Three Reasons to Learn Survival Skills

Learn a few of survival tips and you can be prepared for just about anything. After all, you never know when things can take a turn for the worse.

By Mark Warren
Published on April 26, 2019
article image
by Pixabay/RastoZvolansky

We live in a different world now because of the escalation of terrorism. There are people in other countries who feel that America is long overdue on being at the receiving end of foreign attack and devastation. (Pearl Harbor seems not to count, because of its distance from our continental shores.) We, who engineered the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and head the list of the planet’s most voracious consumers, present an image to many that is spoiled and arrogant. From the lessons of September 11, 2001, we have a new awareness that – within the scope of terrorism – anything is possible. Almost certainly, there is more tragedy to come.

Short of nuclear holocaust, an act of terrorism could demand from us at least a few survival skills. Consider a deliberate contamination of a municipal water source. Water from surface streams (though now almost nationally polluted) would come full circle and once again be a primary resource just as it once had been. Knowing how to render such water drinkable would be imperative. Drinking that stream water “as is” would be a mistake – one that could level you with a sickness so severe as to incapacitate you. Racked with pain, you would become, paradoxically, dehydrated and too miserable to perform the tasks necessary to stay alive.

What about an extended power blackout? In winter, if you don’t have a wood heater or fireplace, you’ll be setting up a grill or permanent fire pit outside your home. You’ll have to haul water to it – that, or make your fire pit near the stream. You already own all the containers and cookware you would ever need for collecting and boiling water.

If our system of commerce and the transporting of goods were brought to a halt, grocery stores would empty in just a few days. After depleting our pantries, we would be forced to venture outside for our food. Hunting and fishing would enjoy the revered status it once held in pioneer days. Those good at it would be renowned and in demand, but the forests and streams would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers of people trying their hands at it.

As for our other needs, virtually all of us possess at this moment a lifetime supply of shelter, clothing, and tools. But how much do we know about successful gardening? Seed storage? Or foraging for wild plants? The experienced farmer and the naturalist would become our mentors.

There is still enough wild land in America to challenge a person who is unexpectedly stranded. Every year, we hear of someone’s unplanned ordeal (or demise) in wilderness – the person who wandered off from the group, the traveler who ventured off on an unfamiliar route and ran out of gas in a remote area, the solitary adventurer who pushed his/her limits.

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