Take This Quiz to Find Out Your Chances of Survival
- Thread starter Susan Arendt
- Start date
Would you consider your head to be an effective tool?
If you consider your head to be the physical body part then that's only useful for bashing things, and it's not a very good tool for that purpose. Add the mouth and teeth and you can cut stuff, but there are any number of situations where that would prove impractical or dangerous. At a stretch you could argue the mouth and thus voice are part of the head, and making noise is useful for helping people that are searching for you. If you're bald, maybe you could signal a plane with the head-shine? The point is: in no way can you consider a human head, least of all your own head, a more effective *tool* than a knife.
If anyone chooses to counter this argument, I will caution you against accidentally calling yourself a tool.
If you consider your head to be the physical body part then that's only useful for bashing things, and it's not a very good tool for that purpose. Add the mouth and teeth and you can cut stuff, but there are any number of situations where that would prove impractical or dangerous. At a stretch you could argue the mouth and thus voice are part of the head, and making noise is useful for helping people that are searching for you. If you're bald, maybe you could signal a plane with the head-shine? The point is: in no way can you consider a human head, least of all your own head, a more effective *tool* than a knife.
If anyone chooses to counter this argument, I will caution you against accidentally calling yourself a tool.
A dumb quiz. I got a 55% even though after reading the information about each question at the end was exactly what I was thinking when I answered it. I knew the information, I guess I just didn't click the right circles. Like the bear one - I've heard they can sometimes be intimidated by posturing and shouting and obviously you can shoot them, but is probably best saved as a last resort. Both a right depending on the situation. The questions, without context, are pointless.
And the rule of three is a good concept but flawed. 3 hours without shelter? Depends on the environment. 9 days without food? Also false. People in good health and body fat can go several weeks. And some people can last more than 6 days without water. Depends on how hot it is. Humidity. Activity level. If you can get into shade. If you have shelter. etc. Knowing which of those options was one of the rules of doesn't mean crap about actually knowing what to do.
Who would do best stranded in the wilderness? A soldier? What kind of soldier. Some of them are trained specifically for this sort of thing and would be insanely more prepared than an average person. Even typical soldiers get some survival training would obviously is better than your average person who doesn't really know that much. A mountain climber? How experienced? What do they have with them? A child survives through blind luck. Also the environment. Young children don't perspire as well as adults. While this may conserve fluids, in a hot enough environment you could just get hyperthemia (get unusually hot) and die. Also most children don't have a lot of body fat.
Climb a tree? What kind of tree? Where? In Florida, where I live you aren't climbing most tree as the branches of many don't start until far, far higher than you can hope to climb unassisted. What kind of building? How high? It's all too vague for most of the questions to be right and another not.
I suppose is just for fun, but it just seems overly generic and pointless to me. You can't have some generic information like this, it's all so heavily dependent on the situation and environment.
And the rule of three is a good concept but flawed. 3 hours without shelter? Depends on the environment. 9 days without food? Also false. People in good health and body fat can go several weeks. And some people can last more than 6 days without water. Depends on how hot it is. Humidity. Activity level. If you can get into shade. If you have shelter. etc. Knowing which of those options was one of the rules of doesn't mean crap about actually knowing what to do.
Who would do best stranded in the wilderness? A soldier? What kind of soldier. Some of them are trained specifically for this sort of thing and would be insanely more prepared than an average person. Even typical soldiers get some survival training would obviously is better than your average person who doesn't really know that much. A mountain climber? How experienced? What do they have with them? A child survives through blind luck. Also the environment. Young children don't perspire as well as adults. While this may conserve fluids, in a hot enough environment you could just get hyperthemia (get unusually hot) and die. Also most children don't have a lot of body fat.
Climb a tree? What kind of tree? Where? In Florida, where I live you aren't climbing most tree as the branches of many don't start until far, far higher than you can hope to climb unassisted. What kind of building? How high? It's all too vague for most of the questions to be right and another not.
I suppose is just for fun, but it just seems overly generic and pointless to me. You can't have some generic information like this, it's all so heavily dependent on the situation and environment.
See, I got Tourist, but I take exception to some of the answers and questions.
For example, while the human body may under normal circumstances require 8 glasses of water a day in order to function correctly, in a desert or arid environment such as would be thrown up by nuclear fallout, that can increase to needing 20 glasses. Equally, if your body weight is higher you need more water, but then you would have to account for the inevitable weightloss of being stuck in such a harsh survival condition.
Also, while technically nuclear fallout disipates after two weeks, radiation levels can still be high enough to cause severe concern to a normal human being, and depending on the prevaling wind the fallout could be cleared the blast point in under a week but cause widespread damage over a different area as it is spread, often lasting for several months at lower levels but still causing hazardous conditions.
