You might have been wearing one of the best survival weapons or convenience devices around your waist and you never knew it! A belt can be used for more than holding up your pants. Take a look:

Why Leather Belts Are Amazing Survival Tools

1 – Keep Your Cool In The Kitchen
Boiling water and cooking survival food can make the handles of your pots and pans incredibly hot – and, if you’re not careful, you can easily scald your fingers on the handles when you try to move them.
Luckily, there’s a better way – simply take out your leather belt and wrap it around the handle a few times. This will give you a cushion for your hand to hold onto, and will allow you to easily take your pots and pans off the flame.
2 – Self-Defense
Leather belts can be used to defend yourself from attackers in a variety of ways; for one, you can wrap the belt around your attacker’s neck and choke them with it.
Another way to do some damage is to roll up the belt and hit them with it, or to use it more as a whip with the belt fully extended.
3 – Make A DIY Spear
Sometimes, you have to use the bare essentials to make a weapon to defend yourself in a crisis. Thankfully, leather belts can come in handy; for example, if you’ve got a long, durable stick, you can tie a knife to the end of it using your belt, and use it as a makeshift spear.
Note: Want to learn more about DIY weapons? Click here to read our blog on how to make six more defense tools!
4 – Sharpen Your Survival Knife
Leather belts (especially wide ones) can do a great job at sharpening the blades on your survival knives and other weapons. Simply fold up the belt so you can get a good grip on it, and then run the knife blade down the leather side (pushing away from you) to sharpen it.
5 – Carry Firewood
Carrying firewood can be a real pain when bugging out; after all, it’s easy to drop a piece (or a few) on the way, forcing you to go back and search for it later. However, with the use of a leather belt, you can carry a pile of firewood for long distances with no trouble at all.
Simply wrap the belt around the stack of firewood, and then cinch the belt tightly around it (you may need to punch new holes through the belt to make this more effective). Then use the strap to carry your firewood with ease.
6 – Keep Your Gun In Place
By simply wearing your belt around your waist, this can easily help you carry your gun while you walk. For example, if you have a clip holster, you can attach this to your belt; otherwise, you can store the gun behind you on either side of your waist, and the belt will help keep it from moving.

The main word here is “leather” and we want to emphasize it because, as we all know, leather is enduring so your survival helper will be around for a long time after the SHTF! Now, if you have a belt made from lesser materials naturally it will not last long. Still, even it can do a lot of the jobs mentioned above!

Just remember to hang onto your belts and when the time comes wear them, you and all your family, and use them to their fullest capacity! To read more on belts and how they can help you go to Survival Frog Blog.