A
Primal Will
The human body
is a marvel of perfectly synchronized chemical reactions choreographed
to perform optimally in a relatively narrow range of external
conditions. While it is possible for the human organism to adapt
to environmental stresses, it doesn't take much for its symphony
of physiology to collapse into chaotic discord. When deprived
of water, food, or oxygen these processes begin to break down.
If internal body temperature varies by more than four degrees,
malfunction is imminent. Despite this fragility, when put to the
test the body can prove to be extraordinarily resilient. Upon
sensing a threat to survival, higher cognitive functions controlling
precariously defined notions of ethics and social acceptability
shut down allowing primal and instinctual reactions to take control.
When death seems unavoidable, humans are often driven to commit
acts of desperation typically deemed impossible or irreprehensible.
Sometimes these acts are just enough to keep them alive.
Sacrificing
a part for the whole
Aaron Ralston
set out in the spring of 2003 for a day hike through a remote
canyon in Utah. While attempting to slide through a three-foot-wide
slit between rock walls, he accidentally shifted an 800-pound
boulder and pinned his hand beneath it. He explored all his options
to no avail: waiting for help, trying to chip away at the rock
with his utility knife, and rigging a pulley system with his climbing
rope to move the boulder. Nothing worked. By the third day Ralston
was out of food and water, drinking his own urine, and growing
delusional from lack of sleep. Finally, on the fifth day he realized
his only hope of escape was to amputate his own arm. Although
his pocketknife was too dull to cut through bone, by levering
his arm he snapped both forearm bones above the wrist. Then he
applied a tourniquet and spent an hour hacking through his damaged
appendage. After freeing himself, Ralston descended a 60-foot
cliff and walked six miles down the canyon before being rescued.
The realization of certain death allowed Aaron to overcome mental
aversions to sacrifice a piece of his body to preserve the whole.
Others have
faced this challenge on a more mental level, having to transform
themselves into vicious killers in order to obtain nourishment.
On the sixth night of a solo Atlantic crossing, Steve Callahan's
21-foot sailboat crashed into a whale. The craft sank, leaving
him stranded on a life raft in the middle of the ocean with no
hope of land fall for 1,800 miles. Thanks to a solar still and
fishing gear Callahan was able to survive, but not without sacrificing
some semblance of his sanity. After finally impaling a fish with
his spear gun, he brought it aboard and struggled to keep the
flailing creature from puncturing his raft. He stabbed it in the
eye, and finally cracked its spine before it stilled. When his
instincts subsided, Callahan was overcome with guilt when he saw
he had ruthlessly killed a fellow mammal-a dolphin. He had to
disregard personal qualms and eat the animal raw in order to live.
Overcoming
Aversions
In a life or
death situation it sometimes becomes necessary to violate even
the most fundamental cultural taboos. For someone facing starvation,
eating a dead human body is no longer an act of perversion but
a demonstration of desperation. This was the case in 1972 when
a plane of Uruguayan rugby players crashed in the Andes. Surrounded
by the frozen corpses of their former teammates, they were stranded
for two months in barren terrain with no food. After intense deliberations
they brought themselves to eat the dead bodies of past friends,
giving them the strength to travel to lower altitudes where they
were rescued.
What starts
with eating the dead can quickly override other moral tendencies
as well. This type of degradation occurred among some of the members
of the infamous Donner Party-the settlers in an 1847 wagon train
headed for California but stranded by an early winter in the Sierra
Nevadas. The first settlers to die were buried, only to be dug
up and eaten once food became scarce. As the situation escalated
those who died were eaten immediately. Soon, primal behavior was
unleashed as some members found themselves killing and eating
the weakest among them.
The possibility
of cannibalism was once an accepted aspect of mariner life. There
was no written code, but sailors knew a shipwreck might mean people
would die so others could live. The dying and wounded would be
devoured first, followed by sailors selected through the drawing
of straws. The first round would decide who the meal would be,
and the second would designate a butcher. Sometimes the drawing
of straws was feigned, as in the case of the sinking of the Mignonette
in 1884. The 50-foot yacht sailing from England sank in a South
Atlantic storm. After 18 days lost at sea a younger crew member
drank seawater and became delirious; the others decided he wouldn't
survive and made a sham of drawing straws. They killed and ate
him, and after being rescued three days later were charged with
murder.
An Iron Will
While many are
lucky enough not to have to resort to cannibalism, they still
must face extreme conditions and come out on top if they want
to live. An intense amount of determination is required in all
high intensity situations. A century ago, a prospector named Pablo
Valencia survived an unthinkable eight days lost in the Mojave
Desert with only one day's supply of water. After being stranded
by his guide and running out of water, Valencia was sure that
he had been left to die and swore vengeance. His desire to find
and kill his guide was the only thing that kept him going. He
stripped off his clothes and wandered through the desert naked
with only urine to drink. He avoided traveling during the hottest
parts of the day, and ate a few flies, spiders, and one scorpion.
By the time he found the director of the Saint Louis Museum, W.J.
McGee, camped by a waterhole he was near-death. "His formerly
full-muscled legs and arms were shrunken and scrawny; his ribs
ridged out like those of a starving horse; his abdomen was drawn
in almost against his vertebral column
His eyes were set
in a winkless stare
His lips had disappeared" so that
"his teeth and gums projected like those of a skinned animal,
but his flesh was black and dry as jerky
" related McGee.
It took three days of care for Valencia to regain the ability
to speak. Although he had virtually no knowledge of desert survival
skills Pablo Valencia's will led him through his ordeal.
It is no mystery
that positive thinking promotes health. A will to live calls forth
powerful forces which speed up healing and allow bodies to withstand
environmental stresses which would normally be fatal. Whether
due to a placebo, religion, desperate circumstances, or sheer
determination-the result is the same. When pushed to the limits
of endurance, human beings-especially those used to the cushion
of modern civilization-don't always persevere. Nonetheless, we
may find the latent instincts to survive lay dormant until we
are forced to pit ourselves against unimaginable odds. Today,
our species is facing some of the biggest threats to our survival
in evolutionary history. Global warming, nuclear war, and large-scale
ecological destruction haunt our every step. It is time to disregard
faulty cultural conditioning that has grown antithetical to our
very livelihood and overcome this challenge with all the resourcefulness
and instinct we can muster.
Written
by Jason Glover
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