Keeping Your Hands Clean – Part 2 of Survival Hygiene

Getting harmful bacteria and parasites into the human body often times happens through your mouth.  Unfortunately we are oftentimes guilty of doing it to ourselves by not keeping our hands clean.  This is not the biggest of issues in a survival situation where a team or self-rescue is close.  However in an urban prep/crisis event situation it is of the utmost importance.

Keeping your hands clean is a preventative measure to getting passing on germs and such.  There are also preventative measures to help you keep anything unclean from coming in contact with your hands.  Here are a few:

• Don’t touch an animal that is dead unless you yourself just killed it for your needs.
• Use a bandana or other clothing to grab unclean pots etc.
• Use gloves whenever possible
• Fashion yourself some tongs, and fork from sticks so as to pick up gear and particularly meat when cooking.

With that said, it is simply going to happen that you get your hands dirty, here are some ways to clean them.

• Boil water to use to clean them.
• Use aquamira drops or tablets to clean water.
• Use bleach to make large solutions of hand cleaner, as well to help clean pots and other tools that will be used in food prep.  Small measurement = 2-4 drops per quart, in a large measurement 1/3 cup for 1,000 gallons.
• Gather dew, rainwater and consider it clean water and clean your hands.

We have the aquamira drops in our survival kits and many other pieces of equipment to boil, gather and clean water.

There are the obvious options of soap and water, and hand sanitizer.  I did not include those because they are so obvious.  However, putting items like that in you prepping supplies is a must.

Thanks for reading.  I hope to see you on, or off, the trail!

Boiling Water for Survival – Part 1 of Survival Hygiene

Clean water is not necessarily easy to come by in a survival situation.  In wilderness survival it is rare that you simply get lost or injured and find yourself then resting next to a pure, flowing stream of water.  Most likely you are away from any source of water.  In urban events, many times the water is simply not available due to it beign cut off, or contaminated.

Boiling water is the only method known to adequately kill contaminants such as giardia and cryptosporidium.  You simply need to have a container to boil it in.  Boiling water in metal containers is much easier than plastic.  You can use containers that you carry like a water bottle, pot,  etc. or those that you find such as a used can, or bottle, etc.  It has been stated many times that you need to bring water to boil for several minutes before you are able to drink it.  Research shows that is probably overkill.  These contaminants cannot survive in environments as the boiling point of water (212 degrees F).  Therefore if you have brought the water to a rolling boil, then the water should be good.  Anything more and you are overdoing it and valuable water resources are leaving due to evaporation.

Your clean water stores are not only going to be used to keep you hydrated.  They will need to be used for hygiene uses as well.  We recommend a pot be placed in your urban preparedness kit simply because vast amounts of water will be needed to do all the work we need to keep our conditions as sanitary as possible.  Clean hands, hair, etc can more easily be done with clean water.

Until next time I hope to see you on, or off, the trail!

Proper Hygiene During Survival

Personal hygiene is one of the most overlooked aspects of survival/urban preparedness training.  History has proven in Bosnia, Haiti, during Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, that personal hygiene products were were one of the most sought after items.

There are some obvious considerations here but we wanted to take a look at these in a general sense today.  We will devote a blog to each aspects of these to help you.

Infectious disease can be a killer in short order, particularly in an urban environment where there are so many people congregated.  In today’s age we really take for granted the simply ability to turn on the faucet.  Add to that thought that we can turn it on and get hot water is pretty remarkable.

With that said, continuing or getting clean during a crisis event is vitally important.  Here are some quick pointers.  Keep in mind we will go into each of these in more detail in subsequent posts.

• Have a method to clean and boil water.
• Keep your hands as clean as possible all the time.  Keep them out of your mouth.
• Keep your hair combed and trimmed and clean.  Your hair can be a breeding ground for bacteria and parasites.
• Take care of your feet.  They are your base without them, you don’t move so well.
• Keep you teeth clean.
• Keep your area clean, whether this is a camping area or your shelter during crisis.
• Keep human waste far away from your living area.  Have a designated area for this.

Again keep up with our blogs as we will have another blog post for each of these and how best to keep your needs met.

Until then I hope to see you on, or off, the trail.

Four Ways to Manage Fear

In any given survival/crisis situation managing fear, and the possible ensuing panic that follows, is incredibly important.

