Open Survival is a free, open source project. It’s goal is to bring you loads of information about Wilderness Survival, Urban Survival, First Aid, Self-Reliance, etc. Wrote for you by survival expert and instructor David Manise, this web site is an ever growing text and media depository from where you can freely and safely gather precious data.
Survival Gear, Methods, Knowledge, Data… Open Source.
Survival Gear
Survival Gear is one of the most discussed subject over most survival forums, blogs, web sites, etc. People are actually making a whole lot of noise with this… What is the best survival knife ? What is the best survival kit ? How can I get the best survival this and survival that, etc.
This is becoming ridiculous.
Your survival gear is nothing but the extension of your will, competences, and abilities. It WILL help, but having a huge toolbox doesn’t make a good mechanics, and having a costly survival knife forged in some powdered space steel will not make you any better at anticipating risks or at fire making. That being said, having the right gear coupled with the right knowledge and training WILL save your ass in stinky situations more often than if you have lousy, low quality, useless gear.
What is the best survival gear ?
- It’s the survival gear you have with you. Nobody carries heavy and cumbersome kit that they never use. So keep it tight… otherwise you will be tempted to just leave it in the car…
- It’s the survival gear you use daily. I hate closed kits that you never touch, because you usually don’t know what’s in it, if it’s still usable, and you’re not fully accustomed in using it. You need your kit to be almost a part of yourself, and be able to use it without a second thought. Use your kit. Often. Then change the wearable items, sharpen your knife, make it fully usable again…
- It’s simple and low tech. Simple items are easy to use, easy to fix, easy to find… and it’s easy to imagine alternative ways to use them. A stick can be used for thousands of applications. Much more than any complex tool. Simple gear also has less moving parts that can let you down when you need them most. The more it looks like a stick, and the less it looks like a computer, the more usable and reliable it will be under duress.
- It uses gross motor skills. Under stress, we lose our fine motor skills, and become too brutal not to destroy fragile hi-tech devices. Fixed blades are better than tiny multitools. Ponchos are better than shells with tiny zips, etc.
- It’s relevant to your needs. Many survival students come over to my courses with tons and tons of useless, irrevelant stuff. They end up carrying heavy backpacks, spend hours digging in them finding and sorting out stuff… Drop the useless stuff.
We’ll see in other articles how to sort out the relevant survival gear, and how to organize it.
Means Of Survival — 4 Basic Tools
As we’ve seen here, we have needs we need to get covered if we want to survive. We also have means, or tools, to get those covered. At least most of us do. Without those basic tools, we’re in deep shit. If we miss only one of them, it’s bad. Really bad.
What are they ?
Consciousness / Communication
Protect your consciousness. If you’re unconscious, you basically can’t do anything to save your own ass, or anyone else’s. Sounds pretty basic huh ? But the catch is here : it’s not a binary thing. You’re not either “conscious” or “unconscious”. Cognitive science has long ago shown us that consciousness if more like a “shades of grey” thing. Ever got in a fight and got hit hard enough to be “almost out” ? You’re still standing, you’re still moving. From the outside, you may even look like you’re just doing fine, but from the inside you feel like your brain has been shaken so much that you don’t remember what you’re doing there, you’re disoriented, you’re stunned… That’s just an example. Another one would be when you’re hypothermic and you start to feel that comfy, feelgood state of numbness coming in. Death feels pretty much like an easy way out at that point… you’re not fully conscious anymore. You’re drifting away.
What else can make you drift away, without even you noticing ?
- cold / hot
- dehydration
- stress
- lack of sleep
- etc.
Consciousness is your first and primary tool for survival. Protect it. Enforce it. Nourish it. Preserve it.
Communication also is an essential tool. If you can communicate with rescuers or others in your team, you’ve got help on the way. And that’s a plus…
Vision
Make sure you will always be able to SEE. As homo sapiens sapiens, we rely mostly on vision to dectect threats, gather food, find and use useful objects. Unless you’re blind, and trained to live that way, losing vision is really a problem. Vision is about having your eyes working (ever got snow blind ?), keeping them safe, but also having a spare pair of vision glasses if your eyesight is not very good, or having some kind of a lighting equipment on you at all times. A guy got lost in a mushroom cave, and stayed there for 27 days, licking walls to stay hydrated… because his (only) flashlight went off…
Mobility
Do not, ever, get pinned down anywhere. Mobility is the ability to move from point A to point B. This includes the sheer mechanical capacity to do it, in a musculo-skeletal way. You need your feet, ankles, leg, knees, thighs, hips and lower back to work correctly. On one leg you can travel a bit, but it’s tiring, painful, and very very difficult over steep or rugged ground… even with makeshift walking aids.
