When Adventure Goes Wrong (And How To Survive) With Megan Hine

• Make sure to click the 'Follow' the show - It really helps the show, Thanks!
• Full episode with Megan Hine can be found here 

Megan Hine Highlights Reel – Show Notes
Introduction

• The Adventure Diaries Podcast revisits season four highlights as a lead-up to season five.
• This episode features memorable moments and lessons from survival expert Megan Hine.

Megan’s Adventure Story

• Megan recounts a tense experience building a rope bridge in a remote gorge, unexpectedly caught in crossfire between local tribes and rangers.
• She describes the chaos, quick thinking, and eventual escape to safety, emphasizing the unpredictability of adventure.

Survival Tips & Mindset

• Megan explains the “Rule of Threes” for survival: 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food.
• She adds her own: 3 months without company (for mental health) and 3 seconds without thinking (the importance of staying alert).
• Introduces the STOP acronym: Stop, Think, Observe, Plan—useful for both wilderness and everyday life to avoid panic and make rational decisions.

Adventure Mishaps

• Megan shares a story about returning from Borneo with a parasite in her foot, and the creative (if gross) method she used to remove it.

Call to Adventure

• Listeners are encouraged to stop procrastinating and step out their front door—adventure can be found anywhere, even in city green spaces or by joining a local climbing wall.
• The key message: Don’t let dreams stay dreams—take action!

Outro & Links

• Enjoyed the highlights? Listen to the full Megan Hine interview for more insights.
• Stay tuned for next week’s highlight episode featuring Paul Harris, the Warrior Walker.
• Find Adventure Diaries Podcast on YouTube: adventurediaries.com/youtube

Let me know if you’d like these notes in a different format, or if you want a shorter summary or bullet points!

Chapters

• 0:00 Adventure Diaries Podcast Season 4 Highlights
• 0:26 Megan Hine - Adventure Story
• 2:30 Survival Rule of 3 & Mindset
• 6:08 Adventure Mishaps
• 6:53 Call To Adventure With Megan Hine
• 7:25 Adventure Diaries Podcast Youtube Channel

Transcript

As we prepare for the launch of the Adventure Diaries Podcast, season five, we are revisiting each episode in season four to bring those highlights and call to Adventure Forward, to give you a reminder and a refresher, and keep you entertained until we launch with season five.

And starting at the beginning of season four, we have the highlights with the incredible Megan Hine , enjoy. Okay.

  

 And we, myself and two guys, we were setting up this rope bridge challenge. We were building this rope bridge out this hemp rope, which is like a nightmare. It's like, it's just so big and like leaves crap in your hands and like in these hot unit environments and it ends up getting infected. But we were just like rigging this ridge across this gorge.

And I was one side, I was just finishing off making the anchor points and just securing it all one side. And I was just actually just making like a little video of, 'cause that's what I tend to do because. The next day we come in and it moves so quickly that it's like athletes do of like envisioning, like visualizing, visualizing.

There we go. And it's like, so then I'll practice it over and over in my head, so the next day when I go through as we're going through so quickly, I can just put clip everything in where it's needed to go. And I was just doing that and like gunshots broke out around me and it was like ricocheting off the sand like next to me.

And so I, I dove into this little cave bit that was there and uh, it was there for a few minutes and then it kind of swung around above us in the gorge. So I was able to kind of leg it down and like kind slid down into the water at the bottom and sort of climbed up the other side and it's like these water worn clips like really smooth and managed to get out the other side and into this cave where the other guys were waiting.

And it just kind of went on. It was like kind of bouncing off the roof of the cave and then it kind of died down and we were able to get off down river and then back round to where we'd got the Land Cruiser parked and got back. What had happened is it was actually nothing to do with us at all though.

In that moment you're just like, what is going on is that there were two tribes and it was during. That was serious. I think it must have been 2017 when it was that real serious drought that was happening out there. And one tribe stolen a load of goats from another tribe and then been tracked down. And meanwhile, the local rangers had set an ambush.

So it was like three parties shooting at each other, and we just happened to be right in the very middle of it. Mm-hmm. Um, so it was just, yeah, an unfortunate thing. But again, it's like that lack of communication from the, you know, the local rangers back to the production. 'cause they would've known that we were filming there.

  
Yeah, so a survival rule of threes is like a generalized rule that allows somebody that's in a survival situation to be able to kind of help prioritize what's important in that moment.

'cause when you find yourself in that moment and just. It's so overwhelming. It's like, well, what do you need to do? It comes from the American military and they say that human body can go for three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food. So I think, you know, you find yourself in these survival situations and a lot of people panic and think they need to eat because we're so used to feeding our bodies all the time.

