Brian Webb spent many years working in a number of capacities for the US government.  His duties took him to many parts of the world - some friendly and many not so friendly!  In the course of his travels, often alone, his safety was totally dependent on what he did to keep himself safe. Open My Eyes captures the lessons he learned while on the road - lessons that kept him safe in some of the worlds most dangerous places.

Chapters in Open My Eyes include:
- Understanding the dangers
- Perceptions and Intuition
- Pre-Travel Preparation
- Hotel Safety and Security
- Situational Awareness
- Foreign Travel
- Basics of Hostage Survival

............and many more. 

Brian's concise, personal writing style makes this book "an easy read."  If you adopt and practice the advice he gives you will be far less likely to have a problem when next you travel and, should something unpleasant happen, you'll be better equipped to handle it.  
It is unfortunate that so many people fall into the trap of believing that nothing bad is ever going to happen to them and if it does, they will be able to muddle through somehow.  They believe that if they get in trouble in the US or overseas, someone is always going to come to their assistance.  In the "real world" bad things do happen to good people and sometimes no one comes to help.  Take responsibility for your own safety - no one cares more about you than you do! 

Brian specializes in conducting training sessions for those people about to depart on overseas Mission Trips.  He can be contacted through his website www.IHS-Training.com.

When the Grid Goes Down

I have always admired Tony Nester's broad range of survival  knowledge.  My admiration was reinforced a month ago when I received a copy of his new book "When The Grid Goes Down" published by Diamond Creek Press. This is not Tony's first venture into the disaster preparedness arena having previously published Surviving A Disaster: Evacuation Strategies and Emergency Kits For Staying Alive." and his two DVD series Tony Nester's Practical Urban Survival.

The beauty of Tony's  recommendations is that they are "practical."  All too often survival books, with rare exception, are not very practical and advocate techniques and procedures that are difficult to learn quickly and even more difficult to employ when needed in a crisis.  Tony keeps it simple.

Here is a list of the topics he covers in the book:

- How to Create A Self-Reliant Home
- Water Storage and Purification Methods
- Food Recommendations and Storage
- A First Aid Kit That You Can Live With
- Home Security and Personal Defense
- When The Power Goes Out: Heating, Cooling, Lighting and Cooking
- Handling Long-term Sanitation & Hygiene Issues

This is not a large book, only 77 pages, nor is it an expensive book, only $12.95, but it is a book that strips away the fluff and deals with the practical, no-nonsense issues relative to staying alive when the infrastructure we have come to rely on is not functioning.   It is an easy read and if you follow his advice you will be well on your way to being better prepared When the Grid Goes Down.

Contact Tony at www.apathways.com

New Stuff

One of the pleasures of traveling the country as much as I do, is meeting people - and especially those people with new ideas, new ways to solve old problems, new tools to make life a little easier when times are tough - entrepreneurial people.

Meet Patrish Brady.  Patrish is the owner of Shooting Star Nursery LLC located in Washington State.  Shooting Star Nursery is a tree farm and tree farms produce lots of tree waste!  Looking for a way to make use of the waste produced in the process of farming trees, and to improve the farms financial income, Patrish and her family came up with a novel product - "Sparke!"  More than just another aid to starting a fire Sparkes can be used as a "stand-alone" source of heat. 

I first came across them at the Washington Sportsmen's Show in Puyallup, Washington earlier this year when Patrish came by my survival exhibit and asked me what I thought of her product.  Never one to jump on the bandwagon I listened to her explanation of the Sparke and how it could be used.  It was immediately obvious to me that the ground-up tree debris saturated with wax had potential. 

It wasn't until late March that I had a chance to actually test the Sparke to see if it was all that Patrish and her son said it was.  It was - and more!  If you were to walk through the camping section of any sporting goods store you would see a multitude of fire starting aids available for sale.  Over the years I have tested most of them and, almost without exception, found them wanting!  So what makes makes a Sparke so much better?

Well to start with, it is easy to light.  A wick that can be lit on either end runs the full length of the brick.  I placed the Sparke in a ceramic dish to contain the fire and to collect the residue.











