I thought it'd be worth sharing some of what I learned during the significant time I spent preparing to do full suspension in the wilderness. I think the combination of this method + location has a lot of advantages, and since I couldn't see any existing guides on this, I thought it'd be worth writing one. Although I plan to do full suspension, a lot of this would apply as well to partial suspension and I'll make sure to note which I'm talking about if there's any possible ambiguity. Also, some of this guide (especially the first section) would apply to other methods besides hanging, as there's also a general discussion on finding a good location.
This will be a pretty lengthy guide: I wanted to be as thorough as reasonably possible, and there's quite a lot of material to cover. I tried to divide most of it into logical numbered sub-sections, so feel free to jump around to what might be useful to you.
0. Introduction
There are a lot of advantages to CTBing in the wilderness. If you find a remote and private enough area, you will have a degree of privacy and solitude that you won't find anywhere in a city or town. The chances of you being rescued from a well-planned hanging attempt are already generally low (e.g. full death in less than 30 minutes for full suspension), and they're made even lower when you choose to CTB in a remote location. Finally, an additional advantage to choosing to CTB In the wilderness is that a lot of people just appreciate being out in nature and find it easier to CTB in such a place, myself included.
As for hanging in the wilderness, the basic idea is to find some natural object that you can use to hang from. This is generally a tree (and I'll be focusing on trees in this guide), but you could conceivably use a cliff edge or some other sturdy object, assuming you could securely tie a rope around it and it could support your weight.
1. Finding a general location to CTB
This is of course the first and in some ways most important step. The difficulty of this will vary depending on several factors, such as one's mobility (e.g. whether they have a car or not) and where in the world they're located exactly.
If you have access to a car, I'd recommend being prepared to drive a significant distance to find a good spot. The place I plan to use is about an hour outside of a major city, in a provincial park. If you don't have a car, hopefully you can manage to use something like Uber or a bus to get there.
If you don't know too much about natural areas around where you live, I've found Google Maps to be a useful resource – basically, just look for any green areas you can find on the map, especially anything that's large and labelled as a national or provincial/state park – those tend to be the best areas in terms of size and ability to find a solitary place.
2. Finding a specific tree or object to CTB from
For me, this was by far the most difficult and time-consuming step. For you, it may either be similarly difficult or much easier, depending on where exactly you're located. In some parts of the world, there are not many, or even any trees in most of the wilderness areas, or the trees may not be useful for CTBing, generally because the branches are too skinny and can't support much weight.
I live in northern North America, where most of the trees seem to be some sort of evergreen or aspen (I'm no tree expert, that's just what I found in exploring around where I live). These trees generally have very skinny branches that wouldn't even be useful for partial suspension, never mind full suspension.
For me, it took a long time to find a tree in a remote place that had a branch that could support my full weight, and was also high enough up off the ground. But I did eventually find such a tree.
For testing a branch, I'd recommend to just hang off it with your full body weight, for as long as you reasonably can (e.g. a minute or so), and also try to shift around left/right and up/down to put more stress on the branch in a way that would mimic what'd actually happen during a hanging attempt.
To anyone who really wants to CTB from a tree in the wilderness somewhere but can't easily find a suitable tree, my advice would be to just keep looking, and be willing to spend a significant amount of time traveling through different areas. In some areas the same species of tree will have larger branches than in other areas, and although I don't know all the factors involved in this, I think it depends on various things (the soil, how exposed the area is, the elevation, etc. etc.).
In a worst case scenario, if you really can't find any trees with a good enough branch that you can use but still want to try to hang from a tree, you can always consider just attaching some sort of anchor to the tree yourself. For example, there are portable pull-up bars that can actually be attached to trees, and which I assume could be used for hanging (though I have no experience in this area, so please test this out yourself if you decide to go this route). Otherwise, you could also just try to attach an anchor point to the tree yourself (e.g. nailing or drilling a wooden plank onto the trunk of the tree).
Finally, as a last important note in this section, make sure whatever tree you end up using is far enough away from where anyone is likely to pass by. Ideally the place you choose should not be visible from any trails in the area, and not in a place where people are likely to go off trail either. It's also a good idea to be at least a fair distance from any roads that go through or border the area that you're in.
3. Preparing to CTB
Assuming you found a tree and tested it to ensure it can support your weight, you'll probably need a few things to actually perform the hanging (other than the obvious ligature, e.g. rope), the most basic and important of which will probably be a step ladder or stool of some sort, to be able to reach the branch. It's possible to do the hanging without an object to boost you off the ground, e.g. by climbing up to the branch and lowering yourself off of it, but this could be very risky and difficult depending on how high up the branch is and other factors.
If using some sort of object to get off the ground (e.g. stepladder or stool), you'll of course need to carry the object to the location you've chosen. This can definitely be a pretty awkward and tricky step, since you obviously don't want to be noticed carrying a large ladder into a park. I'd advise trying to do this at a place and time where you know you'll be unlikely to run into anyone, e.g. early or later in the day. If possible, try to travel reasonably far off trail to avoid any potential chance encounters.
