instance, there's a number of them. I'm not trying to be a commercial here for someone but Backpacker Mariah and wilderness camping and some of those you'll find that there's some major manufacturers that have a mitten type glove that's used a lot in mountaineering that has polar guard halt of fell or some other kind of good synthetic material that is a very loose fitting in very appropriate type insulation for your situation. You had another question. Go ahead with (00:28:30) that. Yeah the other crazy, I guess I was thinking of the Cornhuskers when I was a child that they used to wear leather and the outside and wool on the (00:28:37) Right loose-fitting now that's (00:28:39) important. The other question was I didn't understand why you said that our to nap before Sunday dinner and I guess I also wondered thought it might be a little impractical because how would you get the dinner unless you (00:28:56) okay? That's a good point. I realized that what I was I was just using that as a reference. I would my point on that is that the way our body loses heat when we sleep essentially or it doesn't I'm sorry. It doesn't lose heat. It reduces the amount of heat it generates. And so we need to put more insulation on if the listening audience ask themselves. Do I wear more or less when I sleep without getting too personal here generally the amount of insulation. We have between our body the naked body in the outside environment is far greater at night and the major reason for that is because our body generates only about 80% of the heat that it would generate even if we were laying in bed for 24 hours a week. So our metabolism if you will drops a lot at night the I was making before is that as a person sleeps their body normally cools down a little bit or especially if they don't have a lot of insulation over them and you'll normally wake up. Someone was worried a little bit earlier about going to sleep in a cold environment and then not ever being able to wake up and for all practical purposes. That's one of the things that had been promoted from a wives tale type of standpoint and he's not very practical because it's not true. Normally. Thanks very much for calling. The time is 29 minutes now before 11 o'clock and we're talking about survival not only in the wilderness but also in the city and we're talking with Tim Neyland who is an expert in that field and we have questioners on the line and we're going to go to another one right now. Good morning. (00:30:19) Good morning. I have two brief questions for Tim. First question is for the Minnesota motorists who drives in the winter. Yes. I've been told to carry certain essential such as a shovel or sand for ballast the spreading under the wheel. On this some Essentials that are commonly overlooked that should be carried in the in the trunk for winter driving. (00:30:45) Okay. This is probably a good time to go through some kind of an appropriate list on that if anybody is making a list it's fairly logical at all. We're trying to do not thus and the ballast to change the mechanical condition of the car the spare tire and all those things go without saying we need to make sure we take care of that. However, if some of that stuff broke down and or if we had all that stuff, but we were still stranded in a vehicle and let's say that's probably the worst that's going to happen to us. First of all, we want to get stranded well off the road. So someone else driving down the street doesn't make us part of their path or whatever. So we get way off the road when we do that if we have a choice when we get stranded and then we end obviously without getting stuck. So we'll never get out of my way be a little bit careful about what I say because I know that I don't get a chance to explain things as much in radio as I normally would in person but a person should concern themselves primarily with the retention of the resource. Have this known as body heat and that's done at the worst situation of a person drove to some place virtually naked it would be done only by way of probably ripping apart the installation of the vehicle itself. I'm going a little bit beyond your question if I've if that's permissible but a person could rip apart the insulation of in a car the stuffing or whatever and it's not so bad. If you're by the way a passenger in someone else's car. It's a little more critical one. We're in our own car, but you rip all that out and get it around you and cuddle with someone else and get it around a couple of people for the person who had a little bit of foresight. Maybe they've got a little more clothes on than just a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. And so what they do is find maps and newspapers and stuff like that and generally you'll find a lot of those in some people's cars anyway, and you pull these things out you open up a sheet of paper and you crunch it up just like any of this sheet of paper and you stuff it inside your clothing and then that also affords more heat retention capability for yourself or more insulation. It's a very primitive form of clothing. And by the way a lot of people in the midwest area of Of save their life their lives because of that ability. We've had a number of cold snaps on Duck hunters and they've taken newspaper and stuffed them inside your clothing and that's in fact, what kept them alive and that alone because they didn't have the ability to go out and buy another down parka self-reliance again is kind of the key. Okay, if you fight figure the newspaper trip isn't going to be the best one for a person then we can even get into something like having blankets just throwing a you know, four or