53 pages • 1 hour read
Laurence GonzalesDeep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary
Gonzales relays the story of Ken Killip, a firefighter and hiking enthusiast who set out on a multi-day hike with his friend, John York. Their destination was a particularly rugged and remote section of the Rocky Mountain National Park. The two men were at different fitness levels, and York soon left Killip behind. Killip followed in York’s footsteps, too focused on catching up with his friend to check his topographical map along the way. A storm began, and Killip waited for it to subside before going back out on the ridge. Now stressed and fatigued, he “began to miss important cues from his environment” (152). He hurried on, thinking he was summiting Mount Ida, but soon realized it did not match his friend’s description.
Gonzales cites research that shows that lost people rarely backtrack down known trails, even though that is the safest option. Instead, they tend to ignore reasoned thinking and forge ahead, “looking forward into real or imagined worlds” (154). Some psychologists used to think that people are born with an innate sense of direction, but now most agree that to learn to navigate, people must pick up on cues from their environment and continually update their mental models. Most lost people hurriedly try to find certain landscape markers and, when they can’t, become panicked and thrash around looking for a familiar place.
This panic is the result of the human need to know where one is. Researchers have found that the brain is like a “spatial cognition machine” (155) that has neurons called “place cells” that fire based on where you are (156). The brain can remap these place cells as it becomes more familiar with certain environments. For example, you may be able to walk around your own house in the dark, but you could not do so in a strange hotel room. The hippocampus stores these place-related models, but the amygdala generates the emotional responses that make you want to arrive in a certain place. Unfortunately, these emotional responses and their connection to place memory can prompt people to keep moving when it would be more logical to stay still. With emotion in charge, lost people may revert to primal instincts, searching out places with food and water.
Gonzales returns to Killip’s story, revealing that he continued down the unfamiliar slope despite knowing it was not Mount Ida. With darkness falling, he drank from a pond, ate some of his packed food, scared away a bear, and fell asleep. When he woke up, he decided not to retrace his steps down the mountain to his vehicle. Instead, he forged ahead, still determined to find his friend.
He convinced himself he had a strategy to find the right lake, and the more lost he became, the more urgently he traveled. He eventually injured himself by falling down a slope and spent another night outside. Finally, he decided to retrace his steps, but by this time he was completely disoriented, and he eventually passed out on another mountain slope. While Killip began his hike in good physical condition and well-prepared, compounding errors brought him close to death.
Gonzales interrupts this story to relay his own experience of being lost in the woods, which happened when he did not prepare for bad weather and did not keep track of the turns in the trail as he traveled. He and his friend were fortunate to be rescued by a lake boater they happened to meet. Gonzales cites research showing that people’s conscious brains are unable to reflect reasonably on their emotional reactions to being lost, which may manifest as “vertigo, claustrophobia, panic, and wasted motion” (164). Some psychologists call this “woods shock” (165). The only solution, Gonzales claims, is to “make a new mental map of where you are. You must become Robinson Crusoe or you will die. To survive, you must find yourself” (166).
Gonzales relays how Killip finally accepted he was lost and set about trying to survive. He built a shelter and fire. The author praises him for being able to “stop denying and begin surviving” (169). Soon after, a helicopter pilot spotted Killip’s parka and directed search-and-rescue to his location, saving his life.
Interestingly, children ages six and under have some of the highest survival rates of lost people. Scientists attribute this to their lack of mental mapping and expectations, as well as their tendency to seek comfort such as water or warmth in the moment. Conversely, children ages seven to 12 have the worst survival rate, perhaps because they can make detailed mental maps but do not have the same logical cognition as adults to act on them. Gonzales aspires to have learned survival skills that work in tandem with the raw instincts young children possess.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary
In 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke fell from a failing airplane into the wilderness of Peru. Koepcke survived with some injuries and quickly began planning how to escape the jungle, since she did not expect anyone to be able to rescue her from such a remote location. She followed a river, hoping it would lead to a village of some kind. In spite of her injuries and the many bugs living in and on her body, Koepcke continued walking for 11 days until she found a hut. Local hunters found her and brought her to a doctor. Gonzales credits Koepcke’s survival to her pragmatic strategizing and determined spirit, as well as her independent thinking. He claims that survival is rarely about “bravery and heroics” and more about having the right “state of mind” (175).
