Most of life’s lessons are learned through a collection of advice, personal successes and failures and formal instruction (book learnin’ if you come from my neck of the woods.) Of each, the most effective probably is through experience, succeeding and failing (especially failing) and learning from each. Close behind that is the advice given from…
Trot and Jug Lines for Survival – A Brief How-To
Fish are a relatively easy way to get your hands on protein and nutrition in a survival setting, without expending a whole lot of energy. Two methods of fishing while expending little energy are to run trot and jug lines. A trotline is a long line of cordage with baited hooks suspended off of it…
How to Improvise to Filter Water in a Survival Situation
After three days with no water, almost everyone becomes severely dehydrated and approaches the awful process of dying of thirst. As you dehydrate, your cells shed liquid into your bloodstream and as the cells shrink, organs do as well; this is particularly a threat as it pertains to the brain, which can shrink so much…
(Video) Check Out a GENIUS Way to Start a Fire in Just Seconds!
Starting a fire in a survival situation is one of the first priorities towards ensuring you are safe and can make it through. Ideally, you have tinder and a fire starter on your person and kindling and burn wood at your disposal. If you lack a fire starter, however, you have options – one of…
(Video) How to Properly Build Out a Field Bag
If you were planning a hike in the woods, you would not start the trek without some essential items that you know you would need along the way. Those items might be water, food, sunscreen, maybe sunglasses and a hat – stuff you would use on virtually any trip that involved you venturing out into…
Putting Together a G.O.O.D. Plan – Getting Out of Dodge
The term Get Out Of Dodge (GOOD) refers to the American Old West and Dodge City, Kansas, when it was little more than a lawless free-for-all. While Hollywood has played up the mayhem and violence in places like Dodge, it was still a pretty rough place early on and no place you wanted to raise…
Discovering the Truth as to Why There’s So Much Sodium in Freeze Dried Meals and What to Do About It
Freeze dried meals are one way of ensuring that if you are on a hike, camping or in a survival situation, you have the nourishment you need to make it through. They are relatively inexpensive, light to carry, rich in nutrients, easy to make and for the most part, taste good. They also tend to…
Signaling for Help – How to Do it and Still Be Effective
In the vast majority of cases where people get lost in the wilderness, they are not “lost” so much as “lost their way” and know generally where they are or fall within the boundaries of normal search and rescue parameters. With some cases, however, they truly are both lost and stranded and beyond normal search…
Create This AWESOME Worm Tower to Feed a Garden
Whether you are homesteading, preparing for a possible survival incident or even just growing for fun, gardening can be really difficult work. One of the major challenges is keeping your growing space fertilized and aerated. You can resort to chemical fertilizers, but if you do it wrong, you can do almost as much bad to…
Bugs Are What’s for Dinner – How to Stomach That Awful Prospect
Admittedly, the prospect of eating bugs is fun only for a select few. In a survival situation, however, the further you get into it, the more desperate you may become and desperation makes strange bedfellows. What that means is that while normally you may not sidle up to the bar and order the “bug special,”…
Paracord to the Rescue – How it Can Save the Day
Just about all of us have in our possession and have used paracord; if you camp, hike, fish or hunt, chances are you have used it for one purpose or another extensively. In fact, whether you are preparing for a disaster or venturing off the beaten trail, paracord is possibly one of the most versatile…
How to Build a Food Supply Over Time to Save Money and Time!
Just about everyone cedes the importance of being prepared for a survival situation – beyond just a few days. Even the US federal government has recommended having at least a couple of weeks worth of food and water in stock should a more drastic survival incident occur. if you take that recommendation and realize that…
Compass Basics – What Survivalists Should Make Sure They Know
It is always good to know the direction you are heading – whether you are hiking, on a road trip or lost somewhere (in the woods, at sea, etc.) Directional bearings give you a sense of where you are headed, even if it is only in a general sense. In a survival situation, they allow…
Survival First Aid – What Everyone Should Know
The risk of injury is greatly enhanced during a survival situation, particularly if the survival incident is very violent (like with a tornado or hurricane) or leaves a large swath of carnage and debris (like in an earthquake or flood.) In each case, more things are torn apart and that means, in addition to the…
Deciding Whether Hoarding Survival Items Is a Wise Idea
Generally, when people mention “hoarding,” a less than positive image comes to mind. In a survival setting, however, hoarding is not only permitted, it is encouraged. Ok, not actually hoarding in the “she was found crushed to death under a stack of newspapers dating back to the ’70’s”; that is not good. But hoarding survival…
What Not to Do After a Survival Incident (And Why Not)
Most survival advice is based on what you should do. You should build and maintain a stockpile of food. You should have a bug-out bag for emergencies and a survival cache for longer-term survival scenarios. You should constantly review your list of survival “must-haves” and keep it updated. And so on. What is not usually…
Plastic Sheeting and Why it is a Must for a Survival Cache
Plastic sheeting is one of the most versatile “survival” materials on the earth. It has applications in construction and gardening but is also used to protect things from the elements and in a pinch, can be used to capture heat, collect water, bind things and even as insulation in walls. As you prepare for whatever…
A Prepper Can Get Bit by a Brown Recluse and if He Does Here’s How to How to Effectively Treat It.
The Brown Recluse Spider has an unwanted reputation for being nasty, poisonous and potentially deadly! Unfortunately, for the spider, that reputation is a bit unfair! Brown Recluses are generally pretty shy, which is why you usually only find them in closets, under beds, wood piles or dark corners of basements. In fact, in most cases,…
Barehanded Self-Defense Targets Every Survivalist Should Master
A perfect world scenario is one where a survival incident occurs, everyone gets along, pitches in and gets through it as a unified force of optimism, perseverance, innovation, and harmony. In the real world, some do that, to be sure, but many resort to their basest instincts and view every survivor as a target and…
Potential Disasters That Could Result in a Year or More Without Experiencing Summer
Growing up on the East Coast of the USA, in the late 80’s, there was one summer that seemed to be on an extended vacation. May seemed like April, June like May, July seemed like a cold version of June, and so on. It evoked in my grandparents remembrances of another year when summer seemed…