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Writing assignment engels (surviving in the wild)
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It is a writing assignment about surviving in nature.
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Would you kill to survive?Sir Douglas Mawson did, or so there is said… Sir Douglas Mawson lived from May fifth, one thousand
eight hundred eighty-two till October fourteenth, one thousand nine hundred fifty-eight. He was born
in a farmer family in a town called Yorkshire, in England. But he moved to Australia with his family
when he was a baby. When he was older he became an explorer. He has done many explorations,
some in Antarctica and some not. He was very good at is job and he never failed. Like the time he
explored Antarctica with his coworkers in one thousand
nine hundred twelve. Their main base was at Cape
Danison, at the head of a bay they discovered:
Commonwealth Bay. It all started in December, when sir
Douglas Mawson and two of his fellow explorers left their
main base to gather some test pieces and scientific data.
They went for a three hundred mile exploration to
discover the inlands of the continent. While the three men
were exploring, one of them fell down a crevasse. The
name of the young man was Belgrave Ninnis, he was a
British soldier. But not only he fell down there, he took a
sledge with several dogs and a lot of their team supplies with him. The remaining two struggled to
get back to their main base because of scurvy and other diseases. It was also very cold and they
didn’t have their sleigh anymore, so they must have walked a long way. The weather was also no
help, there was a lot of snow, so moving forward didn’t go easy and due to the blistering wind and
the cold they lost lots of energy staying warm. They kept themselves alive by eating the dogs that
were left. Once there were no more, they ate the starvation rations. Eventually one of them died, a
man named Xavier Mertz. He was a mountain dweller and skiing champion from Switzerland. He died
from starvation, exhaustion and a vitamin A toxicity. Sir Douglas Mawson was the only one left. He
has also eaten dogs’ livers. So he suffered from the effect of hypervitaminosis A, but still he wouldn’t
just give up and he was determined to bring the scientific data and test pieces to the main base. Even
though he lost the skin from is hands and feet because of the cold, he kept going. Despite the pain
that he must have felt because of the cold, his dead coworkers and the hunger because there was
nothing to eat, he moved further. Well I guess he must have been very hungry because there is said
that Mawson has eaten his ex-coworker, Xavier Mertz after he died. His biography from two thousand
and thirteen suggest that Mawson may have set his and Mertz starvation rations at a level so low on
purpose, so that it would have sped up his coworkers death. They say he cooked and ate Mertz’ dead
body to survive. His boiled flesh to be precise. So that basically means that Mawson killed his
coworker and then ate his corpse. It’s hard to believe a human being would do such a thing to stay
alive. But then, most humans would do anything to survive. It almost seems too weird to be true…
And so thinks his descendance, they deny all claims against Mawson. Because they can’t believe
someone would do such a horrible thing. And I mean, could you blame them for thinking that? It’s a
story so ridiculous. But then again, a man in his situation may have been dead if he hadn’t eaten his
former coworker. Then two years later, after he recovered from his exploration he married. He
married a women named Francisca Adriana (Paquita) Delprat. She was a community worker and
British born writer. They had two daughters together: Patricia Mawson and Jessica Mawson. So in the
end, Mawson survived and had a good life after. Would you do what he did in his situation? Could you
survive like he did?
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