Survival Training | Outdoor Survival Gear And Preparedness

What Do You Mean By Survival Skills? Survival skills are a basic set of skills that could keep you alive in times of crisis. Survival skills require the knowledge of how to execute certain tasks as well as the practice to actually do them. What if the stores were to run out of groceries? Or if a massive storm were to hit and your house was out of power for months? Or you got lost in the woods? Or the cleanliness of drinking water was compromised? What if there was a massive political uprising and your stable access to resources was lost? What if you had to survive off of the land? Within the answers to these questions lie the skills necessary for survival. If anyone of these things happened--could you stay alive? Where Can I Learn Survival Skills? Survival skills can be learned in any number of places. The first step is to gather the actual knowledge of survival skills. There are many ways to do this. Reading articles online about basic skills is an excellent place to begin. YouTube is helpful for visual learners. You can search nearly anything and visually see how to complete a task. One way to begin building your “knowledge” toolset for survival skills is to watch YouTube videos demonstrating specific survival skills you want to learn. My Favorite Emergency Preparedness YouTube Channels Practice Makes Perfect Reading articles and watching YouTube videos is only part of the equation. In order to get proficient in these outdoor skills, You will need to practice them. This leads me to the second step in learning survival skills. Practice, practice, and practice some more. This might be uncomfortable at first, but can be life-saving when you find yourself actually in a situation where they are needed. You can also look for local survival training near you or sign up for some online courses that will help educate you on all possibilities in your specific area. Here are some recommendations: https://www.ready.gov/training https://training.fema.gov/ https://www.redcross.org/take-a-class/disaster-training https://emergency.cdc.gov/coca/trainingresources.asp https://rtcil.org/emergencypreparedness/onlinetrainings What Are The Five Basic Survival Skills? Trying to tackle all survival skills at once can lead to feelings of being overwhelmed and discouraged. Work first on mastering these five basic skills. Practice them in different conditions and with different tools until you feel confident that you could execute them if necessary in emergency situations. After you finish these five, continue to build. Water: Understanding how to purify and filter water for drinking and cooking is essential for any type of survival, as the human body shuts down after only a few days without hydration. You can practice this skill by purchasing a water filtration system of some kind. Find muddy water and pre-filter it by removing any large chunks. Filter the water through your water filtration device (or with water purification tablets). To purify the water, boil it for 3 minutes. This combination of skills should allow you to drink and cook with water from any number of sources and in any number of situations. Shelter: Staying warm, dry, and away from predators is also essential to survival. Begin by becoming well-practiced in putting up a variety of different tents. From here, begin to plan for real survival situations. This can be done easily in your backyard. Create a lean-to shelter by gathering a large, sturdy branch. Nestle it firmly between two trees with rope or by carving out holding divots for this branch to rest 5 or so feet above the ground between the two larger trees. From here, on one side, diagonally stack medium-sized sticks across the length of the branch (or at least a few feet of it.) This should create a triangle under which you can find shelter. Insulate with leaves and additional sticks. Food: Learning which plants in your area are edible is a great place to start. Gather knowledge about which insects and arthropods in nature will give you the most nutritional value. Practice fishing and gardening. Practice preparing simple food outdoors with very little preparation. Learn to be resourceful. Fire: In survival skills, fire is king. You need fire to purify water, keep warm and dry, and cook food. Begin by learning simple ways of starting a fire using dry debris for kindling, fanning the flames lightly, and catching larger pieces of wood--stacked either in a “teepee” or “crisscrossed” form--on fire. From here, practice the “bow-drill” fire method for when you don’t have matches or a lighter. First Aid: Having the knowledge of how to do simple first-aid tasks will be life-saving in survival situations. Owning a first-aid kit is great, but not having the skills to actually use it makes it lose much of its value in emergencies. Taking a first-aid class as well as CPR training are a few ways to begin building up this survival skill. How Do You Practice Wilderness Survival Skills? The easiest way to practice survival skills is in your own backyard. Everything we discussed above can be done in many backyards. After you have mastered the skills in a safe environment close to home, go camping and practice them in the woods. From here, continue to try out different environments that are less and less familiar. What Are The Top 10 Survival Items? Consider putting together a “survival skills” emergency kit with these 10 items. Even with all of the knowledge and practice in the world, these 10 items could make a survival situation significantly easier than it needs to be: Small first aid kit Water filter Flashlight Waterproof matches Compass Map of area Knife Personal locator beacon or cell phone Nylon braided line Mylar survival blanket These items are helpful for executing the 5 basic survival skills outlined above. The compass and personal locator beacon would specifically help you if lost, and the survival blanket could keep you warm either as a personal blanket or as shelter insulation. The knife could be used for whittling sticks to better create a shelter, hunting or fishing, and protecting yourself. Gathering these items and putting them in a small waterproof bag somewhere accessible could give you the peace of mind that you are well-prepared. Even more importantly, it could make survival situations significantly more manageable.