Survival Statistics

My name is Steve Marvel, and this is the crucial survival podcast. Statistics are super dangerous particularly in the press, but we're not going to talk about that today. But yeah, they say there's lies, damned lies and statistics, but that's largely associated with things being made up. What I'm talking about is when generalized statistics are interpreted as something that is important to you. And it's not necessarily the case. Let's talk about the statistics associated with wilderness deaths. The top four reasons we die in the wilderness, are trauma, particularly falling, avalanche, which accounts for something like 15% heart attack, drowning, that's the one, drowning 10% of people drown in the wilderness. As an aside, did you know from a RNLI perspective, from a lifeboat perspective, that around the coast, 50%, almost exactly 50% of the people that die around the coast had no intention of being in the water at all. And therein lies the beginning of some RNLI stats, actually, I'll go back to the wilderness in the moment. The RNLI stats have a significant number of contributions from the Midlands. Because there are a significant number of deaths around the coast associated with tourists from people who are an inland. And you might think that's to do with the fact that they are rubbish at being on the coast, they don't understand the tide, they don't understand the weather, and they don't understand the sea. And that's not actually the case at all. The reason more people from a inland die on the coast, is because there are more people inland, then there are on the coast, and we have a great deal of visitors from inland to the coast. So naturally, if everybody performs the same actions, if you like, then because there are more people from the inland, there'll be more inlanders that die, which makes this statistic sound really weird, that more people from inland die on the coast than from coast people who live on coasts, back to the wilderness. What have we got? We've got trauma, mostly falls, avalanche, heart attack, and drowning as being the principal reasons why you die in the wilderness. And so that's it. If you're going to die in the wilderness, given 15% of people die in avalanches does that avalanche statistic hold true of you? If you're going to die if you've got a 15% chance of dying in an avalanche? If you're in the jungle, No, it makes this statistics just crazy. If you don't swim in lakes, or you don't kayak or you don't water ski, you don't do any of those things, you're going to have a lesser chance of dying in the water and drowning. And so again, heart attack. The chances of you having a heart attack, who is going to have a heart attack outdoors? It's unfit people, overweight people, and people who are older, or people who are prone to heart attack. Heart attack, drowning, avalanches and falling. Yes, precautions need to be taken for falling. So what does that leave? This now leaves, things like hypothermia.

getting too hot. And weirdly, there is statistic for being lost. I guess that just means they didn't come back and we don't know. But there is also an unknown, which presumably, is that you could find them dead, but we didn't know what it was. So that's weird. So yeah, heat stroke. And then yeah, 1.4% snowmobiling accident. And so if you look at yourself, and you are fit and healthy, and you are not a kayaker, or someone that goes swimming, or spends a prolonged amount of time in the wilderness near the water, or you wear crap shoes, then you are not going to have an avalanche death, snowmobiling death. Yeah, there are unknowns, but they're only skinny, skinny little statistics. And if you fit and well, you're not gonna have a heart attack, you're not going to be drowning, you're not going to be an avalanche. So yes, now we are concerning ourselves with hypothermia, things like that. And so when you got that little

"Oh, you got other things to worry about". So actually, now, we got to worry about hypothermia, and things like that. Statistics, very, very dangerous to interpret. And so yeah, be careful out there. Don't underplay the things that go in to survival training where people

"Oh, you must deal with hypothermia". It's really, really important to not think, because the statistics say there's nothing to it. And that's not true. So yes, there are lies, damned lies, statistics. But these aren't damned lies. These are real statistics. And I'll tell you a funny one. What do you think the chances of dying after a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital is? It's less than 10%. Even with a defibrillator. It's less than 10%. However, in a hospital, it's more like 25%. What the hell does that mean? Does that mean if you're going to have a cardiac arrest, have it in the carpark because you're going to have more chance of dying on the inside of the hospital. No of course it's not. The reason you have more chance, the reason the percentage of people dying is high enough hospital is because there's more poorly people in a hospital. So the set of people on with the statistics are based are already on the way, and they are at risk of a heart attack. They say they're poorly they're old, they've had an injury. Sorry, cardiac arrest. So yeah, think about statistics. And we're going to do think about risk soon. Which is another statistics base thing, which a lot of people, it's difficult to get your head around but it's really, really important. And so, in summary, even though the statistics are small, for associated with some of the deaths, which we learn about; dehydration, hypothermia, etc, we still have to learn about them, because we can wipe off a great deal of the other statistics because we are not at risk of heart attack. We are not necessarily swimming in a lake or kayaking. And we're not going to be in an avalanche. So keep in mind that and make sure you learn your medical skills for everything Catch you later!