The Armageddon Blog

Blog

  • Heat Stroke

    It’s hot outside, REALLY hot.  The air burns your lungs as you breathe and the sweat is dripping off your brow in a constant stream.  You run your fingers through your hair and it burns to the touch.  You feel parched even though you just guzzled a bottle of water and even though you’re walking slowly down the road, you’re heart is racing so fast that you can see your pulse in your eyes.  Suddenly, you realize that you’ve stopped sweating and you’re dizzy, you lean over and vomit the little bit of lunch you had onto the ground at your feet.

    This is just the beginning of heat stroke and if it were to progress any further, you could very likely die.  Heat related illness is a very treatable illness, yet an average of around 300 people die from it every year.  In a post-apocalyptic environment, your chances of surviving heat stroke are lessened a great deal.  So the better you understand it, the better prepared you are to prevent and treat it.

    Symptoms

    Heat stroke, the most severe stage of heat illness, occurs when body core temperature exceeds 104 degrees Fahrenheit and your body’s normal heat regulation systems are no longer able to dissipate internal heat.  There are a number of symptoms to look for:

    • Rapid heartbeat even when not exerting
    • Light-headedness
    • Rapid or shallow breathing even when not exerting
    • Nausea
    • Lack of Sweat where sweating had occured before
    • Abnormal irritability or confusion
    • Headache
    • Fainting

    If you happen to faint from heat exhaustion and you’re by yourself, you’re pretty much done for unless you get REALLY lucky.

    Treatment

    If you suspect that you are suffering from heat stroke, you need to immediatly cease any physical exertion and find a shady (prefereably cool) spot to sit.  Take off as much of your clothes as you can to promote evaporation on your skin and splash some water on your skin.  If you have a way of fanning yourself without exerting yourself, do it.  Sip (and I emphasize this) cool water.  If you drink too much too quickly or if the water is too cold, you’ll get stomach cramps and probably vomit.  Avoid anything with sugar or caffeine in it, these are diuretics and will cause you to dehydrate more.

    You can take more drastic measures to cool yourself off.  If you are near a water source, jump in and soak in the water (preferably in the shade) until you cool off.  Avoid water that is too cold because this can cause vasoconstriction which will not allow for efficient heat transfer.  If you decide to soak in water, remember that your head dissipates heat much faster than the rest of your body, so stick your head under the water.

    If you are sick enough that drinking water, no matter how slowly, causes you to feel sick to your stomach, it may be necessary to feed yourself water intravenously.  This is not difficult to do, but I will not go into it in this article.

    Prevention

    Urine Color Chart
    Urine Color Chart

    The most important thing you can do to prevent heat stroke is to drink fluids.  Stay hydrated!  Don’t gauge your hydration on thirst, especially in extreme heat.  By the time you’re thirsty, it’s already too late.  A better judge of hydration is the color of your urine.  On the included chart, you can see what color your urine should be and drink accordingly.  You should avoid drinking anything with a lot of sugar, caffeine, or alcohol as these will cause you to get dehydrated much faster.  You should be drinking 16-32 ounces of water an hour in extreme heat or when physically active.  Almost as important as hydration is salt intake.  If you drink too much water without replenishing salt and minerals this will lead to a condition called hyponatremia which can cause sudden heart failure and death.

    When eating, avoid heavy meals and hot foods.  Particularly during the mid-day hours.  These types of foods tend to raise your core temperature and thus raise your risk of heat stroke.

    Avoid being in the sun, especially during mid-day since this is when it will be hottest out.  If you have to be outside in the sun, limit your exposure time and level of exertion.  Take lots of breaks and be aware of how you feel.  You should try to wear lighweight clothing that is lighter in color, light colors reflect sunlight and the accompanying radiant heat and lightweight materials like cotton will draw sweat away from your skin and allow for quicker evaporation (and thus quicker cooling).

    Avoid enclosed spaces (like a car) if at all possible.  Inside a building (assuming there is no air conditioning) should be okay, but just be wary of buildings that are warm inside.

    Protect your head!  Wear a hat that will block sunlight from all sides.  There are hats out there that have vents in them.  Those vents allow for greater air flow, which will keep your head much cooler than a hat without them.

