Critical situations
Avalanche, lightning, flash flood, fire, charging animal: the minutes when you must know without thinking.
Short, punchy cheat sheets, designed to be re-read the night before you leave.
Avalanche: the 15 minutes that decide
A slab breaks loose under your skis, you have fifteen minutes before the stats turn against you: what you need to know instinctively, the night before heading out.
Lightning: When the Sky Targets You
In 3 seconds, a lightning bolt heats the air to 30,000 kelvins and kills 10% of those it strikes: here is what is at stake before you count to thirty.
Flash Flood: Water Arriving Faster Than You
It isn't raining where you are, the creek has been dry all morning, yet you have less time than you think before a wall of water rushes down the valley.
Forest Fire: Evacuating, or Protecting Yourself When You Can No Longer Run
It moves faster than you uphill, jumps roads via embers, and won't wait for you to figure out what's happening.
Bears, wolves, cougars, wild boars: what to do when facing wild animals
What saves you with a black bear can kill you with a grizzly: the rules change depending on the animal in front of you.
A child lost in the wild: what they must know, what you need to do
He is eight years old, twenty meters ahead, and has never had to choose on his own. The good news: a child who knows how to stay put almost always makes it out fine.
Injured, Alone, No Service: Self-Rescue
No one is coming for hours. The first step isn't to panic—it's to perform your own assessment. On yourself, with no witnesses, and no second opinion.
Blizzard and whiteout: when you can no longer see your feet
White swallows the horizon, ground merges with sky, and you no longer know if you're walking straight: what you need to know before it happens to you.
Falling Into Ice-Cold Water: 1 Minute, 10 Minutes, 1 Hour
The ice cracks, and you're in the water before you even realize what happened: three clocks start ticking at once, and only one decides if you make it out.
Ticks, mosquitoes, hornets: the tiny creatures that actually kill
No European snake, bear, or wolf kills as many people as insects do: nature's true threat weighs just a few milligrams.
Heat Stroke While Hiking: Dead in 3 Hours
A body that stops sweating isn't a body getting better: it's a body three hours away from cardiac arrest.
Crevasses and glaciers: walking on a trap
A glacier can carry you a thousand times and betray you on the thousand-and-first: how to read it, how to rope up, how to get out — and what you almost can't do without.
Quicksand, mud, and marshes: getting stuck without drowning
The sand will never swallow you whole — but the rising tide while you struggle doesn't negotiate.