Top 10 most crucial survival skills

[ZenDog]

I was somewhere on the internet and I found this list - thought it would go well here at TGO. It was an interview with the author of a book "When Technology Fails".

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interviewer: Can you give us a list of your Top 10 most crucial survival skills?

author Matthew Stein: OK. Here's 10:

1. Be Prepared: I strongly suggest that everyone put together a basic 72-hour "grab-and-run" survival kit (see page 51 of my book for full list of items). This kit should cover the basic food, water and survival needs for you and your family for at least the critical first three days after a disaster. Most of us could survive for a month without food, but a single day without water in extreme heat is enough to kill a person.

2. Develop Your Intuition: Most survivors credit their instincts and "gut feel" with saving their lives. Natural selection has bred the most incredible survival mechanism into man. It is called "intuition," and primitive man has relied upon it for untold millennia to help him to make life-and-death decisions in a split second.

3. Disaster Plan: See the Short-Term Preparedness Checklist on page 50. Discuss a plan with your family for communicating and responding to a disaster when phone lines may be dead (select a predetermined local meeting area and out-of-town contact; know how to shut off your home's gas and electricity supply, etc.).

4. Learn First Aid: In the back country, as well as in most natural or man-made disasters, knowing fist aid (including CPR) saves lives.

5. Go Camping and Backpacking: Most people have not camped or backpacked since they were a kid, or perhaps never at all. If you are in this category, start with some car camping for a few weekends. I suggest you get comfortable with car camping before graduating to overnight backpacking trips. Backpacking will accustom your body to hiking several miles at a time and carrying whatever you need yourself.

6. Know How To Start a Fire: Being able to build a fire is important for cooking, purifying water, preventing hypothermia in cold climates, keeping wild animals away at night (in some areas) and signaling potential rescuers. Starting on page 76, my book gives illustrated instructions for building fires including: starting a fire with matches; using a flint-and-steel; starting a fire with a primitive fire drill; using a "fire plough;" etc.

7. Learn How To Find and Purify Water: Unless you are in a cold climate, a single day without water will make you quite miserable, and three days could kill you. Bees and birds can lead you to sources of fresh surface water. A primitive solar still can collect enough water for survival from plants and ground moisture.

8. Survivor Personality: Developing the mental traits of the "survivor personality" will help you to navigate and thrive in spite of life's challenges. The best survivors are flexible, tend to keep their cool in stressful situations, don't give up, have a playful curiosity, have a good sense of humor, don't tend to "cry over spilled milk," follow their "gut feelings" and are often "bad patients" and poor rule followers.

9. Learn the "Plant Edibility Test": Most people will not happen to have a guide to wild edible plants on hand when they are thrust into a survival situation. If you know how to perform the "Plant Edibility Test" (see page 81), you will always have a safe way to test local plants for potential edibility.

10. Learn How To Make a Primitive Shelter: Learn how to make a "Scout Pit," "Squirrel's Nest," snow cave and other primitive shelters. In severe weather, a shelter could save your life, and at other times it will make your life far more comfortable.

[oldogy]

:DYeah, I like number 8

oldogy

[Punisher84]

:DYeah, I like number 8

oldogy

LOL so all us grumpy, yet playful guys are set. Mike .357 will outlive us all.

[towerclimber37]

LOL so all us grumpy, yet playful guys are set. Mike .357 will outlive us all.

AHAHAHAHahahhahaha

+1

[Mike.357]

Thanks, I love you guys too. LOL

[Guest Rando]

so where is page 81 so we can see the edibility test, is it like the one for the wifes cooking, throw it to the dog and see how far he runs before he stops. Less than 100 yards and I figure I will live through it:rofl: My dad dvr'd a show on a few days ago about a dude showing how to live in the jungle for long enough to be rescude or crawl out. He had a test for it, I think you start rubbing it on your skin in a sensitive area and wait a few minutes, then rub it on your lip wait a few mins. then lick it, wait then chew it up and hold it in your mouth, wait. and then swallow one bite and wait for 8 hrs. if your still alive take another bite;) naw by then you should be able to eat it, but if you have a numbing or tingly feeling during ant test toss it.

[Punisher84]

Thanks, I love you guys too. LOL

*hugs* Aww you're my buddy!

[Guest SUNTZU]

Edibility test.

http://www.aircav.com/survival/asch09/asch09p04.html

[strickj]

Naa,technology will never fail......well at least not all at the same time anyway

I think you start rubbing it on your skin in a sensitive area and wait a few minutes, then rub it on your lip wait a few mins. then lick it, wait then chew it up and hold it in your mouth, wait. and then swallow one bite and wait for 8 hrs. if your still alive take another bite;) naw by then you should be able to eat it, but if you have a numbing or tingly feeling during ant test toss it..

I think thats what we call the drunken sniff test

[Guest jackdog]

:DYeah, I like number 8

oldogy

Man I was thinking the same thing:D

[Guest Rando]

Edibility test.

http://www.aircav.com/survival/asch09/asch09p04.html

cool site but if I go 16hrs without eating I'm cooking up a whole tree let alone one little plant.

Hey what do you figure on the first one to roll up a little hemp and smoke it, I guess some \one tried to eat a little first but I dont know what that would do to you either way its kinda:screwy: