Fandom High School

It was a scattered-looking Atton who walked into the Danger Shop that morning. Sure, he could've gone to the preserve and done this, but whatever, he wasn't in the mood. The whole place was set up to look like the preserve anyway.

He had a box with him, and a stack of handouts. The handouts? Got handed out.

"We've been talking a lot about food and identifying plants, but really, the best source of food you'll get in a pinch is the animal kind." He shrugged. "If you're a vegetarian, you can set this class out, though I have to warn you, you don't always have the chance to be that picky."

He patted the box. "Inside this box, you'll find a variety of parts you'll need to create traps for small animals. I want you to go through the handout, find at least two traps that you think you could use out on mission, and build it. Bring a friend if you want to."

The box got another pat. "That's it. Go."

"Today, we're going to be talking about water."

They were standing in something not unlike the New Mexico desert, so no points to anyone who'd guessed that.

"Food's important, but you can go without for a couple of days. Lack of water, though, that'll kill you." Atton gestured at his surroundings. "There's a couple of ways to deal with that. Best thing is if you find a source of running water, of course. Any water you find out in the wild still runs a risk of being contaminated, but dealing with it is pretty straightforward. There's a ton of gear you can take with you to help: straws that filter the water, special canteens, or even pumps you can use. The filters will take out most of the contaminants, though if you want to absolutely avoid getting a water-borne illness off of it, you'll also want to boil the water, or maybe add chemicals like iodine, sodium chlorite, or potassium permanganate. The latter is usually sold as a water softener at hardware stores, so not hard to get."

He eyed the class. "Now, if you don't have the right gear, or there's no running - or even still - water nearby, that's where it gets interesting," he said. "Most of you probably already know this, but if you don't: if you leave something with water in it out in the sun, and you cover it with plastic, the sun will convert the water to steam, and when it hits the plastic, it'll condense back into water. This is vital to know if you want to get drinking water and you don't have any filters or pumps on you."

He squatted down by a small hole he'd carved out in the ground. "This is called a solar still," he said. "Well, it isn't yet, but it will be one. You dig out a v- or box-shaped hole in the ground. You put a container in it, like a bowl or a mug." He produced a small bowl and set it down in the center. "Now most soil contains some moisture. You might have to dig for a while to hit the deeper ground that retains more of it, but still, it's in there. You can also get more condensation going if you toss in some leaves or other vegetation."

He picked up a roll of plastic he'd taken with him. "This is your plastic," he said. "Now, I think you guys already know where I'm going with this--" He stretched the plastic out over the hole, cut off the necessary part from the roll, and then started scooping up mud and putting it down to pin the plastic down. "You'll want to make sure you get a good seal," he said. "Make sure it isn't in the shade, and then just let it do its thing for a while."

He stood back up. "A still like this won't get you enough water to last you for weeks, or anything," he said, "But it'll help you survive a few days longer. Another, better alternative is if there's trees around. Same effect, easier to do. You just put a plastic bag around a branch full of leaves and let the sun do its work for a while. When you come back, you should have about a cup of water. You'll need a couple of these to last the day."

He cleared the mud off his hands.

"All right, I want you all to grab some plastic and a bowl and get to work. There's some trees around here somewhere, too, but you'll have to look for 'em. The sim is set to speed up, so you should have something to show for your work at the end of the class. Go."

Today, the Danger Shop ran neither hot nor cold - instead, the class would find themselves in a clearing in a temperate forest. Atton started passing around hand outs as soon as everyone had gathered up. "So," he said, "If you've ever looked into diet at all, you'll find all this stuff about how your daily intake should be somewhere around 2000 calories. Which is nice, but that's an estimate for people who don't exercise much."

He passed out the last one. "If you're out in the field, you're probably involved in some grueling exercise," he said. "Your body will need more. It varies based on height, weight and age, of course, but you're generally going to want something upwards of 3000 calories. You can pack a bunch of food if you're going to be out, of course, but you're not always going to be able to do that, and there won't always be something to hunt."

He gestured towards the woods. "In this sim, you'll find a wide variety of herbs and plants that are found on this continent. Obviously, these are going to vary from region to region, so do your reading before you set off, if you can manage it at all."

He crossed his arms. "See, eating something wrong in this sim isn't going to do anything besides turn you blue until the end of the class. In the field, it could kill you. I need you go in there and gather some food, from at least five different plants, and try it. Use your handouts to guide you."

Now the class got a wave. "Shoo."

"So we've been talking about extreme cold a lot," Atton said.

