Survival tips
Buy Used Supplies
It’s amazing the kind of deals you can find if you just look. I’m not just talking about flea markets. You can find some great stuff on Craigslist. If you’re on Facebook, try joining some local yard sale groups. My wife has found a lot of good deals that way.
Visit Your Neighbors
You don’t have to become best buddies with them, but there is a huge psychological difference between an acquaintance and a total stranger. If you’ve visited with your neighbors at least a few times, they’re far more likely to help you and far less likely to attack you.
Add To Your Food Cache Every Week
Every time you go grocery shopping, grab some extras. Just make sure they’re things that will store well and that you’ll eat, disaster or no. If you do this weekly, your food supplies will add up fast. Just don’t make these food storage mistakes.
Go Camping With Friends/Family
Not only is this really fun, but you’ll get a chance to practice some of your survival skills.
Conduct Disaster Drills
Also known as a survival stress test. The more you do this, the less likely you and your loved ones are to panic when there’s a real disaster. Try to make it fun. Imagine a different type of disaster each time. You’ll fare much better if everyone knows exactly what to do.
Plant A Food Forest
Growing your own food is easier than you might think with a food forest. David the Good, of TheSurvivalGardener.com, has lots of advice to make planting a food forest easy and inexpensive. For a small investment, you can have fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, and perennials that will feed your family with little work. If you choose varieties that are native to your location, they will be easy to grow and take very little work after they are established. For more ideas, here’s how to create an edible food forest.
Get A Generator
If you have the space to keep it, a generator can be indispensable when the power is out. Make sure to get one that will have enough power to run everything you need such as your refrigerator, lights, and chargers. If you have a well, you might need a bigger generator and a special hookup so you can have fresh water when the lights go out.
Learn to tell where North is without navigational survival gear!
If you need the help of a compass but you don’t have one, you can use an analog watch to do that. Point the hour (short) hand at the sun and draw two imaginary lines between it and the 12 o’clock point. You will create an angle between the two lines. Draw an imaginary straight line bisecting the angle. The line point away from the sun is north, because the sun always goes to set in the west direction. Disclaimer: telling time by sun doesn’t work as effectively when you are too far up north or south.
Staying Cool in the Desert.
This may not be the best-smelling solution to preventing heatstroke when you’re out in the scorching desert, but it works. Take a piece of cloth like a bandana and soak it in urine. Wrap it around your head and it will keep your head from feeling the wrath of the sun. Heat stroke is the second leading cause of death in the desert, next to dehydration.
Create a thick fire signal.
A combination of fresh pine and spruce leaves produce a lot of smoke, which is what you want with the signal. Start out by building a small fire using dry leaves, twigs, or other tinder. Collect the fresh pine and spruce leaves and compile them into a bow. When the fire is up and smoking, put the leaves over the fire, making sure to cover it completely. This will cause the branches to burn intensely, producing even more smoke. Additional things to consider:
- Choosing the location – ideally, you want to build a fire on elevated grounds, such as a peak, top of a hill or ridge. Clear the area so that the fire will not catch onto nearby twigs/other flammables. If it’s too difficult to clear the area of debris, then the next best option is to isolate the fire with stones to control the fire.
- What creates the thick smoke? – Dry grass, leaves, pine needles, paper, wood shaving, small sticks are great for starting fires. To sustain the fire, you will need to find dry wood , full branches and anything similar that will provide a slow but long lasting fuel. To create more smoke; simply add living branches, wet leaves and even rubber materials.
- Don’t forget to thoroughly extinguish the fire when you depart your location or when you are rescued. The last thing you want to do is start a raging fire in the forest.