five or six wool blankets into the car instead of that. If you want to even get better throw some even some very inexpensive sleeping bags in the car and then Loosely wrap them around a person making sure of course that you take off wet clothing especially if they're cotton clothes. What cotton clothing is almost a detriment to a person because heat vibrates a rapidly from our own body the water evaporates rapidly and pulls the heat away from the body. Whereas wool clothing or something like that what evaporated of much slower rate and would be much better for heat retention. Now, I know there's people out there talking about synthetics and everything else but there's something that makes synthetics retain. When you're wet most do not some of the Polar cards and Hall of Fells and stuff do however and then on top of that I would think if we if since we're talking about luxuries here, I would probably try to carry a trailer with me if if I had the opportunities if I thought the weather was going to be kind of bad then I'd climb into the trailer or a Winnebago or whatever. It is specifically to answer your question. I'm sorry about the tangent. I would suggest that you throw in some sleeping bags. If not that a bunch of blankets to take care of at least the number of people you're going to have in a vehicle and then I'd put in a hot thermos of fluids before any trip and it could be water and you could bring some you know, some dehydrated cocoa and some instant coffee with you. So you take care of whoever it is and what their personal likes are in the car, you might because you might be stranded for a while. You might throw in some kind of a light. And that light then might be usable for people you might have some coloring books in there for the kids to keep a little more entertained and a number of other things. There are there are some suggestions that have come out of Minnesota and years past that you could have a coffee can a 3-pound coffee can the Safety Council is promoted this in a number of other people we've talked about this to quite a lot of detail before and that can contain a lot of little goodies. You want to have even to a point where you could start some kind of a fire now that of course we have to be careful to never do that inside of a vehicle that would always be done well away from the vehicle which probably wouldn't put us in a very emergency oriented situation if we did but you can have a lot of little goodies. The key thing is the ability to keep warm. I'd also throw in if you had the luxury of doing that I would throw in some wool socks for everybody and that way they can pull them right over the top of their shoes or put them on in lieu of their shoes or whatever and it also throw an extra pair of mittens and for each person and a stocking cap for each person (00:35:28) my thank you to my other question. His if a person was stranded in the core, we had a typical Minnesota winter of 30 or 40 below what you be warmer if you stayed in the car or as I've read you can burrow into snow and use the snow itself as an insulation looking warmer in the snow are in the (00:35:49) car. Okay, super super question. That's a good one. I'm glad you brought up because I'm afraid we wouldn't have touched on it just spontaneously. Okay. It's important for people to realize that it's the key most important thing after we control the mind is to retain as much body deals with can for as long as we can and the best way to do that typically is by staying in the car the car will typically assume the air temperature outside not totally in that depart that depends on a lot of things but it will normally not be as warm as it would be burned into a snow shelter and I've had a lot of experience in snow shelters and I've had a lot of students that we've been on Mount Rainier we've been doing A number of other places where we've done a lot of winter camping and when you get into making snow shelters, it's generally a wet process and it's a timely process because a person sweats so you'd be warm for a while. But the trouble is your clothing we get wet and it be very very critical. The snow is a warmer place. Typically if you make sure that the water doesn't get on you and you can do that under normal conditions but not for people stranded in a vehicle. And another thing so stay in that vehicle soon as you get out then the windchill becomes a problem and let's say it's 20 degrees below zero temperature add 20 miles per hour wind speed to that and your temperature is probably going to drop to about 35 40 below and if you happen to be wet at all assert or even if it's because you're nervous and sweating a little bit then that water is going to drop it physically the physical temperature on your body quite substantially even faster. And so please that's an important Point stay with that vehicle unless you know for sure that there's a good reason to get out of it and if I can carry your question on since it did stimulate something a lot. Of people feel that they're kind of hopeless sitting in a car. I'm not doing anything to take care of my problem. I can't do that. I wasn't raised that way. And that's a that's a that's a statement and a thought that will get a lot of people in trouble and there are a number of examples and if you watch the papers this year, I guarantee that you'll see him again where people feel they had to walk the one mile to the service station and that can be a critical mile to try to go and if anybody has ever been in one of the Dales or any other shopping center around and has been unfortunate enough to park in the back of the lot and they were cold by the time they got to the park to