Three Survival Items That Never Fail

We have all watched in horror as a piece of our trusted survival gear breaks. We have all watched attachments break, blades snap and even handles crack. It happens. Most of the time it happens on a camping trip with little risk. Thank God for that! Still, it has a serious affect when it happens.

Instantly, you are transported to a place and time where that piece of gear is all that separates you from disaster. It’s a terrifying thought. It calls into question the quality of your gear and how you handle and maintain it.

What survival items can you add to your setup that never fail? Well, there are plenty, but three come to mind. These three will not only stand up against survival they will also make the biggest impacts on a survival situation.

Bank Line

For a long time, the survival cordage space was dominated by paracord or 550 cord. There was no getting away from this stuff. It became the ultimate in survival cordage primarily for its tensile strength and the 5 smaller strands of cordage that were inside of each strand.

I don’t want you to think that there is an epidemic of paracord failures. That is not why I am bringing it up. There are other alternatives and when it comes to cordage, bank line is less bulky and weighs about half as much as paracord. Now, that should get you excited.

Bank line can be purchased with vary degrees of tensile strength. It’s a finer cordage than paracord but its very strong. Bank line takes up much less space than paracord and that space savings is exponential as you increase the amount of cordage you carry. You can grab a 100-foot spool of quality bank line for about $4 or less.

No matter the situation you face, a spool of quality bank line can make you shelter, catch your food and stand the test of the outdoors.

Ferro Rod

If you go overboard in a canoe, if you roll down a steep embankment, if you find yourself in the throes of some situation that separates you from your gear or treats your gear to some blunt force trauma, the ferro rod will be there.

Aside from a modern lighter or a piece of flint and your survival knife, the ferro rod is the most dependable and fast acting fire starter there is. If you are looking for a fire-starting companion that will not fail you, invest in a nice thick ferro rod. Don’t buy one of the thinner rods.These can break easily. buy a 1 high quality ferrorod that will last.

Aside from the fact that it will never fail to shoot sparks, even if it’s wet you can just dry it off, the ferro rod is also going to lastyou a very long time. If you have efficient tinder making skills and you understand how to build and sustain a fire, you might only need a few scrapes on that ferro rod to make it work.

Imagine how long a ferro rod will last you if you scrape it a few times for each fire. This is why the ferro rod is one survival item that will never fail you. You ask it to bring sparks and it will do that over and over again.

Bug Spray

Now, maybe you think I should bring you some impressive type of survival tool for the third item that will not fail you. A few come to mind. I could mention things like short handled axes or maybe something for creating shelter.

Its pretty clear that water, shelter and fire are the three most important parts of any survival situation. So, you might be asking yourself: why are you talking about bug spray?

Lots of survivalists get wrapped up in this idea of gear. They get to the point where they are wading in gear. However, things like sunscreen and bug spray are often left out. Could it be that these two items are just not exciting enough? They aren’t as cool as more modern survival gear?

Bug spray can make all the difference in a survival situation. If you are truly lost and trying to find your way out of the woods, you are going to need to be alert and awake. Sleeping in the woods, under a lean-to is challenging enough. Imagine getting bit by bugs all night, too! You can bet you will be groggy and tired come morning.

After a few days of hiking, without sleep, you will not be able to focus and getting out of the woods safely will become much harder.

Bug spray will never fail you. It is a powerful item that is light and easy to carry. There are many derivations of it but even some store-bought product will put an end to the gnats flying into your eyes or the biting mosquitos. Even bugs scurrying over you in the night can be brutal, if you aren’t used to it.

While the gear out today is impressive don’t forget about keeping the bugs and the sun at bay.

Conclusion

Of course, there are many other items that could be mentioned but I think these three offer up the benefits, the reliability  the sweeping power to affect survival on many levels.

For the most part a serious rifle for hunting is another piece of gear that is rarely going to fail you. Take into account that you could even build that weapon from a simple 80 percent lower and then you know how to fix it even if it breaks!

That’s the type of mentality we all need to focus on. Even if these great tools fail us, can we fix them?

