Nobody's Coming… It's all up to You

If you were on a plane that crashes into the ocean and kills everybody except for you, are you going to survive? It’s true that it’s hard to know with absolute certainty since there will be so many different factors that play a role in your survival. Whether there is a supply of food, whether you are injured, and if there is a working radio around, are all a few examples I could think of off the top of my head. Each situation will be unique, but one thing you can safely say is that the likelihood of you surviving, will depend on what you do. I know, that’s really vague, but hear me out. If someone was already coming out to search for survivors, you might just be able to do nothing and wait until they arrive, but if nobody was coming at all, you would slowly starve or the plane would completely submerge into the water and you would drown. That means that by doing nothing, your success is completely dependent on whether or not someone is coming to look for you. I don't know about you, but I don't like those odds already. There is a lot of things that could go in your favor, but if you aren't even willing to try them out, you probably deserve to die.

A nihilist would probably say it doesn't matter what you do, because the odds are against you, and you going to die either way, but I couldn't disagree more. I would argue that if you exhaust all of your options, then it will almost be impossible not to survive. For example, let’s say you found where they keep all of the plane’s food. You end up collecting about two dozen packets of crackers, some individually wrapped biscuits and bottles of water. Already, you bought yourself some time and you don't have to worry about starving immediately. Food unfortunately, doesn't stop the plane from sinking, so if you didn't have a raft, you might still be SOL, but planes have rafts for that very reason. Maybe you could find one of them and maybe a couple of the 100 self-inflating life jackets that are probably floating around everywhere. Now, with food, water and a place to rest, you have increased your chances to stay alive if someone is searching for survivors, but that is of course only if the airline knew that you crashed yet or if they can locate where you are.

Realistically, once the airport loses contact with the plane, it won't be long before they consider that there might be a problem and it really is only a matter of time before they send someone out to the site to find you, but how long that will take? If you have food and a place to stay afloat for a while, you've bought yourself some time. If you search the plane more, you might find something else that might be helpful like a cabin radio that could contact the airport or even better, a passenger's phone that might still work. Either way, what I'm trying to get at is that things might look pretty hopeless if you didn't do anything about it, but as you find more things that could help you out, those things start compounding your likelihood of survival. Also, as you discover more things, your chances to find additional discoveries increase as well. For example, let’s say that you did find a radio and could contact the airport and tell them what happened. Even if you have no idea where you are, you now have the wisdom of an entire division of people willing to guide you on what to do in the meantime. Maybe there is no radio, but you find a manual that teaches you about a floating function of the plane that you would have never known existed if you hadn't found that guide. In short, it doesn't matter what you do, it's that you do something. Every time you act with a set direction in mind, you are always going to discover something new that you can use to help you. Success is literally just trying a bunch of stuff until you find something that works.

Let's pretend that there was no radio and you had no idea if anyone was ever going to come. Then what? Well, you might still have the food and the raft. Perhaps you could float around until you find a land mass, but once again, waiting around is just the same as rolling the dice. Maybe you could figure out where you are and where you need to go from a map. Maybe you could find a flare to alert someone where you are. Maybe you could try to paddle in one direction until you find land. It's hard to say what your options would be because this is a purely hypothetical plot, but in the next story I'm about to tell you, every bitter detail is absolutely true and is on the same level if not more frightening than our plane crash scenario.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Although it wasn't from a plane crash, Aron Ralston, an ex-engineer and notorious outdoors man, found himself in a predicament where his options seemed limited and his survival seemed fanciful. In 2003, while hiking in Utah through the Blue John Canyon, Aron found himself between a rock and a hard place…literally. In what would have been a routine decent from a high ledge, Ralston hung off a bolder that was lodged between the canyon walls so that he could minimize the fall to the platform below. Unfortunately for him though, the weight of him hanging on and the angle he was gripped on from was just enough to cause a freakish accident. This bolder must have been close to a thousand pounds and possibly stuck in the canyon for years, but somehow, Aron's weight managed to dislodge the bolder and caused it to come barreling down towards him. Aron knew he was in danger, so he let go and fell to the platform below and instinctively, thrusted his arms above his head as if to stop the rock from crushing him. There wasn't a lot of time to think as the bolder crashed down, ricocheting back and forth between the canyon walls. It's hard to say whether or not his arms could have done much against the crushing force of the rock, but before it was able to get to the ground level, it became re-wedged in-between the canyon again. The only problem was, it managed to ensnare Aron's right hand in the process, trapping his arm in place without any hope of freeing it.

Aron was in quite the predicament. He may have been lucky enough to survive the bolder barreling towards him, but that’s only if you consider starving in the mountains as lucky. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place and he was several miles away from anyone who could help him. He didn't have any cell phone service, and he was traveling light, meaning that he wasn't prepared to wait it out for the long run. Even if he was prepared to spend a week or more in the canyon, nobody would have thought to go look for him and even if they did, they wouldn't know where he was. Aron was alone, and nobody was coming. In a screaming frenzy accompanied by understandably loud profanity, Ralston vigorously attempted and re-attempted to free himself by any means necessary. He tried lifting the rock up. He tried jerking his hand out of the pinch. He even tried chipping away at the rock with a pocket knife that he was carrying. In every attempt brought with it an equivalent failure. He was trapped and without help, food, or water.

