Archive for April 12th, 2021

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 377

Monday, April 12th, 2021

I thought today, for Military History Monday, I’d do a couple of videos at the intersection of survival and military history. For reasons.

Short-ish: Have you ever asked yourself, “Self, how do I escape from a sinking submarine?”

If so:

  1. You’re weird. (Unless you served on subs in the Navy.)
  2. I want to hang out with you.

“Submarine Escape” from 1953.

Long: there are actually two versions of this on the ‘Tube. I’m picking the longer one because the shorter one seems to be cut off. The longer one seems to be a little chopped as well, but not as dramatically.

“Survival in the Arctic Tundra”. In which the crew of a C-119 bails out and has to survive…in the Arctic tundra.

The Saturday Night Movie Group recently watched “Island in the Sky“, one of William Wellman’s two great John Wayne aviation films. (The other is “The High and the Mighty“.) “Island” is in large part about the crew of a downed aircraft trying to survive in the Arctic, and in equally large part about the interpersonal relationships between transport pilots, and how everyone unites when a crew is in trouble.

Both movies get my thumbs-up seal of approval.

Also, I kind of like the C-119.

Random thought.

Monday, April 12th, 2021

In the previous post, valued commenter “Jimmy McNulty” made the observation:

Tourniquets are simple, not dangerous!

This is absolutely true, and I have no argument with Mr. McNulty.

But it did get me thinking.

It has been (mumble mumble) years (soon to be mumble mumble plus one) since I was a Boy Scout. But my recollection of Boy Scout first aid training at the time (as well as the Red Cross first aid training I went through) was that: you should never ever ever use a tourniquet to stop bleeding.

Am I misremembering? Is there anyone else who was a Boy Scout back in the day, or took Red Cross first aid training, and remembers being told tourniquet = bad?

I know medical knowledge grows and changes. I remember the wisdom on snakebite treatment has changed over time as well. I’m just wondering when and why this changed.

This might be one of those discussions I need to have with some authority like Ambulance Driver over a couple-three beers if we’re ever in the same place at the same time.