Knowing What To Do Following a Disaster

After a disaster, things are just well a mess. So what do you do? Here is an article with a list of some very practical steps for you to follow if you are ever caught in a disaster. Following these steps will help you to first  help yourself, and then also help others too.

One of the great suggestions is if your home is safe, then place your fire extinguishers outside your home. This is good for both those that may need to use them and also in case of a fire coming towards your own property.

Volcano Stove

You have noticed by now that I pretty much go back and forth between gear and tactics.  Over the last 3 posts or so we have taken a look at some more of the items from the Dan’s Depot kit.  I am doing another one today.  However I want to emphasize for you that your gear is only as useful as the practice you put in with it.  I do alot of tactical shooting for the enjoyment of it.  One of the things that tactical shooters and all defense orientated trainers will tell you is that, “We do not rise to the occasion, but rather fall back to our level of training”.  I believe this to be incredibly true.  So beyond this volcano stove you MUST take it and all the pieces of your survival kit, bug-out-bag, go-bag etc whether it is from Dan’s or not, and practice with it.

I’ll be honest with you regarding this volcano stove.  When Dan first showed it to me, Ithought it looked a bit too much like a gimmick.  However, its simplicity and a couple of simple benefits to its use have swayed me to have apprecation for it.  There is no need to be too technical with this piece of equipment because it is pretty simple in its design.  This video explains it pretty well.

So yeah it is pretty simple to use and it is incredibly light, so carrying it is not problem.  One of the students of my classes who has one of these stoves turns it on its side and lays strips of meat across it and uses it as a griddle from time to time with much success.  The grease from the meat slowly slides down the sides to keep the small fire fueled.

My understanding from Dan is that this is one of the best selling pieces he has at the Depot, with good reason.  Easy to use, easy to carry, good for water and food and multiple fuel sources.  What is not to like?

Finding Firewood for Survival and Camping

I have literally taught firebuilding skills to hundreds of people.  These skills range from primtive methodologies such as bow-drill or hand-drill, on up to using white gas and a lighter at a campfire.

The “Triangle of Fire Making” is a commonly used term for the helping us to remember the three things needed for a fire.  Those three things are:

• Ignition Source (Dan’s Depot has firesteel ferro rods in our kit and a lighter)
• Fuel Source (we have fuel cubes in our kit)
• Oxygen (you can supply this can’t you )

Most people that are new to fire building (and sadly many who are not new) will pick up their firewood (fuel source) directly off of the ground.  This is never a good idea.

Any place that a fuel source, such as wood, comes in contact with the earth, there is almost always going to be moisture present. One of the ways to prevent this is to find wood hanging in the air, and if possible find wood that has sunlight on it.  Both the wind and the sun, will help to dry out the material that is hanging around.  There are a couple of quick tests that will let you know if the wood is wet or not, and we will show you those in another video.

What we have done in this video is to get behind the camera a bit and pan around and show you how to see dry firewood in this particular location.  Again, this is certainly a video dedicated to beginners, however I have watched some seasoned outdoors folks, go about picking up firewood from the ground and am always surprised by this.  As you will see in this video, there is plenty of wood to be found that is completely dry in this one location.  This will be true in most deciduous forest environments.

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

The Survival Lifestyle

For some people Survival/Preparedness is a weekend gig, for others it’s their favorite topic of discussion on their chosen forum, but for some folks the survival/preparedness lifestyle is simply the way they live. Of this group there are two more divisions, the first is the rare breed of people who deliberately set aside modern conveniences and choose to live “off the grid“, the second group doesn’t think of their chosen lifestyle as survival at all.

To this group, their life is simply what they know.

I realize that we can’t all live on a ranch or farm in in the middle of nowhere but we can learn from those people that do.

The first thing that these people have is an attitude! I am not referring to a “bad” attitude, but instead an “independent” attitude. They don’t expect a handout, charity, or freebies.

They do get help from their friends and neighbors; but that help is reciprocal (it works both ways).

Instead this type of people expects to find a helping hand on the end of their arm. That said, these folks can be some of the most generous people you will ever meet! Why? Because they understand what it’s like to have very little.

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Family Survival/Preparedness

For those of you reading this blog who are men, living alone and do not have a family or friends that you enjoy spending time with, you live a entirely solo existence with no contact with the outside world………….this post is not for you.

I have taught a lot of survival classes and I  have also attended many survival classes under the instruction of other teachers and there seems to be an underlying theme in the mindset of the folks who attend such things.  That theme is that this survival/preparedness game is for men only.  That is unfortunate. Today we will focus on helping your spouse and later in the week we will focus on helping your children get into survival practice.

While I will readily admit that there are some ladies out there who will resist and downright be upset by the thought of the survival/preparedness game.  The vast majority of them have simply not had the opportunities to learn in an appropriate environment.  The cold hard facts are this, if you are a man and you are prepping and studying survival methodology and you are not involving your loved ones out there, you are making a big mistake.  You will have a hard choice to make when it comes time to actually put these skills to use, that is you will need to walk away from them and go-it alone and let them take care of themselves, or you will need to teach them then.  If the prior is your plan, then stop reading now, because you are not worthy of my instruction.  If the latter is your reason, then please listen to me now, and understand that you need to involve them NOW.

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Hicks Law

Hicks’s law is an understanding that has very broad appeal and usefulness in varying fields of study.  Teachers and students of tactical gun fighting, commercial marketing, ad design and many others can lay legitimate claim to utilizing Hick’s Law to better assist them in their chosen field of study or work.  Survival methodology is certainly no different.

Hicks law basically describes the amount of time it takes a person to make a decision and that time is increased if the number of optional answers is increased.  It can be further understood by observing the following graph.

So as you can see it is rather simple in that, if you have two many options then you will need to take more time to make a proper decision.  As I understand this, there are many things to consider when in any given survival situation.

By understanding Hick’s Law, you can help yourself in two very distinct ways.

The first way is to simply expand your knowledge and limit your kit.  You will notice in our kit, that we have included several durable and re-usable items that can be utilized and practiced with time and time again.  We have done this because of many reasons, one of which is our understanding of Hick’s Law.  The more items you have, the more decision making time you will need to utilize as well.  Quite simply, in most survival situations, time is of the essence, and too much time trying to determine which gear you will need is a luxury that you may not have.  Therefore, train with your gear and make the response time shorter by understanding and utilizing its usefulness.  This is also very true (as we alluded to in another post) because our kit items are multi-use.  Consider this as you add items to your kit, to make it more useful to you.

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