Mobility also is the knowledge and cognitive ability to go from point A to point B. Map reading skills, a map, sometimes a compass and some way to count your steps will be needed… GPS’ are cool things, but they rely on too many moving parts, and have too many ways to fail : not enough sky exposure, low batteries, frozen LCDs, water, dirt, impacts. Even the most rugged GPS on earth will fail some day. Don’t rely 100% on it, unless you want to mess with Murphy’s Law.
Side note : Mobility, on a battlefield, will let you change angles and protect yourself, hide, seek, or fire effectively at an opponent. If you’re stuck anywhere, under fire or for whatever reason, expect big shit coming in soon, either in the form of ennemy personnel or impersonal fire. As long as you can move, you can fight. As soon as you can’t, you’re in trouble.
Dexterity
Stay able to use your hands. Dexterity is fine motor skills. They plummet under duress, as well as because of cold, dehydration, etc. Some people die in their tents, in front of their benzine stove, because their fingers are too frozen to be useful. Your fingers are the most useful, high-end survival tools you can dream of as far as evolution is concerned. Don’t get Darwin Awarded because you neglect protecting them, or your ability to use them properly. Protective gloves, btw, weigh close to nothing and can really make life safer in the outdoors, as well as in urban scenarios. I’ve once had to go through a windshield to get to a car crash victim without gloves. It’s possible, but it’s not optimal at all.
CVMD.
Critical, Valuable, Meditation Data ;)
Protect all 4 at all times.
Needs For Survival — Revisiting The Rule Of Threes
Many people aldready know the classical “rule of threes” : 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, etc. This rule, which has reached my mind thanks to mister Ron Hood, is a great conceptual tool and checklist (à la Atul Gawande, must read this –> The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
You can actually survive…
3 seconds not watching out…
We’re knee deep into risk management here. And risk management is a subject all by itself. But keep in mind that you need to stay alert, focused on the incoming crap, ans still watching your six… What will stop you from being focused like that ?
- fatigue / sleep deprivation
- dehydration
- hot / cold
- stress / anxiety / panic
- intoxication
- anoxia (lack of oxygen)
- etc.
Keep your brain working. Stay in your comfort zone as much as you can. Anticipate and evaluate risks.
One simple trick for evaluating risks : “occurence x danger”. On a scale from 0 to 5 for each one.
- Occurence : 0 – will never happen to 5 – will certainly happen
- Danger : 0 : No danger at all to 5 : lethal
So you evaluate the risk of being sniped while relaxing on the beach :
(occurence : pretty much 0) x (danger : 5) = pretty much 0.
Now the risk of having a car accident while you drive back from your survival course, being tired and dehydrated, and driving at night…
(occurence : 2) x (danger : 4) : risk = 8. Not something you can just shrug away…
3 minutes without oxygen
Now you don’t care much about lacking Oxygen in your pinky. But if you don’t have a consistant supply of it in your heart muscle, you’re in trouble. Oxygen transport is mainly all what first aid is about. Get on a serious first aid course. And practice.
3 hours without shelter
… keeping in mind that the clothes on your back and your ability to seek and find a suitable micro-climate will do most of the sheltering you need. Learn to use clothing as a system. Learn to stay out of wind and wet. Learn to use whatever you find to make shelter. And practice again.
3 days without water
… more or less ! If you’re jogging at noon in the summer in the desert, you’ll need water sooner than that to thermoregulate. And if you’re fasting in fresh wet air, you’ll survive about 10 days, maybe even more, without water. But findind, evaluating, purifying and stocking water are four essentiel skills that you must master if you’re serious about wilderness living or surviving.
3 weeks without food
… to say the least. Most people can fast over a month without any problem, as long as they start eating again in a controlled way. Food is not your priority.
3 months without social contact
… then you call your volleyball “Wilson” and start talking trash to fish you catch. Even the most rugged, lone people I know need some contact with something close enough to a human to stay mentally sane. If we don’t get it, we basically lose our will to live.
3 years… with a lousy job…
… no, just kidding. Otherwise many people would be dead by now ;)
This rule of threes can be used as a priority checklist, when you’re in a survival situation. In can also be used as a gear checklist, whenever you build some kit or fill up your backpack for a hike, or plan a 4×4 trip. Whatever. Just take it one point after the other. 3 seconds ? Check. 3 minutes ? Ooops. Forgot the kid’s epipen. 3 hours ? It’ll be cold out there, I’ll bring the 0° sleeping bag after all. Etc.
Got it ? ;)