Principles of Survival - Part 1

(18 posts)

Started 10 months ago by NomadCelt
Latest reply from Suenos
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Anonymous
Unregistered

No matter what the situation from crash-landing in a peruvian forest to an EMP attack on Central London, there are 4 principles of Survival that, if you understand, will get you though.

PART 1

They break down in to the neumonic P.L.A.N

P - Protection

You must be able to protect yourselves from the initial danger and from subsequent dangers.
You must be able to find protection from the elements (shelter).

L - Location

You need to work out exactly where you are and where it is you want to get to.
You need to be able to signal your location by any means possible - sight, sound, shape, smell, etc

A - Aquisition of Water and Food (in that order)

Rule of Three applies here - 3 mins without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food (and about 3 months without company).
Water is your priority and you must have the means and knowledge to collect/extract/contain and purify water.
You need knowledge of local food stuffs; the ability to collect / store and prepare vegetables and animals. More importantly, you need to know what you CAN'T consume.

N - Navigation

You know where you are and you know where you want to go but how do you get there?
You need a sound working knowledge of map/compass navigation as well as improvised navigation.

Once you have a confident grasp of all of the above, you are pretty safe and secure, especially in a lush temperate land such as the UK.

more to follow if anyone is interested.....

Posted 10 months ago #
jillybean
Member

More please. I am interested!

Posted 10 months ago #
Catweazle
Member

Yes please !

Posted 10 months ago #
tracy
tracy

NomadCelt, you have just won yourself a series of little articles in the newsletter! I Look forward to this ;-)

Posted 10 months ago #
RichardKing
Member

Hope that this forum will not simply degenerate into a "survivalists" manifesto.

Posted 10 months ago #
tracy
tracy

Richard, I think it is absolutely fine to have a discussion thread on this topic! We support the community woods projects ;-) and we might all learn something too ....

Posted 10 months ago #
Anonymous
Unregistered

Richard,

I don't wish to annoy anyone by writing anything unacceptable. Of course, you don't have to read it ;o)

Tracy asked me to send in educational articles about what I get up to in her company's woodland.

oh, and I'm not a survivalist. I am a survival instructor. The difference being that I don't stock up on pallets of beans and tinned fish in the event of the sky falling on our heads. I merely teach people the skills that we all had to use to evolve to this current state of being.

John

Posted 10 months ago #
Darren
Member

I think bushcraft/survival are complementary to woodland activity. First aid, fruits of the woods and shelter all can be quite useful when you spend alot of time in the woods.
Forgot firecraft, not many people can build a fire let alone make it effortless.

Posted 10 months ago #
tracy
tracy

Oh dear, we have stocks of beans, and tinned food in our house in case the sky falls on our heads.... I better keep quiet! lol

Posted 10 months ago #
Anonymous
Unregistered

Darren,

I shall also be holding afternoon 'skill sessions' to focus on key aspects, such as firecraft. Wait out for more details!

John

Posted 10 months ago #
Anonymous
Unregistered

PROTECTION

Protect yourself from the Initial Situation.
Protect yourself from further danger.
Protect yourself from the elements.

So, the initial situation....

There are two schools of thought here, fight or flight , stay or run.
For the majority of permissive situations (ie; you're not being hunted by a gang of rabid eastern european special forces), I am firmly in the "stay" camp. There are exceptions though that I'll go in to later.
What the 'situation' always gives you is a means of being identified and located. If you're caught in a flood, rescuers are not going to look to the drier areas first.
If you've crashed in a plane, chances are that it was carrying a transponder, locating the position.
As I said, there are exceptions. If 'life as we know it' is about to change / has changed then I'm outta here. More on that at another time.

Protect from further danger....

First aid training is key. As is fitness - mental and physical. To use the flood example again, if you're going to be climbing to high ground, you need to be able to carry yourself and your equipment while probably dragging / pushing a loved one. You may have to wade through flowing waters. Mental strength above physical is always key though. If you put took bones or muscle tissue and put them under stress-testing you would see that they are INCREDIBLY strong. They will take a huge amount of force - it's the mind that often is weaker.

You will need to be able to apply basic first aid to yourself and those around you. Get yourself to a basic first aid lesson run by St John's Ambulance (or St Andrew's Ambulance in Scotland, I think). I believe that all children should be taught first aid in school anyway but that's another rant.

Protect from the elements....

You NEED shelter. It's up on the list with Water and Food. Without shelter you will deteroriate rapidly and perish. Shelter could be sitting with your back to a tree a rainstorm or building yourself a log cabin - I'd suggest we're thinking about something in between. Learn how to make improvised shelters from the wreckage around you. You need to know what insulates and what conducts heat. Know how to make waterproof coverings from the local flora and fauna.
Don't go building a huge shelter if it's just for you, regardless of how much space you think you need - you make it big enough to fit your body and that's it. Small shelters are easier to warm with body heat.