10 Defensive Shooting Tips That Could Save Your Life

Owning a gun is one thing, but knowing how to wield it is something else entirely. If you don’t know how to properly use your firearm in a self-defensive situation, not only do your chances of survival go down, but your chances of accidentally harming yourself or somebody else go up.

Fortunately, this can all be cured by just a little bit of regular practice on the shooting range where you can train with your defensive shooting skills and grow comfortable with your weapon of choice. The tips you are about to learn in this article apply regardless of what type of firearm you’re using.

Here are the top ten defensive shooting tips that could save your life:

1. Buy Enough Ammo

What good is a gun without ammo? It could serve you well as a club, but that’s about it. Therefore, the first defensive shooting tip is to actually buy enough ammo to practice your defensive shooting in the first place.  Since ammo is a little costly, you can get around this by making it a habit to buy just one or two boxes a week.  Your stockpile will grow steadily as a result.

2. Get A Proper Firing Grip

To hold a handgun correctly, you need to have both hands wrapped firmly around the grip of the gun with both of your thumbs forward. The fingers of your weak hand should be wrapped around the fingers of your firing hand. Hold the gun at eye level so you can peer down the sights.

3. Line Up Your Sights

Line up your front sight to your rear sight. You want the front sight to be aimed directly at the target.  Your eye should then be focused directly on the front sight. Your rear sight and your environment beyond the front sight should therefore be a little blurry.

4. Keep Both Eyes Open

A natural thing to do is to shut your non-dominant eye when peering down the sights of a firearm. This is a big mistake for two reasons: it causes extreme fatigue in your eye lids, and it shuts out half of your field of vision (so you may not be able to see an enemy approaching). Remedy this by keeping your front eye wide open and your second eye squinted but still open.

5. Keep Your Finger Indexed

One of the core rules of gun safety is to never place your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot. Keep your trigger finger indexed, meaning it’s resting on the frame of the handgun above the trigger guard.

6. Control Your Firing

Spraying and praying with guns is fun in video games, but it’s a horrible shooting technique in real life. It makes the gun uncontrollable, decreases the chance of you hitting your target, and increases your chance of accidentally hitting someone else who you don’t want to.

Rather, control your firing so that each individual shot is deliberate. If you want to practice double taps, that’s fine, but you should never fire any rounds that you didn’t intend to or that were out of your control. Avoid flinching as well (where you jerk the gun when it doesn’t fire). To practice not flinching, load some live rounds and dummy rounds into your magazine, but don’t know the order they are in. When the primer hits a dummy round and you flinch, you’ll need to correct that.

7. Reload Without Looking

Looking at your gun while fumbling around with a reload is a terrible thing to do. It removes your focus from the environment and it shows that you’re not a properly trained shooter. Therefore, put lots of practice into swapping out magazines and racking the slide to re-chamber the weapon. Keep your eyes focused on the environment around you as you eject the spent magazine, draw a fresh new one, insert it into the weapon, and rack the slide. Draw the gun in closer to you when you reload as well before re-assuming a natural and proper firing stance.

8. Know How To Shoot One Handed

While you should try to get a two handed grip if possible, some defensive scenarios may require you to only shoot one handed if you need to act quickly. Therefore, you should practice shooting one handed as well. When shooting one handed, keep your firing arm stretched out, while your non-firing hand should be clenched into a first and held to your torso. This way you know where your non-firing hand is and you don’t risk it being out in your field of fire.

 

9. Learn How To Clear Jams

It doesn’t matter if you purchase the most reliable pistol on the planet; experiencing a jam is a very real possibility. Just as you must practice reloading, so you must practice clearing jams as well so you can get back into the fight. Standard procedure with a jam is to firmly tap the magazine (most jams are caused by a not-fully inserted magazine) and then rack the slide to eject the failed round. If this fails, eject the existing magazine and load in a new one and rack it again. If this also fails to clear the weapon, you have a bigger problem on your hands.

10. Practice a Lot

The old saying goes that practice makes perfect, and practicing firing your weapon on the shooting range is not going to cut it. Make it a rule that you’ll practice on the shooting range a minimum of once per month, with a minimum of two hundred and fifty rounds fired each time.