There were a few other tools I found useful in my own prep:
* a small portable hand saw, to saw off the smaller branches in the way of the larger branch I intend to use. You should be able to find one of these portable saws in any home hardware store.
* a shovel, to clear away any uneven ground around the base of the tree, where you'd plan to put a step ladder or other such object. You can also use it to increase or decrease the height from the branch to where you'll be standing, which can be useful for e.g. if the branch is not quite high enough for full suspension.
4. Actually CTBing
Once you have everything setup, you can of course decide on the details of how you want to go about it. Some people prefer to do it at sunset, or in the dark, or during broad daylight. Doing it in the dark can be tricky for obvious reasons, and if you decide to go this route and need to use a flashlight, just be conscious that if there are any people in the area you may be spotted.
There's also the possibility of taking some drugs beforehand to reduce the anxiety or pain or just make it easier to go through with. Some people recommend alcohol, but that also increases the chances of messing up the CTB, so I would advise caution there. Many anti-anxiety meds should generally be safe. As for me, I plan to just take some extra strength ibuprofen (400 mg) beforehand.
Finally, the other obvious and important choice is which specific hanging method you use and how you carry it out. I don't want to go into this too much as there are other general guides specifically on hanging, but I did want to say a few things. My personal preference is for full suspension over partial suspension as it leaves less room for things to go wrong, in particular SI kicking in and stopping the attempt. If full suspension is performed correctly, unconsciousness should be fast – in 10-15 seconds, or even less. For the knot placement, I plan to place it at the front of the neck, instead of the more common location at the back. The main benefit to this is that it avoids placing maximum pressure on the sensitive front part of the neck (which could obstruct breathing), and the pressure applied to the rest of the neck (back and sides), with full suspension, should still be enough to close the key arteries and veins. This knot placement has been demonstrated to work with full suspension but I don't know about partial suspension, and so would not recommend it for that.
*** Final Note ***
I actually plan to CTB myself sometime in the next couple days, so I may not be around to read or respond to any comments on this thread (I considered posting a "goodbye thread" but I honestly never really participated in this community aside from a few random posts, and decided I'd rather post a resource thread like this instead). However, I hope what I posted is at least of some help to some people out there. I know how difficult it can be to find a good method and then do all the preparations for it, which is why I wanted to share some of what I learned through my own experiences. I guess this could be considered my sort of "final contribution" to the world before actually leaving it myself. If there are any questions or concerns about anything I posted here, hopefully other knowledgeable people would be willing and able to help out others.
This will be a pretty lengthy guide: I wanted to be as thorough as reasonably possible, and there's quite a lot of material to cover. I tried to divide most of it into logical numbered sub-sections, so feel free to jump around to what might be useful to you.
0. Introduction
There are a lot of advantages to CTBing in the wilderness. If you find a remote and private enough area, you will have a degree of privacy and solitude that you won't find anywhere in a city or town. The chances of you being rescued from a well-planned hanging attempt are already generally low (e.g. full death in less than 30 minutes for full suspension), and they're made even lower when you choose to CTB in a remote location. Finally, an additional advantage to choosing to CTB In the wilderness is that a lot of people just appreciate being out in nature and find it easier to CTB in such a place, myself included.
As for hanging in the wilderness, the basic idea is to find some natural object that you can use to hang from. This is generally a tree (and I'll be focusing on trees in this guide), but you could conceivably use a cliff edge or some other sturdy object, assuming you could securely tie a rope around it and it could support your weight.
1. Finding a general location to CTB
This is of course the first and in some ways most important step. The difficulty of this will vary depending on several factors, such as one's mobility (e.g. whether they have a car or not) and where in the world they're located exactly.
If you have access to a car, I'd recommend being prepared to drive a significant distance to find a good spot. The place I plan to use is about an hour outside of a major city, in a provincial park. If you don't have a car, hopefully you can manage to use something like Uber or a bus to get there.
If you don't know too much about natural areas around where you live, I've found Google Maps to be a useful resource – basically, just look for any green areas you can find on the map, especially anything that's large and labelled as a national or provincial/state park – those tend to be the best areas in terms of size and ability to find a solitary place.
2. Finding a specific tree or object to CTB from
For me, this was by far the most difficult and time-consuming step. For you, it may either be similarly difficult or much easier, depending on where exactly you're located. In some parts of the world, there are not many, or even any trees in most of the wilderness areas, or the trees may not be useful for CTBing, generally because the branches are too skinny and can't support much weight.
I live in northern North America, where most of the trees seem to be some sort of evergreen or aspen (I'm no tree expert, that's just what I found in exploring around where I live). These trees generally have very skinny branches that wouldn't even be useful for partial suspension, never mind full suspension.