    If at anytime you start to feel hot, take a break, dunk your head in some water, sit down and drink some water, etc.  Don’t feel like you ever need to power through it.

    Further Reading

    

  • Spicing Up Your Canned Meals

    You’ve survived the initial disaster, scraped by on what bits of food you could find, and you’ve scavenged a healthy inventory of canned goods.  What’s for dinner?  Franks and beans again?  After a while, you’re going to get bored with eating the same stuff day in and day out (a luxurious problem to have in this scenario, but a problem nonetheless).  You can do some things to spice up your meals so they aren’t the same drab thing all the time.

    In this day and age you can get nearly anything canned and if its in a store now, it’ll be there after the Apocalypse.  From canned fruits and vegetables, to the more exotic canned meats.  There’s even a company that sells canned bacon (shelf life ten years!).  The point is that you can find all sorts of items in canned form and you can then mix and match these to make a more palatable meal than just eating a hunk of spam until you’re full.

    At the very basic level, you can make a proper meal by just pulling out some canned meat and a vegetable for a side.  You can go a little further and mix some things together.  Got a can of stewed tomatoes, corn, black olives, and jalapeno peppers?  Mix them up for some salsa (chips not included).  Want to go all out?  Add some none-canned goods into the mix.  Remember the recipe for Bannock?  Use that dough to make a shell and put a stew inside, cook it and you’ve got yourself a pot pie.

    The key is to add a little something to your meal to make it different enough that it’s no longer a bland meal.  Even just adding a shake of some seasoned salt or some other spice to a can of food can make it so much better.  From personal experience, I added a few shakes of generic seasoned salt to a can of corn one time and I’ll never eat corn without it again.  You can find all sorts of canned food recipes on the internet, unfortunately most of them have 15 ingredients, only one or two of which are actual canned food and the rest would be highly difficult to find post-Apocalypse.

  • How to Fashion a Make Shift Knife

    In a survival situation, a knife can be one of your most important tools.  It’s a weapon and an eating utensil.  You can cut rope with it.  You can dig with it.  You can peel bark from a tree to use as fire fuel.  You can skin an animal with it.  It’s a very verstile tool that can come in handy in any number of situations.  You should keep one in your Go Bag, but for some reason or another, if you lose that knife I’m going to show you how to manufacture a field expedient knife to use until you can get your hands on a new knife or can forge yourself a new one.

    First of all, a knife performs three basic functions: piercing, slashing, and cutting.  Ideally, a knife will do all three, but in some cases a field expedient knife will only ever be able to do one or two.  You can fashion a knife out of all sorts of material: metal, wood, stone, bone, glass, plastic…  It all depends on what you have available.

    Metal

    Your obvious first choice for a knife material, metal is going to probably be scarce and especially metal that is small and thin enough to be used as a knife.  However, if you’re lucky enough to stumble on a piece you will be able to fashion a knife that will last you a very long time and that you can resharpen.

    If you don’t have tools to work on it, most metal is nearly impossible to manipulate.  So if you can’t find a piece that is pretty close to what you want you might not be able to make a knife.  You can try hammering the piece into the shape you want, but this will only work on soft metals.

    Once the rough knife is in the general shape you want, you need to sharpen the edge.  This can be accomplished by running the edge across any rough surfaced stone (including pavement).  You will get a better effect if you get the stone wet before attempting to sharpen it.

    If you want to get a REALLY sharp edge, rub the edge of your knife on unpolished ceramic.  If you look at the bottom of a coffee cup, you’ll notice that rough ring that the cup sits on.  That ring is unpolished ceramic and will even sharpen forged knives, including the knives you have in your kitchen right now.  Yes, this tip applies to non-survival scenarios too!

    Stone

    Stone is one of the most reliable and sturdy materials to make a knife from.  Since its such a sturdy material, you will need a couple of specialty tools to make the knife:

    • Chipping Tool – a chipping tool is a blunt tool used to break off pieces of stone
    • Flaking Tool – a flaking tool is pointed to break off flat pieces from the stone

    The first consideration you need to make is the actual stone you will make into a knife.  You need to use a soft enough stone that you’ll be able to carve it with your tools.  Secondly, it’s totally up to you how long you want the blade, but you need to account for a handle or a tang to attach a handle.  If you can find a rock that’s already close to the shape of a knife you;re in business.  If worse comes to worst, you can use your chipping tool on the edge of a boulder and try to knock a piece loose to make a knife from.

