By Laurence Gonzales
© 2017 W. W. Norton & Company
REVIEW
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
By Laurence Gonzales
© 2017 W. W. Norton & Company
Reviewed by
Brian Ferguson, MD
It does not take long in medicine to meet people who die but who we had suspected would live. Others we care for, of a similar age and presentation, manage to look worse initially yet live to discharge. Ever wonder if there might be something consistently innate within those that make it? Have you ever wondered if you would pull through in an analogous situation? What if you were lost in the mountains, cold, perilously injured, with no hope of rescue for weeks?
Laurence Gonzales has added an interesting voice to the survival and wilderness literature. Most people who go through life threatening situations and experience frantic and paralyzing panic do the wrong things, follow these with even worse decisions, and of this, 90 percent( per Gonzales) end up dead. This work meticulously explores the paradigm characteristics of the latter 10 percent who seem to remain calm, collected, hopeful, and return home to tell about their perils.
As it turns out, these situations are not entirely comprised of luck.
Deep Survival is a gripping and intriguing meshwork of stories of survival and analyses of unbelievable and harrowing sagas. As a writer for National Geographic and a researcher into the survivalist mentality, Gonzales brings a unique perspective to stories of survival. An interesting twist is the inclusion of his father’ s story. As a pilot
in the 1940s, he lived through a catastrophic plane crash, followed thereafter by the reprieve of months of starvation and torture in a WWII prison camp. His father’ s will to survive, amidst the majority who died, was a key motivating factor to Gonzales’ career path, and eventually, this book.
His entire life Laurence has attempted to answer,“ What made my father different?’’
After years of case study into individual incidents, Gonzales has brought together an outline of tendencies and characteristics which seem consistent among survivors. He discovered many of his findings are generalizable across vastly different people and situations. For example, in the case of lost children, those younger than six years old, interestingly, have a much higher survival rate than those 6-12. This seems counterintuitive— except: when a five-year-old is tired: they sleep, if hungry: they eat, and cold: they seek shelter, when lost: they stay in a near region. When lost in the wild, those that are older will usually persist in desperate wandering in a frantic fury, masquerading as hope to find help. In panicked exhaustion, they frequently wander farther away from safety / assistance, and end up dying of exposure.
Those who live in isolated and caustic environments expend only small amounts of energy at any given time, spend most of their time resting, and will consistently focus on being grateful. Being grateful when all external hope is lost is key to keeping the mind
22 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE