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Making Smart Decisions in Dangerous Places

What does wisdom really mean when lives are on the line?

In Wisdom Under Fire, conflict journalist and survival expert Robert Young Pelton explores decision-making in environments where mistakes are punished immediately. Drawing on more than four decades in war zones, failed states, and high-risk situations, Pelton argues that wisdom isn’t mystical, emotional, or age-dependent. Wisdom is the quality of your decisions—and their outcomes—especially under stress.

This isn’t philosophy. It’s survival.

Pelton dismantles the idea of “Yoda-style” wisdom. In dangerous places, wisdom is intensely practical: avoiding stupidity, managing bias, and choosing actions that increase your odds of survival. Many failures don’t come from ignorance, but from confident, unexamined assumptions.

Why Your Brain Can Get You Killed

Under stress, the brain defaults to ancient survival instincts that don’t match modern threats. Cognitive bias, overconfidence, and false pattern recognition distort judgment—especially among intelligent, educated people. “Gut feelings” are often primitive reactions, not insight. Training, not instinct, prevents panic and poor choices.

We fear loud, obvious threats and miss quiet, lethal ones. Wisdom starts with recognizing how unreliable the brain can be under pressure.

Three Levels of Decision-Making

Pelton breaks decisions into:

• Strategic (made calmly in advance)
• Tactical (made as events unfold)
• Crisis (split-second choices)

Most failures happen before the crisis, when preparation is ignored. Preparation creates options. Options create calm. Calm enables correct action.

Decisions That Mattered

Pelton shares real-world examples—from staying put after a missile strike in Ukraine to walking into a potential ambush in the Darién Gap—where correct decisions were based on experience, not impulse.

The Takeaway

Wisdom isn’t intelligence or fearlessness. Wisdom is clear thinking under pressure and choosing the least-worst option.

Train your decision-making, and panic fades. Others may call it wisdom—but it’s really practiced judgment.

Robert Young Pelton is a Canadian-American author, journalist, filmmaker, and adventurer known for his conflict reporting and for venturing alone into some of the world's most dangerous and remote areas to chronicle history-shaping events. His work often involves interviewing military and political figures in war zones and spending time embedded with various groups, including the Taliban, Northern Alliance, CIA operatives, al Qaeda, and Blackwater .

He has been present at numerous conflicts, from Ukraine to the the Battle of Grozny and from Qali Jangi in Afghanistan to the rebel siege of Monrovia in Liberia.

Pelton is the author of several books, most notably the New York Times bestselling guide, "The World's Most Dangerous Places," which provides information for navigating high-risk zones. He has also written "Come Back Alive," a survival guide, and his autobiography, "The Adventurist: My Life in Dangerous Places". His work includes feature stories for National Geographic, Men’s Journal, Foreign Policy and Vice. He has worked as a contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure and has worked for major media networks like Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, CBS's 60 Minutes, ABC Investigative Division, and CNN.

Pelton is also the founder of DPx Gear, a company that designs rugged survival tools and knives based on his field experiences.

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In Robert Young Pelton’s latest project—a reimagining of The World’s Most Dangerous Places—he begins with the building blocks of survival: turning raw information into useful knowledge and calm decisions under pressure.

When Pelton first wrote his guide, there were almost no online sources. Today, there are too many—and everyone claims to be an expert. More data will be produced in the next three years than in all of human history, much of it generated by AI. It’s like being dropped into a forest with no map or compass.

Drawing on hard-won experience in war zones, Pelton shows why gathering, filtering, and prioritizing the right information is now a survival skill. With Reza, he asks: If information built civilization, what happens when we lose control of it?

Pelton takes the viewer back to basics: the five senses. For most of human history, information was physical and high-stakes—a sound meant danger, a smell meant food, a pattern meant shelter or threat. Start there, he advises. If something feels “off,” your senses are the first filter.

The brain can absorb millions of bits of data every second, but the conscious mind handles only a tiny fraction. Overload leads to stress, confusion, and apathy—exactly when you need clarity. Bad inputs create bias and overconfidence in what you only think you know.

Pelton then explores the “joy of nothing.” If overload harms the mind, can silence sharpen it? Wilderness, isolation, and stillness can reset awareness—but too much isolation tips into anxiety, hallucination, and paranoia. The lesson: manage the amount and quality of input.

In the real world, social media and news are built to hijack your attention. Algorithms reward outrage and emotional extremes. Pelton and Reza call this weaponized information: content that makes you reactive instead of reflective. With traditional editors gone, anyone with a phone or AI tools can publish fiction as truth.

