What would you do if you got really pushed to your limits???

I was thinking about how in life there's always the chance that something could happen your way and that you'd get pushed to your absolute limits of human endurance.

Like here's a few scenarios:

1) Many people end up with excruciating fatal deceases. They will eventually die from but they end up having to endure for years. Eventually sometimes seeking out the help of someone or some other country in which they can be euthanized

2) Someone say for example getting a life sentence for some crime they didn't commit.

3) Someone finding out they have some fatal decease which is seriously and gradually killing them.

4) Being abandon on some deserted island (which often happens in ship wrecks and other situations)

5) Going bankruptcy, losing your pet, your home, and or losing a loved one, or your whole family.

6) Ending up paralyzed, deaf, blind, or crippled.

Or any other number of major challenges that life can drum up. So if you were pushed to some absolute limit in some way, what would you do? How would you cope with the situation or how would you try and get through it and or live with it?

What exactly is your strategy that you'll use when or if things go terribly wrong for you in life, which it's very possible it will???

So tell us????

a reply to: bigpatato

My answer to those scenarios:

1): Morphine was invented for such a purpose, however I think this would be a great opportunity to finally make my trip to Mars and see if humans can survive there. After all, I'd be a dead man anyway; might as well be a guinea pig for something useful.

2): I'd pursue the judge for human rights violations.

3): see 1.

4): Abandoned islands? You mean, I'd have an entire island to myself, and I could do whatever I want there? Nice!

5): I've already lost loved ones, and came to know that eventually the mind regenerates; it takes a long time but it does.

6): That would suck; however perhaps I'd get more acceptance as a physicist, especially if I change my name to Hawking!

a reply to: bigpatato

Fall down nine times stand up ten .

I'll play a Motorhead album and show the finger to the devil who brought me there.

a reply to: bigpatato

I recall reading the horror story Survivor Type written by Stephen King, where the main character is forced into a test of pushing the limits.

Most of those I've already planned for.
Fatal disease such as cancer : They almost always give those patients heavy narcotics. If it is untreatable, when the end draws near, a pint of good Irish whiskey and a handful of morphine. I Will Not try to hang on and run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to leave to my kids, fighting a losing battle.

Same for prison. I'll do a week in jail or a few months, but I won't go to jail for the rest of my life. What's the point? Your life is effectively over, you just haven't died yet.

Paralyzed from the neck down? Same. I have led an extremely active life, I damn well won't spend the rest of it strapped in a wheelchair, with someone wiping my ass for me.

okay what about if your a guy and your dink stop's working???? Then what??

a reply to: bigpatato

Nooo!!

I'd have to run for president!

a reply to: bigpatato

I like the way you listed the items in example no. 5. It seems you put your pet ahead of the family... interesing.

Any way, most of the things on your list are very common to many of us. So my question to you is : what do you do when you realize this is pretty much the norm for so many people, and you suddenly become one of them ?

Almost forgot.

The answer to your question is; you get up the next morning and go to work as you have always done. Life has just given you one more opportunity to prove why you deserve to continue to exist.

I am pushed to my limits walking up a flight of stairs.

a reply to: bigpatato

There are only two responses to serious hardship. Live, or die.

My particular thinking, is that I can conceive of no threat to my dignity worse than becoming so old that I cannot attend to my own grooming, even dress myself unaided, and in prompt fashion.

I am seeing to it as we speak, with a healthy diet of dead animals, rum, beer, and cigarettes, that I never have to face that particular fate. If I were to be diagnosed tomorrow with some horrific disease however, I think I would have to have a very long bout of violence. Things have made me distinctly angry over the last few years, and some people are walking around without the kicking they are owed.

Survive and smile.

We could only know what to do in any given situation if and when that situation comes to pass. The vast majority of people don't have the slightest idea how strong or weak they can be when dealing with extremes, but one thing I know for sure. We, as part of the animal kingdom of Earth, are not amongst the strongest, the fastest or the most agile, but we surely are one of the most adaptable. We adapt, and we survive.

When I was 16, parents gave me a choice: emancipation or what they called "boy scout camp". Of course, I chose camp. When I got off the airplane in Salt Lake City Utah, I knew something was wrong- I was grabbed by a huge man that looked like Grizzly Adams and then thrown in the back of a windowless van with 3 other guys about my same age. None of us knew what was up as we had all been told different stories or nothing at all. We drove for more than 8 hours without any idea what was happening and then suddenly stopped. When we got out of the van I saw that we were in the middle of the desert (some very harsh country in Southern Utah called Escalante Canyon). We were then given our "last meal" of sandwiches and potato-chips, and then strip-searched. I'll never forget one of the guys, Marty, tried to stash a water-pipe in the potato chip bag before being searched, and then asked for the bag back and the Grizzly guy actually searched the chips and found it!

