 control. What do you mean get it under control? Well, blood loss from a wound can be controlled by applying direct pressure to the wound. That's the first thing we need to do. Take a clean pad if we have it and press it firmly against the wound and hold it there until it is controlled. Is this all I need to do to get the bleeding to stop? If direct pressure doesn't work and you can't reach the wound, try to apply pressure between the wound and the heart. Major arteries run very close to the skin surface at several points in your body. If you apply pressure to these points, you can restrict the flow of blood from your heart to your wound. If you're alone and you can't apply pressure by yourself, you can find something you can use to apply pressure to that point. This is like a tourniquet out of this blood. No, that's not a good idea. You should only use a tourniquet if you've applied pressure at the artery and the wound and neither have stopped the bleeding. A tourniquet should only be used as a last resort. Every movie I've ever seen the end of people get tourniquets. This isn't a movie. The reason a tourniquet isn't good is that you may stop the bleeding, but you may also lose the limb. If you don't get rescued right away, that tourniquet is going to restrict flow of blood to your entire limb. And without blood flow to the limb, it will be starved of oxygen. The bottom line is this. If you leave a tourniquet on, you can lose the limb. And if you release a tourniquet, that rush of blood into your limb may reduce your blood pressure enough to send you into a deep shock. The kind of shock you can't take care of yourself. But I think you're going to be fine. It's not that bad. How do you know so much about first aid? Actually, I don't know much about first aid. You see, first aid is something you do to stabilize yourself or someone else until you get professional treatment. Since we don't know when we're going to get rescued, or if we're going to get rescued, we have to take care of our medical needs the best way we know how. It's survival medicine, not first aid. Well, you mean we might not get rescued. I mean, you go to the May Day signal, somebody knows we went down, right? How long is this going to take? There are no guarantees that we're going to get rescued in a couple of hours, days, or weeks. So it's up to us to take care of ourselves the best way we can. And that's survival medicine. Nothing reduces our chances of getting rescued more than having an injury. That's why we use techniques of survival medicine to take care of injuries so that we can put our energies toward more important issues, like building a shelter, signaling for health, and just surviving until health does arrive. I'm not going to die out here. Not if you stay calm and be smart. If we use survival medicine to treat our injuries and illnesses first, we can focus on the task of getting rescued, and we are going to get rescued. How do you keep so calm and collected doing all this? I'm trained on all the current treatment that this is survival medicine. I know what it takes to get rescued, and we'll make it out of here alive. I promise you, we're going to start right now. There's a clearing over there about 30 yards. I saw it coming in. We're going to set up camp. I'm going to activate this ELT, and hopefully someone will come for us within a matter of hours. Are you okay? You didn't hurt your foot when we landed, did you? Nah, just a few blisters. I got run around the lake this weekend, and these shoes aren't helping. In a survival situation, it's important that we take care of something like that, right away. Let's take a look at those blisters. Blisters can cause you a lot of grief if you don't take care of them right away. If you feel your sock or shoe rubbing, you need to stop and take care of that problem immediately. Hand me that stick sock and pop this thing open. Oh no, no way. You don't want to drain the fluid. You see, your body creates blisters as a protective reaction over an injury. For this reason, you need to leave the blisters intact. We'll just protect them with a clean bandage. You definitely want to take care of your feet. You want to make sure that you keep them dry, even if that means stopping what you're doing and airing them out every now and then. Not only are your feet prone to blisters from walking, but you need to be careful of getting blisters on your hands, too. If you don't stop looking at the sun, you're going to go sun blind. I'm okay. I'm not looking at the sun. I'm just looking for a rescue plane. You may not realize it now, but sun blindness can sneak up on you. You can make it through the day without any trouble, only to be struck with burning watery eyes, poor vision and a headache as soon as the sun goes down. When you feel these symptoms, it's too late. You can expect an entire day of painful eyes or even blindness. And then all you can do to protect your eyes from further exposure is to lightly bandage them or stay in your shelter with your eyes shut. You could probably put something cold on them and make them feel better. But my point is, sun blindness will ruin your day. You need all of your senses to get rescued. Otherwise, you're going to sell yourself short. If you're squinting right now, you need to stop looking at the sun. Well, what happens when it's super bright out here and we don't have any sunglasses? You take a piece of heavy cloth, thin bark, or even a bit of aluminum foil. You just cut or tear a piece about an inch and a half wide by six inches long and out. Out of that, you cut narrow, horizontal slits so they will be centered over each eye. Then you tie the strip over your eyes like a mask. Make sure you don't hurt your hands. If your hands get tinder, just either stop or use a different grip or just rest a while. You don't want to give yourself blisters. Ooh, I don't like bees. My sister is allergic to bees and she has to carry a special bee sting kit. Now, I do know something about this. The first thing