Conclusion

Between owning two guns and not knowing how to use either of them or owning one gun and being a master at it, the second option is certainly more preferable if you’re serious about defending your life. Take the tips you have learned in this article seriously and apply them during your real life shooting range time.

The 8 Secret Essentials To Long-Term Food Storage

Our greatest priority in preparedness should be long-term food storage, simply because any catastrophic event will affect the supply chain and food will quickly become scarce.

But while food storage has significant value and provides us all with a level of security, there are some realities affecting food storage that we need to both understand and manage. If we fail to do so, we may find that our well-planned storage has failed on levels we hadn’t anticipated nor imagined.

What’s critical to understand is that most stated shelf-life statistics assume an ideal storage environment. The question we have to ask ourselves is: What is that environment and to what degree can we provide it? In that regard, the purpose of this article is not to list endless shelf-life possibilities, but to clearly identify the success factors and failure points that affect shelf life for any type of food.

The 8 “Secret Essentials”

1. Temperature
2. Humidity
3. Oxygen
4. Light
5. Food type
6. Packaging integrity
7. Keeping away rodents and insects
8. Rotation

1. Temperature

A fascinating discovery recently took place in the Antarctic that impacted how we view food storage. The base camp of Sir Robert Scott – the British man who died in 1912 while exploring the region — was discovered. One of the huts had canned foods and other food products that were still edible and free of bacteria after more than 100 years. The reason was largely due to the below-freezing temperatures that permeated the hut. The lesson is clear: The lower the temperature, the longer your food stores will last.  That’s why a basement or other root-cellar type of environment is preferable to an attic or a part of your home that is hotter or heated during the winter.

2. Humidity

Humidity is the most significant threat to long-term food-storage. It promotes both bacterial growth and mold growth. And it can happen in what you believe is the most hermetically sealed canisters you have. I had an experience where my wife needed significant amounts of sugar for Christmas cookies and desserts. Unfortunately, blizzards were dominating our area and travel was impossible. I laughed as I remembered that I had a five gallon bucket of sugar in our basement that had been sitting there for 10 years. The projected shelf life was 30 years and I figured, “No worries.” I was wrong. When we opened it, the smell of mildew was so over-powering that we couldn’t wait to get the can out the back door and onto the deck. Everything about the seal seemed intact, but moisture finds a way.

This is not only true for any package that could have moisture seepage, but also true for something as seemingly indestructible as a sealed, metal #10 can. Corrosion is common in moist environments and even the best metal in a #10 can succumb to corrosion in high levels of moisture.

Some companies enclose a packet of moisture absorbing crystals inside, but these are mostly designed to remove any residual moisture in the canned or packaged product. The point is, don’t store your long-term food-stores in a moist or wet environment. If your basement has that tendency, you might want to find an alternative storage location that still provides some level of low to average temperatures without excess humidity.

3. Oxygen

Image source: Couponfrenzymom.com

It’s ironic, but a molecule that all animals depend on for life on Earth is one of the most corrosive and destructive elements in the universe. While we breath oxygen deeply it both compromises and corrodes our long-term food storage. Some long-term food storage companies actually evacuate all oxygen from their canned or sealed products, and some inject nitrogen gas to fill the void and prevent oxygen from entering.

If you have purchased a hermetically sealed package such as a #10 can or a foil wrapped grain package with sufficient thickness or “mils” for the foil, you probably will avoid this oxygen problem. Many home-canned or cured meats may not fare as well. You realistically can’t remove oxygen from your living environment, but properly packaged long-term products will strive to reduce or eliminate oxygen to prevent it from compromising your food stores.

4. Light

When we talk about light, we’re talking about sunlight. Sunlight deteriorates food products quickly due to the ultra-violet or UV light that dominates sunlight. It’s one of the reasons beer bottles are usually bottled in brown glass to reduce and diffuse the effects of UV light. This typically isn’t a problem for many long-term food stores, but if you preserve your own foods, whether they be fruits or vegetables, you’re probably using clear, glass jars. Keep them out of the light, especially sunlight.

