Outdoor Life Prepare for Anything Survival Manual (21 page)

SURVIVAL BRACELET

Get in the habit of wearing a woven paracord bracelet at all times. It goes with everything and means you’re never without a good amount of lifesaving rope.

SHOELACES

Lace your boots with paracord and you’ll never be without this essential item!

Having skills and experience in a wide range of survival techniques can take a person much further than gear alone. When supplies run low, a well-rounded survival skill set can keep providing for you and for those in your care.

In this second chapter, we will have a look at a diverse assortment of survival and self-sufficiency skills. These pages will help you in every aspect of survival, from shelter and water to food, medicine, and self-defense. But this book is of little use if you don’t pay attention to one particular cornerstone of survival—practice. A mind full of facts and data is better than a mind full of trivial nonsense, but knowing the information and performing the skills are two very different things. You need practical, hands-on learning before an emergency hits in order to make a useful difference—and you must learn these things for yourself because, ultimately, you are the only one truly responsible for yourself.

It’s high time more people decided to take responsibility for themselves. We live in an era when a professional is always available to solve your problems and there’s a 24-hour store stocked with food and supplies around every corner. People have become dependent on these support systems to the point of being slaves to them. Generations are growing up without the skills to provide for themselves, the knowledge to repair the things around them, or the ability to either improvise the tools they need or simply do without.

I have always been a big believer in practical skills. Even if your materials or supplies are lacking, a little creativity and some solid self-reliance can make all the difference in any situation, especially in an emergency. And once you’ve learned a skill, it’s with you forever. For example, you may run out of fishing gear, but you’ll never run out of fishing techniques. Your food supplies may dwindle, but once you learn to garden, you’ll never forget how you grew your own vegetables. A set of skills is the one thing that can’t be lost, broken, used up, destroyed, or taken from you during a survival situation. Skills are weightless, easy to carry, and they will last a lifetime.

Somehow, millions of people make it through life without learning these basic skills. They may not seem related to survival—but you just never know when you’ll be confronted with an outside-the-norm situation, such as having only one working car available for a getaway and a group of people who have never driven a stick shift. Here are a few of those things that you should already know—and if you’re missing any, you should learn and teach others, pronto.

PERFORM ARITHMETIC
You don’t need to be able to perform vector calculus in your head at the drop of a hat, but you should know more than just 2+2=4. When you’re trying to determine measurements for building, or doing a little bartering, you may not have a calculator available.

LEARN BASIC AUTO CARE
This is one of those skill sets you might think you have a good handle on—but it pays to be sure. At the least, you should know how to change a tire, as well as your oil and filters.

OPERATE A MANUAL TRANSMISSION
Whether your creaky old uncle scared you off his truck when you were 16 or you simply never had any other car besides automatic put in front of you, go find a friend who’s into cars and get driving.

HANDLE BASIC TOOLS
You don’t need to master a router, drill press, table saw, or belt sander for every possible need, but you should know how to handle tools. We’ll assume you can probably use a hammer or screwdriver without help, but make sure you’re good with the rest of the toolbox as well. A handsaw or axe can be trickier than you might think.

RIDE A BIKE
You never know when having to get somewhere in a pinch may come down to a set of wheels powered by your own two legs—and the cliché that you never forget how to ride a bike isn’t really true. You should definitely consider learning to ride a motorcycle as well.

Think sewing’s got nothing to do with survival? Wait until that first cold winter when your old coat is falling apart and the nearest settlement is a day’s walk through the snow. A lot of the skills seen today as mundane tasks or outdated pastimes were vital to our forebears’ subsistence—and might be again.

COOK THE BASICS
This doesn’t mean pouring boiling water over a cup of noodles. Basic cooking knowledge encompasses how to stay healthy, what wild foods are edible, and how to safely prepare the food you’ve stored and that you hunt or gather—as well as avoiding kitchen injuries and foodborne illness.

SEW
It’s not just a skill for little old-fashioned grandmas. Learning to sew means you can patch up a damaged piece of clothing or make a new one. It’s a skill that’s transferable to fixing other items and, to a degree, even to medical care.

PLANT A GARDEN
In this day and age, not very many people know how to keep a plant alive—much less grow a garden. Learning to properly cultivate plants isn’t just about having pretty flowers or a pot of herbs at your window; it’s another of our oldest skills—and one that you could potentially use to grow your own food.

Everything that’s in these pages can be considered a survival skill, but some situations are a little bit more immediate than others. After all, if you need to learn to garden, there’s probably time for someone to teach you. If you need to learn how to win in a fistfight, that’s a good thing to know before the brawl breaks out. The skills below will help keep you alive and unharmed when the chips are down.

READ A MAP
Don’t just rely on a GPS or smartphone’s navigation software. Know your way around a real map, on paper. Learn how to find where you are and how to get where you’re going—and you should know how a compass works, too.

BUILD A FIRE
This is one of humanity’s oldest and most important skills. Even if you have matches or a lighter, you should learn how to start a fire without them; it’s a skill that might save your life. (See items 101–104 for more detail.)

SWIM
You’d be surprised how many people don’t know how to swim (or aren’t confident in their abilities), and considering that more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, it’s a lifesaving skill. If all else fails, you should at least know how to tread water and how to float on your back.

RIDE A HORSE
You don’t have to make like the Lone Ranger, but in a hard-core survival situation, horses might be your best or only form of transport. Knowing how to saddle up and ride with some skill will keep you from being sore, laughed at, or left behind. Extra points for mastering the art of mounting and riding bareback.

KNOW BASIC FIRST AID
Even knowing how to take care of minor injuries can make a big difference in a difficult situation. Add in some CPR training and the Heimlich maneuver, and you’re well on your way to the foundations of medical care. (See items 89–100.)

TAKE AND THROW A PUNCH
You might hope never to get into a fight, but if push comes to shove (or jab, or hook, or uppercut), you should learn how to defend yourself and others with your bare hands. (More about this in items 211–214.)

HANDLE A GUN
Firearms are both a tool and a weapon, and, as such, owning one involves great responsibility. Plenty of people are unreasonably afraid of guns simply because they don’t know very much about them. Even if you’ve never hunted or don’t expect to have to defend yourself, take a basic firearms course at a local shooting range. You’ll learn how to safely handle and use a gun, should the need ever arise. (Also see items 225–228.)