to do when you get stung is treat the sting by immediately scraping it, not pulling the stinger away. Because if you pull it, you will squeeze the poison sack and increase the dose of venom. You'd be amazed how many people die in the United States due to stings from bees, wasps, and yellowjackets, just because people are allergic to them. Stinging insects actually end up killing more people than snakes do every year. Well, I can handle bees, but I can't handle snakes. Snakes? Snake? What happens to the snake that's one of us? Well, not all snakes are dead, but if you get bit by a venomous snake and you can't get medical attention, your best bet is to remain calm and drink plenty of water. If you go rushing around in the panic, that will only increase the circulation of venom in your bloodstream. And the whole movie concept of cutting a hole in yourself and sucking the venom out is not recommended anymore. Turnicates are not recommended anymore. But we don't have to worry about that because no one's going to get bit by a snake. What about lizards? Actually, the only venomous lizards you need to worry about are the two species that are found in the North American desert, the Gila monster and the Mexican beetle lizard. And both of those are relatively sluggish and non-aggressive. You're not going to get bit as long as you look where you put your hands and feet. And if you do get bitten, just react the same as if it was a snake bite. Don't panic and drink lots of fluids. What happens if I'm bit by a spider or a scorpion? Then what? All spiders and scorpions are poisonous to a certain degree. But it would be pretty uncommon for someone to die from these bites. The only spiders that could really hurt you are the Black Widow and Brown Recluse. But again, you're not going to get bitten by these if you just play it smart and stay away from places where these creatures might be. We need to keep ourselves in the camp area clean and neat. Are you crazy? It's just a stick. Are you some kind of meat freak or something? It may sound crazy, but it's true. Your chances of getting hurt are decreased when you keep everything in its place and you use your survival tools properly. And it's important that we keep ourselves and our clothes clean. By doing this, we reduce the odds of getting sick. Look, even if it seems like a low priority, it's very important. I can take a hint. It's not easy to burn my hand. Quick, we need to cool the burned area. We can't waste any time. We need to get the hand in some cold water right now to get that hand in some cold water so we can chill the injury before there's any more damage. If we don't get the temperature of your burn back to normal, the residual heat from your burn will damage even more tissues. Hey, I really messed up. Burns are serious, especially out here. With anything more than a simple first-degree burn where the skin is mostly red, dehydration and infection are likely to occur and in that order. Pain and trauma to the circulatory system near the burn can cause shock. Dehydration is caused by the loss of body fluids in the burned area, meaning you will have to increase your water intake. The loss of skin along with having favorable conditions for bacteria pose a high threat for infection. What happens if it gets infected? Infection is almost uncontrollable in survival situations, but it takes a day or so for the infection to set in. Oh, no. Here, let's take a look. Is it bad? All burns, regardless of severity, are handled in the same way out here. Without sterile conditions and medical care, we are very limited as to what we can do for a burn out. We've already cooled it. Now we have to get it clean. That calls for a little soap and water. The trick is not to make matters worse by disrupting the damaged tissue. It is very important to keep the burned area clean and protected. We have to use the most sterile dressing we can find. Lucky for you, we have a medical kit with sterile dressing. Otherwise, we would be trying to boil some of our clothes to use as bandages. Oh, this really hurts. Am I going to be okay? Painage is going to be a problem you have to deal with. But you're lucky this time. The burn isn't all that bad. Now listen, you're going to have to pay attention to me and remember what I tell you. It flies with death out here, and everything you do is going to impact our survival. So if you want to live, you're going to have to get smart in a hurry. There are no second chances out here. You're right. I'm sorry. Feels like you have a slight fever. No, I'm getting sick. Fever is simply a symptom of another problem, maybe even dehydration. In your case, it's a symptom of your burn. So there's nothing to worry about? I didn't say that. A fever can be a problem. So what should we do? The best thing we can do for it is to take a mask front according to the directions and drink plenty of water. Here, take these. This should help ease your pain and control the swelling. Don't worry. You're going to be all right. Just don't feel so good. I don't remember what I ate, but it's not agreeing with you very well. Could you just give me a few minutes? Come here. Please go away. Oh man, this is so embarrassing. Don't we embarrass? Diarrhea is common in these situations. It can be caused by tension, eating unfamiliar foods or intestinal infection from contaminated water. But believe me, I understand it's uncomfortable. It can keep you in those bushes all day long. But most cases of diarrhea are relatively easy to control. I don't have any medicine you can take, but I am going to get some charcoal from last night's fire. Believe it or not, it doesn't taste all that bad. Diarrhea can be harmful to you after, because it can make you really dehydrated. The only way you can combat this is by drinking lots and lots of water. A couple of teaspoon fulls of charcoal should help you get back into control, okay? I'm not sure. It might be a spray or... What's the difference? It really doesn't matter what the difference is, because