The physiological aspects (increased heart and breathing rate, narrowing of vision and thoughts, much more) that occur during such an event are things that can be recognized and dealt with.  The goal would be both cognizant of the fear and deal with it.  Without recognizing it, one could make a bad situation get a whole lot worse in a real hurry.  Here are four considerations to help you understand and deal with fear.

Injuries are a catalyst for increasing problems.  When and if you get injured you need to have training to deal with the injury.  Hopefully those in your group have similar training (if they don’t get it!).  If you are injured and you don’t have training, you will often panic.  This panic can lead to the ideas of your situation being unsolvable.  In this mindset it is incredibly difficult to complete the basic and necessary tasks to stay alive. Do all you an to avoid being injured.

Fear of the unknown is a major problem.  Some of these biggest fears are caused by things that are not even real and exist only in your thoughts.  For example, sounds from unknown animals can cause a lot of fear.  We see this all the time in our Nature Reliance School classes that stay over night.  For those that come and hear all the night sounds, they start to make those sounds into the “monsters” or animals they have seen in movies and such.  Basically taking a squawking bird into something much larger  and worse than it actually is.  So the answer is to practice and spend more time doing skills so you start to turning these unknowns into knows.

Actively stay alive.  We always teach the STOPA (Sit down, Think, Observe, Plan, Actively Stay Alive) method to our students in urban preparedness or survival classes.  Actively staying alive doesn’t mean that you physically keep at a bunch of work, it does however mean that you keep looking at your situation even your plans and improving them.  Keeping busy, even if it means sitting in one spot practicing knot tying, helps to keep up your spirits and morale higher.  This is much better than only sitting and getting more and more worried about your situation.  

Be prepared before it all occurs.  I briefly mentioned this above, but want to do it again for emphasis here.  Start training now and gaining knowledge is of utmost importance.  You need to know how to take care of yourself and those you care for.  A good test at your house is to turn off the electric and water into your house for a week.  This will help you recognize many problems that can arise.  For outdoor wilderness survival, spend a lot of time outdoors.  Practicing with and without your gear.  Continue to practice with and improve your abilities to your gear as you go along.

These are some simple things you can do to help manage fear.  Fear leads to panic and panic leads on to injury and/or death.  You must do all that you can to manage your fear.

Until next time I hope to see you on, or off, the trail!

Three Things Learned While Teaching Survival

Watching students looking for edibles in the rain

I recently taught a survival class in which it rained mostly all day two days and intermittent showers on the other.  It was quite a learning experience for the students for certain.  It was also highly valuable to me as well because I learned three very valuable lessons that were great takeaways.  I would like to share them with you.

“Embrace the Suck” was put into practice.  I won’t get into many of the details as some of them are personal for the class participants.  It is worthy of note that many of the plans that had built up to this class simply fell through at the last minute.    I had never visited this area, so I knew going in I had my work cut out for me.  With the forecast being what it was, my son and I arrived and started getting to work immediately.  It had rained for the two days prior to our arrival, so all wood for fire building was going to be wet, along with everything else we would be using throughout the weekend.The weather was going to be such that we needed a fire.    At one point, I looked around at our campsite, the participants, and the conditions and thought to myself, “This cannot be done?”.  That was when I took on my own advice and made it happen anyway.  I embraced it and ran with it, and we had a thorough, educational and class.

Survival practice is needed.  I know I preach this all the time, but it is so true.  The students I spoke to before the class had told me that they had plenty of survival practice.  I failed in my conversations with them in that I did not questions them about this more before they arrived.  These were great guys in many respects but they were lacking in basic survival and outdoor skills.  I will go ahead and say it out loud here, that I would much rather have someone who is proficient with a barlowe pocket knife, rather than someone who spends a ton of money on a knife that they cannot use.  The Tom Brown Tracker knife made another appearance this weekend.  I am so sick and tired of people relying on a knife, thinking it will save them somehow.  Knives are tools and can only help in the hands of someone who has practiced and trained with it.  With that said, get out and practice with your gear.  Do not just go camping with it, get out with it and survive in as safe a conditions as you can (take someone with all the right gear who can watch over you and make sure you stay safe).

