The US Army trains soldiers for jungle warfare at the 25th Infantry Division's Lightning Academy on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Students spend an entire day learning about jungle-survival skills such as collecting and purifying water, building shelters, setting traps for animals, starting fires, and finding edible fruits and plants.
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00:00 -Squad, the ammo will come, step right there,
00:02 and go flying up.
00:03 -This one is one of those hanging traps
00:05 that we were talking about.
00:06 They stick their head through the snare wire,
00:09 they trip the bait stick, and they go up, okay?
00:12 -As tension between the US and China builds,
00:16 the US military is shifting its focus from the Middle East
00:20 to the Asia-Pacific region.
00:24 That's why Army soldiers are training
00:26 not only to fight in the jungle...
00:28 [gunshots]
00:30 ...but also to survive there.
00:32 -Do not use this stuff to start a fire
00:34 and/or burn it as a fire fuel.
00:35 It has little fibers in it.
00:37 When you burn it, it goes off into the air,
00:38 and you inhale it.
00:40 It'll give you a sore throat.
00:41 -At the Army's 12-Day Jungle Operations
00:44 Training Course in Hawaii,
00:46 students spend a day learning survival skills --
00:50 how to collect and purify water, forage for food,
00:54 start fires, build shelter, and set traps to catch animals --
01:00 skills that could mean the difference
01:02 between life and death.
01:04 -This is a desalination station, okay?
01:07 We had a fire going this morning,
01:09 and we started at 7.
01:10 It went out right after the first class got here,
01:13 and this is how much water is in there.
01:17 But you see how clear it is?
01:20 -Hey, that'll do. -That'll keep you alive.
01:22 -That'll keep you alive, absolutely, right?
01:24 -In jungle school, instructors teach trainees
01:27 that people can only survive three days without water.
01:30 -And that three days is if I'm just sitting here
01:32 hanging out by the campfire, right?
01:34 If I'm up busting these gulches,
01:36 collecting, cutting trees down to build shelter,
01:39 foraging for foods, everything like that,
01:40 I'm looking at more like a day and a half.
01:42 -The ability to purify water is a critical survival skill.
01:46 The first technique involves building a layered structure
01:50 to filter water through three elements
01:52 found in the jungle environment.
01:54 -The first one here is going to collect any big particles.
01:58 The moss is gonna oxidize any of the bacteria
02:01 or diseases that's in it,
02:03 and then your third one is going to pull
02:05 any of the finer, smaller particles out,
02:07 and it's also going to add a little bit of a flavor,
02:11 charcoal flavor.
02:12 -The next technique students learn
02:14 is how to extract water from jungle vegetation.
02:18 -This is an above-ground still.
02:19 You're going to take a clear bag of some facet, right?
02:23 You're going to wrap up a bushel of green leaves,
02:26 and you're gonna tie it tight.
02:29 You're gonna ensure that it is in direct sunlight.
02:31 What's happening is that sunlight is hitting that bag,
02:34 and you're basically baking those leaves,
02:37 pulling all the condensation and moisture out of the leaves.
02:40 -That wouldn't be, like, considered cancerous
02:42 at some point, or in a bag?
02:46 -I mean, in a survival situation, right?
02:48 Like, I would want to, you know, feed my body with water.
02:53 -That risk over that reward, right?
02:55 -Actually, I think we're all, like, really wanting to know,
02:58 and you tell us the science behind drinking our urine.
03:01 -So, I would not, but if you are well-hydrated,
03:04 you can for the first time.
03:07 As you go on and on and on, and you get dehydrated,
03:09 dehydrated, what happens to the color of our urine?
03:12 -Dark. -That darkness
03:13 that is showing in that is the imperfections
03:16 that are coming out of your body.
03:19 -As the animal comes in, they trip the stick,
03:22 and it falls right on like that, all right?
03:24 Instructors show a variety of man-made traps
03:27 that can be used to capture animals in the jungle.
03:30 -This one is one of those hanging traps
03:32 that we were talking about, OK?
03:34 If you guys see this one right here, we're using a --
03:36 -Catching prey with traps is a numbers game.
03:39 Students are taught that for every 15 traps they set,
03:43 only one will work.
03:45 And each trap can be scaled up or down
03:49 to capture prey of different sizes.
03:51 -When the bird steps on the bone line,
03:54 I get caught in there, they're stuck, right?
03:57 They're not going, just like the chicken was this morning.
03:59 -Catching food is only half of the job.