their car. What's it going to be like when we're nervous because our cars stranded and we've got a little farther to go than a block to the back of the lot for our car. (00:38:14) Is there is there any value in these emergency a pocket-sized strobe lights that you can slash the supposed to be singing for a long (00:38:20) distance? Okay. That's that's another guy me now you're getting into a lot of different things. They're pretty well set at we dealt with that a lot in Southeast Asia and and a lot of the other places where I've taught survival. And that that strobe light has a lot of value and I would suggest that people are that are boating oriented should buy a strobe light for about $40 whatever they cost. They're really good. Okay now for a person starting the vehicle sure I would think that something like that could be put up and ruined her with whatever I'm not sure how much the mental sanity that people can take that blinking light on the continuing basis, but you can always wrap some clothing around it make the reflection principally go outside anyway, and that might signify an emergency. That's good. Another thing about your Flashlight batteries and batteries is sometimes you stick them in your pocket to get them warm beforehand. So thanks, thanks very much for your questions. And you were very good the one about the the crawling in the snowdrift. I know each time. We have a blizzard here in this state. We seem to hear a few days later about somebody who has made it through by doing that and I guess I wonder myself sometimes how they yeah a managed way. If you do that, you need some good equipment or even if you don't have good equipment you when you get in some kind of a snow shelter, you have to close the end off there's plenty of snow so that you can normally breathe from that kind of snow anyway, and you need some insulin. Between you and the ground but to build a snow cave if you go up to a mountain area somewhere and you try to build one. It's going to take you three hours. I know there's some people say well I can do it now and a half that's talent though. That's not typical. Okay, we have some more callers who have been very patient and waiting to get their questions answered. Let's go to another one now. Good morning. We're listening for your question. (00:39:48) Hi. This is a very informative program and I hate to be picky picky but all several cars back when you were trying to help the cell in his backpack you talk about laying on top in my eighth grade English teacher told me only hens lay and that stayed with me all these (00:40:07) years. Okay. Well, that's a point well taken anyway, it was short. Yes. It was. Thank you, bye-bye. I'll write that down. We'll go to another question here. Good morning. Good morning. We're waiting for your question. (00:40:22) I just moved up here from the south and I just tuned in so I don't know if you cover this question, but I need to know what are some of the basic things that you would carry in the car for cold (00:40:31) weather. Well, we've just been over that rather in detail, and I'm afraid that there may be lots of other people out there who have already heard it and maybe if you could give us a call back after 11 o'clock after we go off the air and maybe Tim would fill you in we pretty well gone over that in detail and we have a number of other questioners on the line. Could you do that? Okay. Thanks for calling. Let's go to another question, please. (00:40:57) Yeah, okay, if you touch just a bit more on something you put a flashlight the car and you figure okay. I'm all set up going to have light when I get into a difficult problem, but in cold weather batteries really go to pot now. How long have you any idea how long you can leave a battery? So your flashlight in the trunk be Dependable? (00:41:17) Probably not very Long think the thing that I do is I take batteries and I use alkaline batteries, obviously and the alkaline batteries will give you a lot longer battery life and I always turn him inside out know I don't turn him inside out. Do I gotta watch my English here? I turn him around so that the contact points are toward the back of the flashlight and it doesn't turn on accidentally for some of your three cell flashlights what you're a little large normally excessive for our purposes. Anyway, you can take instead of turning your batteries backwards. You can take a piece of cardboard or some paper and put it between the bulb and the battery itself. The reason being of course is you don't actually turn the flashlight on and burn it and bring them down without you noticing it and I found that saved me a lot of batteries principally any kind of a battery like that by if you keep it close to your body and then you end up retaining some of that heat in there. And so just slide it inside an inner pocket and before you use them or whatever the case is, by the way, the flashlight point is very minor point. I think too about the needs of the person has typically it doesn't Get very dark ever in the winter in Minnesota for a person that stays up because the Sun the snow reflects a tremendous amount of light of course detail work. We might need something like that for but I just put it in my pocket. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you darling. The time is 16 minutes now before 11 o'clock and we're talking about survival with a survival expert Tim Neyland and if you have a question about that subject you'd like to ask him you can do so by calling us at 2 2 1 1 5 5 0 that's two to one 1550 in the Twin Cities area. If you live outside the metro area, but in the state of Minnesota, you can call us toll-free at 1-800-695-1418. 