If you need help look for a cop.

Drink alcohol to stay warm.

Is that an actual, existing survival myth?

PCP makes you better at fighting cops

I don't know how much so practically, but it perseveres at least in tongue in cheek references to "putting on your whiskey jacket"

Sadly, I think some people believe it.

But other people think you get sick from being outside in the cold

Just drink the lakewater, don’t worry that everyone else died of food poisoning!

The brightest star in the sky is not the North Star (Polaris). If you follow the brightest star in the sky you will follow a planet and travel some curved path.

How to really find Polaris:

Lol!

Alcohol is antibacterial, thus medicinal.

Drinking your own pee will end up dehydrating you faster, contrary to how confident Bear Grylls is in it being a decent strategy.

You're not even concentrating it that much when you boil it. Keep the lid on the pot next time so you lose less to steam and evaporation.

Boiling water renders it biologically safe. No giardiosis, etc...

If you are drinking water with significant heavy metals, concentrating by evaporating a few cups when boiling a gallon, isn't your problem.

Someone doesn't understand how distilled water is made...

Cool, now how do I find those thingies?

I mean, it definitely makes you warmer. In that it shunts your blood to the outer layer of your body, warming your skin and making you feel less cold. Problem is, this actually makes you lose heat more rapidly, and increases your susceptibility to hypothermia. But since you can experience "drink alcohol, feel warmer" yourself, the myth will probably persist indefinitely.

Is you're lost but someone knows where you're supposed to be it's probably better to stay put.

Also moss can grow on any side of a tree.

Look up

Well it's not wrong, but it will get you killed

Boiling water that contains cyanotoxins*

Run outside into the street during an earthquake

I always struggled with that, too, until my cousin taught me to use Cassiopeia. The other constellations use way too complex of shapes and require accuracy, and they're not super-bright.

Cassiopeia looks like a W or M. Look for 5 dots that could possibly form an ugly W where the left side is wider and more shallow than the right. It'll genuinely stand out like this.

There it is!

Now, mentally draw a straight line across the tips of the shallow side of the W. Then, draw a straight line through that starting from the bottom of the shallow side. You'll get something like an arrow shape. Keep following that perpendicular line away from the W until you find something nearby the line that is noticeably bright. That's Polaris!

After you find that, you can confirm you found the right star by looking for the dippers and shit.

Makes it more fun, though!

I think even Bear admits that it should be an absolute last resort. Like a "well I'm like 99% sure I'm dying in the next ten minutes, why not?" sort of situation.

It is calories too, so can be drunk for energy if you're out of food.

So I'm gonna die anyway, but with the taste of piss in my mouth? Fuck that.

ask AI slop for advise

Can't say I have ever heard that expression.

Yes. It's where the old meme of St Bernards carrying little flasks of alcohol came from. The idea was if you were injured in the cold, alcohol would warm you up.

You may feel warmer. But it actually lowers your core temp, IIRC.

It actually was the case, in the olden days.

The classic image of St. Bernard rescue dogs carrying tiny barrels of brandy for the benefit of hypothermic travellers was a myth though.

I think Bear Grylls has a fetish and managed to fool people into thinking it was a survival skill.

Great question! Use https://stellarium-web.org/ and set it for your latitude or location, according to your preference, and then look toward the northern sky. You can set the app to highlight the constellations.

Distilling is different from just boiling, in the sort of context we''re talking about you're just getting water up to boiling in a container to kill pathogens, not collecting the steam that evaporates off of it to condense back into water to drink.

And in a lot of survival situations you'd be lucky to have something to boil water with, let alone construct a still.

To their credit, yes, theoretically boiling water will concentrate things like heavy metals. You're just not going to be able to get it hot enough to evaporate stuff like lead or mercury, all of the water will boil off and your pot will melt long before that if you can even reach the sorts of temperatures needed (you probably wouldn't be able to, at least not without constructing some additional infrastructure, and if you're capable of that odds are you're pretty much set for this kind of situation and not need to be reading anything in this thread for advice)

In practice, you're just not going to be boiling water hot or long enough for that to really matter. You really only need to get it up to boiling for an instant then you can take it off the heat (and arguably it's probably safe at some point before it reaches boiling, but unless you have a thermometer, stopwatch, and some tables to consult about pasteurization, it's a lot easier to just watch for a boil.) Go put a few cups of water in a pot on the stove and get it up to boiling, how much did the water level change? Probably not all that much, you're not doing much to concentrate whatever's in there.

You have maybe a week you can go without water under absolutely ideal conditions, more realistically you probably have about 3-5 days, or even a few hours if it's hot and you're exerting yourself. Most toxins you're going to find in water aren't going to kill you in that sort of time frame, they're more likely to be something that will add to your lifetime exposure and bioaccumulation and cause issues for you sometime down the road, maybe years or decades later.

And if the concentration of whatever you're concerned about is high enough to cause more immediate issues, odds are that you're kind of fucked either way, and the tiny bit of concentration that happens from boiling isn't going to be a major factor. You'd probably get sick regardless, you're just trading one issue for another- dying of dehydration in a couple days, or dying of poison in a couple days.

