I'm going from memory here, but as I recall, the author, Larry Dean Olsen, states that there had never been a serious medical problem on any of his training courses. However, in the section on finding water in the desert, he describes how he once joined a group of students (led by a fellow instructor, a woman of the Shoshone) in a desperately dehydrated condition, only to find that the water hole they had been counting on had alkali poisoning and the water was undrinkable. They spent that night without anything to drink, he in a badly dehydrated condition, and set out the next day in search of alternative water supplies. At some point in the search, he lost consciousness from dehydration and was rescued by the other instructor. She managed to dig a water seep and scoop up tiny capfuls of water (that's capfuls, not cupfuls, using the cap off a broken whiskey bottle that he had found earlier) and poured the water down his throat, even though he was unconscious. She continued forcing water down his throat even after he regained consciousness and began vomiting.

As a part-time Wilderness First Aid instructor, I'm appalled - pouring anything down the throat of an unconscious victim is a definite first aid no-no, and making a victim with severe dehydration vomit is also not something I'd recommend. Granted, it was a desperate situation and there probably is no "book" answer, but I'd have tried moistening a cloth and putting it in the casualty's mouth, and at least waiting for a few minutes to see if they regained consciousness. (She did drag him into the closest shade, which was definitely the right - albeit obvious - thing to do.)

My interpretation of this is as follows:

He took a group of students out into the desert and endangered their lives - first, by not ensuring beforehand that there was adequate water for them, and second, by carelessly endangering his own health. (He was medevac'ed out on horseback by a passing cowboy the next day.)

He didn't have a fallback plan - no way of signalling for help if anything went seriously wrong. What if one of his students had been injured - say, crushed by a falling rock?

Neither he nor the other instructor appeared to have had proper first aid training - I could be wrong about that, but I disagreed strongly with the other instructor's treatment, whereas he credited her with saving his life.

The techniques in his book appear to be valid, and well-researched. However, I would probably never want to take an actual course from him.

(As an aside: I recently spoke with a man who had taken one of Olsen's courses, many years ago, although Olsen himself was not instructing, and his opinion was that they were so focussed on the "march or die" philosophy that he didn't retain much of the instruction - the students were so exhausted and hungry at the end of each day that it was impossible for them to concentrate. He did say, however, that he thought the BOSS course format had been modified quite a great deal since those early days.)

The "live off the land" philosophy is admirable, but putting your students' (or your readers') lives in jeopardy
because of a philosophical principle is, IMO, a tad over the edge. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Besides, how many people - including Olsen himself - would be capable of surviving in the Great Basin desert, or the Northern Boreal Forest, for a full 12-month stint? And how many of them would be able to do it based on the information contained in a paperback book?

I want my survival manual to at least tell me how to build a signal fire. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />