Survival... A Topic You Should Think About.

Survival Preparations and Tips

When one thinks about the word “survival” they often think about being stuck in a remote part of the world without any of the modern conveniences that we take for granted on a daily basis in our regular everyday life. While this scenario is certainly one that would be considered a survival situation, we often do not think of the other possible situations where survival techniques would be extremely important.

We have all seen the stories on the news about riots, weather related disasters and even earthquakes that shatter people’s lives every day. Some of these things have hit close to home such as September 11^th and hurricane Katrina. These situations were devastating and only the people directly involved in those (and other) situations are capable of knowing the full impact that these types of situations have on a person’s life.

Since most people do not deal with these horrible situations they do not know what they would need to do in the case of such a situation. The problem with society is that we as people always think that “it can’t happen to me” and that attitude can be extremely dangerous to each person who uses that as a way to put off planning for all sorts of situations that actually can happen to them.

This small survival preparation manual is not meant to be the “bible” of survival techniques and skills that one could learn, but it is meant to be a survival guide to give you the necessary knowledge to plan and be ready for many different types of situations that CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!

Food and Water

One of the most important features of any survival preparation is food and water storage. These two items are the basis for everything because without these two things, there is no need to prepare for anything else because without these two items, you will not survive.

Having a well stocked basement or pantry is one of the first things you should be thinking about. Most people within the United States do not have enough food stocked away for even a three day period and this is quite scary. When or if a situation occurred where you could not leave your home or the stores no longer have food, you need to be prepared to stick out the problem and stay safe in your home. By having at least two months worth of extra food and water, you ensure that in a serious situation, you will be able to survive.

A lot of people look at me funny when I say you need at least two months worth of food and water for each person within your household. They seem to think that this sounds quite crazy. While I can understand how this may sound a bit strange, we must also understand that if we are put in a position to survive a situation, it is better to be safe than sorry. It is always better to have more than you need rather than not having enough of the things that you need. This of course is extremely important when we are talking about food and water because these are the two things you MUST have if you are to survive.

Now that we have established how important food and water are to your survival, how do we go about getting the correct types of food? How do we know what to get and how to use our stocks in a way that will ensure that our large stash will not go bad?

The first thing to remember is that when buying large quantities of food, we are going to “rotate” the old to the front and the new to the back, meaning we are going to eat the food that is oldest first so we always have a fresh stock of food. Buying food in bulk is not just a survival technique; it is also a money saving technique because usually we can find better deals when buying large quantities rather than smaller quantities. Buying in this manner will also be a slight change to the normal way we do things because we must stay aware of what we have, the age of these products, and when we need to re-stock items that have been consumed so we have enough in the case of any situation. The key to food storage is knowing what you have and knowing when you need to re-stock. The goal is to keep that two month supply at a constant two month supply at all times.

When trying to figure out what kinds of food you wish to use for stocking, first look at what your family eats on a daily basis now. Once you have figured out what you and your family enjoys, you can look at those products and see which ones have the longest shelf life. Another key to food storage is the “shelf life” concept. We want to stock items that will stay good for the longest period of time so we won’t be in a race to consume it before it goes bad. There are all sorts of possibilities these days with freeze dried foods and even canned foods. These products can sometimes have shelf lives of up to ten years and they are a perfect storage food for bad times. Rice is also another wonderful food to store because it will last for a very long time, it is relatively inexpensive and you can buy it in large quantities. One thing to remember with products like rice and other grains is that you will want to keep them in a container that mice and other pests cannot gain access to.

Often times we see food stores online pushing “survival foods” in bulk cans that have long shelf lives and these can be very good to have around but please remember that many of the stores pushing these products will try to overcharge you for these items. The key here is to shop around and find the best deal. There are still some places that care about customer service over massive profits at the customer’s expense.