I lit the wick on either side of the brick and it quickly igniting the wax and the ground-up tree-farm residue that the brick is made from.








Once lit, the combination of wax and vegetable matter burned hot and long!  Initially there was a bit of black smoke but as the heat increased the amount of smoke decreased. At this point I noticed that there was a considerable amount of melted wax collecting in the dish.  Knowing this I would always recommend placing a fuel source that contains wax or petroleum jelly in a container that will collect the melted fuel. Doing so will increase the burn time of the Sparke.








As the minutes passed the flame gradually diminished.  This photograph was taken 23 minutes after the Sparke was lit.












Before the flame burned out I took a stick and stirred the remains breaking it apart whereupon the flames flared again for a few more minutes.








 
When it finally burned out all that was left was ash - and not much of that!

The Sparke that I used was one of four contained in a package of four bricks.  The weight of the bricks varied from 2.9oz to 4.1ozs The Sparke that I tested weighed 2.9ozs and burned for twenty-seven minutes.





 I also burned a Sparke during the blizzard that swept through Colorado Springs on the 9th of April.  The temperature that morning was 15 degrees F. with winds gusting between 30 and 40 mph and light snow.  This Sparke weighed 3.7 oz. and burned for 38 minutes before burning out.  At the height of the burn, using an infrared heat measuring device, I measured the temperature of the flame at 541.9 degrees F.

The only difficulty I experienced was lighting the wick.  Because of the high winds it took two matches to get this done.  Once alight it remained lit despite the very gusty winds.  I made no particular effort to protect the Sparke.



CONCLUSIONS:  None of the fire starting products that are currently available in the retail stores that cater to those who recreate or work in the outdoors are as good as the Sparke  - by a huge margin! www.sparkefire.com (Note to you readers - the Sparke website is still being developed so please be patient until it comes online.)    In the meantime give Patrish a call and place an order (509-465-5685)

The larger Sparke will be very useful for home owners who enjoy their wood burning fireplaces and to those who still rely on wood burning furnaces to heat their homes.  It should also appeal to the car camping community and others who use some form of vehicle to get themselves into the back-country.  The smaller size Sparke is ideally suited to back-packers who need a reliable way to get a fire going.  The smaller size would also be a good addition to an emergency kit.  In short, a Sparke would be useful to anyone who wants to start a fire quickly and reliably, particularly when weather conditions make it difficult to do so.

I will continue to evaluate both the large and the small Sparke throughout the rest of the year and if anything new shows up I will share it with you.  In the meantime check them out yourself and let me know what you think of them.

Emergency Kit - $5.00
Mini- 2-pack - $6.00
4-pack - $12.00

DISCLAIMER: OutdoorSafe Inc accepts no money from any manufacturer to promote their products.  The opinions expressed are mine and are based on my independent testing under field conditions. 