    Get the general shape of your knife using the chipping tool.  Strike your soon-to-be knife with one end of the chipping tool repeatedly until the knife holds the desired shape.  Try to keep your knife relatively thin – the thinner it is, the easier to get a sharp edge.  However, don’t get it too thin or else you run the risk of the knife breaking under stress.

    The flaking tool requires a little more finesse.  PLace the flaking tool against the knife near the edge and apply pressure until pieces break off from the knife.  Don’t press too hard, or you could end up break off a chunk of your knife that you didn’t want to lose and it won’t have a sharp edge to it.  Continue doing this down the length of one, or both, sides of the knife until you have a blade edge.  Make sure to leave enough unsharpened length to be the handle or tang.

    If you choose, you can attach a seperate handle to your knife.  Just tie a piece of wood or some other material to the base of the knife.  Make sure to secure it tightly or else you’ll have problems with the handle coming loose later (which could in turn cause injury).

    Bone

    Bone is a step up from wood, but it isn’t going to be as easy to find.  So given the choice between the two, go for bone.  Your first consideration is the size of the bone.  If it’s too small, you won’t be able to make a knife out of it.  To make a knife out of bone, you’re going to shatter the bone so a larger bone is going to create more shards.  Once you’ve found a suitable bone, place it on a hard surface and smash it with something heavy like a rock.  Go through the shards and find one appropriately pointy with the potential for a sharp edge.  Sharpen the edge of your shard against a rough surface (like cement).  Don’t forget to leave a portion unsharpened as a handle or tang to attach a handle.

    Wood

    Wood is easily the most abundant resource you will find in most of the world.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t make for an ideal knife-making material.  If you make a knife from wood, you will only be able to use it to puncture things and the point will go dull fairly quickly at that.  If you look at a piece of wood, you can see the grain is either straight or in a circle.  The straighter the grain, the further from the core of the branch/tree the piece is.  If there is no grain, it means the piece of wood is from the pith (the layer of wood seperating the tree from the bark).  You want to avoid wood that is from the core of the tree/branch and you want to avoid pith.  Both types of wood are weak and will crumble or snap if used as a knife.  Select a piece that’s roughly a foot long and shave the tip down to a point using a rough surface (like cement).  Once you’ve sharpened the point to the desired point, place the blade over a fire and let it slowly dry until it is lightly charred.  This process is known as “fire hardening” and will make the point hard and it will take longer to dull.

    Bamboo

    Fashioning a blade out of bamboo is very similar to wood.  However, bamboo is capable of holding an edge.  When shaping the knife, remember that the hardest part of bamboo is the out shell so try to keep as much of this layer as possible.  When fire hardening bamboo, only char the inside

    Glass

    When glass is broken, it naturally make a sharp edge so it is ideally suited as a knife.  Unfortunately, glass is incredibly brittle so you can’t use it for heavy duty work.  All you need to do for a handle is wrap a piece of cloth around the base of the shard.

    Ceramic

    The ceramic used to make coffee cups is similar to glass so in a pinch you can break a coffee cup and use the piece attached to the handle as a knife.

    Plastic

    Have you ever stabbed yourself while trying to open up a new piece of electronics?  If not, you’re lucky but if so you are painfully aware of how effective plastic can be as a knife.  You can also sharpen plastic—if it is thick enough or hard enough—into a durable point for puncturing.

    Further Reading

  • How to Build a Shelter

    Shelter is one of the most underrated and important aspects of survival.  A shelter provides you with three things: protection from the elements, a place to hide from predators, and a place that provides psychological and physical comfort.  Face it, you’re going to need to sleep some time and which sounds more appealing: a tent and bed of pine needles or laying under the stars on miscellaneous twigs and branches?  If you’ve never slept on the ground with no padding, let me tell you – it sucks!  You get poked in the back all night by twigs and rocks, you get cold and shiver yourself awake, and you wake up as tired as (if not more tired than) when you went to bed.  Building a shelter, however paltry, will improve your condition phenominally.