Water is the most important item that you will ever need in any survival situation and since this is the case, you should have massive quantities of water on hand at all times. This is a very easy and very cheap thing to do and because of this, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be doing this. In an emergency situation, you could lose power and lose water pressure very quickly and then you will have no way of getting it. In a flood situation your water could be contaminated with sewage and other nasty things making the water that you can get be completely useless to drink. Drinking any kind of contaminated water or untreated water can kill you very quickly and unfortunately the drinking of contaminated water is one of the leading killers of human beings all over the world. Even if you live in the country and have well water you need to stock up. Once again, your well relies on an electric pump in most cases and even if you have a generator to keep your power on and the pump running, what are you going to do when you can no longer find the fuel to power that generator? As you can see, saving water in massive quantities now will save you much trouble if or when a bad situation came up.

How much water should you have for each person per day? Many people have their idea as to how much water one should have per day but as a survival situation I would say that you should have a gallon of water for each person for each day. While this may sound crazy, we need to remember the rule that we are trying to stick to. That rule is always having more than you need.

By this time you may be asking how on earth am I going to store hundreds of gallons of water at my home. This is a valid question and one of the best ways to store large quantities of water is by purchasing large plastic rain barrels at your local hardware or farming store. You can usually get these for around ten dollars and buy buying four or five of these; you will ensure that you are pretty well set for any situation. One note on water storage that is pretty important is to never store water in the plastic gallon jugs (milk jugs) because those plastic jugs are meant to “break down” over time for environmental reasons and I have personally had these jugs leak. How horrible would it be for you to stock away a large number of these jugs only to find that when you needed them, they all leaked the precious water that your family needed. Stick with heavy plastic water cans or the barrels mentioned above. Another thing about water barrels, make certain that they have caps that go on top so your water won’t become contaminated. It would also be advisable to of course wash all containers before adding water and it would also be a smart idea to add a small bit of bleach to the water as this will kill any contaminants and it is perfectly safe. Please check current information online for the correct amount of bleach for each gallon of water.

Another way you can be certain that your water is healthy and safe is to boil all water before you drink it. There are many who say that you should boil water for a few minutes before it is safe but most survival experts agree that at the point the water begins to show a rolling boil, it is then safe to drink. You may also want to buy a few packets of iodine tablets just in case you need a quick and easy way to de-contaminate your water. Remember though that it is not recommended that you continuously drink water that is treated with iodine as it may cause health problems and could make you sick.

Health

An important aspect of any survival situation is being capable of performing some medical care for yourself and your family. Now of course we are not talking about heart surgery and other types of serious things. We are talking about cuts, abrasions and colds and flu types of things. It is important for you to know what your family’s needs are. Do any of the people within your family need prescription drugs for any type of condition? Do they have at least a two month supply of this medication in the case of an emergency? If not, that is something that you will need to prepare for. Another major problem that some people have that is overlooked quite often is bee stings. Many people are allergic to bee stings and sadly many people don’t even know that they are. For this reason, I always say that you should have some kind of bee sting medication on hand and in your first aid bag. If possible, get a prescription for this and keep it in your first aid kit.

Another thing to worry about is broken bones. While I understand that you are most likely not a doctor, you can set a bone if needed in a situation where no help is around for you. For this reason I recommend that you have different size splints and small boards for keeping broken bones set and still. You can use the small boards along with the splints to keep the bone in place and this will aid in the healing process because we need to keep that fracture or break still.

It would now be a good time to talk about general bandages and compression wraps as these are most likely what you will need the most for cuts and scrapes. I also recommend a wonderful product called “quikclot” because it does what the name says, it quickly clots blood and this can be extremely important. Our troops at war use this product and it has saved many lives. It will work on small cuts all the way to gun and knife wounds and having a few of these packs around could mean the difference between life and death. You can find that product online as well by doing a search for the name. There are other brands that do the same thing and if you look around you may be able to find better prices.

Since we are talking about first aid supplies, we should also talk about pain medications. You should stock up on things such as Tylenol and Aspirin so that you can take care of pain and fever related issues. It would also be a good idea to have allergy medication around for those that suffer from those kinds of things.