And some more volatile chemicals might evaporate off in the boiling process, let's say that for some reason there's a bunch of acetone in the water (picked that for no other reason than because I happen to be looking at a can of it on a shelf in my basement while I'm writing this) acetone boils at 132.8°f (56c) so by the time the water reaches boiling all or most of that acetone has already evaporated.

"If it's black, fight back. If it's brown, lie down."

That's shortened to the point of being useless and leaves out all parts that actually matter.
First of all, there are black grizzlies and brown "Black bears" and the sizes of the species overlap. It may be hard to identify a bear that's coming at you.

Here's what you should do: Carry bear spray whenever you're in bear country!

When you encounter a bear close up, stand still, take out your pepper spray (or anything you can use as a weapon) and start talking to it calmly. Let it know you're a human and neither aggressive nor afraid. Ask it how its day is going!

If it backs down, you walk backwards slowly till it's out of sight, then find a different route.
If it stops, advances or charges, you stand still, facing it. Don't run or climb a tree.
Most charges are mock charges where it'll stop before you.

If it doesn't stop and gets within 20 feet, shoot your bear spray, which resolves 98% of bear attacks without injury:
https://irp.cdn-website.com/01d676b7/files/uploaded/Tom_Smith_Research_Report___Efficacy_of_Bear_Spray_(1).pdf
In the other 2%, fight for your life. Aim for the nose. Good Luck!

Lying down might sometimes be better if it's a Grizzly, depending on its reason for attacking you, but there's no way you can know that. Chances are, after its first slap you're lying down anyway.

Source: worked as a ranger in British Columbia

That we know of

it makes you stronger too.

and the PEE drinker just recycles thier own waste and toxins back into body.

Just want to add, because as an outdoorsy guy in Pennsylvania, I'm a little dumbfounded by how many people seem to think we might have brown/grizzly bears in our neck of the woods.

There aren't. If you're reading this, odds are pretty good that you don't live in brown bear country, because you're probably in an English-speaking country, and just going by numbers you're probably not in the parts of western Canada, Alaska, or the tiny part of the Continental US (mostly just Yellowstone) where they can be found.

Everywhere else in North America it's black bears (or polar bears, but I really hope you don't need help identifying those, and maybe a handful of grizzly-polar bear hybrids)

If you're in Europe you have brown or polar bears.

If you're in Asia, you have a few species with a bit of overlap- brown, polar, panda, sun, and 2 or 3 other species I don't remember off the top of my head.

If you're in the Andes, you got spectacled bears.

If you're anywhere else in the world, read the sign by the cage because you're in a zoo.

Also, I have never encountered a black bear that didn't immediately fuck off the moment it noticed me. There are certainly bolder ones out there, and you should always take any reasonable precautions, but when I'm camping and hiking, bears are basically at the bottom of my list of concerns, squirrels, chipmunks, mice, etc. generally rank higher, I've had chipmunks try to get into my pack while I was sitting there watching it.

All my years of camping I've had exactly 1 incident with a bear back when I was in scouts, and it happened when we were all away from camp, it got into a box of cookware, and I suspect it probably immediately scared itself away when the pots and pans went clattering everywhere.

My experience with black bears as well. They fuck off as soon as they see you.
Grizzlies seemed more annoyed, like "Why's there a human in my woods? I just wanna chill."
So depending on their mood, they'll usually check you out, maybe try to get you to fuck off, and failing that, grudgingly walk away.

I actually missed the number one protection against bear (and cougar) attacks in my post:
Have a hiking partner and talk to them. Or sing to yourself.
That reduces the chance of even encountering a bear by a lot cause they hear you coming and avoid you well in advance.
The drawback is you won't get to see a bear.

Our bear safety trainer actually said step 1 in a bear encounter is: Take out your camera.
It puts you in a more reasonable mindset, cause almost no encounters lead to attacks. And you can take some sweet pictures.

What about a moose?

I'd like to read a survival guide based on actual locations rather than old boy scout tricks.

If you strand on a deserted island in the year 2026 you will find a heap of plastic bottles and other trash that can be made into a solar powered distillery or desalination device.
It might still be full of micro plastics but whatever so is the the bottled water in the grocery store.

Actually if you ever get in a survival situation besides falling off a ship, your best option is probably to rob the nearest grocery store. It's a great resource that can be found in the most desolate places.

Find cover. A big tree or big rock.
Use your small size and better maneuverability to keep the cover between you and the moose.
Move from cover to cover to create distance.
If there's no cover, run like hell. Moose are faster than you, but they often stop after a short distance.

You'd never find one of you went looking over here, I've not seen a cop on foot or parked up in YEARS. Only ever see em driving somewhere. Strange.

When I spent some time in the USA though it was creepy, they'd drive their cars around real slow, just watching you, and they're everywhere. It felt weirdly oppressive/threatening to have them always around the next corner, always over your shoulder....watching o.O

Ask it how its day is going.

I'm just picturing somebody talking to a bear as if it understands what they're asking.

That’s not what I would call „talking calmly“. Not even asked how his day is going!

But I admit the „you should be sleeping“ got me.

I think it very much depends on the building

Meanwhile in Finland