Train hard, train often.  My son and I (along with the other NRS instructors) spend a lot of time training and practicing skills.  We had a comfortable bed, got a fire going in unforgiving conditions, made sure the whole group had plenty of water and food.  This was due in great part to many years of training and practice.  While the students were having difficulty sleeping, we are getting plenty of sleep and rest.  This is imperative in survival situation where possible.  We have also spent many a night out and not gotten much sleep in an effort to better prepared as well.  In a situation where it all goes planned that is great…but you need to be prepped and ready when it doesn’t go as planned.  The only way to accomplish this is to train under hard conditions.  I will repeat Cooper again, “You will not rise to the occasion, you will default to your level of training.”  So please by all means spend a lot of time training and mastering it then.  So you can rely on it later.

With all that said the guys in this class had a lot of fun and humor went a long way of making uncomfortable situations more easy to bare.   Most of them know one another before the class so that made it a lot easier.

I hope this helps you to get out more, and practice.  Until next time I hope to see you, on or off, the trail..

Finding Survival Water With Trees

Survival QandA with Craig this week takes us to water, literally.

One of the questions asked was, “Can trees help me find water in a survival situation?”.  The answer is most definitely a yes.

Trees are really interesting to me.  Their individual health as well as their health as a group can be very indicative of a much larger picture and cell us many things.  We have seen a small portion of this throughout our land navigation series.

There are many trees out there that “enjoy” being near water.  Scientifically, what I mean is that they need more water than other species to exist.  When they grow from a seed, into an actual woody stemmed tree, they will thrive near water and possibly die if not near water.

Some of these species that love water are the cypress, various species of ash, river birch, river maple, water tupelo, cottonwood, willow and sycamore.

In the following video I take a look at three species and how they  can help us find water.  Those species are the white oak (listen closely as I explain it is not the white oak in general, just how it related to the chestnut oaks that surround it), a sycamore, and a willow.  The first two I show in woodland environment, the last one in an semi-urban (small town) environment.

For some direct links to these three species go here:

White Oak:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_alba

Sycamore:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore

Willow:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow

Until next time I hope to see you on, or off, the trail.

Natural Navigation, Part 3 – Determining Direction with a Hillside

This is our next in the series of survival Q and A with Craig. If you are a member of our forums (if you are not you should be), you will most likely recognize the name Regulator5. Reg5 has a wealth of information that he shares in a humble way in our forums. He “asked me” in a question how to determine direction if you do not have a compass, nor the sun or stars due to cloud cover. This is a pretty tough subject to cover on video but we took a pretty good stab at it.

This subject matter ended up blowing up in the field while I was filming and turned into several different videos in which we had to turn them into three parts.

In part 3, what we wanted to do was take a look at direction finding on a broad scale.  Basically by looking at a whole hillside and seeing if one or more together can help us find direction.

Regulator 5 mentioned in his question that he wanted to show how snow melts on a southern facing hillside before that on a northern facing hillside.  Due to the time of the year I could not get that on video, simply because there was no snow.

However, what I was able to get on video is the same concept but I showed how the sun affects a hillside, particularly around a woodland opening.

We have said it several time in this series, but is certainly worthy of saying again.  Plants need lots of things and the two thing that are easiest for us to see from trees that they need is water and sunlight.  A hillside that is Southern facing is going to have more numerous “pioneer” species of plants and such.  Pioneer species are those that will thrive in an area and help to hold the soil when there has been disturbance.  Pines, cedars, rhizome type ground species are a few examples.  These species pop up, grow fast and spread roots quickly.  They are natures way of holding the earth in place.

If an opening appears, the southern facing hillside in an that area will receive more sun, which in turn means that they will hold more species of these types.  In the video you will see how this occurs in relation ship to virginia pine trees (pinus virginiana). 

Next up on the list is how to find water using trees…until then I hope to see you on, or off, the trail!

Natural Navigation, Part 2 – Determining Direction with Moss

This is our next in the series of survival Q and A with Craig.  If you are a member of our forums (if you are not you should be), you will most likely recognize the name Regulator5.  Reg5 has a wealth of information that he shares in a humble way in our forums.  He “asked me” in a question how to determine direction if you do not have a compass, nor  the sun or stars due to cloud cover.  This is a pretty tough subject to cover on video but we took a pretty good stab at it.

This subject matter ended up blowing up in the field while I was filming and turned into several different videos in which we had to turn them into three parts.

In this part we took a closer look at whether you can determine direction using moss on trees.