Vitamins are also very important to have around because if you start running out of food and are stuck eating “less than healthy” foods to survive, you can supplement your diet with important vitamins and minerals to keep yourself healthy. Buy enough for that two month period for each person. This could be a very important thing to have.

Safety

The darker side to survival is the fact that in almost every situation that has come up in the past, there were always people who were willing to take advantage of these situations. We have all seen mass rioting and looting of stores before and we have heard the stories of how people kill each other over food and water when they have nothing left to lose. These things do happen and it is extremely important to allow yourself to understand that nobody is really safe in a survival situation. For this reason, we need to think of ways to keep ourselves and our family safe in situations that may occur.

One of the first things I like to tell people is that in a situation where mass chaos may be happening, your goal should be to be invisible to everyone else. You should not make it known that you have food and water and you should not make it known that you have a generator with enough fuel to light the city for twenty years. By allowing people to know things like this you are inviting every desperate person on earth to come and take what you have worked so hard to stock away so you and your family will be safe. It is your responsibility to defend these things because if you don’t, someone will take them from you and you and your family could very well not survive the situation that you have now been placed in.

While there are many people out there that do not own or know how to use a firearm, it would be in your best interest to learn about them and take some classes to learn how to use them safely. Then after that, buy a firearm that you feel comfortable with and practice often. Buy extra ammunition for this weapon and keep the weapon and ammunition in a secure and safe place. I understand that firearms scare many people but for your survival, you are going to need one to keep people away because as we all know, there are bad people at there that will think nothing of killing you and your family or raping you or your family members. Because these types of people are out there, we need to protect ourselves and you can’t do that without a firearm.

Police and fire are not going to rescue you in the case of a problem so you are now going to have to become the policeman and fireman and take care of these issues yourself in a survival situation.

Once again, I know guns are a topic that scare many people but please think of how scary it will be when you are face down on the floor with some punk pointing his gun at your family. You will have no control, your fate will be in the hand of someone who could care less if you live or die and in fact may find it fun to watch you die. Buy the gun; don’t let anyone have control over your fate.

Important supplies

Now that we have covered what I feel are the most important things to think about, we are now going to talk about the other things that you will need to survive any situation within reason.

We are going to assume that in this survival situation you are planning to stay in your own home so we can call your home your shelter. Obviously having shelter is right up there in importance with food and water and defensive items. Since you have shelter, we need to make that shelter comfortable and useful even without power. Some questions to ask yourself should include things like: How are you going to stay warm, how are you going to cook and how are you going to take care of body waste. These are extremely important and by taking care of these issues, you will have a much easier time riding out the storm.

Keeping warm is pretty important and if you don’t believe this, go stand outside on a winter night in the snow for a few hours. It gets cold pretty quick. Now how do we keep warm without drawing attention to ourselves? Remember, we are trying to stay as invisible to others as possible. A great way of keeping warm and providing a little light is to buy a kerosene heater. Now of course if you decide to go this route, you are going to need to buy enough kerosene to last you at least two months and for some this may not be something they wish to do. I would highly suggest that this be something you think very seriously about because not only does this provide heat and light, you can also very easily cook on the top of most of these heaters. If you decide to go this route, I would recommend that you get the kind that goes in the middle of a room and not the kind that you can set next to a wall. The ones that go in the middle of the room are round (or barrel shaped) and the reason to get this type is that the top of these heaters can very easily be sued to cook on. So by getting one of these, you have just killed three birds with one stone and because they are vent-less and relatively free from smell, they will not attract any attention. You can also quickly turn them off in the situation where you need to have no light.

