Would agree the book "Endurance" is an incredible story, the determination those men had to stay alive is incredible.

Maybe the most difficult part of the journey was not on the ice, but when they landed on the tip of South America and had to walk across mountains to get to where they were going. I did not know that part of the story and book is pretty good in describing that hardship.

I did read the book years ago. It just happen to come on the Smithsonian channel and watched with my son and wife. Plenty of other examples of survival stories before gps, cellphones, and other innovations. I especially enjoy the tales of old whaling ships

http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship-Essex/dp/0141001828

Which is a great read.

I think how TOUGH everyone was back just before WW2 in rural America. My MIL says she never wanted to go camping because she was camping for the first 18 years of her life. Farm life was tough. My wife's grandparents raised 5 kids through the great depression & the dust bowl years on a farm in Oklahoma. In the winter if you woke up and wanted a drink of water you had to get the fire in the stove fired up to thaw the water pitcher in the kitchen. There was frost on the beds. In the summer if it was 110 outside it was like your attic in summer in the house. No fans since there was no electricity. The bathroom was 14 steps out the back door. Yea, those were tough people to survive just day to day.

Hey, now. We're not all softies here in the 21st century. I've heard about people in this day and age standing in line up a half hour on weekends to pay 5 bucks for a cup of coffee!!

JK. I read Endurance years ago, then reread it. Unbelievable test of courage. 4 tests of will, any one of which would have most of us crying for our mommies. Just so many ways this could have gone bad, but everyone held it together.

Didn't I read somewhere where they found a case of whiskey on the ice floe recently?

Society today consists of a bunch of weak pussies and sheep with no moral compass.

Present company excluded of course.

Man is just as tough as he used to be in the Shackleton days. Look at all the young men and women that go into the army/marines and have to fight for their lives. In the US this is certainly the case - WW2, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea etc. When you are put in a challenging situation you do whatever it takes to survive.

Also, when you look at those pictures, guess the age of the subjects. An awful lot of used up toothless 50 year olds looking like they are 20-30 years older than they are.

But yeah, lots tougher.

Every time I go over to my thermostat and poke a button to make the house warmer or colder I appreciate how easy we have it. I remember having to go chop wood to have enough to make it through the night. That was one weekend at my parents lake house. I hated it and don't ever want to do it that way again. I prefer a natural gas powered forced air central heating & air conditioning system. I feel the same way about my comfortable bathroom with heated tile floors. Outhouses suck.

My grandfather told me many times about hooking up the horse to the wagon so he hand some buddies could go 10 miles into town to the big dance. I prefer to use my car.

That only means that the survivors were tougher. The fact that technology has made it easier to survive doesn't mean we are weaker, it just means the weak among us are still alive. Life expectancy of a newborn in 1850 was 38 years. The life expectancy of a newborn now is 75 years.

Concerns were linear then. Modern society concerns are a mile wide and an inch thick. To me, this explains why so many soldiers long to return to the line...it's so much less complicated and success is measured by days survived.

wilderness survival hasn't been a part of life for a significant percent of the pop'n since... 10,000 BC? whenever agriculture and cities arose I guess

tho you could argue that movement of traders in between settlements entailed a lot of exposure and risk

I'm not talking about the people who want to be on TV either.

I generally agree with your 'shape of the pop'n distribution curve' comments, but the life expectancy thing is off. It's a common problem and comes from the high infant mortality before modernity - that is the main thing throwing it off.

Life expectancy has not gone up all that much (yet) if you measure at age 30 or so.

Besides certain military units, there are lots of people who have some need to push the envelope for whatever crazy reason. One guy who did it more than me tried to cross Canada with some friends. They pulled kayaks thru the snow for a few months, then put their snowshoes in and paddled for a few more months. IIRC, they got about 2/3 of the way across. Then he went to graduate school in biology.

Maybe he was a wimp compared to Shackleton?

Yup -- read that one. Though at the other pole, one of the best books I've read in years -- detailing intrigue, politics, courage, cowardice, ambition, and extreme conditions -- is about the decades-long search for the Northwest Passage:

Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship: Martin W. Sandler: 9781402740855: Amazon.com: Books

A must-read if you're interested in the 'astronauts of the 19th century' and the single most important turning point in U.S.-British relations since the Revolutionary War.

Not trying to be argumentative here. This is the kind of question that fascinates me.

Why does the age at which we start measuring makes a difference?
150 years ago a sickly baby died. Now he grows up to be a sickly man."If we can only get them through the first six months they thrive." But do they? Do they thrive because they are strong and it didn't show for the first 6 months, or do they thrive because the same type of technological advances that kept weak babies alive keeps weak adults alive?

you are constructing an average from a distribution curve - the average will shift if the curve has a different shape, e.g. if high mortality occurs before say age 3 (and it used to)

There are thuosands that live like that in the US today, they are called homeless. In many other countries the life still is typical.

Yes, we do have it soft so to speak, like Kings and Queens, all of us. There are some that prefer to live in the wild of a city or the outskirts of one but mainly they are insane. If given the chance, any human with a sound mind would prefer a dry 68 degrees with proper hydration, at least 40 grams of protein a day, ample fat and sugar intake, 6 to 10 hours sleep and maybe the opportunity to bust a wad.

Isn't that what we all really want?

Most in agricultural settings lived the world of "Man vs Wild" through at least the 19th century. You either beat the wilderness or you died, be it of exposure, starvation, or disease. Urban settings at the turn of the century much less so, though life was certainly tougher for them than it is today.

well, I just cannot equate agricultural settings to wilderness