    Shelter Site

    More than the materials you use, the site you build on is important.  Nature can be a bitch and ruin the best established shelters. 

    It’s pivotal that you stay dry overnight so you want to avoid being too close to water sources or potential water sources (like dry river beds).  It could rain and the water source could flood and get you wet or you could drown if its bad enough.  Insects tend to reside near water also, so you could have a big problem with them if you’re too close to the water.  You also don’t want to be too far away from water sources either.  The further from water you are, the further you have to travel to get water and food (indirectly).

    Look for a place with a lot of fallen, dry wood if you can.  You can use this wood to build your shelter or for firewood.  Dead trees could potentially fall at any time so be wary of setting up to close to them.  However, a fallen tree can make a superb backbone for a shelter.

    Avoid ravines and valleys.  Low ground like this can collect moisture and become incredibly damp and soggy at night.  Cold air sinks too, meaning that you’re going to be sitting in all the accumulated cold air while you’re trying to sleep.  You also need to be mindful of wind and how to avoid it.  Large logs, boulders, and dirt berms are all good ways to block wind.  Your shelter will only do so much against the wind and the more you can block it outside your shelter, the better.

    You’re basically looking for a dry, well drained area that is either flat or on top of a hill.

    Basic Guidelines

    No matter what type of shelter you build, there are some basic guidelines and suggestions to follow when building.  First of all, make your shelter no bigger than necessary.  The larger the shelter, the harder time you’ll have holding in the heat.  Fir tree branches make excellent insulation so use them as the roofing of your shelter if feasible.  If you are building a shelter in sub-freezing temperatures, pour water over the roof of your shelter if it’s thatched.  The water will freeze and create an insulative layer.  You may be tempted to use scrap metal you found to build a shelter.  This is not a good idea.  Metal is reflective, which means it will reflect most of the heat from the sun when you want it to be absorbed.

    As counter-intuitive as it sounds, snow is one of nature great insulators.  The more you use it, the greater the amount of body heat you’ll retain.  Why do you think the eskimos built shelters out of snow (igloos)?  It wasn’t because of it’s pretty white color!

    If you plan to have a fire inside your shelter, make sure you have some sort of ventilation in the roof of your shelter.  Smoke inhalation isn’t fun when you’re out in the woods.  If you don’t plan on having a fire inside your shelter, you can always heat some stones up on a fire outside and then bring them into the shelter with you for warmth.  You won’t have to deal with smoke or potentially burning your shelter down, but they won’t stay warm as long as a fire will.

    Don’t leave the opening of your shelter wide open after you enter it.  Have some way of closing yourself off from the outside world.  Be it a large boulder, a snow plate, or just a few tree branches every little bit counts.

    Bedding

    As I said before, sleeping on the ground saps the heat right out of you.  80% of your body heat is lost to the ground while at rest.  Grass and pine needles make an excellent mattress and insulate against the cold ground very well.

    If it’s dry, you can simply dig a hole in the ground and cover it with large sticks, followed by smaller, dense boughs.  If it’s raining or wet, avoid burrowing in a hole and get off the ground. If this isn’t possible at the time, make cover on flat or sloped land so rainwater can drain.

    You can build a cot to keep you off the ground if you have the time, energy, and resources.  Find two long, sturdy branches and roll them into whatever you are using to lay on (a poncho, tarp, blanket, etc.) like a long scroll leaving about a foot of wood exposed at each end.  If you don’t have any material to do this, you can lash branches perpendicular to the long branches (this will look similar to a ladder when finished), and use grass, pine needles, and any other plant material as a sort of bedding on the cot.  Then simply lash the cot to trees a few feet off the ground.  If there are no trees to accomadate, you can use branches stuck firmly into the ground.  This is particularly useful in a swamp or other damp environment.

