Oh, I was hoping for something a little more interesting, so I could say something like:

Pilot B dies in crash. Pilot A watches B's crash, and follows the resulting signal fire on foot. Pilot A has survival rations until recovered.

In your version, Yuri should defect. The bush pilot... Does he have communications? When will he be declared over due? Most likely, freeze to death.

This is the reason I advocate carrying/ packing food. Hunting/fishing/gathering bugs takes time and energy --I'd rather carry 3,000 calories of food bars and get going.

Fun and amusing answers as always <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> The point of my little exercise is to show how PRECONCEIVED training and mindset need a certain fluidity of thought in the real world. Omega's examples are of a specific culture that knows what works. There WIll be established camps with food farther on and to walk on takes less energy and time than replicating one. Military survival often means Survival, Escape and Recovery- SERE or avoiding all the comanches, japanese, vietcong and middle eastern types played by latin american and chinese actors that bedeviled old John Wayne and Chuck Norris. Our russian was trained to evade, and may very well run into my friend Bart the Bear's relatives or freeze doing it. Pilot B may have a Glock .40 after reading our forum but no Wiggybag, and Mythbusters or not there is no fuel on the tundra to make a decent fire anyway. If hes smart, he drained his engine oil and cut up all the insulation Piper installed in that old supercub. There is no set survival scenario, even in known environs with a carefully thought out kit.

It sounds a good idea of staying put, but there is a chance that you might think:"Oh, I recognise this tree/mountain/bush. Yes, the path is just behind it". After you get there:"Oh, no, I was wrong. But hang on, THIS IS THAT TREE/MOUNTAIN/BUSH behind of which is my path!" etc etc.
And this way you get completely lost. Then finally you understand that all trees/mountains/bushes look the same and you start thinking how to get out of this situation. But your thought is the following: "I have just got lost, it has happened today. So I am only a few hours off the right track. Why should I wait for rescue and suffer if I can find it? It is only a few hours!" Probably, you will try to orient yourself in which direction you walked before (south/north/east/west) and by going more or less straight you will try to find your path. And you start walking again. You may be right and find your way, but also you might be wrong.
Moreover, your live experience will probably tell you that, yes, it happened you got lost before, but you always managed to find your way back somehow. So, if you just keep trying you will eventually find your way back.
I would say abudance of animals/plants significantly depends on the area. Yes, in most cases there are plenty of them, but I was in areas where you do not see animals that often and plants are different so you do not recognise them.

Actually, what I have done in the past when I get turned around (I never get "lost" <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />) is mark my current position visually, and then move on from there. The point is to always be able to at least get back to the place where you first realized you were lost. This way, at least you are not ending up further and further away from the people who are searching for you.

This has only happened to me one time (a fog came down suddenly). Of course I always have a compass, and more recently, a GPS.

Again, if you are lost and absolutely have to move, at least make sure you are not getting into a worse situation.

Ha ha ha ha...gasp...

He has a gun but no wiggybag. Yep, he deserves to become the human popsicle for the next omnivore that comes by. LOL...

Any nut stupid enough to fly the bush without packing his frosties really is in the wrong business (he'd have better luck being a meat model for a pit bull trainer, at least the pain and suffering wouldn't last as long).

Kinda reminds me of the Farley Mowat stunt in "Never Cry Wolf", where he packs all those cases of Moosehead instead of real provisions (or maybe that was an act of genius).

After using his Russian military training to evade the Coast Guardsmen, Yuri sits next to his K-36 ejection seat and wonders if he should have joined the Navy instead. He then proceeds to inventory the survival gear the Government of Mother Russia has seen fit to equip him with. Lets see, survival vest, knife, emergency sleeping bag, life raft, seat kit, emergency radio....

When he came across his 24 hour individual food rations, he wondered if starving is really so bad...

Soon Yuri felt dejected... after searching everything twice, his worst fears were confirmed. He didn't have a Glock .40...

Despite his training, he lost the will to survive, and was never seen again.

Pilot B however, knew he'd be ok. You see, through selective absorption of tips from the equipped forums, cast away, and Survivorman, he knew he had to get moving as quickly as possible if he's going to meet his rescuers halfway. He looked around and scanned the aircraft up and down for anything he could possibly use to help him stay alive. The propeller! Pilot B remembered how important keeping his spirits up was in a survival situation, so he took off the propeller, drew a little happy face on the hub, and named it spinny. Now, he was ready to go, and started walking towards the sun. After about an hour, he decided that was hard work, since it was noon, so he just decided to walk left. He continued for a while, every now and then telling no one in particular how dangerous it was.

A couple of days later, he wasn't sure why he was so weak... what went wrong? He sat down, ate some snow, and chewed on a stick that he had given a complex name and deemed edible, but dangerous. Northern Arizona Puffer Fishicus Stick. Rare delicacy around these parts! Now that it was day three, he decided to inventory his gear, which consisted of pocket lint, some string, a paper clip, and old lighter that didn't have any fluid. Meh, all useless. He tossed them.... it was good to get rid of some dead weight anyway so it wasn't so hard to carry spinny around. But wait, what's that deep in his left cargo pocket? zomg, a Glock .40! He knew he'd survive now... somehow. Someone would think twice before trying to take HIS spinny!

On day 7, when his crew didn't arrive, he decided he should stay put. After accidentally shooting himself twice trying to start a fire with the glock, he decided to remove the bullets from the shells. Eventually, he was successful! In torching 291 acres of wilderness preserve. A caribou trying to escape the fire ran past him, but unfortunately he was out of ammo and too weak from loss of blood to build some sort of primitive phaser. He survived for the next two days drinking urine until smoke jumpers found him. Two weeks later, he signed a book and movie deal worth 16 million dollars for his story; "Knowing -- it's half the battle" in which Bruce Willis plays the heroic Pilot B, fighting hordes of enemy terrorists in the wilderness with nothing but his trustly bazooka named "Glock" and Angelina Jolie as "Agent Spinniker", the only thing that kept him from slipping into madness during his harrowing ordeal.

So, was I close? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Pilot A: evade t'ill night. Then move in and slit imperialist pigs' throats as they sleep. I now have their guns, gear & transportation mode. Now I figure out how to get back to my side of the Bering Sea...

Pilot B: make sure the ELT is working, use the radio, do a quick recce in daylight for nearby resources (water, materials...) inventory the aircrafts contents, prepare a means to signal my position (or two), bundle up & get as comfortable as possible to wait out the next few days...

I'm glad you brought up Survivorman. Although the show is admittedly a little contrived (he does his best not to be prepared and he does know someone's coming back in a week), it is interesting to watch his "progress." He clearly becomes disoriented and agitated after a day or two with no food. You also see how exhausted he becomes with simple activity and little to no caloric intake. Luckily, I have a few more pounds of fat stored internally for such an occasion.

Yep ! exactly what I say : it's not being overweighted (sp?) , it's just being prepared...... <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />