The Rules of Threes is the most important thing to focus on in a survival situation.
- 3 minutes without air or in icy water – I personally can survive more than 5 minutes without air as I free dive, and I have survived more than 5 minutes in icy water without even coming close to hypothermia because I ice dive in frigid ocean waters. That said, most people it is 3 minutes.
- 3 hours without shelter – In a harsh environment where it is raining or snowing, and cold, 3 hour exposure to that can trigger hypothermic reaction in the body and your body temperature can plummet shutting down your vital organs.
- 3 days without water – You must hydrate to stay alive, and 3 days is the limit before your vital organs start shutting down. This Three also requires you to have a proper shelter and heat. I hope you are starting to see the priorities.
- 3 weeks without food – This one is tough, as I have never gone 3 weeks without food. But after about 4-5 days, you feel weaker and dizzy at times. After about a week to 10 days, your ability to think clearly starts to decline. After 15 days, your motor skills decline, and after 3 weeks, everything starts to decline. I have heard people go 4 weeks without food, but even after a few days, your muscles become your body’s food. If I have to prioritize my food group, carbs all the time, then protein and fat, in that order. But protein is definitely required by the first 10 days or your muscles are going to be food.
Now you should know that you need Shelter, Fire, Water, then Food in that order. Without shelter, you will be in a world of hurt in 3 hours. Without fire, you may not stay warm, nor can you boil water to make it potable. Without water, you have 3 days before things go really bad. You need shelter, fire, and water, in most cases, to have food, especially protein and fat. Carbs I can forage without water or fire, and that is why I do that on Day 2 in a survival situation to keep my mind sharp.
I have additional Threes like 3 months, 3 years, 3 decades, but those are for situations where it is beyond surviving in most situations. Here are my additional Threes, and your feedback is appreciated:
- 3 months without direction and hope – I hiked for a few months, and sometimes I thought, “What am I doing? Is this worth it? I know where it ends, but this is tough and I don’t know if I can make it.” If I didn’t have a destination, I would not have had direction, and there were times I lost hope when my shelter didn’t keep me warm and I couldn’t start a fire for 3 days. I was alone, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it or work on the what seemed like impossible tasks, and losing direction and hope would have killed me.
- 3 years without a survival team or community – After 3 months of my solo journey out in the wilderness, I really wished I had at least one companion to divide tasks, and have conversations. Dividing tasks, and having a few people with different expertise would have made the journey more manageable. I never went for more than a few months, but I would say within the first 3 years in a survival situation, you should have built a team or a community to share the tasks and enjoy the time together.
- 3 decades without procreation and birth – I can imagine after 10 years, age sets in on everyone in the community, and without procreation and birth, eventually we would die of old age and no one will be left in the community. That is how some tribes have gone extinct on this planet. Procreation and birth will become important depending on the average age of the community to keep the human race alive. 3 decades without it would wipe out the surviving group.
