Field Note: 015
Hell Week Stress
What Collecting Pee in a war zone can tell us about our stress
otzi the iceman
This week is a fun one!
What collecting pee in a war zone tells us about stress and resilience.
How to have fun in nature with your kids.
Have you ever tried to figure out what the best backpack is?
How do you have a conversation about the multiverse and the Old Testiment at the same time…
Frontier Performance
Collecting pee cups in a guerrilla warfare zone
Imagine you're pinned down for 3 months in a high-intensity war zone. Guerrilla warfare is going on all around you, at any given moment. You have no idea when they are going to strike. And your job…run around with cups collecting pee, and giving the soldiers a survey about their mental health.
Let that sink in for a moment. I can’t even imagine what it must have felt like. The sounds of random bullets whizzing by your head, explosions going off near you, for 3 months stuck behind an enclosed barbed-wire fence….and you’re running around with jugs of pee.
In 1966, Army psychiatrist Peter Bourne embedded with a Green Beret team at a remote outpost in Vietnam and collected 24-hour urine samples to measure their stress hormones while they waited for an expected attack.
What he found was surprising: as the threat grew, most of the experienced enlisted soldiers actually showed lower stress levels, while the commanding officer and radio operator became more stressed. The likely reason was not that the soldiers felt no fear, but that training, experience, action, and a clear role gave them a sense of control. The leaders, meanwhile, carried the burden of information, uncertainty, and responsibility for everyone else.
The lesson is simple: the body does not respond to danger alone; it responds to what that danger means to you.
As threat levels increased, enlisted soldiers got into the zone and controlled their stress levels.
It's almost an anthropological experiment happening accidentally in the middle of a war:
Take extremely agentic men.
Give them a mortal threat.
Then prevent them from acting on it.
Their stress didn't necessarily emerge as fear.
It came out as activity, territoriality, aggression, jokes, arguments and an almost obsessive desire to regain control.
Cabin Fever in an extreme environment didn’t lead to the normal mental health issues we would think. It led to a sense of wanting to regain control.
THE TAKEAWAY
The useful lesson is that stress is not only about how hard something is. It is also about whether you feel capable, useful, and in control.
When life gets stressful, the instinct is often to try to calm down. But sometimes the better move is to create action: define the next task, narrow your focus, use the skills you already have, and do something concrete. The Green Berets in Bourne’s study seemed to handle danger better when they had a clear role and could act on the threat. The people carrying more uncertainty, information, and responsibility showed more stress.
So the everyday takeaway is simple:
When stress rises, don’t only ask “How do I relax?” Ask “What can I control, what is my role, and what is the next useful action?”
That shift—from helplessness to agency—may change how your body experiences the exact same problem.
Adventure
Family Fun
When my kids were little, one of the best activities we did with them was Geocaching. If you’re not familiar…its treasure hunting on an app…and its a blast. Nothing better than going on epic mini adventures and watching your kids try to solve puzzles while in nature and hiking with the family. Years later, and my kids still pop up the app when we go to new places to see what they can discover.
Gadgets and Gizmos
What’s the best backpack?
Over the years, I keep finding myself asking the same question…how do we know what a good backpack is? I’ve spent decades asking store clerks, hikers, and YouTubers, and they all have different opinions. I’ve personally studied the biomechanics and research in my Masters degree in sports science and rehabilitation…and still no conclusive answers. Turns out, for over 5,000 years we’ve been having the same argument.
Here are 3 fun examples:
The oldest backpack we’ve found: Otzi the Iceman. Found in 1991 by hikers. He was killed 5300 years ago, and froze into a glacier. His belongings were preserved, and his equipment showed us the complexity of their crafting. It’s the first example of using a framed shell. Check out the full museum here
The Korean Jige. During the World Wars, Americans coined this backpack the “A Frame” because it allowed them to haul such a big and heavy load. Check out more styles and designs HERE
The Hallstatt Bronze Age salt-miner carrysack — ~1300 BC, could carry around 60-70 pounds of salt! What I love about this is it literally has the same ergonomics we do in current-day backpacks, plus the added benefit that it has a “release stick” for easy dumping of the load. Natural Historical Museum
Mind of Dave
Interesting finds for the week
Fewer than 500 people have summited all Seven Summits, and no one has achieved Charlie Engle’s goal: To be the first athlete to trek from the lowest point to the highest summit on every continent. Discover Charlie Engle →
Multiverse, God, Schrodingers Cat, and the Old Testament all wrapped into one fascinating conversation. Video Podcast here →
I had no idea a list like this existed. 50 of the most interesting athletes. 50 →
Go find your edge. That's where resilience lives.
— Dr. Dave
Guild of the Wild — The frontier of human possibility. Field tested. Truth told.
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