Well, so imagine this: you and your dog go on the boat ride or jet ski ride… You crash on some beach of the island that is 10 miles of the coast. You are dry, have your basic EDC (every day carry) and you need to live on the island. Now you know that in 24 hrs there will be a search party looking for you so you will be found in 3-4 days top… It is windy, dry so far but it looks like rain and temperature is 40 degrees.


From left to the right: Matt Jachyra as Cyrus Harding and BrunerDog as Tops

My dog and I went for a walk on the beach far away from the city but close enough to the settlements. Beach is about 2 miles long. My exercise was not planed, just brought out on the spur of the moment already being on the beach. Not having prepared for it allowed me to see how I would act in a real life. Obviously I had a cell phone and UHF/VHF radio which for the purposes of this exercise were not working. Also I assumed that my backpack took a dunk in the water. I had no additional water or food.

My priorities:
1)Fire
2)Water
3)Shelter
4)Signaling
5)Food

Survey of the island revealed that we were not first who got marooned here. Signs of the plane crash and a broken jet ski gave us few clues that this place was visited before.

Tops and I picked up a name for out new home: Lincoln Island

Exploring the island was very important in order to give us an idea if any tribes or wild beast occupied the island.

In this gray and black situation we ventured upon this tree which was spurting back to life. We named it the “tree of hope”.


FIRE

Walking on the beach I found four lighters, all in different state of the decomposition. I took them home, broke them apart and made one working lighter out of them. I found some octane buster; wd40 spray cans that steal worked and had some liquid in them than can be used as fire starter.


Since it was very windy I used half buried box to light up the fire. Empty cans all around me could have been used as pots. Now here was my first SNAFU. My trusty windmill would not work. I used USAF fire starters to light up the fire. Worked like a charm but here’s the problem: I was out for about 2 hrs and my hands were getting numb. Kind of hard to operate tiny instruments with cold hands.


WATER

Water would have been little problematic since there was no sweet water in abundance. There were some marshes that had some and few containers that had some leftovers from last rain. With fire all the water collected could be boiled and somehow usable for consumption. My dog tried salt water which he didn’t really liked much. Well that’s not really right… he liked the water but his stomach didn’t.

Water storage was not a problem since there were plenty of containers around. I even found an empty cooking pan. I also found a magnum condom for water storage.

That's right... aluminum tray and foil and I'm ready to cook my lemon chicken

Other misc containers:

Diet or regular?

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Tops trying water from the marshes. Not shown is Tops’ stomach not liking water from the marshes.


SHELTER

Drift wood, broken dock ramps, half buried docks were scattered all around the beach. Picking up this material and bringing it over would be a hard task but can be done. This would create a strong waterproof shelter that would outlive my stay at the island. If I had to, with all the scrap metal around I could have made a knife.



And to make my new shelter more homey

Sooner or later question of clothing and footwear would need to be answered. Since this is XXI century, there is no need to go bare foot with a fig leaf around your waist. Well whatever floats your boat but not recommended in 40 degree weather. We found plenty of cloth and shoes growing wild on the island.


And even some pants…

And than some music...


SIGNALING

Tree draped in fabric I found on the beach would make an island stand out. Tires and oil can be dumped into the fire to create a smoke signal. Stash of dry grass can be kept to signal when light conditions go low or bad.

Or we could have tried a traditional message in the bottle approach


FOOD

I found some dead birds, fruit and mussels all over. I guess if really hungry they can be boiled, grilled, cooked or whatever.

Now what would island be without lemons and coconuts?

And now for medicine: I give you Aspirin. Hopefully Mr. Luizio didn't need it when he was having chest pain. I emptied out the bottle and there were still few pills intact.


After forging water when the tide was out and walking for many moons that way (thank you George) we came upon an abandoned park building and realized that this is where we parked our car. Disclaimer: no chickens, dogs or humans were hurt during my adventure.



THE END

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Names of the characters borrowed from "Mysterious Island" by Verne