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Survival is a shorter way to say you want to stay alive. But staying alive is not living on an exotic island surrounded by hundreds of television crew members and being watched by tens of millions of voyeurs.
To survive is what animals do everyday in the wild to maintain their existence. Like in television, their seconds also count. Real survivalists do not want to reach that nail-biting point where they are hanging off a cliff like you see on the silver screen. They don’t even want to go there. They do what is necessary to stay healthy and uninjured. How do the Boy Scouts of America put it? Bingo. “Be prepared.”
Look around your yard and notice what you could possibly eat if all the food in the world disappeared for two weeks. You see those cattails your wife wanted you to plant a few years back? You didn’t see the beauty in them then, but you will now. Cattails can save your life because they contain as many as eight edible parts and will insulate you from the cold. The new shoots and the white part at the base are quite delicious. If you have a taste for a sweet and sour combination, throw in a few dandelion greens and those clovers your gardener normally pulls out of the ground to beautify your yard.
Taking into consideration you have not done this by now, go ahead and plant a sassafras tree in your yard. You’ll be able to identify this variety anywhere you go because its leaves are shaped like a mitten and its inner bark smells much like rootbeer. You can boil either the bark or the root to make a nice pot of sassafras tea.
Before taking off for the woods, even amateur survivalists are quick to take along a professional survival kit that includes all you’ll need to survive, including a sewing kit. Otherwise, make sure you have a few items on your person before you trek into the forest.
A bandanna is used to catch the morning dew for water and keep you cool on a sweltering day. It can also be used as a hotpad, sunscreen, tourniquet, cleaning cloth, to carry additional items and filter the water you’ll need to stay alive. Attached to a stick, that brightly-colored cloth becomes a rescue flag.
A single, folded sheet of aluminum foil not only wraps your food, but serves as a fire booster. By the way, the bottom part of a downed tree, or belly wood, makes superb kindling because it remains dry even after a downpour. In addition, a wax-covered and filled plastic cup will also light if it’s wet. You’ll find that a lit candle will break the chill on a cold night. Your pocket knife protects you, helps you prepare your food and can be used to shave kindling.
A light-weight aluminum can is your food or drink container, a good reflector for rescue and a possible defense weapon. Your vocal chords will appreciate the use of a whistle if necessary. Never leave home without a reliable fire-starter and water.
Crushed Juniper berries can be used as topical medicine for a cut. Should a member of your party become very sick, feeding him/her the nutritional, undigested contents of an animal’s stomach could make the difference between life and death. Otherwise, if your sight is on something larger than a fat, healthy grub, keep in mind you prefer to be the hunter, not the prey. Simply build a fire and throw pine needles into it. Allow your clothing, including your boots, to absorb the scent of the pine sap to disguise your human smell.
Should you ever get lost in the woods without a compass, remember the moss on trees faces north; a spider’s web faces south; the tops of evergreen trees bend to the east; and the sun sets in the west.
For more information on other clever survival techniques, read The SAS Survival Handbook by John Wiseman. It can be purchased at any bookstore or at the Army Surplus store.
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