    Debris Hut

    A debris hut is a very basic shelter that is great if you are in an area with lots of dead wood available.  The basic design mirrors how animals build their dens or nests in the wild.  To build a debris hut:

    1. Find a long sturdy branch to use as the central pole of your hut.  This is called the ridgepole.  Place one end on the ground and the other against a tree, stump, boulder, etc.  If there is a fallen tree that makes the same angled shape, you can use it as your ridgepole.
    2. Create a ribbed frame by leaning branches against, and lashing them to, your ridgepole all along its length.  Make sure to leave enough space between two of the ribs so that you can fit through (this will be your entrance).
    3. You will eventually be placing insulating materials over your frame, but before you do that you need to create a lattice that will hold your material.  Place smaller sticks crossways over the ribs of your hut.
    4. Now, when you start putting leaves and pine needles on your frame, it won’t fall through.  Pile this stuff on top of your frame so that it’s at least 2 feet thick – the thicker, the better.  This is where the name of the shelter comes from, because you can use whatever debris is laying on the ground.
    5. Find something to cover the entrance to your shelter: a rock, a pile of debris, etc.

    A one man shelter is very similar to a debris hut, the only difference is that a one man shelter uses a poncho, tarp, or some other similar material to cover the frame instead of debris.  You could very easily combine the two concepts to create an even better shelter.

    Tree Pit

    If you find yourself in a deep snow environment, a tree pit may be the best possible shelter you can use.  By deep snow, I mean snow deep enough that it reaches the bottom branches of a tree.  To build a tree pit:

    1. Find an evergreen tree that has low hanging branches that reach out far enough to cover you.  The snow needs to be deep enough that the branches are essentially touching the snow.
    2. Break away one or two of the branches so that you have access to the underlying snow.
    3. Dig away the snow under the tree to a depth and diameter that is comfortable for you.  Just remember the smaller the space, the more easily you’ll retain body heat.  One thing to keep in mind is that cold are sinks, so it might be wise to build a platform to sleep on that is at least a foot higher than the floor of the pit.
    4. Pack the snow on the walls of your shelter as tightly as possible to avoid a collapse.
    5. Use the branches you broke off earlier and any other found branches to cover your entrance.

    Beach Shade Shelter

    A beach shade shelter is exactly what it sounds like: a shelter to provide shade on the beach.  Obviously, this shelter is ideal for the beach, but is also useful in any hot, sandy region.  To build a beach shade shelter:

    1. Dig a trench in the sand running in a North-South direction.  The direction is important because it minimizes the amount of sun exposure inside the shelter.  Make sure that the trench is big enough for you to lay down in comfortably.
    2. Mound the sand you dig out of the interior of your shelter on three of the four sides of the shelter (the fourth side will be your entrance).
    3. Lay wood or other materials across the trench to make a framework for the roof of your shelter.
    4. Lay a blanket, tarp, poncho, or grass over top of the trench to make shade inside.

    Further Reading

  • How to Brew Beer

    Post-apocalyptic life is hard.  Every day that goes by it’ll feel harder.  That’s why it’s imperative that you find a little joy where you can.  One thing you might try is brewing your own beer.  It’s also helpful if society starts getting back on its feet since people will gladly barter for alcohol.

    Beer brewing has been around for centuries and hasn’t always been as precise a science as it is today.  The basics of beer brewing are:

    1. Soak malted grain in hot water to release malt sugars.
    2. Boil the malt sugar solution with hops for flavoring.
    3. Cool the solution and add yeast to begin fermentation.
    4. The yeast ferments the sugars, releasing CO2 and ethyl alcohol.
    5. After fermentation is complete add sugar and bottle to create carbonation.

    Depending on the ingredients you use, these steps can make an infinite number of flavors of beer.  Sadly, some of these ingredients will be hard to come by in the PAW.

    Grain

    Barley is the type of grain typically used to make beer, but you can pretty much use any type of grain.  You can scavenge grain for all kinds of places.

    Hops

    Unfortunately, unless you live in Germany, the Northwest US, or the UK, you probably aren’t going to be able to find hops for your brew.  You could always scavenge at a local Co-Op or brewing supply store for hops and yeast, but its not a renewable resource.  This isn’t a show stopper, hops are just for flavoring and aroma so we can actually make beer without them.