1-800-695-1418. Tim area incidentally should mention that the phone lines appear to be free now. So if you try to get through a few minutes ago and got a busy signal you probably can get through now. Someone asked a few moments ago in the question the involved question about what all to have with you in the car and you mentioned. Something hot to drink in films of old we often used to see somebody who might be out in the wilderness reach for that back pocket and pull out a flask and take a good belt of whatever appeared to be some alcoholic beverage and I've heard that that's not the best thing to do. Why is that? Okay alcohol no matter what a person perceives. It is to themselves personally alcohol is a physiological depressant and alcohol depresses the heat regulatory Center within the body which is part of the brain and what happens is the old the old saying of the st. Bernard Tomic and we're getting back to the same principle before we've learned a lot of things about survival from some very unreliable sources that were basing a lot of our decisions on life and death decisions in some situations. Unfortunately and the flask what it does since our okay, basically when we're losing body temperature inside because it is cold. We can sacrifice hands. That's why they get cold and feet and here's and things like that and By sacrificing that just means the capillaries venules and what have arterioles in those areas reduce their size and there's more fatty insulation form between the warmer blood and the cold heat robbing outside environment and because of the reduced size of the capillaries venules and veins or arterioles, which are the very fine veins essentially in the surface and near the surface. Some of those are when it does that it conserves the flow of blood and keeps it keeps the warmth near the heart where it's really needed for the vital organs to keep that area as long as possible at 37 degrees Celsius or whatever the case might be or 98.6 degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. Yeah. Sorry about that at Fahrenheit. Okay. Now with that then we'll find that when we drink alcohol then it just overrides the ability of our body to keep those blood vessels reduced in size and it'll open up the size of the surface blood vessels the heat that was retained in the core by way of the blood is going Rushing out of the extremities and a personal feel of warm flash essentially, but the heat that they're going to lose it. That point is is really well in excess of what they can afford to lose at that point. You mentioned that's really important. You mentioned that it was it was okay. I think you said this to have either coffee or tea well coffee or tea now people talk about coffee or tea, you know, they are a drug to at the same time, but they are the important thing is you're primarily getting some warm fluids in your system. There's no there's not very much of a comparison. I don't think between what alcohol can do it with coffee and tea can do and you know, we're not course talking about a lot of it or anything else and I realized we can get into a lot of detail on those specific things. But the important thing is flavoring that well just getting warm warm water and our self but stay away from alcohol save it for Recovery. If a person's into that or for the rescue force or whatever the case might be. Okay, very good. I think we have another caller on the line. Good morning with your question. Go ahead with your question. I should say. Good morning. Good morning. (00:46:13) I just moved out here about a year ago from Oregon where I was involved in search-and-rescue. Oh good the wave of the future at the end of the time. I was leaving Oregon particularly for conditions was the Gore-Tex process or how practical is that for? Is that a desirable thing say for the cold that we have here in Minnesota now (00:46:36) boys have to explain the gore. Yes, that's you're really getting into a pretty heavy area. See there's not I don't think the there's enough information on cortex and I know people that have manufactured tents with Gore-Tex and garments with Gore-Tex. Gore-Tex. Simply is normally a backpacking garment. Excuse me, a down parka or a fiber fell or some kind of a synthetic Parker has a nylon outer shell and then now another shell is generally either something called down proof. Nylon or ripstop. Nylon as a parachute might be made out of What Gore-Tex is okay, and then there's and then what they'll do if it's if obviously I know that the one that asks us knows he's at these answers, but for the other people that if a person wants to get protection from the rain, they put a polyurethane coating on the inside of the nylon essentially and they make a waterproof. Gore-Tex is somewhere in between the supposed to let body moisture out but not rainy in okay with that like anything else. There's limitations with any gear you have and I think Gore-Tex has a lot of potential and a lot of possibilities for people in certain situations, but like anything else it has certain limitations they found when they've had too much moisture inside tents for instance after a few days that the Gore-Tex won't allow enough moisture to penetrate so that some of that moisture freezes in the material and you can take a cup and you can actually scoop a cup of ice out of the inside of the tent and if you ended up running with a nylon shell on and you got wet right to the nylon shell even though you had a breathable nylon shell on You'd know that if you put a Gore-Tex on you get even wetter because less moisture essentially can penetrate than with a regular nylon shell but I think it does have