And actually, you know, the priority in the situation is not necessarily food. It's gonna be, you know, ticking a temperate environment is gonna be shelter. Getting yourself some shelter, if it's a. Desert hot environment, then it might be water. So it's kind of adapting those survival rules of three. And then I have like, I've got two more that I like to teach.

So one is three months without company. As humans, we need other people around us. We're very social creatures. And if we don't have that interaction, and this is something to think about, you know, for those of us, you know, if you are working online, you don't ever need to actually physically interact with anybody anymore.

So those three months you can start, your mental health starts declining in three seconds without thinking. 'cause a lot of these environments that I go to, you know, if you switch off for a second, that could cost you your life or you know, get you into trouble. So staying switched on. And it's very easy when you're tired and stressed and overwhelmed for the brain to kind of try to switch off.

And that's when accidents happen. And then STOP is an acronym that I use and I use it for everyday life. But I also use it in the world as well. I teach it is stop, think, observe, plan. So the best, I suppose the best analogy that I have for this is that if you are wandering along a trail and you stop to go to the toilet and you wander off the trail and you do your business and you pull up your trousers and you look around and you can't see the trail and it's in that moment, the fight, flight, freeze response hits, you know that adrenaline and you're just like, shit, where's the path?

Oh my gosh, I've lost it. You know, I'm really remote. I've lost a path. And that's when people make a major mistake of them like running around and like crazy and disappear, and then they lose the path completely and it gets them into a lot of trouble. Whereas actually in that moment, if you stop. And then you take a breath, try to calm down, get back the parasympathetic nervous system back in so that the body and mind start calming back down.

Get rid of that flash of hormones and chemicals that have come through when that fight, flight, freeze responses hit. And then you can think, get back into logic and reasoning. So, you know, are there any indicators of where the trail might be? Are there any clearings? Are there any footprints that I've made coming to here?

You know, really like the logic, logical part of my brain is like, well, I'm only 50 feet away from the trail. It's gotta be here. And then so I observe, I have a look around, look for those footprints, look for any broken branches, look for anything. And then I still can't see anything. So then I make a plan.

So, okay, logic dictates the path's only 50 feet away. How am I going to make sure that I bisect it so concentric circles ever wider or squares? And then at some point you're gonna hit that path. And it's something I. Like encouraged anybody to do that, gets overwhelmed. You know, we get that email that's like really triggering and you just wanna be like right back to them and just be like, and actually, you know, you stop and you think about it and you're like, actually I've interpreted this completely wrong.

Or, hang on a minute, let's stay with curiosity and find out. Why they're annoyed or like what this actually means, and then make a bit of a plan of how to deal with it. So, uh, so we, we don't react to stuff with, in that kind of like headless chicken manner

  

 

 Yes. Yeah, so I'd, um, I'd been out in Borneo and I'd come back and in my foot, like in the arch of my foot, I had a butterfly and there's parasite that like burrows into your skin and yeah, it has a little snorkel where it breathes through.

So it was, what I had to do with that was I was using a combination of Vaseline over the top of it and duct tape to suffocate it and then I was able to pick it out, which is pretty gross.

  

So in the next is a call to adventure. So a recommendation for an adventure activity, a place or something to get people inspired.

It doesn't need to be jumping out helicopter or dangling wranglers from ropes or, you know, getting shot at in, uh, in Africa. So what would you recommend as a call to adventure? 





Uh, stop procrastinating and just step out of your front door. Like there's some amazing places. Like even if you're in the middle of a city somewhere, you know, there's some incredible green spaces or hop on a train and, you know, within 30 minutes you can be in the UK countryside and it's just incredible.

So just go out there, do it. If you wanna, if you're interested in climbing, go and join a climbing wall. Go climbing. You know, just go, go out there and do that. And I know it's easier said than done, but you know, those dreams will just stay as dreams unless you actually step out of your front door and go and do it.

  
 So I hope you enjoyed those short, snappy highlights from Megan Hine. And if you haven't listened to the full episode, please go back and listen to that full interview. I'm sure you'll find it very entertaining, compelling, and informative, and look out for next week's highlights, which will come from Paul Harris, AKA, the Warrior Walker.

And then one final message from me, if you didn't know. Adventure Diaries Podcast is on YouTube, so if you go to adventurediaries.com/youtube, it will redirect you over to our YouTube channel. So that's adventure diaries.com/youtube, and we'll see you visually over on YouTube piece.