Originally Posted By ppine
Gershon,

You have missed the point entirely. You are refering to bad judgement. Most of the people who perish in the outdoors give up and that is what costs them in the end. Wimpy people are the first ones to give up.


You are incorrect - statistics do not prove your theory of survival of the fittest.

The highest rate of survival of lost hikers goes to children, who by definition are inexperienced. This is due to the fact that kids will stop when tired, find shelter when it's raining, and eat and drink, rather than wearing themselves out trying to follow the incorrect mental map they don't yet have the ability to develop.

When you hit the teen years, the rate of survival resembles that of adults, in the 80-88% range. Experience in the outdoors makes no difference. Experienced backpackers die at the same rate as the inexperienced.

You are of course entitled to believe otherwise, but one of my first callouts ended with finding the decades-of-experience man dead of hypothermia sitting on a rock. His full backpack and his boots were neatly leaning against boulders not 1/4 of a mile away.
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