SURVIVAL TRUTHS

Number One.  You have to accept the fact that, as good an outdoors-man or women as you may be, sometimes things happen that precipitate you into a crisis when you least expect it and you’d better be ready to cope with, what will be one of the most difficult challenges to your life that you have ever faced.
Number Two.  Never say “I am just……”  Saying “I am just going to….” (You fill in the blank) is a denial of the possibility that anything will go wrong and a denial of the need to carry an emergency kit or protective clothing with you.  After all “what could possibility go wrong?”   A lot can go wrong, it can go wrong quickly and you can die!
Number Three.  Always carry the means to shelter yourself, to start a fire and to attract the attention of people who are looking for you and, perhaps more importantly, people who are not looking for you but might be in your vicinity.  To that end your emergency gear should include a waterproof, windproof shelter that you can crawl into or crawl under.  If you expect to be able to construct a shelter from natural materials as advocated by many outdoor writers you will be sadly disappointed. To build such a shelters take skill, time, resources and an able-bodied person.  Save yourself the trouble – carry a large orange or royal blue plastic bag to crawl into when you need protection.
Carry a metal match and a supply of cotton balls saturated with Vaseline.  This mixture is the most reliable combination of fire starting aids available to you.   Practice building a fire
Carry a whistle and purposefully made glass signal mirror.  You can blow a whistle as long as you can breath.  With a mirror, given that you have sunlight, you can bounce a beam of sunlight to a passing airplane, boat or person on a distant hillside many miles away.
Number Four.  Prepare for the five scenarios that commonly result in a person having to spend a night out:
1. Becoming lost
2. Not making it back to camp or vehicle before the sun sets.
3. Becoming stranded when the vehicle that took you into the back country malfunctions.
4.  Becoming ill or injured to the point that you are unable to make your own way out.
5. When weather makes it dangerous to continue traveling.
In each situation finding the safest campsite possible and then using your emergency equipment and survival skills to defend your body temperature is your best course of action.
Number Five.   Don’t let the concerns of others and what they might be thinking affect your decision-making.  Don’t let the promises or the commitments  you made to others drive you to continue trying to make it back in the face of darkness, rough terrain or inclement weather.  Do what is in your best interest and survive.
Number Six.  Always tell someone where you’re going and when you plan to be back.  Better still leave a trip plan with two people who you have briefed on what to do in the event you do not return.  Remember that having left a trip plan you are obligated to stick to the plan.  If you fail to leave a trip plan, or don’t update the plan, days may pass before an active search begins in your location.
Number Seven.  Be ready to deal with fear and the panic that usually results when you are confronted with a crisis.  It is ludicrous to say “don’t panic!” Everybody is going to panic.  Even the most experienced outdoorsman or woman will experience a momentary twinge of discomfort when faced with a potentially life threatening situation.  But, unlike the novice, an experienced person will recognize the discomfort for what it is  – a warning that things aren’t right!  A warning to back away and reconsider the situation.  Remember the “get-off-your-feet, have drink of water, stay put for at least thirty minutes” routine described earlier.
Number Eight.  Keep faith.  In yourself and your ability to survive based on your preparations.  Keep faith in the search and rescue system and the ability of the searchers to find you.  Keep faith in your family.  The strongest catalyst you have to keep you going, when everything appears to be against you, is your desire to be reunited with your family and friends.  Carry something to reinforce that desire – a photograph works.
The time is sure to come when you will have spend an unplanned night out. When that times comes it’s not important “what Peter would do” but what is important is “what you will do!”  Your life depends on it

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Survival & Navigation Class June 13-17 2013

 I'd like to put in a pitch for the outdoor safety class that Ralph Wilfong and I teach for the US Forest Service each year at the Nine Mile Heritage Center, Huson, Montana.  This is the only class I teach where I set the date and invite others to attend.  Normally I go  wherever I am invited to speak, present the class and then go back to Colorado.

The class is five days long.  Two and half days of survival training followed by two and a half days of of map, compass and GPS training.  I lead the survival phase and Ralph leads the navigation phase.  It is a very comprehensive program and, by the time you graduate, you will have a very solid foundation in those skills you need to survive an unplanned night out and the knowledge and skills to effectively navigate the back country.

You can take either the survival training or the navigation training - or both.  You save yourself $50 if you take both!  The cost for each phase is $250 but again if you stay for the full five days it will only cost you $450.

The program is designed to prepare you to spend a night out with a minimum of gear - but the right gear!  We do not teach aboriginal skills (rubbing sticks together to start a fire) but focus on quick shelters, effective fire building techniques, signaling techniques that work and the steps you need to take to keep yourself warm and hydrated.

In order to keep the costs down Ralph and I camp out at the Heritage Center and invite those who attend to do likewise.  You can also stay at one of the local B&Bs or motels if you wish.

If you are interested give Ralph or me a call.  If you want to sign up give the US Forest Service a call.  Also keep in mind that we only accept twelve people in the class so it tends to fill quickly

Peter Kummerfeldt   - 719-650-8925
Ralph Wilfong  - 509-993-0092
Nine Mile Heritage Center - 406-626-5403

Follow-up on Battery Leakage Problem

It is always a pleasure to have someone respond to my blog or other piece of writing with a constructive comment or addition to whatever topic I was writing about.  I received an email several weeks ago from Andrea Hill who had read a blog entry I wrote about leaky batteries.  Andrea had solved the problem!  She wrote "I found a great trick to keeping batteries in the actual device but keeping leaking from happening over long periods of inactivity.  I cut a small round of thin plastic (the cheap tupperware you get with lunch meat is a good thickness) and place it in between the battery and the connector to stop the phantom flow of electricity that circulates even when you aren't using the device.  Just remove the plastic piece when you are ready to turn it on!  I haven't had an issue since starting this."  Thank you Andrea.  I'm sure this suggestion will save a lot of battery powered electrical devices.