the results are the same out here. They all cause pain and swelling, and they make you not want to move it or use it. Well maybe I could help step the bone back for us. No way! We don't even know what I've done to my arm. And second of all, if it is broken, you should never try to set a fracture or reduce the dislocation. That is a job for a professional. We just need to immobilize this injury and reduce the pain I'm feeling right now, and try not to do any more damage than what's already been done. Okay, so what do you want me to do? I'm going to need you to take your belt off. Huh? Your belt. You're going to use your belt to make a sling. Hand, arm, and shoulder injuries can be immobilized sufficiently with a simple sling. You can use belts, rope, pieces of clothing, anything that you can use to form a loop around your neck that will support the damaged arm. With a little patience, you can make a sling with one hand. But fortunately, I have you to help me out. Can you help me out? Are you going to be okay? We just lost some of our survival equipment. No we didn't. We left all our survival gear back at the campsite. What are you talking about? I'm talking about my arm. Injuries like this? I'm just like losing a piece of survival equipment because it's going to be hard for me to light a fire and help address few efforts with the use of only one arm. Man, what would have happened if one of us had broken our leg? If I had broken my leg, we'd be in big trouble right now. We would have to figure out a way to make a sling. Slings are great for protecting structural injuries. Slings can be made from small poles, tree limbs, cardboard, or any semi-rigid object that you can find. You can even use an uninjured leg as a temporary splint. But you're not going anywhere if you do that. So I could go over there, get a couple of lends and put them together and that would be a splint? No, you need to put more work on good than that. You would want to put a little padding in the splint to prevent painful pressure or abrasions. You can use fox strips, tape, but don't try using any cord or twine because you might end up restricting your circulation. You just want to try the splint in fights with plenty of snug knots. If you have any cuts or wounds, you need to make sure that they are treated before applying the splint. So what's the point of a splint anyway? Splinting is to immobilize the joints above and below the injury. And if that's not possible, a splint should just prevent any movement in the injured area. And if you hurt your foot or ankle, be sure to keep your shoes on for support. Sorry, you're in pain. My arm will hurt you on me with this way. I'm not moving on that. You're exactly right. The pain is telling me I shouldn't hurt my arm. Pain is our body's way of reminding us that we need to rest a certain part of our body. Under normal conditions, this is a good thing. But when our life depends on our ability to deal with problems out here in this survival situation, we may have to ignore that warning. But serious pain associated with injuries is a separate problem in itself. What do you mean? Being in a great deal of pain can keep you from doing what you need to do to get rescued. You seem to be handling it pretty well. Different people have different sensitivities to pain. For me, I'm looking at this pain as a temporary discomfort that can be tolerated. I'm keeping my mind busy thinking about how we can get rescued, rather than thinking about how bad this arm hurts. Naturally, I want to avoid aggravating this pain and what's causing it. But I'm going to keep my mind on the goal, and that's getting rescued, and we are going to do the rescue. I need you to do me a favor. Sure. What is that? You're going to have to keep your eye on me, because I could go into shock. Severe pain does weird things to our body. You mean the pain in your arm can cause you to go into shock? Many things can cause a person to go into shock. Bleeding, severe pain, burns, allergies, infection, and even psychological trauma caused by seeing yourself or someone else injured. Regardless of the cause, the result of shock is the same. If you've ever experienced shock, it's highly unlikely that you'll forget the symptoms. It's a light-headed, weak, and nauseous. It's sort of a surreal feeling, but that's only what it feels like. You need to pay attention to what it looks like. If I were to go into shock, you could tell, because my skin will be cold and clammy, my breathing will be a little crazy. It may be quick and shallow or irregular, and it may even cause me to gasp for air. My pulse will be weak and rapid. I'll be nauseous, and I may vomit, and most likely I'll have some type of mental confusion. There are more severe symptoms than this, but the idea here is if you don't catch and treat the symptoms of shock, then situations will get a lot worse. That's why it's important for you to watch me closely. What happens if you go into shock? How do I keep the symptoms? The standard way of treating shock is to control bleeding if there is any. Drink plenty of fluids, but don't try to give someone water if they're unconscious. You'll drown them. Try to lay them down, preferably with their head slightly lower than their feet, and have them rest until their symptoms pass. If they have a head injury, you would need to elevate their feet without lowering the head, and keep them warm. Use extra clothing, sleeping bags, blankets, whatever might be available to maintain their body temperature. Look, I don't want you to go into shock because I don't think I can do this without you. Ever since we crashed, man, you've been taking care of me and doing everything right, and I've been doing everything wrong. Remember, our situation is not permanent. The ultimate goal here is to get home. We are going to get home. Besides, you basically know everything there is to know about survival medicine. We are the doctors out here. You just have to look out for it. Do you hear that? Here, help me up.