Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

Gonzales, a lifelong risk-taker, is at times dismissive and borderline disdainful of the comforts of modern life, while waxing vibrantly poetic about the beauty of nature. He has been testing his survival skills in the Texan wilderness since teenagerhood, and his preference for natural settings is clear in his prose alone. He notes that people are increasingly participating in the risk-taking sports he prefers, such as surfing, rafting, bungee-jumping, or rock-climbing, because such pursuits are becoming more normalized and accessible. However, unlike the easy pleasures of modern life, he cautions the reader to engage in these activities carefully and thoughtfully.

He feels the society has left most people woefully unprepared for the rigors of surviving in nature. The comforts of urban living have rendered traditional survival skills, such as navigation, fire-starting, hunting, and foraging, largely unnecessary. Instead, most modern people’s basic needs are easily met in societies that offer “safety” as well as “convenience, and efficiency,” which the author calls “the opiates of the modern world […] since they put our primal senses and awareness to sleep (188). Gonzales emphasizes people’s naivete and unreadiness to take on nature and the elements in a life-or-death emergency, writing, “The environment we’re used to is designed to sustain us.