    Yeast

    Yeast in a concentrated form is difficult to come by as well.  But unlike hops, yeast occurs naturally pretty much everywhere in nature, so it’s just a matter of exposing your concoction to the elements for a little while.

    Armageddon Brew

    1. First you need to malt your grains (about 5 pounds).  This can be accomplished by toasting them near a fire.
    2. Now you need to boil the malted grains in 5 gallons of water for about an hour.  At this point, if you have them, add about 2 ounces of hops.  At this point, your concoction is called “wort”.
    3. While the wort is chilling it, place it in a field or forest for a few days where it can gather the wild yeast in the air, just make sure to put a screen of some kind over the wort so no leaves or twigs or other contaminants get into it.
    4. Under ideal temperatures (60-70F), the yeast will need roughly 1 month to complete the fermentation process.  Add time for colder temperatures and subtract for warmer temperatures.  If the temperature is too extreme, the yeast will die and the fermentation process will terminate before completion.  You can tell the wort is done fermenting when it stops bubbling.
    5. At this point, add 3/4 of a cup of sugar to the beer, stir it up and bottle it.  Let it sit for about a week and it should be properly carbonated.

    So kick back with your tasty beer and forget about life for a while.

  • Found on the Internet: How to Drive Away From a Tsunami

    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

  • Found on the Internet: Bug Out Bag

    Our first post here at The Armageddon Blog was on Go Bags.  Recently over at the Art of Manliness blog, they’ve done a similar write-up on these emergency kits. 

    

  • How to Set a Bone

    Face it, if you get injured you never really think its a big deal.  Everybody these days has suffered a broken bone at least once and are not worse for wear.  That’s because we have advanced medical knowledge and antiseptics.  Imagine if you were to break your arm right now and you were the only person you could rely on.  The quicker it heals the better off you are, and if you can get the bone placed properly then you won’t have any lasting effects from the break.

    First of all, you need to recognize when a bone is actually broken.  Obviously, if a piece of bone has punctured the skin and is jutting out, its broken; and if the bone is bent in a place it shouldn’t be bent at, it’s broken.  But, minor fractures have a way of hiding themselves (and if you’re like me, you refuse to acknowledge injury and insist on “toughing it out”).  You need to check for bruising, swelling, or sharp tenderness at a very focused point.  Feel the area for any breaks on the bone (this will feel like a crack or the bone will have some “give” to it).  Likely, if a bone is broken you won’t be able to move it much because of the pain.

    For non-compound fractures (those where the bone is not protruding from the skin), you need to align the bone to the position it should be in.  To avoid causing more breaks or damage, lightly pull the bone fragment away from the fracture site while realigning it.  Once the bone is properly aligned, put it in a brace or some other contraption to immobilize the bone.  You need to make sure that the bone stays as still as possible to ensure quick and proper healing.  Monitor the break site constantly to ensure that there is no infection or internal bleeding.

    In the case of internal bleeding or a compound fracture, the best advice is to seek out a medical professional.  Compound fractures are nasty and typically require surgery in order to save the limb.  There are tendons, ligaments, veins, arteries, and all sorts of other tiny little things that can get caught, pinched, ripped, or otherwise damaged.  But assuming that you have no access to a professional or won’t have access to a professional anytime soon you can do the following.  I must emphasize right now that if you have even the possibility of medical assistance, just leave the fracture, bind the wound and get to that assistance because what I’m about to suggest is the last ditch and is probably going to do more damage.

    That being said, in the end-of-the-road, last-ditch, last-man-on-earth scenario, here’s how you deal with a compund fracture.  You need to realign the bone in the proper place.  In this situation, the two bone fragments are essentially sitting next to each other and you need to move one on top of the other.  This means you will be doing the same thing you would do for a simple fracture, but more extreme.  You need to pull the one bone fragment hard enough that you can replace it at the end of the other bone fragment and then line everything up.  If you are doing this yourself it is going to hurt… a LOT (it’s going to hurt anyway, but you need to account for the pain if you do it yourself).  At this point, bind the wound and place the bone in a splint.  Keep it immobile until its healed.  Since this was a compund fracture and you just essentially used a chainsaw where a scalpel was needed, you need to be VERY deligent in checking the fracture site.  You can assume that the area is infected, take a lot of antibiotics to try and combat the infection.  You can assume that you ripped all the tendons, ligaments, veins and arteries to shreds at the fracture site, assume that you won’t ever walk quite right again.  Be especially watchful for bruises from pooling blood (i.e. internal bleeding).  If worse comes to worst (and this might be a more viable option for the beginning), you can always amputate.  Again, let me reiterate: IT IS A BAD IDEA TO TRY TO TREAT A COMPOUND FRACTURE YOURSELF.