04:02 Students are taught two different methods --
04:04 to kill or dispatch a chicken and prepare it for consumption.
04:09 After the lesson, students get to eat the meat
04:15 from the chickens they've dispatched.
04:17 -It's not bad.
04:23 Needs a little bit of seasoning, but right now I could eat
04:27 anything.
04:29 -We're talking about shelters today, all right?
04:31 Who here has built a shelter before?
04:34 A lot of you guys, right?
04:34 -Trainees learn about the different types of shelters
04:37 they can build with materials found in the jungle,
04:40 such as an A-frame or a lean-to.
04:44 -How much effort do you think it took to build this?
04:46 Look how many lashings it took,
04:47 or how much cordage it took to build it.
04:48 Does anybody think they want to build a shelter like this
04:50 tonight?
04:50 So, probably not, right?
04:52 -The trainees learn how to make lashings,
04:55 which bind the components of their shelter,
04:57 using materials like vines, 550 cord, fishing line,
05:02 and sinew, which can be derived from the dried tendons
05:05 and ligaments of wild animals they've consumed.
05:09 -It's a one-current theme every country will go to.
05:11 All right, you will find some man-made trash somewhere.
05:12 It's a way you can braid this trash together, all right,
05:16 and turn it into something you can use for lashings.
05:18 All right, so, give myself a loop,
05:20 give myself something to pinch with.
05:23 All right, I'm just gonna grab one side here.
05:26 I'm gonna twist this away from me,
05:28 keeping it between my fingers.
05:29 -Equipped with the knowledge of what works as a lashing,
05:32 the trainees learn how to use them to make rigid structures.
05:36 -If I lay these parallel to each other, all right,
05:40 I begin wrapping, all right?
05:42 So, what I'm looking for here is just making circles,
05:45 all right, back and forth.
05:46 All right, what we've done now is make these,
05:48 three, add them out, all right, that's rigid.
05:51 All right, these are a bit longer.
05:53 I can lay another brace between these.
05:54 All right, so, I built my A-frame off of them.
05:56 -I'll tell you guys, this is a basic-level course
05:58 of knowledge.
05:59 You guys are not gonna be experts by the end of this,
06:01 right, where you're gonna start a fire
06:02 with nothing but bare hands and wood.
06:04 But we'll go over some primitive methods.
06:06 -Students learn about the tools.
06:08 -We call it the hot-dog pencil.
06:10 -They learn about the techniques.
06:12 -And you're gonna make contact with your steel wool.
06:15 -And natural resources they can use
06:17 to start a fire in the jungle.
06:19 -You got your natural tinder, right?
06:22 So, tinder is gonna be that material that's fine,
06:25 that real fine material that accepts heat.
06:28 A way to make yourself a nice little tinder bed
06:31 is what we call bird nesting.
06:33 Twist it, get it nice and soft.
06:36 You can bend it and twist it.
06:38 You can rub it between your hands,
06:39 it's not falling off, that's what you want.
06:42 -After the lesson, students are tasked
06:45 with starting their own fires
06:47 using materials found in the jungle.
06:49 -There you go.
07:15 -So, go ahead, put this fire out,
07:18 and try to start a fire without your lighter.
07:21 -Got it.
07:22 -There we go. Lay it down.
07:28 -Hallucinations and death.
07:29 For this, I'm thinking more plants like mushrooms,
07:31 where, again, you can step on them,
07:32 and they release those spores into the air.
07:34 So, sometimes you don't even have to eat
07:36 or come into direct skin-to-skin contact.
07:37 -Students learn about which jungle plants are edible
07:42 and which ones are poisonous,
07:44 and they sample certain jungle plants
07:46 to determine signs of edibility.
07:48 -Test for contact poisoning by placing a piece
07:51 of the plant part you are testing
07:52 on the inside of your elbow or your wrist.
07:56 -They start by smelling the plant for signs of poison.
08:00 They rub it on their skin to see if it produces a reaction.
08:04 If there's no reaction,
08:05 trainees put the plant in their mouth and chew it.
08:09 If there's still no reaction, the student swallows the plant.
08:13 [smacking]
08:16 -Students learn about the different edible fruits
08:18 and plants found in the jungle.
08:20 -Tastes pretty good.
08:21 Not as sweet as, like, processed coconut.
08:26 It's not bad.
08:27 -Does it taste like coconut flavor, though, like at all?
08:32 -Yeah, very, like, mild, though.
08:33 So, not as strong.