Wilderness Survival-2

Okay, let us start packing our backpack. One thing I should mention here while we are still at the beginning and some of you are possibly looking for that perfect backpack. I prefer a backpack with an outside frame. Many things can be hung on the frame outside the pack. Also the frame can be used alone to pack such things as a haunch of venison or other large items. If you already have a pack that you like and it does not have an outside frame, do not worry too much about it. Either use it as it is or make your own frame for the pack you have. One of my packs is an army pack for which I made a frame from 1 x2s and some canvas.

The first thing to have for your pack is a good large knife. This is one of the items that can hang on the outside of the pack. I like a good, well made, fixed blade knife for this purpose. You can still carry a sturdy pocket folder or even another smaller belt knife. I also carry a folding camp saw and a hatchet. I know it sounds like a lot but remember, you may want to survive for a fairly long time. We are also going to need a firearm and ammo. Here is where we get into some trouble of knowing what to take. My suggestion is a combination .22 caliber/.410 over and under. The reason I pick this weapon is that it can be had as a takedown weapon, both the .22 and the .410 are the quietest firearms of their style and we need quiet if we are going to survive. I also have a .22 pistol in my pack but that is a personal choice. By the way, a .22 will bring down a whitetail deer with one well placed shot. However, this can be tricky and should only be tried in a must survive situation. If you are going to depend on deer sized game for food it might be better to eliminate the .22 handgun and carry a .357 or .44 caliber handgun. My only reason for not doing so is that I would need another size of ammo and the noise factor, but it definitely is worth considering. I would carry a brick (500 rounds) of .22 ammo and about 100 rounds of .410 shells, with 25 of those being slugs.

Now that you have a good knife, guns, saw, hatchet what else do we need to survive. Well, how about something to start a fire with. First, I have a large container into which I have put about 100 waterproof matches. I do my own waterproofing so that I can save a little money. I simply dip the head of a strike anywhere match into melted wax and let it dry. If it does not look like enough was has stuck, you may need to dip it again. A point of interest here is that in my area of Wisconsin the only place that I can purchase strike anywhere matches is at an Amish store. You will also want another fire starter. One of the flint and steel or similar type starter is what is probably best. I also have a number of fire starting pellets with me. I make these by combining lint from the dryer with the wax I finished using for my matches. Do you actually need these? probably not, but having a couple with at all times could save you a mighty cold night or two.

An now back to the medical kit. We will need some 2 x 2 gauze pads and some 4 x 4 gauze pads. We will also need a roll of gauze for wrapping wounds and some heavy duty tape. Put in a bottle of eye drops and a bottle of nasal spray. Also, some cold tablets and some throat lozenges. I think that is enough money for this week. Next week more on survival and more on meds.

Wilderness Survival

I titled this "Wilderness Survival instead outdoor survival because this is the one where you may want to go into the wilderness and disappear, at least for a while. This is the case of wanting to get away from whatever is happening. While most of us will never venture into true wilderness for any length of time, the time may come when some of us want to. To those that want to and can handle it, this could be one way to survive panics, rioting, martial law and other scenarios.

There are several things that a person could do. You could possibly take a van or a small camping trailer and drive it as far into the woods as possible. You would then need to do an excellent camouflage job on it so it could not be seen from the air and would be very, very difficult for anyone but you to find on the ground. I personally have a pop-up camper that I keep fully equipped. However, I do not intend it to be a wilderness camping unit. My idea, other than using it for pleasure camping, is to go to some remote state or national forest and camp should rioting or other panics occur. I would not want to use it for a hiding place during martial law or other time when our government decided to round up all survivalists and put them in a camp. For this purpose I have another camping method prepared. This is my backpack method of disappearing.

First you will need a pack that is large enough to hold a lot of equipment, but yet is not so heavy that you have a lot of trouble carrying it. I do not carry a tent in my backpack, I carry only a light five foot by seven foot tarp. I can use it as a lean to, a ground cloth or I can wrap up in it. You can obtain woodland camo tarps at a very reasonable price. I have been keeping a mummy style sleeping bag with my pack but in the name of weight and space I may switch to a wool blanket. If you wrap up in a wool blanket and also wrap the tarp around you, you can stand some fairly cold temperatures. I intend to test my theory out when winter returns to Wisconsin. Until then I will keep my sleeping bag with my pack.

Here is an idea which I know will work. I have not used it for many years but used it in my younger years. All you need to do is to pull up a pile of leaves and other forest floor debris into a pile about three feet wide, seven feet long and three feet high. Now if you crawl right into the middle of it you will stay warm in temperatures down to the mid twenties. With your wool blanket you could probably stay warm in below zero weather, I am not sure because I have not tried it with the wool blanket. You could also carry a couple of the small, cheap space blankets. With a foot of leaves on the ground, a space blanket shiny side up on top of that and the second blanket shiny side down then a couple of more feet of leaves and when you crawl between the two space blankets, I do not see ever being cold. This would allow you to not carry a heavy sleeping bag or even a blanket and it would also eliminate the tent. By the time I get the whole list ready for you, you may want to leave the tent and blanket home.

I will pick this subject up again next week, but now as I promised last week, we are going to start building a medical case. This is not going to be a first-aid kit not even a well stocked first-aid kit, this is going to be and honest to goodness real medical kit. You may be able to do much more than first aid with it. The reason for it is that if we head for the wilderness or even if we are stranded in our present locations, we may not be able to get to a doctor or a hospital.

First we need a way to carry all of the items needed and there will be a lot of them. I was going to use a fifty caliber ammo box, but decided that I would rather have a soft pack. I am ordering a surplus medical bag used by a foreign army. It has several pockets and looks like it will hold the many items I am going to put in it. I am going to try to limit the purchases to a half dozen per week to keep this within most of our budgets. This week, besides the container put aside or in the container if you have it: a box of regular band aids, hydrocortosine creme (1 tube), spray disinfectant, a bottle of one hundred aspirin and a roll of medical paper tape.

