Anthonys Survival Training Blog

Christmas and New Year have come and gone and, once again, a busy year ahead no doubt awaits us all.  Some of you will have hiking expeditions planned, others may be travelling to far flung destinations in pursuit of the unknown.  Athletes will be running long trails over mountains, unsupported by comfortable aid stations conveniently placed along the route.  Pilots will continue to fly in hostile, unforgiving terrain where lack of even the most basic survival knowledge could mean the difference between life and death.

Wherever your career, sport or hobby takes you to in this coming year, we will be offering a course to prepare you both mentally and physically for the hardships that potentially lie ahead.  Survival skills are indeed one area in life where a little knowledge can take you a long way.  Over the next 12 months we will be training the following:  school expeditions; sportsmen who run, cycle and paddle their way through the toughest terrain; pilots who plan to fly in the most extreme regions of the planet; ordinary citizens who feel a simple but deep-seated respect for their environment.

As part of our preparation for these courses, we will be publishing a series of articles on the four basic principles of survival: Protection, Location, Water and Food.  But the cord that threads all four tenets so tightly and effectively is Fire, so to kick us off for the year ahead is an article by our resident expert on the subject.

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It’s been an exciting few months for Survival Training South Africa.  Is it my imagination or is everyone just getting busier and busier?  It seems that wherever you go or whatever your interests are in life, there’s just not much chance to just sit back, relax and reflect; everyone is just too busy, including us!  It’s certainly the case that as our courses start to rattle by there’s less time to write these newsletters and more excuses to procrastinate.

In this November issue I include a write-up by Chris Crewdson describing a course that we ran for a Magnetic South/SanParks team in preparation for this years fantastic Otter African Trail Run.

Additionally, Wellington College from the UK recently spent some time in South Africa during the English schools half term and one of the first things they did on arrival was a Survival Course with STSA.  Good logic if you ask me.  I include an excellent piece by Neil Lunnon, the leader of the School group, describing the course that he and 30 pupils from the school took part in.  Additional testimonials from the pupils will be included on our website as a reference for other schools interested in our courses and Nathan has added course photos to the various galleries on Facebook and on our website.

Finally, a beautiful article written by Michelle Luyt (a participant on our Basic Course) who describes how the priorities learned in Survival Training translate into everyday living, if you can just slow down a little and take note of the things that really matter.

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Well, it’s been a fairly benign winter thus far, in the Southern Cape at least.  On our recent Basic Survival Course we were fortunate enough to have cool but perfectly dry weather throughout, ideal for training purposes.  In an attempt to spare you from my further ramblings, for this month at least, I’ve decided to rather include an article written by one of the students from that very course; lively, amusing and insightful, it paints a more vivid picture than I could ever hope to achieve.  Many thanks to Jan for his literary effort!

 “The checklist supplied by Survival Training South Africa for their Basic Survival course was self-explanatory for the greater part.  However, some items listed appeared puzzling at first: why would you need tampons, condoms, and a foldable saw? Why, I wondered rhetorically, would one not rather pack freeze-dried food, water-bottles, possibly cold beer and lots of solar powered gadgets?  The thinking went that modern armies carry tons of the latter stuff and they seem to survive just fine.

Despite being allowed to take some food on the course, it was really very hard to overcome the instinctive reaction to not worry about food – and deliberately not pack any food or water.  I took the philosophical stance that one never knows when you are going to be placed in a survival situation.  Likely, your food and water would have been consumed long before you were even in the nasty situation. Likely also you would be dressed in non-ideal types of clothing, with no idea that things were about to go horribly wrong. I therefore deliberately dressed in cotton and brand new shoes. I expected to be taught how to survive in the most realistic manner possible, whilst being out of luck in the nutrition and proper clothing side of things.

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