some value but I think we had kind of have to weigh it a little bit. Okay. Thanks for calling we have another question are on the line. Go ahead. Good morning. (00:48:22) Thank you. I do not have a question, but I didn't go ahead something occurred to me and I don't know whether or not you covered that okay, the things that you put in the car like all the blankets are sleeping bags and chocolate bars and what not. They should be kept in the car rather than in the trunk because sometimes when a car goes off the road it goes off backwards and a stuck in a (00:48:49) snowbank. Yeah, we did talk about that (00:48:52) talk about that. Right? I didn't hear that. I'm sorry. (00:48:54) It's important. I think we might as well hit that again it you can sometimes pull a back seat out and get to the truck. I know I was robbed one time that way but it did but that doesn't mean that all cars some of them are kind of tight and hard to get into. There are some other things that are really critical there to that another thing I would suggest in your boat or in your car in your backpack or whatever. It is has some garbage bags and these garbage bags, of course actually one of the best little survival kit you can have for a child say six seven eight years old or whatever is a garbage bag and right away. I know people are saying plastic over a kids had never worked that'll never work and you're right. That's something we shouldn't do but you talk to the kid or the child or whatever and if they take that garbage bag adult child alike and you cut a place for the head you can put that on like a large raincoat and then if you take a person and give them a whistle and you find that they ever get Miss oriented in a Wildland environment the woods wherever it might be that all I have to do is sit down next to a tree put that plastic bag around him and if it's raining or sleeting or whatever their insulation is going to stay relatively dry, and it'll it'll go a long way to keeping that person really warm and if they take the whistle and blow that in a series of three anybody will We recognize out right away is something not growing wild in the woods and they would probably reluctantly somewhat probably approach that and take the person out of the situation. The key thing. Is there of course that a person stays put and let Rescue come to them. (00:50:23) Go ahead. I'm glad that you mentioned that plastic bag that because I was going to suggest that next thought about although I usually carry a whistle with me, (00:50:33) right? Well, there's a lot of approaches you can use on that basis. Another thing. I think that people in their in their their vehicle, you know, if you have to get out and change a tire if you've got a garbage bag on you'll find it at garbage bag if if I could sell you one at that point, you're probably pay $10 for it and they don't cost near that much when you buy them ahead of time because they would be that valuable to you. I would also suggest that a person if you find that your car seat is cold and I'm getting off again here, but I want to get this point in if your car seats ever cold put some insulation on your car seat some people buy extra little fluffy or And of fur type synthetic Fert type car seats that they sit down on and those give you some insulation of that cold car seat and I use some regular backpacking pads insulite all over my car seats and even underneath the floorboards underneath the mats are on top of the mat sit in my vehicle itself. Some people will use newspaper sit down in a newspaper. Sometimes the only trouble with that is a newsprint might get on your clothes and you might be standing on a corner in someone might want to have you move over so they can finish reading the story but aside from that it works out very (00:51:36) well maybe using a mirror. I'm sure (00:51:38) and I'm sure and what you have inside your car for sure that (00:51:41) you could use The program has been very very (00:51:45) interesting. Well, thank you. Thanks for calling. Thanks for your Insight. Tim we I think we have another caller. But before we go to that person I want to ask you if you have ever been in a situation that where you wondered whether or not you might not get out of it. Well, there's a lot of ways of looking at that. I've been in situations where I've been mighty nervous in places where I've been miss oriented and and getting lost is a state of mind. It's really not you leave today from st. Paul on your drive to Minneapolis. And if you get lost it would mean you would have to all of a sudden end up. We have no idea for your at all and yet we do know we're still in Minneapolis. So it's just a matter of a little mental perception and I've been in situations like that where I've been nervous and I've been in some reasonably inclement weather situations and I think there's a mark to say to that because a person doesn't end up in a situation. Maybe that means they've been trying at least to recognize some of the problems while ahead of time and part of that recognition factor is staying out of environments and circumstances have become serious or potentially become very serious with your family, especially when Have that responsibility and as we all do of course with their own families and just use good judgment all the time. And again that gets back into the Mind itself mental attitude. Yeah, I find situations, you know in everyday life were you you know, you get irritated. They're probably just too severe, you know, when you get kind of upset a little bit inside from you know, because of our relationships with other people strangers alike or whatever that's as much of an everyday type