It has been said by campers, survivalists, and other outdoor aficionodos so many times that moss always grows on the north side of trees.  To begin with, I want to go ahead and say that is simply not true.  I often hear or read things like that and it really makes me wonder if the person who says it has ever spent any time in the wilderness.  After a lifetime playing, studying, and teaching in the wilderness, I and many like me know that moss grows on all sides of a tree.  There is however a sliver of truth in what people are saying, and it will help you to determine direction.  I will do what I can here to help you do this.

As with anything that grows outside, there are a myriad of things that effect when and how it grows.  We touched about this fairly well in our last post on determining direction with trees.  The natural world (and you if you stay outside much)  is greatly affected by many things outside including the sun, wind, rain, nutrients in the ground and in the air, and untold other influences.  Moss is certainly no different.

The statement that moss always or only grows on the northern side of trees is false.  The suggestion that moss prominently grows on the north side of trees is certainly true.  Moss is like many species of plant in the wilderness that is often referred to as shade-tolerant.  This means that it grows very well when it does not have a lot of sun.  As a matter of fact, moss prefers to grow in indirect sunlight. For those of us residing in the northern hemisphere the sun appears to be in the southern sky.  Due to this the northern side of a tree will mostly be shaded throughout any given day.  Since moss likes it there, it will take up residence.

The other aspect of moss growth that is important to note is that it likes alot of moisture, as do most plants.  The side of tree facing south will dry out more readily than the northern side of a tree.  Therefore, you have the good double whammy for a moss to grow on the northern side.  It has indirect sunlight and it will also hold moisture longer.

With that said, I would like to remind you that moss does grow on the side of a tree it wants to.  As an example, lets assume that a certain deciduous tree finds itself in the shade of another species of tree that is larger and is coniferous.  Due to there being a lot of shade there, you might very well find moss growing on that tree all the way around it.  Simply because the coniferous trees provides it with with shade, which increases the moisture all the way around it.

I got out and wanted to get on video to show you that moss grows on more than one side of a tree.  In this specific case, i am looking at the moss primarily growing near the base of the tree.  However this can also be done with moss growing along and higher upon the side of the tree as well.

That is part 2, in part 3 we will take a look at direction finding by looking at a whole hillside.  Until then I hope to see you on, or off, the trail!

Natural Navigation, Part 1 – Determining Direction Using Trees

This is our next in the series of survival Q and A with Craig.  If you are a member of our forums (if you are not you should be), you will most likely recognize the name Regulator5.  Reg5 has a wealth of information that he shares in a humble way in our forums.  He “asked me” in a question how to determine direction if you do not have a compass, nor a the sun or stars due to cloud cover.  This is a pretty tough subject to cover on video but we took a pretty good stab at it.

This subject matter ended up blowing up in the field while I was filming and turned into several different videos in which we had to turn them into three parts.

In this video we take a look at determining direction using trees.

Keep in mind that when doing this that you cannot just simply choose any tree.  It is best to find a tree that is in the open.  From understanding nature a bit, this provides the three to basically grow in any direction it chooses.   Most plant material, green or woody, need sun to survive so they will grow in a direction towards the sun when they can.  For us in the northern hemisphere, the sun primarily appears to move about in the southern sky.

This means that a tree that is in open territory will appear “heavy” on the southern side of the tree very often.  Meaning it will have a larger number of branches on the southern side, than the others.  This is not always the case and anything from nutrients in the ground to previous scarring on the trunk can prohibit or benefit branch growth anywhere on the tree.  However in a general sense this “heaviness” on the southern side is mostly true.

While this does not provide you with an accurate degree reading for land navigation purposes, it does certainly give you a real good sense of general direction when no GPS, compass, sun, stars or other method are available.

Come back later for part 2 where we discuss some of the real uses and myths surrounding moss on trees, and in part 3 where we look at determining direction from previous appearances of the sun on a broad scale.

Until then, I hope to see you on, or off, the trail!

Thoughts from a Search and Rescue Operator

Clay Corbett on the left.

To say that Clay Corbett knows a thing or two about Search and Rescue is a gross understatment.  Clay is an incredibly accomplished SAR operator.  I asked Clay if he would mind answering a few questions about his background and his knowledge on lost persons.  He very happily obliged and I am happy he did.  Many thanks to Clay for his time and his service in SAR!  Below you will find my questions in bold print and his answers following.

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