  • How to Gather Water

    Let’s face it.  You won’t survive a week if you don’t have any water to drink, and you won’t last much longer on contaminated water.  So not only is it important to get water, but clean water.  You should be drinking roughly 2% of your body weight (generally around 1.5 liters) in water every day.  If you are in a situation where you are sweating more than normal you should be drinking that every hour.

    The obvious choice for clean water, is bottled water.  As a society we have become obsessed with drinking bottled water, and as much as you may disagree with that it will certainly benefit you during the apocalypse.  So look at a supermarket, convenience store, or any other store or restaurant really and you’re bound to find bottled water.

    As with everything else, bottled water is not sustainable.  Eventually, it’ll run out and you’ll have to find another way to get water.  There are many things in nature that naturally hold clean water.  For instance, bamboo is hollow in the center so it catches rain water and hold it for a long time.  You just need to punch a hole in the the bamboo to access the clean, clear water.

    However, you may not be lucky enough to be anywhere near any of these types of plants.  You’ll need to manufacture your own gathering system.  The easiest of these is probably a dew trap.  To create a dew trap, dig a hole in the ground 2 feet deep, lay some vegetation like palm fronds or grass on the bottom of the hole, lay rocks on top of that, and then more vegetation on top of the rocks.  Leave this apparatus overnight and first thing in the morning, the rocks with be covered in dew.

    You can also build a rain catcher.  You need a sheet of waterproof material, like a tarp or (preferably) a poncho.  Make a hole in the center and hang it outside.  Put a bucket or other receptacle under the hole and when it rains you will have a bucket full of water.  Don’t drink this water straight though.  This water will likely be clean, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

    If you’re in a snowy region, you are literally surrounded  by water.  Most survival experts will caution you against eating snow because it lowers your core temperature and, if the snow is cold enough, blister your mouth and cause ulcers.  In my opinion, if you’re thirsty, you’re thirsty, just eat a little bit at a time.

    If you don’t trust yourself to not gobble down the fluffy white stuff, you can make a Finnish Marshmallow, which is simply a snowball on a stick set over a cup near a fire.  It will melt fairly quickly and you’ll have a nice cool glass of water.

    The same principle can be applied while you’re on the move.  Fill a canteen or bottle with snow and keep it inside your jacket to let your body heat melt the snow.

    The Last Resort

    You just drank the last of your water and none of the above applies to you right now.  What can you do for water?  Some really gross things, that’s what!  These options are last ditch efforts, not only because they go against our fundamental sense of decency, but because they are potentially harmful to you.

    First of all, you can drink your own urine as long as its fresh and you are relatively hydrated to begin with.  Essentially, if you’re still peeing clear, you’re okay to drink your pee.

    Elephant dung is a combination of both undigested and digested (yuck) vegetation.  This makes it a spongy consistency that contains water.  It can have harmful bacteria in it (after all it IS feces) but if you need water it will help, just don’t drink a large quantity of it.

  • Bannock on a Green Stick

    • 1-cup whole wheat flour
    • 1 teaspoon baking powder
    • ¼ teaspoon salt
    • 3 tablespoons butter
    • 2 tablespoons milk powder

    Mix all the ingredients well, making sure the butter is evenly distributed throughout. Sometimes I will melt the butter before adding it to the mixture. Then slowly add water while mixing until a dough ball is formed.

    Make the bannock dough into a cigar shape and wrap it around a green stick. Try to keep the thickness of the dough about ½ inch.

    Slowly roast the bannock over a hot fire, rotating occasionally until it turns a golden brown. You will hear the butter sizzling and your stomach rumble as the bannock cooks.