survival thing that we should deal with and I had a friend named Gary Anderson that survived in the Yukon Territory 44 36 38 days and you didn't have anything to eat essentially in that 30-day period of time and did not have any fire and I know there's people out there saying well I could have built a fire. Well, you weren't in that situation and a lot of other things and we can sit from a warm room with the sun coming in through a window or wherever it is and and speculate what we could have done. But Gary live for that 38 days and in some pretty and Clement areas up in that Canadian. A wild land area we had the Good Fortune of going in four years ago with Gary who is subsequently to that become a friend of mine and we got a chance to trace his steps and we actually trace the 27 miles to traveled and I'm not an advocate of travel in most situations to stay put Gary lost his father. He drowned in that particular situation and he didn't know he had drowned but he had thought maybe he could find him and he got covered by some didn't get covered. He couldn't go on because I'm very ice cold glacial water and stuff and when he got back from that whole situation, he said that one thing about it was that it always kind of reminded him that that if he ever got to hassled in the work world or wherever it happened to be that he was working in that he just kind of go off by himself a little bit say let me put this back in perspective. I had one extreme with nothing where he almost can't became he did become part of that environment is as sound was his hearing was tremendously acute and a sense of smell and everything hidden. And stand out of the some to because he didn't have the normal interruptions a we had and you didn't have the normal type any things that we had it all I'm not suggesting that people do that every few years ago out for 30 days on them by themselves because I don't think people had to go out on their own. Anyway, they had to be with someone else. That's there that's reasonably competent or as we as we learn, you know, don't extend beyond our own limitations of capabilities. But anyway, Gary just said that he was able to go back by himself and say gosh is it really worth getting too upset about this? I wished I could adapt that more personally and also I could keep my PO mayor and a lot of food up a little higher imagine all of us would like to do that. We have three and a half minutes left in our program and I think we have one more caller on the line and if you can be brief for go ahead and with your question, please (00:55:31) yeah, I had a question regarding the best insulators you'd talked about the word several different kinds of both synthetics and the natural I was kind of wondering if you could find a compare the insulators that are out like how to fill and Dacron and And you know with down and wool and I was also wondering like oh I've seen garments that are made of Orlon that looked you know, you know hunting garments that look a lot like will feel like well, (00:56:02) yeah, there will be there will at all that's a that's a really an extensive question far beyond the capability of of answering here. That's something that we try to get into in quite a lot of detail on a survival program or in some other kind of a program. Basically, I would suggest for most garments of people try to wear when they get out of the environment, especially when there's a chance of precipitation or if you're out in a snow and it's not a heavier over garment try to deal with wool because you can get them from army surplus stores and a lot of other places and anybody can get into a pair of wool pants for four five or six dollars and you can work essentially all day in the wall and you can brush the snow off and a repeal a lot of water and if it should get wet it'll retain heat even though it is wet a down. Of course, you've got to keep drive down gets wet in a loser. Most of its insulating capability if you can picture a park or wrapped around you and dump a bucket of water on it and a park of won't have near the distance that it had before or near the loft or inches of insulation that it had before some of the synthetics not very many synthetics mind you the fiberfill to the hall of fell and materials like that a very special materials have the capability of still retaining heat when they're wet and the unique ability of drying fairly quickly and they've been proven in many many mountaineering situations. Generally, they're not well, they're still doing a lot of research and I hate to say a lot about what's going to happen over long-term between one fiber another fiber, but generally it takes a little bit more to equal the insulating capability of down and 3M even developed a brand new material, you know, that's they're still not finished with all the testing on it and it hasn't been filled tested very extensively that is even supposed to be better than those materials. So you never know what technology is going to do, but oral on and most your nylons and stuff do not at all. I have the I'm equivalent capabilities that the sum of the good synthetics to buy good. I don't mean quality material, but I mean type of function that they have and your wool that capability of dealing with that overall. I was just people get wool pants, so I have to interrupt you because we're out of time. I want to thank you Tim Nealon survival expert for being with us this morning. I enjoyed it and I suspect judging from the phone calls that a lot of other people were interested in finding found it informative to so, maybe you'll have to come back soon again. So thank you very much for inviting me over. You're welcome.