Summary Of Survival By The Numbers By Peter Kemmerfeldt

Have you ever wanted to experience living in the wilderness on your own? Do you think you would last very long? This question is what started the novel of Hatchet, wrote by Gary Paulsen. After being the only one who survived a plane wreck, though there were only two people in the plane, Brian Robeson had to survive until someone could find him. Brian lived in the wilderness for a total of 54 days.

What does it mean to survive? Have you ever imagined yourself in the Canadian wilderness without anything but a hatchet and not knowing how you ended up there? Well, a 13 year old boy named Brian has put his life and soul to finding a way to survive. He survived by using trial and error, by not giving up, and his senses to survive. He doesn't have any food ready, no matches, and no tools besides his hatchet.

Sixty days of carrying 80-pound backpacks, sleeping under a tarp for shelter in the Utah winter – welcome to “wilderness therapy.”

He uses the shelter to protect him from the rain and some animals. After he builds the shelter, Brian uses his hatchet to make spears and arrows. He takes branches and sharpens the tip of them to make arrows and spears. "He had worked on the fish spear until it had become more then just a tool. He shoots the arrows at birds and throws the spears at fish. "I know about fire; I know I need fire." Brian says this the second night he's there. Brian needs a fire because he needs it for heat, to cook food and to keep animals away. Brian makes the fire with his hatchet and a rock. First, he figures out that he needs some paper so he takes his 20-dollar bill and tries to burn it. Unfortunately, the bill just burns right out and leaves him with no fire. After that, he takes his hatchet and cuts small pieces of bark. Then he piles them up under twigs. Then he takes his hatchet and hits a rock with a great blow and sparks catch the bark on fire. He hits another blow and the sparks catch the twigs on fire. Therefore, he has a fire. This process shows that whatever Brian sets his mind to he can do it. About two months later Brian went to the bottom of the lake to see if there was anything useful in the plane. He brought up a survival package. There were many useful things in there like bandages and matches. Couple months later, just before winter was going to hit a man shows up in a plane. The guy in the plane was the man Brian had talked

James Rachels claims that morality is absolute. In his article Mortality is Not Relative, he discusses the fallacies of Cultural Relativism as well as the Cultural Differences Argument. Rachels believes that all cultures have some values in common and that there is way less disagreement between them than it seems. He brings up the example of the Eskimo’s and how they choose to kill the infants that they cannot take care of, “The Eskimo’s values are not all that different from our values. It is only that life forces upon them choices that we do not have to make” (Rachels). Another example of this would be how in some cultures it is wrong to eat cows because they believe that the souls of their ancestors and deceased are reincarnated into the cow. In our culture we would not eat our grandparents either, the only difference is we do not believe that they become cows, thus we would have no problem eating cows. “Now do we want to say that their values are different than ours? No, the difference lies elsewhere. The difference is in our belief systems, not in our values” (Rachels).

These days a fireman's job is supposed to prevent the fires. But in the book the fireman start the fire.

When is the proper moment to think? Is it better to think before, during, or after an action? The writer, Heinrich von Kleist, argues that one should think after an act. He uses the example of a wrestler, “The athlete, at that moment when he is holding his opponent in his grip, simply has no recourse but to act spontaneously, on inspiration; and if he begins to calculate which muscles to contract and which limbs to move in order to throw him, he will always draw the short straw and be thrown himself” (Kleist, 1810). In this example Kleist is correct that it is more appropriate to reflect on your actions rather, but is this logic acceptable in all occasions? Or when an individual should think be dependent on the situation at hand? In the same essay, Kleist states “life itself is a contest with fate”, however should the entirety of life be treated as a contest (Kleist, 1810)?

This quote said by Henry David Thoreau, “I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.” This explains the effects from being in the wilderness and the outdoors will affect your life. A outdoorsman also has to have the right equipment for what they will be doing. The outdoors has been a big part of my life, and has impacted how I live. To get equipment to go hunting and fish you need to go to a sporting goods store. The biggest two are Cabela’s and Bass Pro. Cabela’s and Bass Pro are similar and different in many ways including equipment, clothing, and locations.

Survival is number 1 in the book hatchet. Brian has to learn how to survive out in the forest where his plane crashed. He has to learn how to hunt, build a shelter, and find a good stream of water that is clean. The common thing is to keep a good mindset

In the beginning of the Lord of the Flies, the fire is used as a form of hope for rescue and survival. When the boys first arrive on the island, Ralph decides that rescue should be their main focus. The boys build a signal fire to attract any passing ships. He puts Jack and his hunters in charge of keeping the fire going. One day the hunters let the fire burn out. When a ship passes without seeing the fire, Ralph panics because they have lost a chance at being rescued. Golding describes the aftermath of the ship passing, “The fire was out, smokeless and dead; the watchers were gone. A pile of unused fuel lay ready” (Golding 68). When this incident occurs, Ralph

In the book, “Survival of the Sickest”, Sharon Moalem forms the basis of how vaccine originated to become a way of combatting the most dangerous diseases in the world. It began with a discovery from a man named Edward Jenner, a doctor from Gloucestershire county in England, where he began to understand a strange pattern when people who were immune to cowpox were struggling with smallpox and vice-versa. He started to test his findings through a small experiment where he injected cow pox into a group of young children and he was surprised to see that their bodies built immunity towards smallpox and supported his findings on the bizarre immunity of people towards either the smallpox or the cowpox but not to both. The rest of the chapter explains complex concepts

In chapter 9 of hatchet by Gary Paulsen Brian attempts to make fire. He starts off by ripping up the $20 bill thinking it would work as kindling, but he was wrong. There were tiny orange sparks, but they died down quickly. Next up, he finds some dried leaves and grass, but the same thing happens. Sparks, then nothing. Brian was left feeling hopeless. Then, he sees some tiny strings of hair-like material coming off of a tree, and gets a good idea. He rubs the hairs in his hand and it creates a fine powder. So, Brian puts them into a little like, attempts to ignite it, and there are more sparks, but not enough to make a full on fire. Then Brian realizes...he needs oxygen! He needs to blow on the fire as soon as he ignited it, so that the flame

Do firemen put out fires or start them? According to Ray Bradbury firemen start fires by burning books. The firemen burn books because it causes the reader to want to die for them and go crazy, according to his book Fahrenheit 451.

We all know that fire is man-made or natural. Sometimes it is on purpose or an accident but it always comes with risks. There are so many reasons how fires start but there are people who are here to help put fires out, they are called firemen. They are the ones responsible for helping the community. However, in the world of 451, firemen work differently.

Now that Jack is the new leader, he became increasingly greedy and mean and exiled Ralph and Piggy from the rest of the group and left them with nothing, except the symbolic origin of fire, Piggy’s glasses. But instead of using fire to divide the group they really needed everyone to come together to create a controlled fire so they can get off the island. While Ralph and Piggy were away Jack tried to create a signal fire, but instead he created a bonfire that ended up burning a quarter of the island down. Piggy walks up to Jack and told him (because he was mad): “‘You got your small fire all right.’ ...the boys were falling still and silent, feeling the beginnings of awe at the power set free below them” (55). Jack knew they needed a fire, but in reality Jack did not understand how destructive a fire can be, and ended up killing one of the members of the group with the fire he started. With the group divided and life in danger, the symbolic meaning of fire is displayed in this quote because it demonstrates the order and or chaos that is on the island and how nearly all of the social structure on the island could be lost as quickly as the time it takes to snap Piggy’s glasses in half.