I will be continuing both subjects next week. Until then "prepare".

Outdoor Survival

Surviving in the outdoors or the wilderness can be as simple or as difficult as you make it. Many people that have been lost in the wilderness due to a plane crash or some other disaster die of starvation near much food and water. Others in the same situation flourish. What is the difference? A large part of the difference is attitude and the rest is preparedness knowledge. I can teach anyone the preparedness knowledge part of it but no one can teach the attitude part. This is something that you have to work out in your own mind. How bad do you want to survive? What are you willing to go through? Can you think outside the box? All of these things only you can answer. If you feel now that you do not have the mentality to be a survivor, you can do some mental exercises that will help. Spend part of each day thinking about possible scenarios and what you would do if faced with them. You may even want to read up on it and see what you should do. The more knowledge you have the more confident you will be and the more likely to survive any emergency. So, let's look at some things to remember.

If you are going to be lost in the outdoors, this is the time of year to be lost. However, no one gets to pick the time they are going to be in a survival situation. However, here in the north the seasons of spring, summer and fall are all good for finding food to eat. In the spring there are many green plants that are not only edible, but tasty. Things like dandelions, plantain and other early spring plants are an excellent food supply and an excellent source of vitamins. Raiding birds nests in the spring will also provide food for a starving person. This is one of those things that one would not think about doing during normal times, but survival is not a normal time. During the summer and fall there are numerous berries and nuts along with many green plants to keep one alive. Up here in the north, winter would be the worst of all times to be lost in the woods. There is much less food in the winter than at any time of the year. However, even then there are things that can be eaten to stay alive. The inner bark of aspen and willow trees can be eaten, cattails can be dug and the roots eaten and there are other foods. Sometimes by digging around in the leaves and snow acorns or other nuts can be found.

If you are out on a hunting or fishing trip when you become stranded in the woods, you already have a good start on survival. Your gun or your fishing rod will provide you with food. The much more difficult thing is for someone who is in the woods due to a plane crash. You will not have a gun or probably even a knife with you as you are allowed to carry nothing like that on a plane. You are going to have to scavenge to find tools to keep yourself alive. If you are in a car that gets stranded in the wilds, you will at least have all of the tools that are in the trunk, tools for tire changing etc. All of these tools will help you to do the many things you need to do to survive.

Next week we will go a lot deeper into things that you should do and things that you should have if you travel. I am also going to start the building of a medical kit. This will be a complete home medical kit and not a first aid kit. Each week we will add to it until we have enough medical supplies to take us through any survival situation. We will add to it each week to keep it from costing us too much money all at one time. I am on a tight budget and I know many of you are too. One of the reasons for doing this is the fact that I no longer have a medical kit and need a new one. My medical got misplaced somewhere in the last move we made and I have been without one for several years. So each week the final paragraph of my blog will concern this kit.

Things To Do 2

As I stated last entry, I believe that things are coming to a head. The terrorists are threatening to us WMDs and the financial world has not improved. We now have a man who is quite possibly a muslim (I believe he is) running for president running against a man who loves invading aliens and wants a one world government. All of these things are going to make this a very interesting summer to say the least. We are also having some severe weather and that is another thing to prepare for. In fact, this is one thing you should always be prepared for.

Preparing to survive tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, wildfire, hurricanes or other natural disasters is a little different than preparing for anarchy, war or depression. However, it is just as important if not more so. Natural disasters are happening in many places and they happen every year somewhere, so preparing for them is vitally important.

The first thing to do is decide what type of natural disaster is most likely to occur in your area. Here in the Midwestern U.S. a tornado is the most typical unless you live along a major river and then it could be a tornado or a flood. The west coast is known for its earthquakes while the east coast is known for hurricanes. Wildfires are mostly in the western U.S. but have also hit Florida and other states. Survival preparation for any of these pretty much follows the same lines.

The first thing you need is emergency radios to keep up with the weather. You also need an emergency radio for information gathering. Everyone, no matter where they live, should have a two week supply of food, water, toilet paper and other necessities. This should include a good first aid kit and your prescription medicine. If you live in an area where you are warned in time to evacuate, having a camper ready to go with all supplies in it is not a bad idea. You may also want a supply of candles, some batteries and battery operated lights, spare batteries for radios and other battery operated equipment. I have one of the emergency radios that can be run by winding a crank, by solar charging or by batteries. I believe that this is the best type of radio to have. You may want to bury much of your supplies away from the house in case the house is destroyed.

Firearms are another necessity as far as I am concerned. Disasters bring out the worst in some people. They do nothing to prepare and when a disaster hits they expect the government to help them. If the government is not right there the looting begins. These people attempt to steal what others have made ready. Other people are just nasty and see disasters as a good time to steal and do other lawless things. Having a weapon to protect yourself and your supplies is not a bad idea. What type of weapon should you have? I think that a shotgun is the best. Anyone in the family that knows anything about firearms can hit what they shoot at with a shotgun. If you are burying your weapon with your other supplies and do not have room for a long gun I would recommend a good sidearm, possibly a .357 or .45 caliber. Either revolver or semi-auto is fine, whatever you are the most comfortable. Do not forget to have ammo for whatever weapon you decide on.

Those are the basics that you need. I could go into a lot more, but for a short time after a natural disaster you can get by with this type of readiness. You may want to get involved in politics this year to try to keep the wrong people out of the white house and congress. For more political information, see my other blog at http://therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com. In the meanwhile I will try my best to get back to this blog next week.