5. Food type

Anyone with any experience with home-canning and food preservation will tell you that certain foods lend themselves to preservation better than others. Typically, acidic foods like tomatoes and citrus fruits will preserve better given the fact that their natural acids retard bacterial growth.

Of equal consideration are foods that are naturally dry or dried such as pastas, whole grains, beans and grains like rice and quinoa or amaranth. What’s critical again is to seal out humidity and in the case of some grains – insects.

Related: Survival Techniques That Tackle the Unexpected

Meats, fresh fish, and other proteins like poultry are the most problematic when it comes to long-term food storage. Unless they are salted and essentially desiccated of all moisture, their shelf life tends to be short and variable. On the other hand, a jar of honey discovered in an ancient Egyptian tomb after 3,000 years was found to be both bacteria-free and edible as if it was harvested yesterday. Food type matters.

Once again, the standard rules related to temperature, humidity, light and oxygen apply to any food type.

6. Packaging integrity

Think about this whenever you consider any long-term food purchase. What does the manufacturer have to say about the packaging?

• Are they hermetically sealed, meaning that no oxygen can enter?
• Has any oxygen been vacuumed from the package?
• Is there a moisture absorber or some type of crystals to absorb any residual moisture?
• What is the material used to package the product? Metal? (What kind?) Plastic? “How thick?” Foil? (How many mils or relative thickness?)
• Other features or benefits?

The premium suppliers will provide significant information with regards to packaging details, projected shelf-life and the usual advice about storage and temperatures. They’ll also answer your questions. The key is to make sure you’re purchasing a quality product in a quality package so you can do your best to maintain a healthy and viable food-storage plan.

7. Keeping away rodents and insects

It would seem that a sound and robust packaging solution would prevent rodents and insects from compromising your food storage. That’s what I thought until I found that some mice had chewed through a thick plastic box to later chew through a very thick layer of foil surrounding some whole grain wheat. Once they had accessed the wheat, their population exploded and then the ants joined the party. Shame on me. I had not paid much attention to this storage area and only did so when the mouse problem in the basement started to show up in the kitchen.

The fact of the matter is that mice can’t chew through metal and can’t chew glass, either. But don’t assume for a minute that a starving field mouse won’t find his way through plastic or foil. Think twice about what and where you store and once again, packaging integrity is key to keeping these pests away. Of course, mousetraps help, too.

8. Rotation

We’ve all heard it many times: “Eat what you store and store what you eat.”  And how many of us really do that? It’s hard when we have food storage products touting a shelf life of 10 to 20 years. Our tendency is to tuck them away and know they’re available if and when catastrophe happens. And that’s a problem. There are numerous benefits to the “eat what you store and store what you eat” philosophy. Here are a few:

1. It forces us to take stock and inspect our food stores. Do I have a moisture problem? Are there any rodents or insects in evidence? Are any of the cans or other containers compromised? And maybe most importantly a simple reminder of: “What exactly do I have down here?”
2. It teaches us how to cook this stuff. I remember whipping up some tacos with some textured vegetable protein (TVP) with a taco flavor. It was horrible. I didn’t like it, my kids didn’t like it, and my wife hated it. I was ready to throw the can away until I talked to a friend. He suggested I try it as an ingredient with some dehydrated vegetables and some seasonings. He was right, and it was better.
3. You might find out you love some of this stuff. My kids love Mac and Cheese and I’m a bit partial to it, too. I grabbed a can of elbow macaroni and another can of cheese powder and whipped some up. It was great! And way cheaper than any boxed macaroni at the grocery store, including the store brands. This was actually a pivotal point for me, as it related to our long-term food stores and the whole “eat what you store” idea. What else was down there that sounded good for someday that would actually be great tomorrow?

Three Survival Items That Never Fail

We have all watched in horror as a piece of our trusted survival gear breaks. We have all watched attachments break, blades snap and even handles crack. It happens. Most of the time it happens on a camping trip with little risk. Thank God for that! Still, it has a serious affect when it happens.

Instantly, you are transported to a place and time where that piece of gear is all that separates you from disaster. It’s a terrifying thought. It calls into question the quality of your gear and how you handle and maintain it.