I am sure many of you who read this blog also have other great ideas regarding making our equipment work when we need it to work - and to work well especially when our lives are on the line.  Please feel free to send them my way.  I won't promise I will publish them all but will make others aware of your suggestions if they have broad application.  Sharp, well exposed photographs would be welcome too.

Stay With Your Car

 

It’s officially winter!  Have you given any thought to what it might be like to spend a night in your car stuck in a ditch somewhere?  Today’s news broadcast reports on the search for a woman who walked away from her car after it slid of the road.  As I write this she is still missing and presumed to be dead.  I’m would hazard a guess that more people each year end up in survival situations after a car accident than do in the backwoods of America.   To continue that thought a step further I would also guess that those people that end “surviving” after a car accident are less prepared than those on a backpacking trip.  We have complete faith in our vehicles ability to get us from one place to the next without incident.  Few people “dress to survive” they “dress to arrive.!

Here’s what I think you should have in your car:

Cellular phone with a charger

4 - quart water bottles

Dehydrated meal with heating element (Military MREs)

Carbohydrate food bars

Toilet paper

Wipes

Tools (jacket, lug wrench, shovel. windshield ice scraper, multipurpose tool)

Road flares

Tow strap

Booster cables

Blankets or sleeping bags

Chemical warmers

Light sticks

Matches

Metal cup

Basic first aid kit

Knife

Additional warm clothing to include warm gloves and work gloves.

Winter footwear

Two empty #10 cans (one for melting snow and one for sanitary purposes)

Sack of cat litter (to improve tire traction)

Personal Emergency Beacon

Spare personal critical medications

Flashlight and spare batteries

Portable radio with spare batteries

Ski goggles
Duct tape or Gorilla Tape
Book to read
50 feet of cord

GPS receiver (provides latitude and longitude coordinates)

If you're stuck in your car stay with your car!  Alert someone. Bring all of your supplies into the car where you can easily access them.  Stay warm.  Be patient.  Help will come!

You Can't Do Without It!

550 cord, paraline, paracord,  parachute line, call it what you will, 150 feet of mil-spec parachute line should be a part of your gear.

As I think back over nearly 46 years of teaching survival skills and about the same amount of time beating about the bush, I don't think I have ever been without some parachute cord.  I have used to to build shelters, catch fish, weave nets, make stronger rope, for emergency dental floss, as sewing thread, to retrieve water when I was cliff-bound and yes, parachute line has lowered me to the ground when I jumped out of an airplane while I was in the Air Force. Simply put it can truly be a life saver!


What is parachute line?  Parachute line is made up of a tubular case containing seven pieces of thinner, nylon threads each of which can be further separated into three even finer threads.

The tensile strength of a piece of line is 550 lbs.  The tensile strength of one piece of the inner thread is about 35 lbs.

 

  I don't know what the tensile strength of the very smallest fibers is - probably around 8 or 9 lbs.  At this point the material is useful as a dental floss substitute, sewing thread, fishing line and even suture material.


You can buy parachute line in just about any color from many internet vendors or sporting goods stores.  Or you can go to your local military surplus store where the predominant colors are white or OD green.  I recommend buying white cord and then dying it bright red or orange so that you can find it if you drop the line on the ground or worse still, on snow.  RIT fabric dye works well.  Make a concentrated solution and then drop your parachute line into it and leave it there until you are happy with the color.  Before you remove it from the dye pour in a cup of vinegar to set the dye and let it sit some more - a couple of days.  If you don't do this, since nylon doesn't take up dye very well,  the dye will come off in your hands.

Stronger rope can be made from parachute line by either twisting two ropes together or by braiding three or more pieces together.








