Having the right tools is important to survival. Having a bow could be the difference between “making it” and starving to death. You may not be able to get your hands on a fancy compound bow, but Instructables user dejapong shows us how to build a makeshift bow for less than $20 worth of materials from a hardware store.
Make a Bow for Under Twenty Bucks [via Instructables]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Medical treatment is something we take for granted and we really shouldn’t. Even a simple cut in the P.A.W. can be life-threatening if you don’t treat it. For something more serious like a gunshot wound it is imperative that you know how to stop the bleeding and treat the wound in order to survive, whether you’re the one shot or not. The OutdoorLife Survival blog has an article on how to survive being shot.
While most of you will likely never be in the position that Reeson found himself, the question is worth asking: If, god forbid, you are ever shot, what should you do to survive?
The short answer is that you survive getting shot with a little bit of luck, some skill, ample trauma first aid supplies, a degree of stubbornness and maybe a little divine providence.
How To Survive A Gunshot Wound via [OutdoorLife Survival Blog]
This video addresses a very interesting point that I hadn’t thought of before. How do you cook an egg over a fire? Because the orange peel is moist, the egg won’t burn as easily and it will keep the egg moist. Bonus: The orange peel will imbue a little bit of orange flavor into the egg, giving it an interesting flavor. The underlying reason that this works is because the wrapper is thick and moist and as it cooks the moisture is released keeping the egg from drying up. Ostensibly, you could use anything that is naturally moist to reproduce this effect: onions, other citrus, banana peel, melon, etc.
Like the article says, it may not necesarily be a very useful skill, but there will be that one time that it could be the difference between life and death and looking back on it you’ll be glad you learned it.
You’ve probably seen it in countless movies. A mountain man or Indian takes a man down by hurling a tomahawk through the air and sticking it into his enemy’s back. If you’re going to strike a man down, I can’t think of a more badass way to do it than with a tomahawk.
But contrary to popular belief, Native Americans and mountain men rarely threw their tomahawks, or ‘hawks, during battle. A tomahawk was one of their best hand-to-hand weapons, good for both offensive and defensive moves. Throwing a tomahawk to kill an enemy, while certainly very cool looking, put considerable distance between the thrower and his very best weapon. Even if a mountain man or Indian warrior killed his target, he was pretty much defenseless while he scurried to retrieve his hawk from his victim’s body.
[How to Throw a Tomahawk Like a Mountain Man] via [The Art of Manliness]
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I love love LOVE zombie apocalypse stuff. Especially when it’s a well thought out experiment in design. This guest post on The Art of Manliness falls squarely in that category. Creek Stewart, a survival and preparedness instructor, walks us through the steps of how to modify a shotgun from a single purpose tool into an essential, multi-purpose survival tool:
I’m fortunate in that I’ve been able to turn my passion into my profession–this being the study of Survival and Preparedness. I’ve always enjoyed building survival kits of all shapes and sizes. I enjoy the challenge of fitting lifesaving survival necessities into small compact containers. I’ve built survival kits using film canisters, candy tins, key-rings, boxes, bottles, tubes, bags and everything in-between. For this project, I decided to build a survival kit using a shotgun platform–creating the Ultimate Survival Shotgun. My challenge was that everything had to be included in or on the gun itself–no extra pack items or containers. Below is what I did as well as the survival logic behind each decision.
[Arming Yourself for the Zombie Apocalypse: How to Build the Ultimate Survival Shotgun] via [The Art of Manliness]
Clearly, if websites were people, The Armageddon Blog would be good pals with Lifehacker. Or at least, follow Lifehacker around all the time talking about how great of friends they are while Lifehacker tries to ignore the creepy guy following him around. Yet again, there’s another article on Lifehacker that is relevant to the interests of this website. If I’ve drilled one fact over any other on the site, it’s that food is probably the most important thing to your survival. You’ll be able to scavenge food from houses and stores sometimes, but more frequently as time goes on, you’ll need to rely on nature for sustenance. Mushrooms are one of the more prevalent foods you’ll find in a forest, but they can be potentially dangerous (more so than any other plant you’ll come across). So how do you know which ones are safe? Alan Henry let’s us know a few guidelines for determining this:
If you spend any time outdoors, you’ve probably seen mushrooms growing under trees or in your yard, but if you’re out camping or just enjoy foraging, here are some ways to tell if the mushroom you’re looking at is edible.
[How Do I Tell If a Mushroom Is Safe to Eat?] via Lifehacker
Yet again, Lifehacker shows us an interesting way to do an everyday task in an emergency situation. This time it’s how to brew an “emergency” cup of coffee. A first world problem to be sure, but something that could soothe your soul post apocalypse:
So you’re desperate for a cup of coffee, but you don’t have a coffee maker nearby. If you need to get your caffeine fix as soon as possible, you can hack together a small coffee maker out of just two paper cups and a filter.
[Brew an Emergency Cup of Coffee with Two Paper Cups and a Filter] via Lifehacker
It’s a sad fact, but there are very few places in the world that you can’t find human garbage of some form or another. The silver lining to this dark cloud is that you can make use of this garbage in a post apocalyptic world. Over at Instructables, there’s an post on how to turn a can tab into a fish hook. It’s a simple procedure that only requires tools commonly found on a multi-tool.
[Turn a Can Tab into a Survival Fish Hook] via Instructables
It’s a been a popular subject for the past few years and the US Center for Disease Control has finally jumped on board. Writer Ali S. Khan wrote a post on the CDC’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Blog about how to survive during a zombie outbreak:
The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen. In such a scenario zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way. The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder “How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?”
Well, we’re here to answer that question for you, and hopefully share a few tips about preparing for real emergencies too!
[Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse] via CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response Blog
While this doesn’t necessarily fall into the niche of avoiding the apocalypse, knowing how to avoid a catastrophic tsunami is certainly a helpful skill to have in The End of Times. Jalopnik has an excellent article on doing exactly that.
Using a car to evacuate in the event of a tsunami is NOT RECOMMENDED. If the tsunami is caused by a local earthquake, roads could be cracked and unpassable, or as Newsweek notes, clogged with those trying to escape, as what happened during the Samoan tsunami in September 2009:
People who could easily have climbed to high ground in the hills behind them chose, instead, to evacuate by car. Many drowned in their cars, which were struck in exodus traffic along narrow coastal roads.
The third floor or above in a steel-structured concrete building next to the beach is a far safer place to wait out a tsunami than on the way to higher ground in your car.
But if you’re already in your car, and have no other options, you’ll need to think fast. You only have a few seconds to make moves that’ll increase your odds. Most important, because of the sheer velocity and size of a tsunami, and other cars, debris or people that may be in your way, you likely won’t be able to outrun the water, no matter how fast your car is.
[How to drive away from a tsunami] via Jalopnik
