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Chase Beamer
Mrs. Martin
Advanced Comp
May 10, 2015

Survival of the Fittest

Survival is everywhere around us, everywhere we look. As a human
race we are dedicated to the thought of survival it is our animalistic nature to
thrive to survive, so why not send my inquiry and my thoughts into survival
and why we so desperately try and do it. I have read three books on my
journey of discovering why we survive and each one as played a key role in
my journey. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel was the first book I read on my
journey, which is about a young boy who goes on a trip to move from India to
Canada. On the way of his journey the ship he is on sinks in the ocean or
starts to sink while he is on it. On a desperate plea to survive he jumps onto
one of the rafts and it gets lowered into the water. When he finally hits the
water with his raft one of the animals aboard the ship jumps overboard and
this animal is a zebra. Also some of the other animals to join him include a
hyena, a monkey, and most of all a 500 pound tiger. The raft ends up at sea
and during his voyage the hyena kills and eats the zebra while the tiger
eventually eats the monkey and hyena and what is left of the zebra. Pi and
the tiger end up at sea for over 200 days so they have to get water and eat

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fish from the sea that Pi catches. They do have survival gear on the boat but
it doesnt last the whole trip. They eventually land on an island that they stay
on for several days until they find out that at night it secretes acid that burns
meat. They then have to get back on the raft and survive for a little longer
until they finally reach Mexico and are saved. The second book I read on my
journey was Night by Elie Wiesel. This book was about a young child who
lived and survived the holocaust. He and his father were separated from his
mother and family when they were evacuated during the holocaust by the
Nazis. He rode many trains and wound up in many concentration camps.
Many times he thought he may die in those awful places but he would be
evacuated and forced onto death marches where many people would die
from exhaustion and starvation and the extreme cold temperatures. Eliser
and his father barely made it out of the death runs and then they made it to
their final destination and their final concentration camps. His father then
died at the final camp from sickness and just being worked too hard. The
people in the camp would eventually be saved as we all know. Then the final
book I read on my journey was Roosevelts Beast a book that talked more
about the wilderness aspect of survival which is the one that I focused more
on. Kermit joined his father on an expedition into the deep Amazon rain
forest where their expedition was tired and suffered from severe sickness.
Eventually Kermit and his father were takin captive by an Amazon tribe and
were told that the only way to get out of there alive they would have to kill a
beast that no one had ever seen before and that left no tracks. It was a high

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order for them to do but they finally killed what they thought was the beast.
The beast turned out to be a demon that had just taken the animal over but
it moved from the animal to Kermit to the chief.
The reason I chose those books was because it gave me a look at not
just one type of survival but three different looks at it. I got a look at survival
at sea and then during a thing that happened in our time period and lastly
survival in a jungle. Each book also had its unique way of answering my
essential questions. Is survival more mental or physical? Is survival more of
an instinct or a learned skill? How much does luck play into surviving?
The Life of Pi answered my essential questions very uniquely than any
other books I had. In The Life of Pi it was very key that Pi had a very strong
mental side of things. If he would have been weaker in the mind there is no
way he would have survived on the ocean for as long as he did. Dont get me
wrong though there is no way that the physical side of things didnt help him
out by being able to catch the fish and build his small raft that kept him away
from the tiger but in his situation his mental side was far more essential. I
researched some of the longest survival stories at sea and most of them are
about the same as Pis but the people who didnt survive to tell there story
went crazy and started to hallucinate and therefore fell overboard and died.
In this situation survival is more of an instinct than a learned skill. He built
his small raft to get away from the tiger so that it wouldnt eat him which
was an instinct to get away from the tiger. Although he did learn from the

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manual he had access to on his boat that the stills e had and put in the water
were key in getting him freshwater plus to catch as much rainwater as he
could was also more instinct than learned skill. And lastly what role did luck
play in his ability to survive was actually more than most think. In order to
survive many situations it is key to have back round knowledge in some
things but if luck is not on your side than your chances of surviving have
decreased. Some of the first fish that Pi caught where mostly luck, and once
he had some fish he could then use those fish to catch other fish and feed to
the tiger. The sheer luck that the tiger didnt just kill Pi when he landed on
the boat was a lot too. Luck was on Pis side during his trip on the ocean and
without his luck Pi probably would have died on the ocean.
In Night it was a lot of the same things as my first book. In Night
surviving the holocaust was very much a more mental thing than a physical
one. A perfect example of this is when they went on one of their death runs
with the Nazis and the father of one of the older just laid down and died. He
laid down because he told himself that he couldnt go on any farther than
what he did. He was completely mentally beat down time and time again and
he gave up on his life. He was not the only one who did that, many, many
people did that during the death runs from camp to camp. The reason Eliser
survived the holocaust was he kept being mentally strong in times where he
needed it more than ever before. His way of surviving wasnt instinct it was
intelligence. He knew what to do and when to do it. He never tried to push on
and make things happen he kept quiet and stay alive. He knew how to