What survival items can you add to your setup that never fail? Well, there are plenty, but three come to mind. These three will not only stand up against survival they will also make the biggest impacts on a survival situation.

Bank Line

For a long time, the survival cordage space was dominated by paracord or 550 cord. There was no getting away from this stuff. It became the ultimate in survival cordage primarily for its tensile strength and the 5 smaller strands of cordage that were inside of each strand.

I don’t want you to think that there is an epidemic of paracord failures. That is not why I am bringing it up. There are other alternatives and when it comes to cordage, bank line is less bulky and weighs about half as much as paracord. Now, that should get you excited.

Bank line can be purchased with vary degrees of tensile strength. It’s a finer cordage than paracord but its very strong. Bank line takes up much less space than paracord and that space savings is exponential as you increase the amount of cordage you carry. You can grab a 100-foot spool of quality bank line for about $4 or less.

No matter the situation you face, a spool of quality bank line can make you shelter, catch your food and stand the test of the outdoors.

Ferro Rod

If you go overboard in a canoe, if you roll down a steep embankment, if you find yourself in the throes of some situation that separates you from your gear or treats your gear to some blunt force trauma, the ferro rod will be there.

Aside from a modern lighter or a piece of flint and your survival knife, the ferro rod is the most dependable and fast acting fire starter there is. If you are looking for a fire-starting companion that will not fail you, invest in a nice thick ferro rod. Don’t buy one of the thinner rods.These can break easily. buy a 1 high quality ferrorod that will last.

Aside from the fact that it will never fail to shoot sparks, even if it’s wet you can just dry it off, the ferro rod is also going to lastyou a very long time. If you have efficient tinder making skills and you understand how to build and sustain a fire, you might only need a few scrapes on that ferro rod to make it work.

Imagine how long a ferro rod will last you if you scrape it a few times for each fire. This is why the ferro rod is one survival item that will never fail you. You ask it to bring sparks and it will do that over and over again.

Bug Spray

Now, maybe you think I should bring you some impressive type of survival tool for the third item that will not fail you. A few come to mind. I could mention things like short handled axes or maybe something for creating shelter.

Its pretty clear that water, shelter and fire are the three most important parts of any survival situation. So, you might be asking yourself: why are you talking about bug spray?

Lots of survivalists get wrapped up in this idea of gear. They get to the point where they are wading in gear. However, things like sunscreen and bug spray are often left out. Could it be that these two items are just not exciting enough? They aren’t as cool as more modern survival gear?

Bug spray can make all the difference in a survival situation. If you are truly lost and trying to find your way out of the woods, you are going to need to be alert and awake. Sleeping in the woods, under a lean-to is challenging enough. Imagine getting bit by bugs all night, too! You can bet you will be groggy and tired come morning.

After a few days of hiking, without sleep, you will not be able to focus and getting out of the woods safely will become much harder.

Bug spray will never fail you. It is a powerful item that is light and easy to carry. There are many derivations of it but even some store-bought product will put an end to the gnats flying into your eyes or the biting mosquitos. Even bugs scurrying over you in the night can be brutal, if you aren’t used to it.

While the gear out today is impressive don’t forget about keeping the bugs and the sun at bay.

As a prepper, I always knew that bugging in is not an option for all of us. No matter how well you prepare and how many stuff you stockpile, there’s always the unknown factor you have to deal with. You may be lucky enough to ride the storm in the comfort of your own home, or you may be forced to evacuate. For most people that means heading for the hills or into the woods and those journeys won’t be possible without proper planning.

Hunkering down is not a viable long-term survival solution and you will sooner or later be forced to evacuate. A natural disaster can affect the integrity of your shelter, the social element may try to break in, or you could run out of supplies or could require professional medical aid. There are many reasons why you should have a plan B and figure out how and where to bug out. The following tips should help you plan your bug out plan.

Where to go and what to do?

This is the first thing you have to figure out and once you get the right answer, you should start planning. Your plans for bugging out will change and formulate as you learn more about your options. The importance of a safe haven is not up for debate when a long-term crisis arises. However, the “where to” aspect needs to be clarified since you basically have two options.