Another option in heat would be an alcohol heater. These use denatured alcohol and often you find these types of heaters on boats. The reason for this is that alcohol heaters and stoves are easily extinguished using water unlike other fuel sources so they are pretty safe on board boats and travel trailers. This could also be a good selling point for in the home in case you are worried about fires. Again, you will need to make certain that you buy enough fuel for at least two months and a good way of knowing how much fuel that is, is by testing your heater. Once you buy it, take a week to test how much fuel it burns and then this will give you a good idea as to how much fuel you will need to keep on hand.

Now that we have talked about two good options, I would like to tell you what you may want to stay away from. There are many lanterns and small cook stoves that use propane for fuel. These units usually have the little prefilled propane tanks that you can buy and they just screw on to those units. These are a bad idea because in a survival situation, how are you going to get more of those disposable tanks for those units? Most likely you will not be able to find them and then you will be out of luck. If you must go the propane route, I would but a Coleman stove that takes liquid propane or some other fuel and again, buy enough fuel to keep that unit going for at least two months.

You can also get a charcoal grill and just buy enough charcoal to keep you going but the problem with that could very well be the smell. Hungry people will smell that and you very well may have unexpected dinner guests who may have a bad attitude. Remember, staying invisible means sight and smell.

We have been talking so much about heat and cooking, it would be crazy not to mention another important and related item that you are going to need. Without matches or a lighter you will have a difficult time cooking or heating anything. Make sure that you have a large quantity of both matches and disposable lighters on hand. These things may seem trivial but when you need them and don’t have them, you will be in a bad place fast.

Candles are also an absolute necessity and you should have large numbers of them. Luckily candles are cheap and you can find them in all shapes and sizes. Something to remember is that you should get unscented candles because we are not trying to invite people over with wonderful smells. Keep the pretty smelling candles for when the survival situation is over and use the non scented ones until that point.

Since we are dealing with so much fire and heat, we need to make sure that we have fire extinguishers. We want one for each room of your house and preferably two in the cooking area and two near the heating area. While this sounds like an over kill, we have to remember that you are the fireman and policeman these days so making sure you have enough tools to take care of the job is absolutely necessary.

It seems as though we have really covered our bases so far but I think we may have missed a very important step in our survival preparations and this could literally come back to bite you! Your animals need food and water too and without these things, of course they will die. How much extra dog and cat food (or other animal food) do you have on hand? Do you have the required two months worth for your furry friends? If not, I would suggest that we get on that right away because as an animal lover, I would feel pretty horrible eating my hamburger while Spot was eyeing me for some. Since we are talking about survival, you can get the “cheap brand” if that is all you can afford. Your pet will eat that if he or she is hungry enough but if you can afford it, I would say get them what they seem to enjoy the most and if they need any medications, I would certainly get that as well. It may also be a great idea to get some over the counter medications for your pet just in case you need to take care of some unforeseen medical situation for them.

What else do we need? Well, a survival situation may sound romantic to some but to be perfectly honest, it can be one of the most frightening times in a person’s life. One never knows if or when things will get better, stress levels will rise, people will become edgy and problems can occur. Because of this, we want to make everyone as comfortable as possible and try our best to bring some comforts into the situation. Luckily this is probably already in place because we have established that you are in your home and you have blankets, pillows, chairs and other things. If you don’t have these things or if you are in a location where these things are not available, it would be wise to invest in some nice chairs and maybe a few inflatable beds so people will have places to sleep comfortably. Comfort is a morale booster and in a survival situation, we want people to be as happy as possible. Another great idea is to buy a large quantity of candy and cake mixes and other fun foods. This can help quite a bit and it will help with morale problems.

Having clean clothing is also important and it will not only make you feel better to have clean clothing, it will also keep you healthier. There are a number of different “manual washers” on the market and you can find these by going to Ebay and doing a search. They are quite cheap and they will wash small amounts of clothing at a time but in a survival situation, this is invaluable. You can wash the clothing in the manual washer and then hang the clothing out to dry. If you live in a place where you can’t put the clothing outside, you can just as easily hang them in the house and a great idea is to hang them in the same room as the heater. Just don’t hang them near the heater because we don’t want a fire. Even if you don’t have soap, the action of the water will help quite a bit with cleaning your clothing. Usually you are supposed to use hot water in the machine and this can easily be done by heating water and pouring it in with the clothing. If this isn’t an option, cold water will be ok.

