Ok, this may seem a little trite here, but I was quoted these statistics by a fellow wilderness instructor and I would like to have some feed back on this subject.

1. A person without shelter in inclimate weather conditions can only survive for 3 hours!

2. A person without water can only survice 3 days!

3. A person without food can only survive 3 weeks!

Their rule of three's as spoken!

Who has the facts?

Headbone

I'd have to say that those seem conservative.

You missed
Person without air lives only 3 min.

I think that a truely fit individual with office clothes in inclimate weather could probably get by for a day by moving a lot but put that same individual in <40 degree F water and you might not make 1 hour. The naked individual in a 40 degree F downpour would fare worse than the naked individual in 30 degree F snow storm.

As with any generalizations, these are bound to be overly simplified and usefull only as guidelines for prioritizing your needs. I wouldn't want anyone to be setting their watches by them.

I heard it as:

3 minutes without air
3 days without water
3 weeks with food.

There are accounts of people trapped in building rubble after earthquakes who survived for longer than 3 days without water. There are tales of people who fast or hunger strike for more than 3 weeks. As you noted, this is a rule of thumb. Generally speaking, these are good time frames to keep in mind.

Once you pass the magic barrier, your chance of survival diminishes greatly. As you approach the barriers, your bodies ability to anything other than lay there is almost impossible.

Guidlines are just that- a guide. Survival is proactive. Take the case of a man lost and eventually found dead.He stayed in one place waiting rescue,making journal entries that staying in one place was bad advice. He never made any effort at signalling. The infinite variables of individual fitness, mental and physical, external conditions etc.will always make this a mean average. The important thing is for people to start surviving NOW, not 72 hours and 2 minutes because the search teams haven't shown up within the statistical 3 days.

Chris I totally agree!

Sorry for my incoherence early on a monday morning.

My point was that these "rules of thumb" are good for helping us to prioritize our perparations. Knowing that we will survive longer without food than we will without water should lead us to make a proportionally greater effort to be prepared for lack of water than for lack of food.

Whether it is 3 days or 4 days without water it is still an order of magnititude less time than we will survive without water.

If you are stranded in a wilderness and have a spool of snare wire, a shotgun, large hunting knife with gut hook, fishing tackle, tree stand, scentblocking coveralls and deer blind but no way to carry or purify water or make a fire you may not live long enough to enjoy the venison jerky you are prepared to make.

('course you could get lucky and get a deer on first day, get a light from a nearby lightning strike, roast the venison, drink the blood, cure the stomach for a Botta and be wearing the hide before the winter rolls in but then again wouldn't it have been nice to have had a breast milk bag and a couple of iodine tablets just in-case your venison came along on the fourth day?)

Knowing how to use information is as valuable as having it. Knowing the rules of three is interesting, knowing that it can / should be used to prioritize your preparations may save your life.

I've always heard it as little/few as three minutes/hours/days/etc

But, as has already been said, there are no hard and fast numbers.