Gonzales recounts how he and his friend Jonas went to two wilderness survival schools. The first instructor, Kerns, took Gonzales and Jonas into the mountainous forests of Virginia to teach them how to survive for 72 hours while lost with no food. Gonzales admired Kerns’s “contagious air of calm,” and the “respect and humility” he showed toward nature (176-77). Kerns insisted survival is a matter of maintaining a positive state of mind, something that he struggled to put into words. Kerns initially approached survival training with a more macho attitude, driving people to their limits. However, he realized how dangerous this could be, since people become fatigued, hypothermic, and ultimately apathetic, which can result in death. Kerns relied on his faith to keep himself calm and hopeful when he realized his mistake.
Psychologists claim fatigue is more mental than physical and can even stop people from being able to sleep and recover. This greatly increases the chance of psychological deterioration. Gonzales posits that having faith in something, or committing to surviving for someone else, greatly helps people’s chances of living. The author compares people to animals, noting that animals have evolved some better physical traits for survival, such as fur, but humans have higher cognition and the ability to create culture. Many cultures’ rituals revolve around understanding nature and surviving in it, such as Indigenous American vision quests, in which young people go into the wild alone.
After his experience in Virginia, Gonzales visited a wilderness survival school in Vermont, which teaches survival based on “ancient native skills” (184). Gonzales observed the kids working together to build a fire, and their instructor, Morey, explained such exercises also teach empathy and cooperation, which are essential for surviving as a group. Gonzales was amazed that the children could make fire using a bow drill made of wood and a cord; it took him two days to make a fire using this technique. He realized the school was teaching the children the ability to foster the “Zen disciplines” of living in the moment and considering the correct course of action as they received new information about their environment (187). Gonzales felt that, in comparison, he was “asleep,” since he had been surrounded by the “safety, convenience, and efficiency […] the opiates of the modern world” (188).
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary
The author relays the story of sailor Steven Callahan, who attempted to sail across the Atlantic alone. Several days into his trip, Callahan’s boat was hit by something, probably a whale, which caused it to begin sinking. Unable to access his survival bag, Callahan managed to get into his life raft with just a knife. Gonzales praises Callahan for his quick thinking, as well as his ability to stave off panic and act decisively. He contrasts this with another example of a sinking sailor who panicked and inflated his life raft before attaching it to his boat, causing it to fly away in the storm winds. While most people’s perceptions narrow in emergencies, some survivors, such as Callahan, find that their minds are actually sharper. The author reiterates that “Turning fear into focus is the first act of a survivor” (196).
Callahan dove back into his sinking boat to find his survival bag and brought it back to his life raft. He focused on short-term goals rather than the impossible feat of finding a way back to land, and tried to see the humor in his situation. Fortunately, Callahan had thoroughly researched how people survive while adrift and used such stories as inspiration.
Gonzales again contrasts Callahan’s survivor mentality with the other sailing disaster. Debbie Kiley was leading a crew for a yacht delivery in the Caribbean. Some of her crew members had been drinking, leaving Kiley overextended and exhausted, and so they were particularly unprepared for a vicious hurricane. After the crewman panicked and lost the lifeboat, the remaining crew members climbed into another inflatable boat. Soon, the storm waves flipped this boat too, leaving the crew members clinging to the outside of it. Kiley struggled against the natural forces, her crew’s panic and hysteria, and her own emotions. After trying to flip the boat numerous times, she encouraged the crew to shelter under it, where they were protected from the winds. Knowing that rescue was unlikely at night, Kiley tried to accept her reality and come up with a plan. When sharks swarmed, the crew managed to flip the boat and climb in, but they fought constantly. Amidst her crew’s wild mood swings, Kiley looked inward for peace and began to pray.
Calmer, Kiley encouraged the crew to put warm water in the dinghy to protect themselves from the cold air. They refused. She suggested covering themselves in a blanket of seaweed. They refused. One crewmate began cursing God which, according to Gonzales, is the opposite of cultivating the right mindset for survival (204). With the crew deteriorating psychologically and physically, another night began. Kiley found her thoughts wandering to familiar suburban memories; Gonzales notes that many survivors mention vivid memories or hallucinations which may be caused by the stimulation of the amygdala.
Kiley continued to try to protect herself from the dark thoughts and moods of the other crew members. She asked her friend Cavanagh, who also seemed calmer, to make a pact with her: they would take turns sleeping and looking out for each other. Another decision that gave Kiley inner strength was remembering her black pearl earring, which, according to legend, could be given to Poseidon in exchange for one’s life. She tossed it in the ocean. Sadly, one of the weakening crewmembers began acting irrationally due to his dehydration the next day; he climbed out of the boat and into the water, where sharks ate him. Soon, another crewmember succumbed to the same end.
