You’ve all seen it. Hollywood makes
films of a plane crash or shipwreck that cause only one or a few survivors to
end up on a deserted island. He or she– the main character– frantically panics
at first, maybe even screaming. Then a few months go by, the camera cuts back
to him or her, and now this person is an advanced survivalist with a wide
variety of skills and gear. They seamlessly kill and eat animals and make
impractical but cool looking shelters. Then, he, for the sake of drama, is
faced with some dire problem and has to overcome it with only his wits.
Of course, this is just for
entertainment purposes and is nothing like REAL survival. Real survival is
horrible. This is just the plain and simple truth. Hollywood wouldn’t make much
money, if the whole time there was just some city boy struggling to recreate
the bow drill that he’d seen on TV one time to get a fire going. They just
wouldn’t make money if they showed some surfer girl from California frantically
throwing sticks in a big pile to make “shelter”. Similarly, no profit would
come from the sad outcome that most unprepared people face in a true survival
situation. In real shipwrecks and plane crashes, even the people who initially
survive the crash die a few days later from making common mistakes, such as
drinking ocean water and pee, misidentifying poisonous plants and snakes, or
something else. Survival, in all truthfulness, is never pretty or entertaining.
The truth is that even experienced
survivalists, with their survival kits or gear, die sometimes when put through
nature. Of course, with that being said, most of the time, basic knowledge and
skills or gear can be a huge asset if you ever were lost in the wilderness or,
for today’s purposes, the SHTF. So, let’s set up a scenario to get you thinking
along the same lines as I am.
Let’s us say that you and your wife
get back from work, and you sit down on the couch to watch football while your
wife begins to prepare dinner. She kindly asks you to go pick the kids up from
school. You unwillingly stand up and begin to leave. She says something like,
“Don’t forget to talk to Matt’s teacher when you get there” or “Klay has been
having trouble with his asthma recently, so bring him the inhaler from the
pharmacy.” You hop in the car and dutifully drive to the pharmacy to pick the
inhaler up and then drive to the high school to pick up your two oldest. After
that, you go to the local kindergarten and get your youngest. You turn on the
radio as you drive back to the house, but then, all of the sudden, the radio
shuts off and the car slides to a stop. Sparks start shooting out of your
radio, and then the engine catches fire. A semi truck slams into the car
adjacent you. Your immediate instinct is to jump out of of the car, but the
lock is jammed so you break the window and exit quickly. After you are out of
harm’s way, you have time to ask what just happened.
You find out that ALL electricity,
almost without exception, is gone. You, without any survival knowledge
whatsoever, are forced to find your way home. You have stored food and other
preps at home. However, none of it will matter, unless you make it home. In
essence, you let your entire family down because you didn’t know what to do and
how to survive off the land. The truth is that you could’ve made it home
quickly and easily if you had had only some basic navigation skills and some
basic hunting, fishing, and trapping know-how, but you didn’t know how. So all
of your prepping was futile. One EMP hits, when you don’t have your preps close
by, and you die almost instantly.
Obviously, there are various
situations where you would need to get home when the SHTF, but what about when
you need to get OUT of home. Yes, survivalism does play a key role in almost
all realistic bug out plans. For another scenario, let’s consider that you and
your family were already home when the SHTF, and you have been waiting out the
riots in your house with your preps. You begin to fear that looting may spread
into your neighborhood, and just as that thought crosses your mind, a Molotov
cocktail flies through your window exploding on impact. You grab what you can
and run out the back door with your family. Luckily, you make it into the
woods, away from all of the crime and the chaos. Your kids are distraught
because the house is burned down.
All you managed to grab was your bug
out bag, a small 22. rifle, and some take down arrows. What you do with those can be the difference between life
and death. A wise survivalist would know of several uses for each tool and
exactly how to use them, but you are not a wise survivalist. On the contrary,
you aren’t a survivalist at all. You have no clue what to do; you throw the
arrows away and lighten your load by getting rid of some of the gear in your
back pack. Unfortunately, you lightened your load a bit too much; a month later
all of your kids are dead from starvation, and your wife is dead from exposure.
You wish you hadn’t left those take down arrows because you could have used
them for a handmade bow, which could have provided you with food without making
as much noise as the rifle. You also wish that you hadn’t relied on your own
primitive fire-starting skills so much that you had left your lighter at the
house so that you could have kept your family warm and protected them with
shelter. So, now that you know the why, it’s time to learn the what and how.
What is survivalism and how does it
differ from prepping. Survivalism is the skill of Bushcraft, and it holds
within its own category things like hunting, trapping, fishing, fire starting,
shelter making, water purifying, and more. It differs from prepping, because it
is more orientated on living off the land with little or no equipment, while
prepping tends to focus on using your gear to keep your lifestyle as happy and
healthy as possible during catastrophes. There is a lot of crossover between the
two terms, and the reason for that is because they go hand in hand. Prepping
can never be realistic unless you have survivalism to supplement it and vice
versa. The point I’m trying to make is that you must have survivalism in order
to prep. There is just no way around it.
So, now you know you must have, at
the very least, some basic survival knowledge. Where do you start? Well, you
can begin by reading some books and watching some YouTube videos. Remember, the
Internet has almost everything on it. You just need to know where to look. I
will supply you with some knowledge, nevertheless.
- Never drink pee! It will dehydrate you more if you do so. The high ammonia and salt presence within the urine will in fact make you sick, despite what some may say. A good way of making urine or salt water potable is called distilling. One method of distilling, commonly used by survivalists, is to make a solar still. Use the Internet to help you figure out what that is and how to make one.
- Do not guess whether plants or insects are edible…ever! Only make well-educated decisions. Making a mistake would almost definitely kill you. Various apps and field manuals have good guides to know exactly what you can and what you can not eat.
- Never expend more energy on food than will be given back by whatever you eat! Don’t spend a lot of strenuous activity to get one coconut, so on and so forth.
- If you have a non-digital watch, then you can find what direction is true north. Point the hour hand at the sun and bisect that with the 12 o’clock mark and the end result is none other than true North. That will massively help you with navigation, if you do not have a compass.
- In order to start a fire, various methods could be used in a survival situation. Learn those methods. When the time comes, choose which one is best for your situation. Some possibilities are: bow drill, fire plow, fire drill, and flint and steel. In general, remember that friction creates heat, and heat creates fire! Therefore, make max friction. Books and TV shows are great for learning all of those different ways to start a fire also.
- Oh, no! You are super thirsty, and the only water in sight is a murky swamp! You dare not drink from that, because various bacteria and poop may be in the water. You have no immediate means of purifying it, so what do you do? The answer is to move four feet away from the edge of the water and dig a hole approximately two feet deep. Remember that water seeks its own level, so naturally the water from the swamp should filter through all of the dirt and sand and end up forming a muddy puddle in the bottom of your dug hole. This process may take a while, but it will be much better than risking it on drinking swamp water. The water that collects may still look dirty, but no bacteria or sediment will have had time to develop, which means pure water!
- Keep your knives sharp and well oiled, and in general, take good care of all of your survival gear so that when the time comes, they’ll take care of you.
- Remember, also, that you need to put your skills into practice. Everything I’ve just listed are things that can be practiced, and thus, should be practiced.
In conclusion, I’ve shown you why
survival is important to prepping, what survival is, how it differs from
prepping, and how to become a basic survivalist. Never underestimate the
importance of survivalism and keeping your survival knowledge sharpened. I hope
that you learned a lot and were entertained. God bless you.
From the Survival Blog
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