Thanks for the info, guys. It all looks pretty hard, but possibly fun in a masochistic sort of way.

A former Army helo guy I work with was telling me about the skinning rabbits and eating bugs/worms and I honestly he thought he was exaggerating a bit. But when in the video the instructor dumps open a sack of bunnies, I guess the guy was being pretty honest with me!

I haven't yet been hungry enough to eat bugs. :eek:

I did refresher last year. We did 2 rides in the newer dunker. I think they call this one the 9D6, the old being the 9D5(the green tin can). The difference with the new one to the old one? Doors are harder to open and the dunker could go any which way it feels like, sometimes the rescue swimmers will help it along as it wants to stay up right until its in the water. It sucked but seemed to be more realistic..I've never ditched in a helo thankfully so I wouldn't know.

The rabbit was the piece de resistance while on USAF world survival. The other stuff we had was pemmican and food bars from k-rats along with tea made from lichens on the trees. Average weight loss over the time in the woods was easily 10lbs. I went through world in January on the way to Vietnam. Very interesting POW scenarios.

Next, the 'snake school' in the Phillipines. More yucky stuff that was protein and learning how to get water. The big thing is water. You can go quite some time without food but water.. start getting dehydrated and your efficiency goes down quickly.

Water survival at Homestead. Fun times.. wish I knew then how good sushi is.

The one I wish I had done was desert survival.

The one thing you learn is you CAN survive in almost any environment but it is mostly a matter of being prepared and will.

I have a buddy going through RSS right now, and his group ended up doing it 7 times... I think he said a couple times they gave them blacked out masks and you just had to 'feel' your way out.

so what's the name of the survival school for army helo flyers?

In '86, part of the AF water survival was done in the cooling ponds of the nuke power plant at/near Homestead. We glowed a little afterward, but it only lasted a few hours......:)

I did AF Survival School at Fairchild in March.. BURRRRR ... temps ranged from 5 to as high as 35 the week we were in the field..... snow... ice.... it was a blast. Yes ...we killed the RABBIT!!! Glove skinned it... and ate it... hell on a dare I sucked the eyeball out of the socket and ate it.... Not many bugs in March in the Mountains north of Spokane. I lost about 8 or 9 pounds that week. POW training ...that was a whole story unto itself. We actually had a Navigator type who got pulled from the field and washed back a class..... dumbass had his shelter collapse on him in the middle of the night from the freezing rain/ice and he didnt get up and fix it.... .when we found him around 530am ( he didnt show at the fire ), he was hypothermic from the cold and getting wet.

I went to water survival class at Homestead. Now that was fun!!

Good times!!

Did survival at Stead AFB. They didn't call it SERE then. My wife (USAF RN) went through Artic survival at Eielson AFB, Alaska. THey snared rabbits after which a couple of fighter jocks asked, "What do we do now ?" She grew up on a farm where then did their own butchering. Five minutes later the rabbits were ready to cook and one of the fighter jocks was dry heaving in the snow bank. :)

The best are the boats they have for the training...big boats with "US Air Force" painted on the side.

The wildlife exhibit at the school in P'cola had lost its' snake (Eastern Pine Snake) that it had in its' version of a zoo. They told us that if we found one that they would trade us for it. I didn't give it much thought but I'll be darned if I didn't step right over on while I was on point during one of the land navs. Ended up that the trading for the snake ended up being about a 1/4 canteen cup of chicken borth :mad: We were thinking like an MRE each! We ended up eating a few other scrawney little sakes anyways. Got something caught in my teeth and felt like I was going to have to sent back to the dentist - but lucky I ended digging it out with a sharpen twig :cool: Not quite Rambo sewing himself up - but hey - makes for a memorable time!

USMCFLYR