Thirty Years A Survivor
by Lionel Atwill

What survival tools do you really need?

Peter Kummerfeldt well remembers the first time he got lost. He recalls the panic and the embarrassment, which came in an exceptionally large dose. "At noon we stopped for lunch. I looked over the edge of a hill and spotted a nice river. 'You guys hold tight,' I said. 'I'm going to check that out.' I went down, and when I came back, no one was there. Nor was there any sign of the fire we'd built.

"I just flat panicked. But then I sat down and got my map out and oriented myself and discovered I was about 3 miles from where I'd left the group. For a while I thought I'd be shot against a wall, or at least court-martialed."

Kummerfeldt, you see, was a newly trained Air Force survival instructor, out with his first class. And survival instructors are not supposed to misplace themselves...or their men. That Kummerfeldt tells such a story reveals much about the man: He is no armchair woodsman; moreover, he has the humility that comes with many years in the wilderness.

"Everybody ought to get lost sometime, in sort of a controlled situation. It's such a telling story when you experience your gut falling out." Kummerfeldt knows that feeling all too well. And more than most, he truly knows how to prevent it.

For 30 years Peter Kummerfeldt taught survival in the U.S. Air Force, culminating with a 12-year stint at the Air Force Academy, where he was the man in charge of a three-week survival program for all cadets. Retired in 1995, Kummerfeldt saw a continuing need for his skills in the civilian sector.

"Far too many people get in trouble in the outdoors-for stupid reasons, and in a large part for lack of knowledge," he says in the lilting voice that still carries a hint of his Kenyan childhood (the son of a Kenyan mother-the daughter of the legendary Arthur Percival, for years chief game warden for Kenya's national parks-and an American engineer, Kummerfeldt lived in Africa until he was 18).

"A lot of the information out there is reactive rather than proactive. That is, it tells you what to do when you get in trouble, and much of it speaks to long-term survival-building shelters and such. What people really need is information that will keep them from getting in a survival situation and, should they get in trouble, information that will see them through one, maybe two nights."

One Step Ahead
"Survival is a decision-making process," continues Kummerfeldt. "Thinking is the key. Most people don't expect things to go wrong, but I'm a great believer in Murphy's Law, so I constantly play 'what if' games. I don't think there should be an unexpected night out. I expect it and prepare for it. Unfortunately, the judgment we need to make those decisions is grossly impaired by three things: dehydration, hyperthermia and hypothermia, and panic. And I believe dehydration is the number-one factor that causes accidents-and thereby survival situations.

"When you're dehydrated, your ability to function efficiently degrades rapidly. Then you make mistakes. We should all drink 3 to 5 quarts of water each day when we are outdoors. A lot of hunters don't even carry water, much less drink that much. It's sheer foolishness.

"Panic is harder to deal with. The first thing to do is sit down. When you're on your feet, you're going to move. Have a drink of water. That way you move from being fat, dumb, and happy to a crisis situation to a coping situation, where you get a grip on yourself and on what needs to be done. Panic is a great contributor to the number of deaths that occur in the outdoors."

If we can control our panic and we are sufficiently hydrated to make rational decisions, Kummerfeldt believes, we are two-thirds of the way home. The last obstacle is surviving that dreaded night in the woods. "Keeping warm and dry is the foundation to surviving, and clothing is key. People dress to arrive, not to survive. We need to take that extra layer of clothing with us to see us through the night. Survival books paint too rosy a picture. They say build a fire and warm up. Well, drying out after you have been soaked to the skin is much more difficult than keeping yourself dry in the first place. Building that bonfire is not always easy. You get cold and you can't light a match. So I advocate taking the proper clothing and learning how to maximize its efficiency."

Quick Cover "Shelter is another area where I differ from most of the writings," Kummerfeldt says. "You cannot build a waterproof, windproof shelter from natural materials. It takes too long. The A-frames and the lean-tos you see in the manuals take two or three hours to build. You need something that you can grab out of your pack and put on, something that is windproof and waterproof. What's available to do that?"

Not a hell of a lot.

"The emergency space blanket has been sold as the optimum solution. By God, they reflect back 91 percent of your radiated body heat! Well, what about conductive heat loss and convective heat loss and so forth? Moreover, space blankets are just too small. I'm 6-foot-5, but even a 5-foot-5 person will have a hard time getting everything inside that blanket. They require two hands to hold them around you. And if you tear them or nick them, they pull apart. If you carry one for a long time, the folds will wear through. When you pull it out of the bag finally, you've got nice 4-inch strips of Mylar.

"I recommend one of these bright-orange, 4-mil-thick, Department of Transportation trash bags-the ones you see guys stuffing tires into along the highways of America. Go to one corner, drop down about 8 inches, and cut out a hole that's just large enough for your face. Pull the bag over your body. The corner sits on top of your head, and your face sticks through the hole. Something else I carry religiously is a piece of closed-cell foam, about 18 inches square. I sit on it while I'm inside my plastic bag. It ain't like being at home, but it's a hell of a lot better than being out there in the rain and the snow. And if you go to sleep or pass out, with that orange bag you still have a signal working for you.

"Firecraft comes third in my hierarchy of needs, because if you've got good clothing and shelter, you may not need the fire. The ability to build a fire is a tremendous physical and psychological boost. On the other hand, if you think you're a good outdoorsman and can't get a fire going, that can be a very heavy burden to carry, a real downer.

"There is all that business about rubbing sticks together or using a magnifying glass. Rubbish! Whatever you carry has to be easy. I still like good old strike-anywhere wooden matches. Put them in a waterproof match case, but not one of those metal Boy Scout numbers. Try to get one of those open when your hands are cold. Get a G.I. model-plastic with a simple screw-off cap. My backup is a metal match. Not the ones with the magnesium strip, which is a total waste of time, but just the metal match. With the proper clothing, shelter, and a fire, a night in the woods is not half bad.

"We rarely die in the outdoors from major trauma," adds Kummerfeldt. "We die from an accumulation of little things. Take care of the little things and avoid situations that are potentially dangerous and you'll stay out of trouble." Good advice from a man who has walked the walk for more than 30 years.