What Is the Rule of Threes In Survival? Oxygen, Water, and Food Explained.
- Jacob Secor
- Jun 8
- 8 min read
What Is the Rule of Threes in Survival?
Survival is all about prioritizing the things that matter most in the situation. That being said, this is very specific to your application. In a scenario where you are looking to benefit your savings account, it would look like paying off your highest interest accounts first to avoid the money lost each month per your loan agreement. In a physical fitness scenario you are looking for that small step forward to create a routine that works with your lifestyle. Specifically here, we will be looking at a more granular level of survival, sustaining the human body.
When we are looking at the human body as a machine, you have input equals output. In the basics of sustaining that machine, or in this case your body, you need to make sure you are feeding its basic needs to produce the output (continuing to live and operate as needed). Machines need oil, fuel, and regular maintenance to survive. Your body has three very basic things that it needs or your existence becomes impossible.
The rule of three. This is all you have to remember to keep your body moving forward. On average, the human body can survive three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, and three weeks without food. I would really like to stress that this is an average. There have been casualties from a lesser duration of these three crucial items. We will delve a little deeper into each one of these three, but for right now just remember the rule of three.
Why Oxygen is Your Most Important Survival Need.
Oxygen. The most important part of this complex puzzle that is sustaining the human body. Like what we just learned, we really need it to survive and after approximately three very short minutes, lasting effects on the body may occur, including death. Take a look at this breakdown of the effects oxygen starvation has on the human body. Keep in mind, everybody is different and these are merely average timelines. Your situation could be more or less depending on health, age, existing conditions, and other factors.
What Happens to the Human Body Without Oxygen? A Timeline:
-At 30 seconds to 180 seconds: there is a high probability you will lose consciousness.
-At 1 minute: brain cells begin dying.
-At the 3 minute mark: neurons encounter a higher extent of damage and the likelihood of lasting brain damage becomes high.
-At 5 minutes: death is a factor that should be considered.
-At 10 minutes: coma and lasting brain damage are almost inevitable.
-At 15 minutes: Survival of the human body is virtually impossible.
Again, the side effects of oxygen deprivation will vary from person to person. However, this will give you a good idea on how your body may react. This is also a good time to really drive home that our physical preparedness will help our survival probability. Any time we can give our bodies a leg up, the better off we will be when we are pushing our bodies to their limits.
Other factors to consider with oxygen are external and environmental factors. These are things that we really don’t have a lot of control over. If you are in an area where wildfires are common, you will know that at times it can be a struggle just to breathe during the height of fire season. If you work in a trade, I am confident in saying you have heard about considering a mask or respirator when you are working with particulates. Other environmental factors could also be things like allergies or visiting a location at a higher altitude than what your body is acclimated for.
How Long Can You Survive Without Water?
After looking at how detrimental oxygen deprivation is to the body, three days seems like a step in the right direction opposed to the three minutes with lack of oxygen. However, three days is a cute thought before you start looking at what your body is going through during those three days. Three days is a generalization on how long a human body can go on average. Just because it says three days, doesn’t mean it’s going to be comfortable after the first 24 hours with no water.
Dehydration can start rather quickly within your body. Some early signs and symptoms can be:
-Feeling sluggish or tired
-Dry mouth
-Less urine than usual
If you choose to continue to ignore these early signs, or you still don’t have water available to you, additional symptoms will start to come into play. These symptoms can be:
-Headaches
-Muscle cramps
-Darkening of urine
At this point it starts to get miserable but you can still keep on keeping on for the most part. The following is a list of symptoms when you will really want to consider getting medical attention. Now, if we are trying to survive, this could be difficult if people don’t know where we are. If we haven’t developed a trip plan and shared it with someone, who can call for help if we miss target check in times (more on trip planning in a future posting)? If you start to see these following symptoms, you know things have gotten serious and you need to figure out how to leave the situation or sustain yourself through recovery of dehydration:
-Confusion
-Dizziness
-Fainting
-Heart palpitations
-Heat Stroke
-Hallucinations
-Seizures
The key here is to keep yourself hydrated, plain and simple. Always make sure you have enough water and a little extra for whatever it is you’re doing or planning for. It is also good to keep a register on your body. Look for the symptoms listed in this article. I usually watch my urine and can easily determine my hydration level. However, I am a man and it is easier for me to see what I’m wizzing out (sorry ladies).
