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What is outdoor survival?


"SURVIVAL" - an experience, survival of war, disaster, sudden loneliness on the solitary, etc. This meaning is in the english dictionary. It deals such kind of behaviours, which allow a man to survive in extremal conditions (...)

from "SURVIVAL PO POLSKU" ("Outdoor Survival - polish way") - Krzysztof Kwiatkowski


If you think that you know it yet - check WHAT you know
(test nr 1)

The most real outdoor survival should reach "down to the root", so it should use things with the emblem "self-made". Self - made rucksack or tent, trapper clothes or the whole equipment - all of it speak for a class of outdoor survivaler. I don't recomand self - made boots on the route - because there can be problems, if somebody didn't testify them earlier. Remember about one thing: outdoor survival is another form of scouting. It may be the lack of ideological melody or social accent. But in outdoor survival should dominate the strong note of the contact with nature, and looking for its our own humanity.

"SURVIVAL PO POLSKU" ("Outdoor Survival - polish way") - Krzysztof Kwiatkowski

To know!
To understand!
They are the key slogans of survival, apart from "the strong will".

The sports version of outdoor survival should lead us to acquiring knowledge and extending the possibility of understanding. The sports outdoor survival has one more good point - there is no imperative ordering to do something in this or that way.


Mario on the ropeMario is walking on the rope to look what is "on the other side"

Outdoor survival doesn't demand to fishing and than eat it, to make a fire rubbing a piece of wood against another piece of wood (we can do it using matches or lighter), or make a trip through the marsh fully equipped with military stuff, or to sleep in a shelter, which was made of sticks and the skin of aurochs. If somebody will be laughing at you, that you are not real trapper, let's laugh too. But remember that everything you can do and it's worth of it!
At the same time in "outdoor survival school" you should completely obey the nature laws. The nature doesn't like, when people do something against the nature.
That's why it is the necessity of knowing conditions which were dominating in the nature, observing it, and acquiring the knowledge.

If we wanted to divide outdoor survival into "smaller survivals", we could do it, taking into consideration:

  • our aims
  • used equipment
  • place of action
    In the first case we see a division into paramilitary and "civil" survival, and also another division into: urban, touristic and record - seeking survival.
    Paramilitary survival has its own rules, and its characteristic point is the existence of self - defensive and military aim, division of survival groups, taking into consideration a specific competition, using an equipment which is closed to military, and also personal relations with a military service, but sometimes characteristic is that ... "corporal" is in the forefront.

    You can put yourself different aims. Because of many possibilities I prompt that the aim for trapers can be such events as:
  • cross - country race of fixed ground
  • studying of fauna life on fixed ground by the use of camera or video camera
  • making a set of ground exercises
  • one big stealthy approaches
  • hunting of regional history
  • survival of fixed time without means to the life in the distant of civilisation
  • sanitary course of instruction
  • connecting course of instruction
  • shooting course of instruction (air-gun, paintball, slingshot, bow, cross-bow)
  • meditation in the forest solitude

    I don't exclude another division of aims such as:
  • a course of instruction for young people
  • improvement our own abilities
  • a nice experience of spending some moments far away the city
  • an extremal outdoor survival - mobilising ourselvs

    In the second case (using equipment) we can say that it will be:
  • using of minimal number of equipment or even its lack
  • using only traditional, touristic equipment
  • using specialistic equipment

    You should realise that making "sports of the highest risk" demands using specialistic equipment of the newest generation. This is resulting from adequacy of human psychic: when we see somebody who is jumping safely from the biggest attitudes or climbing high rocks - we would do the same. But in order to achieve it, we should make an exercise for a long time and than use the specialistic cable, which can't be replaced by ropes which were found in the wardrobe.

    In the third case (place of action) we can make a survival:
  • forest
  • forest - water
  • ravine - slope
  • water or marshy
  • ravine - water (canyoning)
  • mountainous
  • cave

    If you'd like you could try the taste of homeless life in the city. It would be additionally an urban survival. All of these who can't or don't like to act singly, can contact with survival clubs. These clubs have very often the military character.

    I come to the conclusion that many of them sacrify a lot of time for self - improvement and for making conditions in which it will be an adventure. I like closed - circle survival without any imposition of something from "the responsibilities of the TRUE SURVIVALER".

    I like TO BE in it.

    Because I don't mind about holiday - making. And only about the contact with green, the fresh air and birds. Survival changes ourselves, our souls, for luck irreversibly. It makes us living persons, which know their value, and want to love the whole word. But it is one condition: we can't take outdoor survival as the next product of frustration. We don't play in it mechanically, without fantasy and human, subtle feelings...

    Mario is watching you...and now Mario is lying in ambush, and looking for...

    I can assure you, that survival will check up, when you will be looking for GOD.

    Or a MAN.
    Or the SENS of LIFE.
    Or your own YOURSELF...


    "SURVIVAL PO POLSKU" ("Outdoor Survival - polish way") - Krzysztof Kwiatkowski


    You know yet, that the most important in outdoor survival is to survive. :-)

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