As I said in the beginning, 150 feet in 25 foot lengths, should be included in your gear.  There's no way to improvise a line from natural resources that comes close to the strength, utility and usefulness of parachute line.  Check out http://www.shop.outdoorsafe.com/Parachute-Line-Parachute-Line.htm

 

Battery Problems

I had the occasion recently to need a flashlight.  The one that was most available was the Maglite that I keep under my bed where I can easily reach it if it's needed in a hurry.  Retrieving the flashlight I pushed the on/off switch and nothing happened!  Removing the end cap I peered into the battery chamber and was disgusted to see a large accumulation of corrosion.  It was so bad that I couldn't even get the batteries out!  The Maglite was ruined.  Well, this got me started on a search for all of my other lights to check them out before I ruined any more.  By the time I was done I found two others that were in bad shape.

And then I got thinking about all of the other electronic equipment that I own that is powered by one sort of battery or another - cameras, GPS receivers, compasses and headlamps for example.  What kind of condition were they in?  What started as a need for a light turned into an all-day campaigned to checkout all of my gear.  Like a lot of people I suspect, I had fallen out of the habit of removing the batteries from my electronic equipment when I wasn't going to be using it for a while.  In the end I ended up damaging three flashlights, one point-and-shoot camera that I hadn't used in a couple of years and a calculator!

Looking into the "leaky battery" syndrome a bit further I found out that it's not a good idea to mix brands of batteries.  It doesn't appear that one brand is any less likely to leak than another.  Leave them in a flashlight long enough and eventually they all leak.  Following that thread a bit further the manufactures recommend not mixing batteries with unknown charges remaining in them.  Despite spending several hours rummaging around on the internet I could not find any practical way to clean the battery compartment well enough to completely eliminate the corrosion problem.  This is especially true of most flashlights - it is impossible to clean the bulb end of the battery tube.

The moral of the story?  TAKE THE BATTERIES OUT OF ANY ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT WHEN YOU'RE NOT USING IT. 

The Questions I Get Asked

Every week I receive emails from people asking my advice on a particular subject.  Questions that relate most commonly to equipment or procedures that the writer come across and are unsure of.  

Here's a sampling of this past week's questions:

Question.  I have a compass but I have been in situations where a compass is not dependable (high magnetite deposit areas and the like). I wondered if can find where north is on a cloudy day and had no compass? I do know of the moss thing but that is not always dependable for the north east in this age of acid rains. 

 Answer. I know of no improvised, reliable ways of determining north under the conditions you describe.  On a sunny day find a thin 18" stick and drive one end into the ground while pointing the other end directly at the sun. Position the stick in such a manner that there is no shadow.  Wait for 30 minutes and then you will find a shadow leading away from the base of the stick.  This shadow always points east.
 

Question.   I wondered about the water issue. what is the best way to clean water? 

Answer. The most effective way to disinfect water is to boil it but boiling requires a container and a heat source.  The most practical way to disinfect water is to add chlorine dioxide tablets NOT iodine tablets or drops to water.  Check out Katadyn MP-1 tablets http://www.katadyn.com.  Should you decide to boil water all you have to do is bring it to a boil, regardless of altitude, and you have killed all of the harmful pathogens you are likely to find in the water.  Boiling it further wastes fuel and evaporates the water!

Question.  What's the quick way to get rescued?

Answer. Always leave a trip plan and having left a trip plan stick to it.  Even with a trip plan it may take hours for people to find you.  You can die in hours so a trip plan is a good start but you need more.  In this day and age you should carry either a SPOT personal messenger, a Delorme In Reach beacon or a 406MHz Personal Locator beacon.  There's no excuse not to carry one of these devices and in the event that you do need help in a hurry all you have to do is activate the device and an emergency signal, with your latitude and  longitude. embedded, is being transmitted to the authorities.  You still have to survive until they get there but getting rescued is going to be a lot quicker because they know exactly where you are.

Question.  I never seen (other than in a dictionary) the word "survival" defined - what is your definition? 

