You never know when a crisis will happen or what it might mean for you and your family. Are you ready to survive without power, running water, and possibly even your house? Here are four basic survival skills you want to make sure you have before disaster strikes.
1. Finding and Purifying Water
Water is one of the most basic—and urgent—human needs. Human beings can survive without food for a few days if absolutely necessary or live in a temporary shelter for months. However, without water to drink, you and your family would quickly be in dire straits.
There are a few ways to collect water in a crisis. Once you find a source of water, you still have to make sure it’s potable. Boiling water is a reliable way to ensure it’s free of parasites and infectious diseases. However, it may leave behind pollutants that are not ideal for consumption. There are clean water kits and personal water filters that can remove bacteria and particles without the need to start a fire.
2. Starting a Fire
Building a fire is likely one of the first survival skills you learned. If you have to bug out, fire can provide life-saving warmth in cold weather, ward off predators, purify water, cook food, and even signal for help. But building a fire is harder than it looks. The three key elements for any fire are fuel, ignition, and oxygen. Luckily, there are many different ways to start a fire. Make sure to brush up on your fire-starting skills to prepare to care for your family if you find yourselves displaced from your home.
3. Finding Food
With clean water and a source of warmth, next on the list of survival know-how is finding and catching food. While it’s recommended to have 72 hours’ worth of food on-hand at all times, once you have depleted any emergency food kit, foraging and hunting are two of the long-term survival skills that you absolutely need to know. The ability to identify common edible wild plants, such as stinging nettle, dandelion, lamb’s quarters, and miner’s lettuce, can provide a source of nutrition for you and your family. Meanwhile, the ability to hunt for small game or fish can help round out your diet if you find yourself living in the wilderness.
4. Building a Shelter
If you have to leave home in an emergency, you may need to provide shelter for your family. In fact, depending on weather conditions, this might be the first thing you do after bugging out. If you’re unable to find a premade shelter such as a cave, overhang, or thick foliage, you’ll want to build a lean-to. To do so, find a large branch and lean it against a tree. Then take other branches and stack them on one side. Finally, add insulating layers such as leaves and moss to create protection from the elements.
Knowing the right survival skills is important, but so is having the proper food and gear. Shop 4Patriots for the survival food and gear you need, including emergency food kits, generators, water filtration systems, and more.