So, you have probably heard of this sort of thing before... It was called Outward Bound, or School of Urban Wilderness Survival- supposedly a way to help troubled teens. They gave us a blanket and a pocket-knife and marched us into the desert without any sort of explanation other than to tell us that if we ran off we would either die from exposure or get shot by a rancher. We had no food or water and it was basically torture. I hated my parents and could only think about food and beverages after the first day without.

To make a long story short: we learned to live like Native Americans, make fire with tinder/knife/bow, make dead-fall traps, coal-beds, etc. If we caught something, we could eat it. I remember hearing the other guys say they would NEVER eat a lizard or mouse- but we all did after 3 or 4 days on empty stomachs. We froze, burnt, blistered, starved, and were exhausted by marching for hours upon hours with little or no communication allowed. Towards the end we were isolated and had to survive by ourselves for 3 days (under hidden observation). It was absolutely crazy but they are some of the most valuable lessons I ever learned and the memories are etched into my brain (for now).

I guess my point is, Humans will do pretty much anything to survive, even if they don't believe they could ever do such a thing. There are many documented cases of cannibalism and other extreme means of survival like the guy from the movie/book Aron Ralston who cut off his own arm after being trapped by a falling boulder (very close to the area where my teen adventure took place). As I said, I hated my parents for sending me on this thing, but that was then. Now I am thankful that they sent me (or that I chose that over emancipation). The experience was more than just learning how to survive, it was about learning how to put your mind to something that you once thought was impossible. Being pushed to the limits can be a rewarding (and surprising) experience if you survive!

a reply to: seattlerat

I was put through sort of a similiar exercise. I won't go into detail. But it was sort of torture. Those situations don't develope or improve anyone at all. They actually ruine people in my opinion. By the time you're done all you realize is one ultimate bottom line: "people are far more evil, than your innocent old self use to realize". And any strangers can't be trusted at all. Even people close to you for that matter. It just ruins people, although the survival skills would be nice to learn, to have to learn them to live is totally stupid. Like if it was me and if I had the know how I'd definitely run off, live or die. Better to die free than to live as a slave in some BS program that's nothing more than a slavery business. That's all it is. Someone who thought it up is getting rich off what they think is helping people. But it doesn't . In many ways it makes them worse. Makes them bitter and resentful at society and the world. The only one thing those situations actually do like I said before is make you understand how evil people are and how corrupt the tyrannical system is that we live under.

Were you actaully able to ever patch things up with your parents? You must have hated them for that. I don't know that's way out there.

It really depends on the circumstance, you've given so many.

If it gets down to you vs me/family, then you get to find out why one of my nicknames was Tom the Impaler.

eta: Behold! This is a Gerber BMF.



There were two knives in this family, and they were only around a while, in the 80's. You could get the BMF, or the LMF. Most of my friends had both - it was one of those things like having a Harley or a Rolex Oyster. I did as well - only instead of a Rolex I got a Seiko Pogue which was just short of gauche in my crowd. My LMF is in the coffin of an old friend, along with a cutaway pin, who had one of those services where his friends sent him along with what he'd need the most in his afterlife.

My BMF is in the dresser over there behind me. A BMF is a loud rude overstepping of bounds short sword sort of thing to pack. It's also ok as a camp hatchet, hammer or major insult to civilized life. These days, no one carries one, as far as I know. But it was de rigueur at the time.

a reply to: Bedlam

Nothing wrong with a big blade. I train daily with a talibong itak and a ginunting.

But my preferred carry is a simple serrated spyderco endura. In my opinion the best designed fighting knife around made by a mass production line. Perfect size, balance and ergonomics. Great for a modified sabre grip. Which is hard to do with the guards on the big kbars

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
Which is hard to do with the guards on the big kbars

Believe it or not, there was a guy that taught knife fighting to a select audience in Munich about 48 klicks from the base I was at, the guard on the BMF is just great for certain forms.

a reply to: Bedlam

Id prefer a smaller gaurd like on the venerable applegate-fairbairn. Still can be used to stop slippage and slicing your own hand on impact. Can still be used for trapping and disarms. Can still pull a proper sabre grip. Can be used in reverse grip too if reverse grip is your thing. I just dont think they need to be so pronounced size wise.

Just so long as the handle is not round like the stupid fairbairn design. Blade orientation not important for stabbing but for slashing yeah.
Although slashing isnt ideal except in cutting up the inside biceps or forearm to "defang the snake"

Nice thing about knives is the technique is basically exactly the dame as a short sword.

Hey what are your thoughts on strait or serrated. I prefer serrated cause cartilage hard to cut through. But damned if i can figure out how to re-edge or sharpen. At least a chisel edge non serrated can be easily resharpened.