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survive in a concentration camp after being there for so long so he kept what
he was doing and ended up surviving the holocaust. Luck plays a huge role in
the reason he survived the holocaust. Nazis during the holocaust might come
in to a barrack and kill everyone in there just cause they didnt want them
anymore, or they would come in and order them to march towards there
doom. Also in the case of Eliser he kept passing the test that chose rather or
not they would send you to the chimneys or keep you alive to work.
Sometimes the test that they were required to do was purely luck and
whether or not the Germans liked you or not. Surviving the holocaust was
much more luck than anything else.
Roosevelts Beast is the only book I read that survival was way more
physical. They got left out in the wilderness and captured by an Amazon tribe
and actually had to go out and kill something. They had to survive the
encounter with it and everything else that they encountered on the way to
kill the beast and back to the tribe. Mentally all they had to do was think of
the necessities to survive but it was the physical part that they really had to
endure. Out of this book survival is way more instinctive than skill learned.
Actually it was a little of both. It was very instinctive in the fact that during
their encounter with the beast they were fighting for their lives will they need
the knowledge of the skills to hunt and fight it during the fight was much
more instinctive. While they were on the way down the river though it was
very much more skill learned traits that they learned that kept them alive.
They knew about the waterfalls and the things that they could eat and what

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things that they couldnt eat which was more skill learned traits than
anything else. Luck didnt play as big of a role in this book but it still played a
huge role. Luck is always a huge role in anything that you do. Even
something today as normal as driving you probably have some sort of lucky
thing that may happen to you that prevents a car crash.
Survival to me is more mental than anything else and thats exactly
what an article I read, the attitude of survival, said. Your greatest weapon
against Mother Nature is your brain and nothing else. Sure you can be
insanely strong or have great endurance but someone who knows what to do
in a situation has a huge advantage over anyone else. Someone who can
keep their mind sharp and think there way out of a situation normally will
survive. If your mentally strong and have the right gear to survive you can.
Sometimes though you do not even need the right gear because you make
some of it including weapons and nets and traps to hunt.
Survival is a learned skill right? Not according to an article I read.
Survival is an instinctive aspect of human nature that comes from our
animalistic characteristics that have been with us since the beginning of
time. If you were to watch a species try and survive and put them in a
certain situation they would drive to do anything and everything to survive.
Human beings are the exact same way. If we were put in a certain situation
we would drive to survive at whatever means necessary. We would also
confront threats to us or our loved ones our survival fight or flight would

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take over. It is the same thing in animals you watch them get confronted by
another animal and this same mechanism takes over in them. It is one of
many different things that happen to be very similar between us and animals
is our will to survive at whatever means necessary.
Luck to me and an article is in the top two things that are important to
survive. You may have the best knowledge of the wilderness or you may
have the worst but if luck is on your side there is not much you cannot do. If
you know a lot of things about the wilderness but you keep getting bad luck
things happening to you how are you supposed to survive? The bottom line is
you dont survive no matter what it the case of the bad luck you might as
well lay down and hope someone finds you. If youre thinking what is the
only thing that could beat luck it is being mentally strong and smart. If you
have those three things your chances of survival have increased and you
havent even started the real surviving.
Everyone should know a little about survival so my group and I made a
survival video of just a few little things to know if you get stuck out in the
woods. We all came up with the idea has soon as we found out what we were
doing. Everyone agreed that it would be a good idea. We tried to think of
things to and couldnt figure out anything then we finally did because we all
really wanted to go camping for the first time. We looked up some of the
things we would need for our trip and then we went and figured out what we

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wanted and did it. We were tired of sitting around thinking so we got out
there and did it.
My non-traditional research provided insight into what a person might
come into contact with out in the wild. There is no comparison to someone
who actually is in danger and in serious distress because that is a whole
different and much more serious situation but just to somewhat be out and
feel what may have happened to some people. When I was out in the woods I
could almost picture what it may be like for someone who is out in the wild
and didnt have a way to get back and needed to survive. I think it would be
way different if you were trapped on the ocean, I think that would be one of
the hardest things to survive. Being out in the woods or a forest wouldnt be
easy at all but it is easier than being out on the ocean. I could see how
surviving could be very mentally draining and I could also see how being out
there would be more instinctive. The luck is the one thing that was hard to
see but I thought about it and see that without some luck surviving would be
very difficult to do.

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My innovative action on my questions was us as a group going out to
record that video. We took our research and our readings and put them
together to form our video. With the help of our video we put what we need
together and sent it out to try and get people to watch it. We were trying to
inform some people of how to make some things like a shelter and we
couldnt stress enough that getting proper food and water is so key. Shelter
should be the first on your list and then water should be next and food last.
You will die quicker without shelter and water than without food. Thats why
we tried to get people more information so they could match that with their
instinct to survive and then they could actually survive if needed.
Bottom line is we did this inquiry for us but we did it to get information
to the rest of you too. Weve heard everyone talk about survival stories and
read about other ones but if it came down to it could you survive if you
needed to? What would happen if you got stuck in a place and you couldnt
get back to civilization? I wish it not even on my worst enemy, I think it
would be one of the worst things someone could endure. That is why I want
to get as much information to you as I can cause that is more important than
a lot of things. If you have the information to succeed and you have the will
to succeed wont you succeed? That is my mission from this inquiry is to help
you succeed if you ever had to it is what would be the most important thing.
My job is to help you out to become the best that you can be in the situation
at hand. I gave you the information required now it is your turn to take the
information and use it.

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Works Cited

Burken, Chuck C. "Quora." Quora Blog. Quora Inc, n.d. Web

Fitzgerald, Larry. "The Attitude of Survival." The Attitude of Survival. N.p., n.d.
Web. 10 May 2015.
Gerald, Anne. "Top 10 Sea Survivors - Listverse." Listverse. N.p., 15 Feb.
2012. Web. 10 May 2015