The Scouts were right – be prepared

The Worst-Case Scenario guides have been around for a while now. Where else could you get advice on everything from how to wrestle free from an alligator, determine if your date is an “axe murderer”, start a fire without matches, or escape from a bad date? (hint: make sure your escape excuse is plausible, such as: “My boss just called- she’s in Seattle for a major presentation, and has lost all her files. I have to e-mail them to her immediately”).

While these Worst Case Scenario guides can offer a laugh and a bit of useful advice, they can also help a traveler avert danger should disaster strike.

While not everyone can have the decades of experience and mad skills that Captain Chesley Sullenberger III did when he recently landed a plane safely in the Hudson River, there is advice on how to land a plane should the need ever arise.

And while Daniel Pharr thankfully did not have to cope with a parachute failure in addition to the nightmare of his skydiving instructor suffering a heart attack and dying in the middle of Pharr’s first skydiving jump (Pharr safely landed and began CPR but was tragically unable to save him), there is advice on how to survive if your parachute fails to open.

Other travel scenarios that might seem a little far-fetched but could come in handy one day (and offer a good read nonetheless) are: how to control a runaway camel, how to cross a piranha-infested river, and how to escape from a car hanging over the edge of a cliff.

While fear-mongering is never a good thing, it does pay to be prepared, because you just never know. Parade Magazine recently ran an arcticle on how to survive various situations, from a high-rise hotel fire (hint: most fire department ladders do not stretch more than 80 feet) to surviving a heart attack (hint: be in a Las Vegas casino- with constant surveillance and defibrillators on site, Las Vegas casinos have a 53% heart-attack survival rate, compared with 16% in Seattle, which has some of the best response systems in the U.S.).

While the Worst Case Scenario website has some great scenarios to start with, there are also over a dozen books available in the Worst-Case Scenario series.

Posted by | Comments Off on The Scouts were right – be prepared  | February 5, 2009
Category: General

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