It is important to keep in mind too that every person and body is different. What’s right for me isn’t necessarily right for thee. If you maintain a constant state of hydration, you’ll be setting yourself up for better success when it comes time to limited or rationed water. Other factors that can increase or decrease your resiliency are:
-Age
-Activity level
-Overall Health
-Height
-Weight
-Sex (male or female, not the act…)
-Foods recently consumed
-Diarrhea or vomiting
To wrap this up, because frankly I can ramble on about hydration for a while, you need water to survive. About two-thirds of your body weight is water. As an exercise, take your body weight, multiply it by 0.66667, then divide that number by 8.34 (the weight of one gallon of water). If you did your math correctly, an individual weighing 165 pounds can contribute 110 of those pounds to water. That is equivalent to 13.19 gallons.
The Mayo Clinic cites studies that show healthy adults should be consuming between 11.5 - 15.5 cups of water a day. This could drastically change depending on many factors like age, physical fitness, exertion, and temperature; to name a few. As a good starting point, try to aim for this 11 - 15 cup goal. Be sure to consult medical assistance if you are unsure what amount of water you should be taking in on a daily basis.
How Long Can You Survive Without Food?
Finally we move into our longer time allowance with the lack of food. Food is something that we all know and love. However, in a survival situation, it can be hard to come by. In the event you get stuck in the outdoors following a hiking trip gone wrong, all you will have is what you packed in on your back. For the doomsday type of folks, an event causing you to break into your precious stash of MREs and freeze-dried foods will leave you thanking yourself for the upfront investment.
As we’ve seen the human body is both resilient yet fragile. We also know that each person and their unique makeup will create a variance in what we can expect to see if we go without our caloric contributions. But what really happens when we go without food? Take it from your crazy Aunt Sue, the best way to stay in shape is intermittent fasting. What happens when intermittent turns into an extended stay?
After just one day, your body’s hard work in creating a glucose (or sugar) storage gets depleted. At this point, you may start to hear your stomach growling at you. You may also have a bad case of the hangries. If you are surviving with someone else, they will likely point this out to you. Your body realizes its glucose storage is depleted and it tells your liver to pick up the pace on production. This is important because that glucose is what feeds your brain.
On days two through three, your body turns into a fatty tissue burning machine. If you think this is the next way to burn weight, you’re probably right; just make sure you make a plan with your doctor if you choose this route. This is what ultimately feeds your muscles. Your liver will also be pulling from this nutrient source to keep your body energized. When your body is using this fatty tissue, it will be brought into your bloodstream and is used to fuel your brain. This allows for a lesser glucose consumption.
Roughly at the one week mark, your fatty acid reserves are depleted. At this point your body switches to consuming proteins. For all you gym bros out there, that means those hard-earned muscles are being eaten away to keep you alive. You will continue to see weight loss throughout this process as well.
Now getting into the two week mark, we are really starting to see the breakdown of your body’s muscle. The problem here is that your organs (heart, liver, and kidneys) also start to take a beating. You will see a degradation of these organ functions. Without getting food into your body, you will start to see other issues with your body as you continue to starve. Here is a list of some nice new complications you can expect:
-Bone loss
-Muscle weakness
-Loss of or thinning hair
-Shortness of breath
-Lowered immunity
-Loss of menstrual cycle (for all the ladies out there)
Basically, you’re gonna want to make sure you have enough food for whatever you are preparing for. In future articles I will delve deeper into types of foods, storage of foods, and identifying what is right for your application. But for now, let’s leave it at our current general level of understanding.
Applying the Rule of Threes to Everyday Preparedness.
Preparing for what life may throw at you is the only way to make things a little bit easier. I’m not saying you have to completely go off grid to satisfy the preparedness itch. However, look into the future, maybe even a month. Are you excited about that big hiking trip you have planned with your friends? Maybe next time you’re at the grocery store you will pick up some packable snacks that are both healthy and easy to stow away in a backpack. Is there a concern that the water you carry in your pack won’t be enough to get you through your trip? Be sure to stop by a sporting goods store and research what water filtration systems will work best with your application.
The other big part to this is realizing anything can happen in the blink of an eye. This is a crazy world we are all living in. Natural disasters are everywhere. The two most common things you hear people say in an emergency is: 1) I didn’t think it would happen to me 2) I thought I would have more time to prepare. Do yourself, and your loved ones, a favor and start by at least thinking about ways to better your current situation. When you’re doing that, remember the rule of three. Three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, and three weeks without food.
Stay safe, and get outdoors.
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