Strangely, Kiley then became convinced she would live, a common occurrence among survivors. After five days at sea, Kiley and Cavanagh, the only remaining crewmembers alive, were rescued by a passing Russian ship. Kiley now says that her advice to people is to trust their gut instincts and to learn to rely on themselves.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
Returning to Callahan’s ordeal in the Atlantic, Gonzales reveals that Callahan immediately began writing a journal about the conditions, the raft, and his state of mind. He consciously tried to manage his emotions and focus on survival. Gonzales claims Callahan embodied the balance of “active-passiveness” described by John Leach, in which people accept their situation calmly but still work to change it (217). The author emphasizes the power of one’s mindset, saying that survival requires both “utility” and “joy, for joy is the organism telling itself that it is alright” (218). Callahan felt his cognition, emotion, and motivation becoming more separate. His rational thinking adopted the personality of a captain who told him how to ration food and which tasks to do. This goal-oriented thinking is an important part of “wrenching some sort of order out of chaos,” a process that Gonzales argues is inherent to life (219).
Callahan tried to normalize his new routine, naming his boat the “Rubber Ducky” and calling the dorado fish he caught with a spear gun his “doggies” (222). Weeks passed, and Callahan faced challenges such as a leak in his raft and circling sharks. While he felt he was enduring “hell,” Callahan tried to recognize the immense natural beauty around him (225). Finally, after 76 days at sea, Callahan encountered a fishing boat. He told the fishermen that he could wait to be brought to land, and that they should fish first. He then drank his remaining five pints of water, which he had saved due to his rationing regime.
Part 2, Chapters 9-12 Analysis
The author builds his theme on Memory, Mental Models, and Bias with stories about getting lost. When Ken Killip became lost in the Rocky Mountains, he valued his mental model so heavily as to continue walking for days in the wrong direction. The near-outlandish stubbornness displayed by Killip in this situation emphasizes Gonzales’s point about overreliance on mental models. He became so committed to his imagined hike with his friend that he compounded the danger he was in to the point of lethality. While Killip survived, his risk-taking behavior motivated by his static mental model very nearly got him killed.
This discussion also connects to the author’s theme of Balancing Emotion and Reason to Achieve Focus. He quotes Syrotuck’s book Lost Person Behavior to say that lost people seem “irrational” since they “would be wiser and safer to stay put and get as comfortable and warm as possible, but many feel compelled to push on, urged by subconscious feelings” (160-61). In Killip’s case, he continued forward under the belief he was summiting the correct mountain despite multiple instances of evidence to the contrary because this made him feel more successful. This finding supports Gonzales’s broader argument that unfiltered emotions are often not conducive to survival and need to be balanced by rational thought. For instance, when Killip finally gave up and admitted he was lost, he was able to make himself safe enough to wait for rescue without emotion clouding his decision-making.
In Chapters 11 and 12, Gonzales presents dichotomous stories of survival at sea, comparing the two to give readers a clear view of what skills and traits survivors need. He starts with Steve Callahan, whom he calls a “perfect textbook survivor” (198). Callahan prepared practically and psychologically for the possibility of being adrift at sea. He had read memoirs and manuals, as well as packed a survival bag and extra-large lifeboat. Then, Gonzales explores the situation of Debbie Kiley and her crew, who had made no preparations and were mostly drunk when a hurricane hit. This comparison highlights Gonzales’s running point about survival as a skill that must be practiced. When both boats began sinking, Callahan remained calm as he boarded his lifeboat and salvaged his survival bag, while Kiley’s crew panicked, lost their first lifeboat, and flipped their second. This speaks to Gonzales’s theme about being able to make choices with emotion and reason. While Callahan used emotion to motivate himself and reason to act, Kiley’s crew acted on emotion alone and completely lost access to upper-level cognition. While adrift, Callahan focused on short-term goals and kept a positive outlook. Meanwhile, Kiley’s crew was overcome with emotion and often complained about their predicament. This calls to mind Gonzales’s theme of Humility and Humor, which stresses the importance of positivity in survival situations. Kiley, who survived the disaster, was able to keep up this positive mindset through prayer and humility in the face of the beauty of nature.
Gonzales connects these lessons to his broader discussion about lifelong survival, writing, “Our survival kit is inside us” (223). While the author recommends following Callahan’s and Kiley’s examples and using strategic thinking, prayer, symbolism, and short-term goals to remain calm and constructive, he also warns the reader against assuming that they can instantly channel such positivity and resilience. He advises the reader to build their psychological resilience throughout their lives, since these skills are not “going to appear magically at the moment it’s needed” (223). These detailed discussions create a more realistic sense of resilience and encourage the reader to consider how they could become more calm and capable.