1. Go to friends and family

If you have trustworthy friends or family connections in another region, you may be luckier than others. You could go to them when it hits the fan and you will be able to outlast the crisis in a familiar and safe environment. The first thing you need to do when starting the bugging out planning is talking with your connections. Let those people know that you might visit them when the world starts to boil. You will not catch them off guard and everyone will know what to expect.

The second thing you need to do is make sure you will not become a burden for others. Sure, they are your friends and family, but if things go bad, you should be able to bring something to the table. Think about how to bring some of your supplies (if not all) with you. Maybe you have a truck, or maybe you have a large stash that could be accessed when things turn bad. And if you can’t bring enough supplies with you, just make sure you put your skills and knowledge to good use. A prepper’s mind is non-stop working tool and they might benefit from it as well.

And last but not least, make sure you can get there. As I said it many times before, a good bug out planning needs to take into account alternative routes to get out of the danger zone and reach the safe haven. Besides alternative routes, think about what you will do if you run out of fuel and if you can use other means of transportation.

2. Go into the wilderness

Unfortunately, this will be the option for many of the people out there and most of them don’t see this as a problem. Some people are used to go camping and they see it as an extended camping trip. This is a wrong assumption and you simply cannot live for an extended period of time in the wilderness without proper planning.

Bugging out into the woods will eventually force you to live off the land, and you will pay greatly if you’re not prepared for such change. This topic often attracts a lot of information since it’s one of the most popular ones. However, not everything shared out there could be classified as good information. Let’s say you reach your safe heaven or camping site deep into the wilderness, but what will happen next? Do you have the means to survive there once your supplies run out? Do you know how to conceal your presence and avoid unwelcome guests?

Making the plan real

Getting in touch with friends and family and letting them know about your bugging out plan and how it includes them is not complicated. Picking a spot into the wilderness to call your home for the next months requires planning and a little bit of experience in exploring the great outdoors.

As a prepper, you should learn everything you can about your living area. How populated it gets during the holidays or hunting season. How densely populated it is and how the social elements acted in the past during various scenarios (riots, blackouts, natural disasters, etc.). If there are only a few people that know the forests around you, chances are you can bug out into the woods and stay there undisturbed for as long as you can. If it’s a region with a vast hunting heritage and people patrol the woods on a daily/weekly basis, you may have a hard time setting up camp without people stumbling in.

Do some prospecting and check if the region is safe for bugging out. Most people will look for government assistance when it hits the fan, and few of them will have the courage of venturing out into the unknown. Even more, nowadays people have become so lazy or preoccupied to compete in the rat race that hiking and camping are no longer activities of general interest.  If that’s the case in your living area, make sure you have your routes map out and check out various camping sites that you could use in case of need.

Dealing with your survival bag

A common occurrence in the prepping community is making a bug out bag and forgetting about it. This is more common for people that are new to prepping, and they miss out on obvious things. I’m not going to talk here about what a survival bag should contain, how to organize it and other stuff like that.  The topic I want to cover is the one about keeping your bug out bag useful.

Your bug out bag grows and adapts just like the way you do. Everything you put in there has more or less an expiration date. Every gear you carry should be tested and analyzed from time to time. You will find multi-use tools that could replace a few items in your bag. You will make it lighter in time as you figure out what you can properly use and what you have no use for.

The bug out bag you make should be adapted for the road, season and climate. Even the clothes you put in it should be carefully picked. If you prepared your bug out bag in the summer and you have to bug out during the winter season, you will have a hard time dressing up properly. If the food or medicine you packed expired or got destroyed after improper storage (mold, humidity, etc.), you will have to find alternative ways of dealing with hunger or health issues.

Just because you made a bug out bag, doesn’t mean everything is in order and you are covered for anything. Check your bug out bag from time to time if you want it to save your life when s*** hits the fan.

Pack the stuff you need

When you are planning for an extended wilderness stay, you should bring all the stuff you need for a comfortable stay. This often means that you will not be able to carry everything in just your bug out bag. Your transportation vehicle will become an invaluable item during a long-term scenario. It will become both a shelter and storage if needed.