Answer.  At the most fundamental level survival means being able to defend your body temperature - i.e. maintaining 98.6 degrees F. for as long as possible!  That means having a shelter of some sort with you - something you can crawl into or under to protect yourself from the wind and precipitation.  I recommend a heavy duty blue, 55 gallon, 4 mil thick trash bag.  I categorically DO NOT recommend Space Blankets or Bags or anything that looks like them!  I also recommend a silicone impregnated tarp as long as you take the time to seam-seal the tie-off tabs where they are attached to the fabric.  If you don't they may leak.  A tarp can be erected in many ways and an 8'x10' tarp will provide a lot of protection.

Question.  Well what about fire?  Isn't a fire necessary for survival?

Answer.  It depends on the situation.  In some some scenarios (cold, wet and windy) it could be crucial.  Surviving also means being able to get a fire going.  To that end I carry a metal match (also known as a fire steel or ferro cerium rod) and two match cases filled with cotton balls that you have saturated with Vaseline.  A maxi sized cotton ball that is heavily soaked in Vaseline will burn for about ten minutes in very wet, very wind conditions.  I don't know of a better tinder.   To study further on the art and science of building a fire I recommend going to my website  http://outdoorsafe.comand ordering my book "Surviving a WIlderness Emergency"  and while you're also there consider ordering my eBook A Better Way to Build a Fire.  These two sources will help you a lot.

Emergency Shelters

There may come a time when you have to spend a night out that you hadn’t planned on.  It may be because of weather, darkness, injury or more commonly, getting lost!  Regardless of the cause you are now faced with nine or ten hours of discomfort at best and, at worst, the loss of your life because of your lack of preparedness for the event.

No one wants to spend a cold, wet, hungry, lonely night out away from family and friends - but it happens!   And it happens all to frequently.  It happens to both to the experienced and the novice – none are immune from the possibility of having to survive cold temperatures, high winds and precipitation sitting out under a tree somewhere waiting for the sun to come up the next morning.  It is more likely that the experienced person will be better equipped and ready for a night out.  It is also true that more experienced people, based on their know-how and past successes are prone to over-estimating their skills and abilities to spend a night out and tend to underestimate the impact of the environment and the weather on their ability to survive.  On the other hand, novices, ignorant of the hazards they might face, venture of into the wilderness blissfully ignorant of the dangers that they are exposing themselves to.  And, when confronted with the setting sun and the realization of a long, cold night ahead, are terrified by both real and imagined dangers.

Protection from the environment begins with the choices you make at home before you depart.  The selection of both the clothing you will wear and have available and the selection of the equipment you will have with you.  Your clothing must keep you dry and warm when you are inactive!  The equipment you carry must include a means to shelters yourself from the weather conditions and other environmental hazards (insects) that could threaten your life.

For those of you that believe that you will be able to find a cave or other protected nook to take refuge in or that you can build some form of improvised shelter from natural materials that will keep you warm and dry you had better think again!  Let me set the record straight.  Survival experiences often begin at the end of the day, as the sun is setting.  The need for additional shelter only becomes apparent when it is already snowing or raining.   It takes time, skill and natural resources to build a shelter using whatever natural materials are available.  It also takes a fully ambulatory person to be able to erect the kinds of survival shelters that are advocated in most survival books and articles.   These are criteria that are hard, if not impossible to meet and it is because of these criteria that I encourage all outdoor people to carry with them waterproof, wind proof sheltering material that they can either crawl into for protection or crawl under. To read more click here

Spring Has Sprung - are you ready

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Spring has sprung – are you ready?

Spring is here and summer is right around the corner.  The snowline here in Colorado is retreating up the mountainsides and things are beginning to green-up.  I’m hearing rumbles about it being time to head for the outdoors to hike, fish, photograph or whatever else takes you out there.  Spring fever is upon us!

That being the case it might be time to drag out all of your gear and give it good once-over.  Don’t assume that just because it was working fine when you stashed it in a basement closet last fall that it’s ready to go today.  

Get your daypack, fanny pack or whatever it is that you carry your equipment in, and dump the contents out onto the floor.  Check the condition of the pack carefully.  Do the zippers work?  Are there any holes in the fabric that need to be repaired?  Do all of the plastic buckles still work properly? Check for any “residents” that might have converted your daypack to a winter home! 