For me, it took a long time to find a tree in a remote place that had a branch that could support my full weight, and was also high enough up off the ground. But I did eventually find such a tree.
For testing a branch, I'd recommend to just hang off it with your full body weight, for as long as you reasonably can (e.g. a minute or so), and also try to shift around left/right and up/down to put more stress on the branch in a way that would mimic what'd actually happen during a hanging attempt.
To anyone who really wants to CTB from a tree in the wilderness somewhere but can't easily find a suitable tree, my advice would be to just keep looking, and be willing to spend a significant amount of time traveling through different areas. In some areas the same species of tree will have larger branches than in other areas, and although I don't know all the factors involved in this, I think it depends on various things (the soil, how exposed the area is, the elevation, etc. etc.).
In a worst case scenario, if you really can't find any trees with a good enough branch that you can use but still want to try to hang from a tree, you can always consider just attaching some sort of anchor to the tree yourself. For example, there are portable pull-up bars that can actually be attached to trees, and which I assume could be used for hanging (though I have no experience in this area, so please test this out yourself if you decide to go this route). Otherwise, you could also just try to attach an anchor point to the tree yourself (e.g. nailing or drilling a wooden plank onto the trunk of the tree).
Finally, as a last important note in this section, make sure whatever tree you end up using is far enough away from where anyone is likely to pass by. Ideally the place you choose should not be visible from any trails in the area, and not in a place where people are likely to go off trail either. It's also a good idea to be at least a fair distance from any roads that go through or border the area that you're in.
3. Preparing to CTB
Assuming you found a tree and tested it to ensure it can support your weight, you'll probably need a few things to actually perform the hanging (other than the obvious ligature, e.g. rope), the most basic and important of which will probably be a step ladder or stool of some sort, to be able to reach the branch. It's possible to do the hanging without an object to boost you off the ground, e.g. by climbing up to the branch and lowering yourself off of it, but this could be very risky and difficult depending on how high up the branch is and other factors.
If using some sort of object to get off the ground (e.g. stepladder or stool), you'll of course need to carry the object to the location you've chosen. This can definitely be a pretty awkward and tricky step, since you obviously don't want to be noticed carrying a large ladder into a park. I'd advise trying to do this at a place and time where you know you'll be unlikely to run into anyone, e.g. early or later in the day. If possible, try to travel reasonably far off trail to avoid any potential chance encounters.
There were a few other tools I found useful in my own prep:
* a small portable hand saw, to saw off the smaller branches in the way of the larger branch I intend to use. You should be able to find one of these portable saws in any home hardware store.
* a shovel, to clear away any uneven ground around the base of the tree, where you'd plan to put a step ladder or other such object. You can also use it to increase or decrease the height from the branch to where you'll be standing, which can be useful for e.g. if the branch is not quite high enough for full suspension.
4. Actually CTBing
Once you have everything setup, you can of course decide on the details of how you want to go about it. Some people prefer to do it at sunset, or in the dark, or during broad daylight. Doing it in the dark can be tricky for obvious reasons, and if you decide to go this route and need to use a flashlight, just be conscious that if there are any people in the area you may be spotted.
There's also the possibility of taking some drugs beforehand to reduce the anxiety or pain or just make it easier to go through with. Some people recommend alcohol, but that also increases the chances of messing up the CTB, so I would advise caution there. Many anti-anxiety meds should generally be safe. As for me, I plan to just take some extra strength ibuprofen (400 mg) beforehand.
Finally, the other obvious and important choice is which specific hanging method you use and how you carry it out. I don't want to go into this too much as there are other general guides specifically on hanging, but I did want to say a few things. My personal preference is for full suspension over partial suspension as it leaves less room for things to go wrong, in particular SI kicking in and stopping the attempt. If full suspension is performed correctly, unconsciousness should be fast – in 10-15 seconds, or even less. For the knot placement, I plan to place it at the front of the neck, instead of the more common location at the back. The main benefit to this is that it avoids placing maximum pressure on the sensitive front part of the neck (which could obstruct breathing), and the pressure applied to the rest of the neck (back and sides), with full suspension, should still be enough to close the key arteries and veins. This knot placement has been demonstrated to work with full suspension but I don't know about partial suspension, and so would not recommend it for that.
*** Final Note ***
I actually plan to CTB myself sometime in the next couple days, so I may not be around to read or respond to any comments on this thread (I considered posting a "goodbye thread" but I honestly never really participated in this community aside from a few random posts, and decided I'd rather post a resource thread like this instead). However, I hope what I posted is at least of some help to some people out there. I know how difficult it can be to find a good method and then do all the preparations for it, which is why I wanted to share some of what I learned through my own experiences. I guess this could be considered my sort of "final contribution" to the world before actually leaving it myself. If there are any questions or concerns about anything I posted here, hopefully other knowledgeable people would be willing and able to help out others.