They were in the Danger Shop. His desk was currently perched in the sand of a very nice beach. "But as some of you learned last week, in the field, you're just as likely to deal with extreme heat, and not every world has helpful potions to get you through it." He sat back on the desk. "Next week, we'll be looking into how to treat burns on the go, but right now, we're looking at the basics. When it's hot, you've got to fear heat stroke, heat exhaustion. Watch for the signs: both usually start off when you stop sweating. Then you get confused, dizzy. Your head starts hurting, you feel nauseous, maybe you get seizures. If this happens, you need to cool yourself off as soon as possible, or you're gonna die. Ice packs, sponge bath, jump in a tub, I don't care, cool yourself down."

He nodded towards the changing booths. "As per usual, it starts with the clothes. Dressing for hot weather is a little more complicated than dressing for cold, in its own way," he said. "The trick is to find something that won't make you shrivel up with the heat, but also won't expose much skin to the sun. Any, if you can manage it. Light, airy fabrics are important, but hats? Hats are lifesaver. And please don't be stupid and put on something black. You know who you are."

"Heat can destroy you painfully," he said. "Of course, in the context of this class, you probably won't be able to avoid exercise, so the key is to move fast, and spend as much time in the shadows as you possibly can. Always pack water. No, your own pee isn't a good substitute. It's not as sterile as it's cracked up to be, nevermind being completely disgusting." Beat. "Which reminds me, never pour it on a jellyfish sting or anything like it. That's an easy way to make the pain worse and introduce all kinds of bacteria into your body."

He cleared his throat. "But enough about pee." Yes. "You'll want whatever rations you take with you to be light. Don't eat anything heavy. Keep drinking water, even when you're not thirsty, and make sure it's cool, not cold or you'll give yourself brain freeze. If you know you're going into this situation, it's best to train your body to be used to it. Spend a couple of weeks in hot weather, and I promise you, everything's going to shift and adjust, widen your blood vessels, etcetera. Just be careful when it's humid. You still sweat when it's humid, but it doesn't cool you off."

He nodded at the class. "Now dress up and do two laps on the sand," he said. "After that, do what you like."

"Right," Atton said. For once, he didn't look particularly busy; he was sitting on top of his desk, something that was only remotely weird because said desk was sitting in the middle of the simulated arctic environment they'd been working in for weeks now. Luckily for the class, the square area they were in right now was heated - they'd have to walk a few dozen feet to hit the actual cold.

"I said we're going to be dealing with emergency medicine repeatedly during this class. Now, you'd think that in icy environments like this, you'd think the chief thing to know is how to deal with frostbite, hypothermia, snow blindness, and stuff like that. But those are conditions that are actually really easy to avoid if you know how. Next week, we'll deal with treating injuries - today, we talk about avoiding the big cold trappings."

( Frostbite, we more or less already dealt with. )

[[ wait for the ocd up! ]]

"So, this week we're going to talk about cold," Atton said, "And the next couple of weeks, too. Since this is a more in-depth class that already assumes you'll be out in the field for whatever reason, I figure we can stand to spend some time on it."

He was not, mind you, standing in his cold weather simulator. That could wait until next week.

Rather, they were standing in a large clothing store, with a whole host of different types of clothes sprawled all over.

"Today, we'll be talking about dressing to survive the cold," he said. "I want you all to pick out an outfit you think will keep you warm at minus thirty degrees celsius. Then we'll talk about what you did wrong."

He nodded at the class. "Go."

"Hey, class," Atton said.

He was sitting at the front of a perfectly ordinary classroom, though his butt was decidedly on his desk, and not his chair. "Welcome to the second day of Blow-Off Week, or as radio likes to call it, Introductions Season. I'm Atton Rand. I've served in two armies, been around for three wars, and nowadays I'm a Jedi knight, which is a fancy word for 'member of a group of monks with fancy powers who are also special operatives'." He shrugged. "Yeah, I don't really get it either, and I am one. I do know you never ask a Jedi about their teachings, though, unless you want to get a wall of cryptic mumbo-jumbo thrown at you."

Somewhere, Mical was getting a headache.

"So I've been around the block a few times," he said. "You don't make it through three wars purely by running on fumes and luck: there are things you can learn to keep yourself going while you're in a threatening situation - combat, infiltration, whatever - and it looks like things might go downhill. Now, there's no substitute for sheer, bull-headed stubbornness, and if you've already got that one, then you'll probably figure out half of what we're going to be talking about yourself if you haven't already. At the same time, having a hard head isn't going to stop your leg from bleeding out if you get hit. You need basic medic skills. You need to know how to keep your adrenaline pumping so you can keep functioning until you're out of there. You need to know how to get out of a locked room. And so on. I know all of that stuff because I've lived it."

He shrugged. "Now I know that at this school, the chances are high most of you know at least some of this already. Maybe even more than me, though I doubt it. So let's kick this off with name and year, and then you can tell me what 'in the field' means to you and what skills you already have that are useful in it."