If you need some serious sewing done or a zipper replaced find out who repairs luggage for the airlines in your town?  Compare the cost of repairs against the cost of a new daypack –maybe buying a new daypack is a better choice.

Check the condition and function of each piece of equipment you carry.   Make sure that everything is there that should be there – sometimes a piece of equipment is borrowed from your emergency kit and doesn’t get put back!  Now is a good time to repair or replace the equipment that you might depend on for protection if you had to spend the night out.  Now is also a good time to refresh your memory.  Do you remember how each piece of equipment works?  Check out your cutting tools – knives, saws and shears.   Sharpen your knives and take your saws and shears to a professional sharpener.  There’s nothing like a good edge to make a cutting tool work better – and it’s safer to!

Like most skills, survival skills are perishable.  You get rusty.  Take a day in the field to practice.  Build a fire.  Build a fire while limiting yourself to the use of one arm – your non-dominant arm.  Practice putting up a tarp shelter - quickly.   Don’t wait for good weather - practice in your backyard when the weather is really nasty.  Practice using a signal mirror to attract attention.  Do you remember how your GPS receiver works or perhaps your emergency beacon?  Have you replaced the batteries in them recently? Test yourself and your gear.  It is better to find out that something doesn’t work in your backyard than it would be in the mountains when your life’s on the line!

Practice, practice and then practice some more – then maybe you’ll be ready!

Book Review - Show Me How To Survive

I’m a sucker for a new how-to-survive book and can’t resist the urge to buy it when I see one that isn’t already in my library.  So when I came across “Show Me How to Survive” by Joseph Pred and the editors of OutdoorLife magazine I ordered it in hopes that maybe, just maybe, there might be something worthwhile in it.  My hopes were dashed yesterday when the book arrived in the mail.

The first thing I am always interested in when I pick up a new survival book is the author’s credentials.  As printed on the back cover of the book Mr. Pred is a trained EMT, firefighter, and disaster-management specialist whose expertise also encompasses public health, outdoor survival, and fire arms safety.  He is the head of all public safety and emergency services for the annual Burning Man festival, and lives in San Francisco.  I didn’t know what the “Burning Man” festival is so Googled it and found out that “Once a year, tens of thousands of participants gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.”   Sounded like “Woodstock West” to me!   I’m not sure how this qualifies Mr. Pred to provide recommendations on how to survive a backcountry emergency?

With these credentials Mr. Pred has written a 175-page book that is broken into three categories – Protect, Help and Prevail.   I will leave it to others more knowledgeable than I to comment on the advice given in the Protect and Help sections but will share a few thoughts on Mr. Pred’s recommendations on how to “Prevail” in the outdoors.

Recommendation #121 – light a fire with chocolate.   Unwrap a chocolate bar.  Rub onto soda can bottom.  Focus sunlight onto tinder.  Use tinder to light fire.   So let’s think about this for a minute.  You are being asked to polish the concave bottom of a soda can into a highly reflective mini-parabolic reflector using chocolate as a grinding compound.  And then use the reflector to focus sunlight into a point sharp enough to ignite tinder with which to light larger fuel.  It takes hours of polishing to brighten the surface enough to reflect sunlight.  And even then it is not bright enough, except under ideal conditions, a hot sunny July day for exam, and a lots of luck, to light tinder.  You don’t need a fire on a hot sunny day!  You need one in November when, at the end of the day, you find yourself faced with a night out.  You better have something with you better than a soda can and a chocolate bar to get your fire going!

Recommendations #122 and #123  - fire drill and a fire plank.   Put these in the “too hard to do” category for the average untrained, unpracticed person.   Any of the fire-by-friction techniques of fire building require years of practice for you to become reasonably proficient.  Those people who can routinely produce the needed coal to start a fire are people who have spent a life-time practicing - people who carry the components for a fire-drill in their day-packs much as you or I would carry a cigarette lighter or better still a metal-match in our emergency gear.

