The most authoritative and easy-to-understand explanation of Into the Wild's technique comes from John Wiseman's "Survival Handbook" and the Into the Wild program broadcast by Discovery Channel. I read the book and watched the video program many times, thinking that I know the skills of survival in the wild.
In 2004, I went to Zhuhai Island for a holiday with a group of old friends. To show my knowledge, the day after I arrived on the island, I persuaded them to follow me and take a little adventure.
With camping equipment, we set off from the beach in the scenic spot, climbed a hill on foot and arrived at an uninhabited beach. Because it is not in the scenic area, there are no human buildings here, let alone services such as water, electricity and food. I want to practice the skills I learned in the wild on this beach.
The garbage on this uninhabited beach has not been cleaned up, and there are a lot of driftwood that can be used to make a fire. While it was still dark, we picked up wood and dead branches respectively. Everyone scratched the bag bitten by mosquitoes on their arms and sat around curiously, ready to see how I turned dozens of rotten wood into a romantic bonfire.
I proudly took out the survival box from my backpack and carefully took out the flint. According to the description in the "Survival Manual", a small pointed pile is formed by tiny litter, and then flint is aimed at this pile of fire, and the magnesium strip of flint is quickly scraped off with a blade. In the twilight, this flint made of magnesium strips sent out a series of sparks and scattered on the igniter made of twigs. Mars is beautifully scattered, but it just doesn't catch fire.
Busy for a long time, it's getting dark, my bruised arm is tired and painful, my fingers are bleeding, and the magnesium bars of flint keep sparking, but I still haven't succeeded in making a fire. Andy sitting next to me became anxious. He grabbed the flint in my hand, scraped hard and learned my movements. Maybe I was in a hurry, and accidentally, the blade scraped a blood mark on my finger.
Looking at the approaching night, my friends' curiosity turned to frustration. After weighing, I had to take responsibility and let my friends continue to rest. I climbed the hill again and went back to the beach in the tourist area to buy a lighter.
This failure made me think, is it really possible to use the skills I saw in books and TV programs?
I decided to find the answer in practice, of course, starting with the failed flint. After several days of practice and research, I found it really difficult to ignite leaves with the spark of flint. But if you just order a paper towel, it will be much easier, because toilet paper is much softer than leaves. I tried to rub the leaves hard to increase the softness and volume of the fire. Sure enough, after this improvement, I finally succeeded in making a fire with flint for the first time.
It's just that the process is still very difficult. You have to scrape 10 minutes or more, and then occasionally you will scrape a lot of Mars. It also needs Mars to be just concentrated to a point where it can fly to the rubbed leaves at the same time in order to ignite successfully. This 10 minute process will not only make your arm ache, but also make you feel that you can light a fire, not by technology, but more by luck. Because every time the fire can be lit, it is very unstable.
The book is purely a technical description, and there are no very intuitive pictures to refer to. I looked through several survival videos in the wild and found that the hero could make a fire successfully with two or three strokes. After comparative analysis, I found that almost all the videos of online flint ignition were successfully ignited by scraping the flint with a knife for 2 or 3 times.
And most of the videos show that they scraped out no more Mars than mine, and some even less. But without exception, just scrape twice, then switch the video lens, the kindling starts to smoke, and then the fire burns. This is doubtful. Why do most videos, from the flint to the smoke and then to the fire, have to be changed in the middle, rather than completed in one shot?
Is there something fishy in this? In fact, the real flint ignition is not as simple as demonstrated in the video?
With this question, I continued to watch more videos. A video of survival in the wild shot by an American caught my attention. From striking a fire to catching fire, it is a mirror in the end, and there is no switching between lenses. I watched it several times again, and found that in the video, when flint struck the igniter, a large number of sparks suddenly appeared in the igniter, and then it caught fire.
But the flint didn't produce more sparks than when I lit it. But why does the igniter suddenly appear a lot of sparks? While thinking, I tried to scrape some flint fragments into the igniter in slow motion. You should be very careful about this, because you should avoid any sparks when scraping magnesium bars.
Then, I used a flint to strike a fire on the igniter mixed with flint fragments. The flint fragments in the igniter were quickly ignited by Mars, and the whole igniter risked a lot of Mars, followed by smoke and fire. I can't believe I just shaved once and then lit the fire.
According to this method, after a lot of practice, I can finally make a fire with flint easily and quickly. It has been more than half a month since the first attempt to land on the island failed.
This living example reflects only a small knowledge point in field survival skills. However, the process of learning and practice has made me work hard for a long time. If you want to learn more about survival, the difficulty can be imagined.
Therefore, it is not so easy to learn the cool survival skills of watching the wild. You should devote as much time and energy as dealing with a college entrance examination that determines your future and destiny. It's just that my college entrance examination results are poor and I won't lose my life. If it is really in the wild and the survival skills are perfunctory, it is the rhythm of death in minutes.