The things you pack in your vehicle should follow a few key selection factors such as durability, weight, size and of course performance or extended use. For example, if you pack snacks for the kids and you pick up chips (yes some pack comfort foods to keep kids happy) you will waste a lot of space. You could maybe pack some energy bars that will temper their moods and provide them with valuable nutrients. The same goes for your survival gear, you can pack a lifestraw filter for every member of your party, but they won’t last for long compared to a professional Berkey water filter that you can safely store in your car.

You need to make a difference between the stuff needed and the stuff wanted and appreciate the true value of an item. Good practice makes permanent and you won’t know how good or durable your gear is whiteout testing it. You won’t figure out if you know to operate your kit and learning how to do it when stress is building up and the crisis prolongs is not recommended.

Feeding the machines

Another important aspect of long wilderness journeys is feeding the power machines that make things possible… you and your family. Understanding what works best for your bodies is an important aspect of survival. You are faced with a variety of options when it comes to food and you need to pick carefully. Fresh food has a limited lifespan and range while dehydrated foods require water. On the other hand, wet foods or MREs require cooking and you will only be able to do that at the camping site.

The problem here is that you are expected to burn a lot of calories when functioning in the wilderness. This becomes even a bigger problem during the harsh climate and you need to find a balance between calorie burn and the gain or advantages you get from burning those calories. Even when walking through the wilderness at 2mph you could be burning 100-140 calories per hour.

Maintenance and survival skillsIf you spend all your day walking and looking for things to forage, the amount of calories you burn will not be replaced by the foods you manage to forage. It’s not like in the movies, the wilderness can feed you, but you require a lot of experience and practice before you are able to sustain yourself out there.

You will stretch out your comfort zones when you change the operating environment. You will have to figure out how to repair and fix your stuff if they break down. If you aren’t able to tie a knot or if you can’t figure out ingenious ways to use zip-ties you will have a hard time functioning in the wilderness.

If you are carrying a comprehensive repair kit with you, make sure you know how to use it. Knowing how to fix equipment, format electronic products, repair stoves, or jury-rig snowshoes, canoes and other kit becomes critical during an extended wilderness skill.

Your survival skills will also help you prolong the lifetime of your supplies and gear. If you know how to set snares, you won’t be using ammo to hunt. If you know how to start a fire using primitive skills, you won’t be using your matches or kindle you brought from home. The same goes for shelter making, if you know how to build a shelter from natural materials, you could be using your tarp to camouflage your vehicle. The idea here is that you should be using all the skills you have in order to save up some of the consumables you have.

Identifying hazards and managing risks.

Chances are you will experience new risks, hazards and scenarios when living in the wilderness. This is not necessarily a bad thing and it will help you grow as an individual and survivalist. However, you will need to use your brain and skills to stay safe out there.

Firstly, considering the hazards in the first place is important to implement some control measures. Planning and running through a checklist is a good place to tarts. On some of my extended wilderness stays my topics included: inclement weather, personal injury, wild animals, heat considerations and human interaction (or the lack of it).

The learning curve can appear steep in some scenarios and to put it simply, you don’t know what you don’t know. That being said, try to seek advice or professional help from other like-minded individuals. Even turning to the internet or perhaps reading the appropriate bushcraft book can help.

No one sets out to have an accident or serious incident. It usually can be traced to a series of factors colliding. Several elements combine to create a more serious incident. Examples of this include broken or wrong kit, fatigue or illness within the team, storms or bad weather, inexperience of the conditions and so on. Anyone of these, when combined with a second or third factor, can result in a serious incident.

Knowing about this effect and recognizing it before it happens and applying good judgment can avoid accidents or worse.

A final word of advice on bug out planning

Bugging out into the woods and hoping to have a safe, extended wilderness stay without proper planning is just not possible. You need to have experience in exploring the great outdoors and the region you live in or the one you plan to bug out to. Bringing the proper gear and making the best use of it becomes law and learning how to identify risks becomes a religion. The situation complicates even more when you have to deal with other party members and you need to manage your team. You may have your s*** together, but how about others? An extended wilderness stay requires a good planning and field test run.