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DOC-101 Immediate survival 3 min

Rule Of Threes

A triage model for panic: solve the thing that can kill you soonest.

TL;DR

Air and bleeding outrank shelter; shelter outranks water; water outranks food.

Search and rescue training over cold water
The first question is always time: what can kill first from here?

/ first_moves

Do these first

/ failure_mode

How this plan fails

The model breaks when the environment changes the clock. Heat, cold, smoke, injury, infants, illness, and disability can move priorities earlier.

/ avoid

Do not spend your first mistake here

  • Buying gear before knowing the failure it solves.
  • Treating the rule as exact math.

The rule of threes is not a law of biology. It is a way to stop your brain from sorting the crisis by fear instead of time.

If somebody is not breathing or is bleeding hard, the go-bag does not matter yet. If everybody is breathing but the room is filling with smoke, the water plan does not matter yet. If you are safe from exposure but have no clean water, dinner does not matter yet.

Use the rule as a stack. Clear the top danger, then move down. Re-check the top whenever conditions change.

The useful question is always the same: what can kill us first from where we are standing right now?