Since we washed the clothing, how about we wash ourselves? Since we have described this scenario as not having power, how are we going to have water pressure to take a shower? Well, we aren’t going to and that is ok! There are other ways to have a shower and one of my favorite is the five gallon solar shower. If you do a search online for a “five gallon solar shower” you will find the products I am speaking of. The solar shower holds five gallons of water and the water bag is black. You fill the bag with water, set it in the sun for three hours, and the water temperature can reach 120 degrees! While five gallons is barely what I would call a long shower, it will do the trick and you can refill the bag so everyone can use it. You can also use it for washing dishes, hands, brushing teeth and so on so picking up a few of these things will be a great idea. Best of all, they are cheap!

Along with everything we talked about so far, we should try and have all of our personal products in order. Get that extra toilet paper, soap, shampoo and toothpaste. Don’t forget to get some extra deodorant and any other products you like. Remember, in a survival situation these items may not be available so stock up now and put them away. You will be thankful if the time ever comes that you have them when others can’t get them. The key is to prepare and to hope nothing ever happens.

Other Items of Use

Some of you may have heard of the term, “bug out bag”. The term is used to describe a bag that has all of the necessary items packed in it in the case you had to leave your location very quickly. These bags can be useful not only if you have to leave your location quickly, they can also make a wonderful bag to keep in your vehicle.

These bags often contain a limited supply of food and water, clothing, a weapon and ammunition, candles and medical supplies and even emergency blankets and tools. Obviously you can see how handy this would be if you or a loved one was broken down on the highway. Having a bug out bag can be very important because we as people are not always at home and if we are caught in a disaster away from home, the bug out bag may have what you need in it to give you the chance to get back to your home.

Think of this scenario, you are at work which is twenty minutes away from home when a serious situation takes place. The roads heading out of town are bumper to bumper traffic, nobody is going anywhere, people are starting to riot and things are getting ugly. You decide that it would be foolish to attempt to get on the highway because you would then be stuck in that traffic jam. Instead you decided to get your bug out bag from your vehicle and walk home. You do your best to stay away from all of the upset people on the roads, you take to the back streets and yards so you will be less of a target for the rioting people. You strap your handgun to your hip for protection, you grab your family radio service walkie talkie out of your bag, dial into the channel that you and your family know as the one to use in an emergency, and you let them know what you are doing and where you are. Your family, because they are outside of town and away from the riots, meet you half way where it is safe and drive you home.

That is just one way a bug out bag can help you. With the right tools in your bag, you could very well be saving your own life and the lives of those you care about because you then will be alive to help them. I know that some of you were probably thinking that in that situation you could just use your cell phone, but in survival situations, we do not know if cell service would even be working. Never rely on something completely! Always have a backup plan for everything you do. By doing this, you give yourself options and in a survival situation, options are as good as gold. Never allow yourself to believe that your phone or car or even internet will always be there for you. Survival situations come in all shapes and sizes and because of that, we never know what will be there for us and what will vanish.

Other items that are always good to have are road flares and other signaling devices. These can be used to summon help if you know that help is near. Having a tent can also be useful in case you need to leave your location. While leaving your home should always be a last option, if you are in danger and have no other choice, having a tent will be important so you can stay out of the weather when you reach your final destination.

Lastly, the most important thing that you can have is your mindset. Never give up and always remember that you have the ability to endure almost any hardship. Push through problems and you will survive. Survival is a state of mind, and if you prepare and educate yourself, you will be one of the few that know what to do when serious problems occur. You will be considered a sheep dog and you will be looked upon for advice and knowledge. Help your fellow men and women, teach them what you know, and we will all be better off and be better people.

Good luck to you all!