Survive in the jungle!

[Satomi]

So I wrote this activity for my high school students to do, but would you like to give it a think?

 

You are lost in the jungle in summer. You are wearing hiking gear. You do not know whether or not you will be rescued. From this list, choose 5 items to take with you. Think about the weather, temperature, food/water, wild animals, sleep, etc. …

 

·         Canned food (12 cans)

·         50m of nylon rope

·         A knife

·         Torches (3)

·         A tent

·         Water (5L)

·         A cellphone

·         Gasoline (5L)

·         Alcohol  (エチル)

·         Blanket

·         Candles (10)

·         Matches (50)

·         A gun + bullets (12)

·         A vinyl sheet

·         A portable stove + canisters (6)

·         A mirror

·         A compass

·         Cloth (5m)

·         A flashlight

·         Sugar (500g)

·         Salt (500g)

·         A shovel

·         A needle and thread

·         First aid kit

·         A cooking pot

 

[MorganLeFay]

Knife, mirror, tent, cooking pot, vinyl sheet.

Dehydration's serious business, and a rainwater collector would be very useful to make. Tent to stay dry. Mirror for signaling. And the knife can help a good bit with improvising ways to catch food. like, say, using a bootlace to tie it to a long stick for a fishing spear.

[Delusional]

On a side note I wouldn't take the tent if I was you Morgan, as tiny and little weighted the tent might be, the last thing you need on the jungle is extra weight to tire you and slow you down, not to mention there's not much room to walk around with "such" a backpack. What I would take instead of the tent would be the vinyl sheet, since water can't go trough, it can act as a roof if you place it well among a couple trees, and you can use it all you want, plus it means much less weight than the tent.

The five I'd take would be:

-Knife (for obvious reasons, that go from hunting, to cutting things, to making traps, to whatever you can imagine).
-A needle and a thread (specially the thread, can be as useful as the knife, and the needle can be used as a fishing hook if you find a river).
-A compass (unless you can use the sun to guide yourself of course).
-50 Matches (just because depending on how much humidity there's on that jungle, making fire with sticks or with two pieces of wood might turn out nearly impossible).
-Vinyl sheet (reasons explained above, plus you can use it to collect and direct fresh water from rain or that goes down from rocks, since as mentioned it's waterfproof). But of course it depends on what kind of vinyl it is.

If you somehow manage to guide yourself using the sun, or following a river down that you're lucky enough to find, you could throw out the compass and select another item that you wish. Maybe the nylon rope, but man 50 meters. Maybe cutting it in half and taking only one half, then yeah, taking it over the compass.

[AnThRaX]

I really like these kind of activities.  As someone that has camped pretty extensively as a young lad, and has therefore noticed one's shortcomings when it comes to personal survival, I would have to take:

1) The gun and 12 bullets, if I come face to face with a bengal tiger or a jaguar, there is no way I am taking my chances winning that fight with any kind of contraption I can create with a spear and a knife rigged together.  Even going to a river and being able to fetch water without a crocodile eating me would be very beneficial.

2) The knife, with it I can sharpen spears, I can filet any animals I may kill, and I can scrape flint to start a fire.

3) The cooking pot, this is one thing I consider a bare essential that I really can't see myself coming up with a natural alternative to, unless I come upon a bowl shaped rock by complete coincidence, so there's just no way around it, it would be nice to have a cooking pot for boiling water.

4) None of the other things really seem like bare essentials to me, so for four I think I would take the rope due to it's versatility, I have created plenty of shelters by stacking sticks into a teepee formation and covering them with brush and foilage, but the rope would probably help hold it together nicely, and I'm sure I could come up with more uses for it such as maybe making a raft on a river. 

5) I would probably take the shovel last, you can use it to dispose of your waste which is nice, you can dig out a shelter if you need to, and it would be useful for laying the foundations of a shelter depending on how permanent you were trying to make it.

 

Interesting topic, would love to see some more inputs! 

[m0a0n7er]

My mother in law

and leaving her there

[BeerBaron]

A knife and fire.

[cazembe]

i take water knife blanket canned food and fire but if i lost 3 or 2 of my items id go with knife fire blanket and kill fish/birds for food  

and for shelter i use the knife and cut sticks and make a tiny shelter and make the fire and cook the fish/birds i killed  and for the water issue

i can make a bowl or a really small wooden cup with the knife to drink the water after leting it sit in the sun light for a day 

[Volcom]

A Knife (Most Useful)

Alcohol (Disinfecting any wounds/Possible Rave)

Gun and Bullets (Wild Animals/Crazy Bitches at Rave)

Cloth (Used for Bandages)

Cooking Pot (Need for Water/Cooking Tigers I hunt)