You must become your own editor and seer. Cross-check sources. Prioritize depth over speed. Build and protect your own library of trusted knowledge before it disappears behind paywalls, outages, or link rot.

Pelton’s message is clear: the filters you use to process information matter more than the information itself. Investigate primary sources. Question narratives. Strengthen your self-editing. In a wo

Robert Young Pelton is a Canadian-American author, journalist, filmmaker, and adventurer known for his conflict reporting and for venturing alone into some of the world's most dangerous and remote areas to chronicle history-shaping events. His work often involves interviewing military and political figures in war zones and spending time embedded with various groups, including the Taliban, Northern Alliance, CIA operatives, al Qaeda, and Blackwater .

He has been present at numerous conflicts, from Ukraine to the the Battle of Grozny and from Qali Jangi in Afghanistan to the rebel siege of Monrovia in Liberia.

Pelton is the author of several books, most notably the New York Times bestselling guide, "The World's Most Dangerous Places," which provides information for navigating high-risk zones. He has also written "Come Back Alive," a survival guide, and his autobiography, "The Adventurist: My Life in Dangerous Places". His work includes feature stories for National Geographic, Men’s Journal, Foreign Policy and Vice. He has worked as a contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure and has worked for major media networks like Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, CBS's 60 Minutes, ABC Investigative Division, and CNN.

Pelton is also the founder of DPx Gear, a company that designs rugged survival tools and knives based on his field experiences.

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The St. John’s Cathedral Boys’ School was founded in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the late 1950s as an experiment in turning boys into men through relentless hardship, wilderness training, and strict religious discipline. For four decades, the St. John’s system operated under a Muscular Christian belief: that suffering, hard work, and obedience would reform “undisciplined” youth and bring them closer to God.

Created by teacher Frank Weins and conservative journalist Ted Byfield—neither formally trained in education—the schools became notorious for their harsh methods. In June 1978, St. John’s was thrust into the spotlight when 12 boys and a teacher died of hypothermia on Lake Timiskaming, one of Canada’s worst boating tragedies.

In this episode, Robert Young Pelton—who wrote about his time at St. John’s in The Adventurist—speaks with fellow alumnus Pierre Bédard, editor of Stephen Riley’s new book God’s Paddlers: Canada’s Most Dangerous School. Bédard shares his research into the school’s hidden history: lawsuits, abuse allegations, and the culture of silence that kept many stories buried.

St. John’s began in a former Indian hospital in Selkirk, later expanding to Alberta and Ontario. The program blended intensive academics with labor and extreme outdoor challenges. Boys studied full days, tended farm animals, cleaned, did laundry, and sold goods door to door. They endured “swats,” strict religious instruction, and wilderness expeditions sending boys as young as ten on 1,000-mile canoe trips or 30–50 mile snowshoe runs. Many students were sent there because parents saw no alternative—an inexpensive way to offload troubled boys to strict disciplinarians, some later accused of abuse.

The 1978 disaster exposed the school’s long pattern of ignoring safety warnings. After years of controversy, the schools closed.

Pelton and Bédard examine the dangers of blind loyalty to ideology, questioning whether enforced suffering has any place in education or spirituality. Pelton suggests St. John’s often crushed confidence through repetitive trauma, a fate he narrowly escaped. Before his death at 93, Byfield continued promoting far-right ideology in Alberta.

Referenced Works: The Adventurist (Pelton), Deep Waters (Raffan), The Toughest School in North America (De Candole), God

Robert Young Pelton is a Canadian-American author, journalist, filmmaker, and adventurer known for his conflict reporting and for venturing alone into some of the world's most dangerous and remote areas to chronicle history-shaping events. His work often involves interviewing military and political figures in war zones and spending time embedded with various groups, including the Taliban, Northern Alliance, CIA operatives, al Qaeda, and Blackwater .

He has been present at numerous conflicts, from Ukraine to the the Battle of Grozny and from Qali Jangi in Afghanistan to the rebel siege of Monrovia in Liberia.

Pelton is the author of several books, most notably the New York Times bestselling guide, "The World's Most Dangerous Places," which provides information for navigating high-risk zones. He has also written "Come Back Alive," a survival guide, and his autobiography, "The Adventurist: My Life in Dangerous Places". His work includes feature stories for National Geographic, Men’s Journal, Foreign Policy and Vice. He has worked as a contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure and has worked for major media networks like Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, CBS's 60 Minutes, ABC Investigative Division, and CNN.

Pelton is also the founder of DPx Gear, a company that designs rugged survival tools and knives based on his field experiences.