Driver’s Toolbox: Stayin’ Alive

Survival Tips

Typically, we try to avoid repeating a topic with any degree of frequency here in these pages, but just before writing this installment of Trucker’s Toolbox, a blog post about winter survival came across the screen, justifying another look at survival preparation.

Before we get into the survival information, a brief plug is in order for the website that reminded us about the necessity for survival prep. While not exclusively a survival blog, www.InstaPundit.com does include frequent links to survival posts on many other sites. As with any of its topic categories, InstaPundit does a great job of filtering out nonsense, and links only to the most relevant survival posts. While some of the linked posts may lean toward the hardcore side of survival training, most are focused on more practical, everyday survival topics.

As a trucker, it’s pretty rare that you can realistically cancel a run based merely on the forecast of a winter storm, so sooner or later, you’ll end up battling the worst that mother nature has to offer, and could very easily end up stranded, regardless of your distance from an urban area.

The InstaPundit post, one of several dated 12/27/11, was headlined “WHY YOU SHOULD CARRY FOOD AND WATER IN YOUR CAR” and linked to a USA Today item about an Arizona State University student found with her car on a remote dirt road in northeastern Arizona after being stranded in the snow for ten days, surviving on candy bars and melted snow water. The student’s survival was entirely dependent on three things: staying with her car, having food in the car, and having access to drinking water.

The linked article also provided an object lesson about the price of not following basic survival instructions. According to the article, the student’s ordeal occurred “less than a week after an elderly New Mexico couple took a wrong turn and got stranded on a remote forest road in eastern Arizona. They survived two winter storms over five days before the woman collapsed and died as they tried to hike to safety.”

While few truckers have routes that take them through the pine forest back roads of Northern Arizona, it’s just as easy to get just as stranded within sight of a normally busy freeway interchange in suburban areas of the Midwest during a larger than average blizzard. So regardless of where your route takes you, keeping basic survival supplies on-board can be a matter of life or death.

In addition to linking to the Arizona article, the InstaPundit post also links to another article about prepping for winter survival in urban areas, and to a shopping list of gear from the Amazon.com “listmania” service.

Check out the post at: pjmedia.com/instapundit/134258/