Speaking of heat, fire is very important (although not the be all and end all). Being able to light and maintain a fire, suitable to the situation, is a life saver. Fire brings you the ability to warm yourself, purify water, cook your food, provide a beacon for location, and more than all of that, bring morale.

Don't worry, if you are new to any of this and are now thinking, "Where do I learn all of these things that he is mentioning?" then, if anyone is interested, I shall elaborate later on.

Posted 10 months ago #
nomadcelt
Member

LOCATION

Locating yourself, allowing others to locate you

While preparing for these posts, I quickly found this link: http://www.inquiry.net/outdoor/skills/b ... ignals.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_for_help

They show the internationally recognised Ground to Air symbols and distress signals.

Luckily for us, the UK is so densely populated that locating yourself is never difficult. If a plane crashed within the confines of the UK (excluding the highlands) you are no more than 60 mins walk from some form of civilisation. Locating yourself in this sort of situation is therefore easy. Locating yourself in a country such as Canada or the Russian plains is somewhat more challenging and a topic for another forum.

Once you have located yourself, you may want others to find you. Search and Rescue may or may not be available still. Failing that, you may simply want others to find you so that you are not alone.

There are many ways in which you can accomplish this:

Sight
Sound
Smell

SIGHT: The symbols shown in the link above are to be created as large as possible in as open an area as you can find, contrasting the ground that you have placed it on. You could draw them on the side of a building, trample a corn field, strip branches and cover a dark field - it's up to your imagination really.
The most common and often simplest way is to use fire. Smoke for Day, Light for Night. There are numerous ways of creating a signal fire and many ways to control it to produce as much smoke as possible or as much light as possible. Three signal fires in a large triangle is internationally recognised as a distress signal. Reflection is another key 'sight' aid. Using glass, metal, plastics, anything that will reflect light to the air. Many people will claim to use a heliograph but in a test over 300m the lid of a survival tin was seen easier than a heliograph.

The main aim with SIGHT is to produce something as large and as 'out of the ordinary' as possible, indicating direction if you can.

SOUND: 6 long whistle blasts followed by a 1 min pause, repeated. The answer you are looking for is 3 short blasts, telling you that someone has heard your blasts. Do NOT stop blowing your whistle until you have established visual contact! Failing the use of a whistle, banging metal objects together to the same 'beat' as above.

Again, with SOUND, the aim is to produce out of the ordinary sounds as loud as possible

SMELL: Burning rubber, plastics, foam - anything that produces an 'out of the ordinary' smell. Clearly, you need to take in to account of wind direction and the fact that what you are burning could be toxic! This is not the tactic of choice but if you are trying to be rescued, it's only your imagination that's stopping you being found!

Of course, this is all on the assumption that you WANT to be found!

Posted 7 months ago #
tracy
tracy

So, if you are going to be alone in your woodland, always have a whistle and a lighter in your pocket!

Posted 7 months ago #
nomadcelt
Member

If only lighting a fire were that easy ;)

Posted 7 months ago #
tracy
tracy

Ok, and some silver birch bark.... !

Posted 7 months ago #
nomadcelt
Member

In the rain?

Posted 7 months ago #
tracy
tracy

Keep it dry in your pocket!
Are you suggesting we carry petrol?
What do we need to carry to make fire then? lol

Posted 7 months ago #
Anonymous
Unregistered

We often camp in our woods, in North Wales. It certainly knows about raining there. In fact we have just returned from a particularly wet stay.

Starting a fire in wet conditions is a vital skill. There seem to be two critical aspects. The first is keeping your tinder dry. Here I find that matches are fairly fragile unless they have special protection. High humidity is sufficient to spoil them. One old trick is dipping the heads in candle wax. On the whole the fire stick seems to be more reliable, but that definitely needs dry stuff to catch the sparks and ignite. In winter, when using a stove for space heating, drying is relatively easy just by hanging the tinder above the stove. In summer its a bit harder. Charcloth kept in old fashioned camera film canisters works well for catching sparks.

The other aspect is getting dry material to burn. I find this a bit easier then maintaining dry tinder. Here all that is needed is to split down dry wood, using axe and knife in turn. The knife is excellent for making thin kindling sticks. This technique will work even in pouring rain, provided that the fire is protected with some sort of roof, like a tarpaulin.

We had some good camp fires this last weekend, and it helped morale hugely. Also it provided heat for our cooking, which of course was critical for our well being.

I think that survival skills are relevant to the woods, primarily because they can be used to help make staying there comfortable. Spending a few days in the woods at a time makes it easier to appreciate them, and to conduct various improvements in the immediate vicinity of the camp.

Posted 1 month ago #

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