Outdoor Life Prepare for Anything Survival Manual (70 page)
Read Outdoor Life Prepare for Anything Survival Manual Online
Authors: Survival/Camping
Know Your Lines of Shelter
Your clothing is your first line of shelter from the elements. Each extra layer is like another insurance policy to keep you safe, so insulate if you can. Seek shelter from heat or cold as best as you can. You don’t need tools to build insulated nests from castoff materials—think of the nests you’ve seen in nature, and create one that you can just squeeze into. Make it open and breezy to combat the heat, or make it thick and fluffy to fight the cold.
Without your gear, lighting a fire will be a monumental task. Considering the myriad of uses of fire, from boiling water to heating, lighting, and cooking, it makes sense to become a friction-fire-building master. Or you can take a shortcut by carrying multiple fire-starting methods on your person. Keep a lighter in your pocket, even if you don’t smoke, or get a survival bracelet with a spark rod in it. Know how to make a fire by concentrating light through your glasses. When your backups have their own backups, your lost gear won’t matter so much.
Scrounge for Nourishment
Catching rainwater and locating a natural spring are two safe ways to get wholesome drinking water without any tools or materials. What you don’t want to do is emulate the TV survival gurus who demonstrate drinking water out of puddles and waterways without disinfecting it. This is the fast track to dysentery, which can kill a healthy person in a short (or long) few days. Look for helpful garbage, like bottles and cans, which can be used as boiling vessels if you are able to get a fire going.
Foraging for food can be a pleasant experience, yielding delicious results when you’re at your leisure with a full spread of cooking methods and condiments to work with. But all those gourmet sensibilities go out the window when you are scavenging just to stay alive. If you don’t know how to definitively identify the local wild edible plants, stick with animal foods. Freshwater fish, worms, crickets, and many other critters are safe for human consumption. Just make sure that you cook them thoroughly in case they are loaded with parasites or disease-causing pathogens.
Diagnose and Treat Ailments
With no first aid kit, medical care becomes a whole lot more difficult. A lack of clean dressings or antibiotic products is a sure recipe for infection. Still, medical aid can be rendered if you have a working knowledge of the skills.
You can diagnose ailments like heat exhaustion and dehydration without supplies, and identify pressure points to slow bleeding. If severe bleeding does not stop with direct pressure and elevation, switch tactics and apply direct pressure to the right artery.
When you apply pressure to an artery, you stop bleeding by pushing the artery against bone. There are specific major arteries in the body where pressure should be placed (see illustration). Press down firmly on the artery between the bleeding site and the heart, closer to the heart. After bleeding stops, do not continue to apply pressure to an artery for longer than 5 minutes.
In short, you’re performing medicine as our ancestors once did. Use what you have to make what you need.
Keep It Positive
An upbeat, positive attitude and a generous streak of mental toughness can be literal lifesavers, especially under the dire circumstances outlined here. Surrounded by an emergency and bereft of gear, it would be easy to give in to despair and cease fighting for your life. If you can find little ways to maintain your morale and remain motivated to survive, seemingly insurmountable odds can be fought, and, for the lucky, fought and overcome.
You’ve read, researched, planned, and imagined your way through hundreds of survival topics and situations. This is great, but you’re not done yet. You still have to put it into practice. You should make a list of the most likely emergencies that could happen to you, your family, and your friends—and a list of supplies you would need in those scenarios. Make it realistic. Look at the things that governments and big businesses worry about. Storms, earthquakes, floods, and terrorist events are some of the most likely situations to address. Aliens, zombies, pole shifts, or sliding into a black hole? Not so much.
Next, start gathering supplies to provide for yourself and those in your care. Don’t break the piggy bank; you can get these things step by step. Buy things that you know you will use. Grab a couple of factory-filled water cooler jugs on your next trip to the store. Buy a few extra cans of food on your next grocery trip. Make your vehicle and workplace ready for emergencies, too. Don’t go into debt; just get your supplies before you need them.
Your third task: Become less dependent on the complex (and vulnerable) modern systems that sustain the First World lifestyle. Electricity, communications, Internet commerce, and clean running water are luxuries; you may have to do without them at some point. Become more independent by going without electricity periodically, making your own power, camping out for a vacation, and growing your own food (yes, even in the city; see the urban gardening section). Practice makes perfect—or at least close to it.
Your final task is the easiest, and yet some people find it difficult: Don’t let preparedness consume your life. It’s easy to get carried away with worry. You’ve probably spent time watching survival shows or reading about calamities. If you’ve actually lived through a disaster, many things in this book may have hit home, possibly dredging up painful memories. But you have to move onward and live your life. If you spend all your time in a bunker, fearing every new day, you’ll miss the things that make life great. You
can
plan for the worst and still hope for the best. The tenacity of the human spirit is one of our greatest survival tools. If you’ve made your preparations and done all that seems reasonable, you can rest easy, because you’re better prepared than ever before. You are ready.
Semper paratus, sine metu. “
Always prepared, without fear.”
Tim MacWelch
A
air compressors,
83
arithmetic, as basic skill,
86
arrows, making,
222
maintenance of,
86
manual transmission in,
86
baking soda,
121
batteries,
11
,
12
,
21
,
82
,
84
,
196
,
197
,
199
,
200
,
254
–
255
,
257
beer
repurposing cans,
317
birthing,
321
blackberry wine,
190
bleach, as disinfecting agent,
46
,
112
,
239
blowguns,
229
botulism, prevention of,
32
,
33
,
179
bows
arrows for,
222
making,
221
shooting,
223
bricks, heating with,
314
briquettes, recycled,
78
bug-out options and supplies.
See
BOBs; evacuation
calories, in food supplies,
35
carbohydrates,
30
carbon monoxide,
313
cars.
See
automobiles
cash.
See
money
charcoal, making,
308
chemical protection suits,
48
chickens, raising,
149
–
154
,
157
,
158
chimneys, residential,
118
chlorine, as disinfecting agent,
40
,
46
,
47
,
112
,
136
cigarettes,
13
cleaning agents,
121
clothing
hazmat suits,
48
survival-kit list of,
52
wool,
49
coconut water,
37
coffee, brewing,
198
cooking
as basic skill,
87
sardines,
105
cooperation, in emergencies,
237
–
238
,
263
CPR,
96
cyclones,
257