For around five days, Aron was stuck in the Blue John Canyon, hungry and cold from the weather which frequently dropped below 30 degrees. It was clear at that point that whatever he did, he would have to do it with only one arm meaning he only had one option left: he had to cut the other one off. Just like in the 2004 horror flick “Saw” the only way he was going to be able to free himself was by cutting off his appendage like the main character had to do with his leg to escape his shackles. The only problem however was that in the movie, he was given a saw. Aron, on the other hand, only had a pocket knife that had been dulled from picking away at the rock. A saw has enough leverage to be able to cut through the bone, but a pocket knife wasn't going to make it much past the muscle. Even if he was psychologically prepared to rid himself of his trapped arm, he lacked the sufficient tools to do so.

Aside from excruciating pain and mental anguish, Aron's arm was bloating up and filling with fluid and gases. He tested the plump area with the edge of his knife and a foul, decaying stench escaped from his arm. Aron was horrified to find that his arm was rotting while it was still attached to his body. After several failed attempts of trying to cut off his arm from a dulled blade, Aron had no choice but to thrash around hoping to shatter the two thick bones in his arm. He practically had to climb up the side of the ridge to give himself enough leverage to crack the bones, but after torqueing and contorting his body enough times, a loud popping sound was heard throughout the canyon as his bones snapped in half. Now, he had to perform a makeshift surgery on himself to finish the task.

Cutting off your own arm might seem like a nauseating thing to think about, but it's also surprisingly a difficult task to perform physically. You are limited to using only one arm and aside from the obstacle of the bones acting like a wall, the tendons and nerves contribute their own set of problems. Aron's knife wasn't able to cut through the tendons because they were very resilient and tough. He was forced to use a pair of pliers that he had in his bag to tear them away from the bones of his wrist in an upward jerking motion. The nerves were only string-like fibers running along the length of his arm, but were extremely sensitive. As he recalled, just touching them, caused a burning sensation likened to putting your hand into a pot of molten metal. He had to sever those little strings which carried that burning sensation all the way up his arm to his shoulder. Luckily, after the tendons and nerves were severed, a couple more strikes of the blade were all that was required for the self-operation to be over. Aron managed to free himself after being stuck in the canyon for a total of 127 hours.

Aron was finally freed from his ensnarement from the canyon, but he was far from being safe. He still had to rappel down 65-foot-high cliffs with only one arm and was bleeding profusely. He still didn't have any food or water and he was miles away from a hospital. He was 8 miles away from his vehicle in fact. He told reporters that he was happy just not to die in that rocky grave, but he wasn't expecting to make it out alive. Luckily for him, while he was exiting from the canyon, a family that was visiting from the Netherlands, happened to find him staggering out and helped him to safety. Aron managed to make it safely to the hospital where they cleaned up his wound and stitched him up. If he wouldn't have been willing to sacrifice his arm to be able to walk out alive, he would have certainly perished in the canyon. Even if people did eventually come around to where he got trapped, nobody, most likely, would have even found his body.
Always assume that regardless to where you find yourself, nobody is going to come and save you. You have the responsibility to keep yourself on track, and although another person’s help might be nice, you might end up dying before it ever comes. If you always do what you can, things tend to work out better than waiting around for that perfect time or for that other person to help you. Remember, you aren't a victim. You don't need to base your fate on what other people do. If you want to accomplish something in life, as the shoe company, Nike says: "Just do it."

Conclusion

If you are always using excuses to justify why things are the way there are, you’re only fooling yourself. You may not feel guilty if you omit yourself as being the one who is responsible, but let’s face it, nobody else is buying it. Not only are you being unrealistic about your own life, you aren't pulling the wool over any one's eyes either, so just stop. If you just spend about a minute thinking about someone in your life who always has a reason why they can't or won't do something, you might give them the benefit of the doubt in the beginning, but after the third or fourth time of them having to bail on their plans, you know it's probably more them, than anything else. Truly unlucky people are extremely rare, and even those people don't have their fate sown already. Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times throughout his life and survived each one of them. One time he got hit while he was fishing and an opportunistic bear tried to take his fish away after he was struck, but Roy found the strength to grab a branch and smack the bear away and saved his dinner. If Roy Sullivan didn't make excuses even when he was well in his right to do so, you probably shouldn't either.

People are polite for the most part and most likely aren't going to call you out for making up excuses, but in the back of their heads, they will remember that you are a complainer, and nobody likes a complainer. Don't think for a second that just because people listen and sympathize with you, that they believe what you’re saying. We all have built in BS detectors and are very good at using them. If someone's life isn't going to be affected by your poor grasp of reality, nobody else is going to burst your bubble if they don't need to. Take responsibility for your life and you will gain power over it.

Thank you for reading and Keep Steeming!