I still maintain that I would do very poorly in a survival situation of this nature, but I've had to research this exact thing for a post-apocalyptic story project for next year, and a lot of these questions have some very serious flaws based around not accounting for the crisis situations which affect primary judgement. For example did you also know that you can survive for three weeks without food as long as you have water, but in the condition of not having either a clean water supply or a regular water supply this can be dramatically reduced depending on individual body tolerances (metabolism, predeliction to weight gain or loss), so that some people would barely survive three days, whereas some would manage a week and a half? In these situations fat people have a distinct advantage in the initial days following a global crisis, since by the time things have settled, all the thin people are dead, whereas the fat people have not only survived by drawing energy from their body weight, but the weight loss means they are now in the perfect position to start living in the new world.
I find the thought of an apocalypse fascinating. If you don't, don't bother reading any of the above.
For example, while the human body may under normal circumstances require 8 glasses of water a day in order to function correctly, in a desert or arid environment such as would be thrown up by nuclear fallout, that can increase to needing 20 glasses. Equally, if your body weight is higher you need more water, but then you would have to account for the inevitable weightloss of being stuck in such a harsh survival condition.
Also, while technically nuclear fallout disipates after two weeks, radiation levels can still be high enough to cause severe concern to a normal human being, and depending on the prevaling wind the fallout could be cleared the blast point in under a week but cause widespread damage over a different area as it is spread, often lasting for several months at lower levels but still causing hazardous conditions.
I still maintain that I would do very poorly in a survival situation of this nature, but I've had to research this exact thing for a post-apocalyptic story project for next year, and a lot of these questions have some very serious flaws based around not accounting for the crisis situations which affect primary judgement. For example did you also know that you can survive for three weeks without food as long as you have water, but in the condition of not having either a clean water supply or a regular water supply this can be dramatically reduced depending on individual body tolerances (metabolism, predeliction to weight gain or loss), so that some people would barely survive three days, whereas some would manage a week and a half? In these situations fat people have a distinct advantage in the initial days following a global crisis, since by the time things have settled, all the thin people are dead, whereas the fat people have not only survived by drawing energy from their body weight, but the weight loss means they are now in the perfect position to start living in the new world.
I find the thought of an apocalypse fascinating. If you don't, don't bother reading any of the above.
50% on my first go, 75% on my second.
I'm with everyone else on the child>soldier and climb tree>light that shit up like the 4th
That seems a bit... off.
I would say the best survival guide I ever read was Dune because that really drove home the sheer magnitude of how important water is.
As far as the stream vs rain vs pee, it's my understanding the the cleanest source of water is to be found at the lip of a waterfall (doesn't even have to be a huge one) combined with boiling and condensing.
I'm with everyone else on the child>soldier and climb tree>light that shit up like the 4th
That seems a bit... off.
I would say the best survival guide I ever read was Dune because that really drove home the sheer magnitude of how important water is.
As far as the stream vs rain vs pee, it's my understanding the the cleanest source of water is to be found at the lip of a waterfall (doesn't even have to be a huge one) combined with boiling and condensing.
This quiz is seriously flawed, at least one of the answers is just dead wrong, the most notable one I found was #11
11) Which of the following will keep you warmest?
a) a jacket
b) mittens
c) brandy
d) a hat
This is the "correct" answer according to the quiz:
It's been a well known fact for years now that this is one of those medical myths that simply isn't true, it's been proven false over and over and the original data was collected from a flawed experiment. If you're only going to give users one shot at a badge, make sure that your questions are ACTUALLY RIGHT!
A few of the other questions were flawed, and if a mod cares to contact me, I would happily explain exactly why they are flawed (not through my opinion, but by proven fact) but otherwise, I wouldn't care to take the work to list them all when I'm not sure anyone would see it.
11) Which of the following will keep you warmest?
a) a jacket
b) mittens
c) brandy
d) a hat
This is the "correct" answer according to the quiz:
In the "post quiz explanation" the explained reason was that
This bothered me because it was wrong. Just flat out, dead wrong
It's been a well known fact for years now that this is one of those medical myths that simply isn't true, it's been proven false over and over and the original data was collected from a flawed experiment. If you're only going to give users one shot at a badge, make sure that your questions are ACTUALLY RIGHT!
I've read the same thing from many different sources, and the fact that this quiz is offering an incentive (badge) for believing a false medical myth, and furthering knowledge of that myth really bugs me.
A few of the other questions were flawed, and if a mod cares to contact me, I would happily explain exactly why they are flawed (not through my opinion, but by proven fact) but otherwise, I wouldn't care to take the work to list them all when I'm not sure anyone would see it.
