When you’re up to your nose in swamp water... just keep smiling

There was something wonderfully uplifting about the tale this week of Daniel Miller, the Australian farmer who accidentally toppled his mechanical digger into a boggy pond. He somehow managed to survive for five hours after being pinned down by the three-ton excavator. The pictures of the scene, in which he is submerged but for his nostrils, like a hippo, made for strangely captivating viewing.

The genial farmer put his survival down to his Zen attitude, and a yoga posture which eventually allowed him to arch his back and call for help. The truth is that, as he recognises, he was very fortunate to survive. My own experience exploring from Rwanda to Afghanistan, however, is that when it comes to saving your skin, you make your own luck. So here are a few of my own pieces of advice for those tricky life-and-death situations:

1. Stay calm. Sounds easy enough all right, but when you’re gasping for air and the quicksand is sucking you down it’s easier said than done. Daniel did the right thing by taking controlled breaths and “doing a spot of yoga”. By meditating and watching the local insects crawl up the grass, his laidback Aussie style probably saved his life.

2. Don’t be precious. You need to drink water, especially if the sun is beating down and you’ve lost your Paul Hogan hat. So even if it’s a bit muddy and brown, take small sips to keep yourself alive.

3. Think! There’s no point in flailing about. It’ll only waste up valuable energy, when what you really ought to be doing is plotting your escape in a considered manner. Look around, see what could be used to help get you out of a situation.

4. Be productive. If you’ve got use of your hands then do whatever it takes to escape. Make a blade from a stone tool, sharpen a stick, craft a pick axe. A polar explorer called Peter Freuchen once found himself frozen inside an ice cave with no apparent way of escape. Since he’d lost all his tools in the blizzard he used his imagination and fashioned a knife from his own frozen excrement, which he then used to tunnel his way out. Remarkable enough on its own, but made all the more impressive by the fact that he also had to chop all the flesh off his frozen toes too. The episode brings to mind the immortal words of Crocodile Dundee: “That’s not a knife, this is a knife!”

5. Keep a sense of humour. If you lose hope then all your survival skills will fall apart. When you expect to die and give up – you will. Assume you’ll survive and you’ll last a lot longer. Try to keep that stiff upper lip and have a chuckle to yourself. Things are rarely as bad as they seem, even when you’re gulping down bucket loads of swamp juice. Remember, when you get out of the hole you’re in, you’ll have one hell of a story to tell. Levison Wood is an explorer and former Army officer