With imagination and improvisation skills, metal cans are one of the most easily adaptable tools at your disposal, especially if you are in a survival situation. Here are just a few of the possibilities:

1. Boiling Vessels

Whether your metal can is aluminum or steel, it can serve as a great improvised container for boiling. Fill it with your questionable water and set it in the ashes at the edge of your fire to boil. Steel cans are thicker and stronger than aluminum, and will also make good miniature cooking pots.

2. Digging Tool

Sturdy cans will work as a trowel, particularly in soft or sandy soils. Use the can to dig fire pits, cat holes, and anything else you need in camp.

3. Signal Alarm

A can full of stones (or several cans tied together) can be perched on the edge of your camp, and attached to thread or fishing line that runs around your camp site (about 2 to 3 feet off the ground). This will serve as a perimeter alarm by creating noise if anyone or anything trips the line. For best results, string the trip line tightly and test it a few times before you rely on it.

4. Low Tech Oven

Large cans, like a #10 size can, make an excellent oven when covered with hot coals. To make a quick Dutch oven, cut a green stick about a finger’s width in diameter and about 10 inches long. Stick it in the ground next to your fire and make sure your can covers it completely. Impale your meat or veggies upon the stake, cover with the upside-down can and then bury in red hot coals. Replace the coals as needed and check the food periodically. A bird the size of a quail will bake in about an hour and a half. Shish kabobs bake in about 45 minutes.

5. Faraday Cage

Threat of EMP’s got you down? Wrap up your electronics in insulating materials, and place them in a large can to simulate a Faraday cage.

You never think of it when you are done using it, but metal cans hold a lot of “survival tool” potential.

The limits to how they can be used is literally your imagination.

To see more uses for metal cans, please visit our friends over at Outdoor Life Survival.