Recommendation  #127 – get water in the desert.  Commonly referred to as a “solar still” this process does not work except in those rare conditions when the desert soil is saturated with water – after a thunderstorm for example.  In order for this process to work there must be moisture in the soil.   Typically, desert soil contains no water regardless of how deep you dig.  The work involved with digging the hole in the hard packed desert soil, covering that hole with plastic, weighting down the edges of the plastic with rocks and more soil, is not repaid in water!  It is most likely that you will loose more water sweating while digging the hole than you will recover from the apparatus! 

Recommendation #146 – impale an elk.  Dig an elk-sized pit and add thick pointed sticks to the bottom.  Cover the pit’s mouth with branches and leaves.  Presumably the elk is dumb enough to step on the materials covering the pit and fall into the hole skewering itself on the pointed sticks!  I don’t think so!  How much earth has to be excavated to produce a hole deep enough and wide enough to contain a six hundred to a one thousand pound elk?  What is the survivor going to dig this hole with?

Recommendation #152 – remove a botfly with bacon.   In a jungle survival situation, Note botfly larva (infestation site). Wrap area in bacon. After three days the botfly will burrow out.  Remove bacon.   OK.  I give up.  Where is the bacon going to come from?

I could go on but I won’t.  This book is going back to the publishers on Monday.  It is one more in a long line of similar books that are full of totally inappropriate, impractical advice.   Most of the recommendations are based on the skills that aboriginal people develop over a lifetime - skills that a survivor would not be able to develop just by reading this book!  As with most how-to-survive books the assumption is made that the survivor is able-bodied.  Surviving is tough enough when you are fully functional but becomes very much more difficult when you are injured.  Show Me How To Survive, like so many other books, makes the assumption that the survivor is not going to have any tools to work with and therefore must live-of-the-land and improvise the equipment that is needed.  Wouldn’t it be better to have the equipment you need and then spend an inconvenient night out rather than a life threatening one because you couldn’t get a fire going by rubbing sticks together or because your debris hut leaked?

Eight Steps to Surviving a Wilderness Emergency

Number One.  You have to accept the fact that, as good an outdoors-man or women as you may be, sometimes things happen that precipitate you into a crisis when you least expect it and you’d better be ready to cope with, what will be one of the most difficult challenges to your life that you have ever faced.
Number Two.  Never say “I am just……”  Saying “I am just going to….” (You fill in the blank) is a denial of the possibility that anything will go wrong and a denial of the need to carry an emergency kit or protective clothing with you.  After all “what could possibility go wrong?”   A lot can go wrong, it can go wrong quickly and you can die!
Number Three.  Always carry the means to shelter yourself, to start a fire and to attract the attention of people who are looking for you and, perhaps more importantly, people who are not looking for you but might be in your vicinity.  To that end your emergency gear should include a waterproof, windproof shelter that you can crawl into or crawl under.  If you expect to be able to construct a shelter from natural materials as advocated by many outdoor writers you will be sadly disappointed. To build such a shelters take skill, time, resources and an able-bodied person.  Save yourself the trouble – carry a large orange or royal blue plastic bag to crawl into when you need protection.
Carry a metal match and a supply of cotton balls saturated with Vaseline.  This mixture is the most reliable combination of fire starting aids available to you.   Practice building a fire
Carry a whistle and purposefully made glass signal mirror.  You can blow a whistle as long as you can breath.  With a mirror, given that you have sunlight, you can bounce a beam of sunlight to a passing airplane, boat or person on a distant hillside many miles away.
Number Four.  Prepare for the five scenarios that commonly result in a person having to spend a night out:
1. Becoming lost
2. Not making it back to camp or vehicle before the sun sets.
3. Becoming stranded when the vehicle that took you into the back country malfunctions.
4.  Becoming ill or injured to the point that you are unable to make your own way out.
5. When weather makes it dangerous to continue traveling.
In each situation finding the safest campsite possible and then using your emergency equipment and survival skills to defend your body temperature is your best course of action.
Number Five.   Don’t let the concerns of others and what they might be thinking affect your decision-making.  Don’t let the promises or the commitments  you made to others drive you to continue trying to make it back in the face of darkness, rough terrain or inclement weather.  Do what is in your best interest and survive.
Number Six.  Always tell someone where you’re going and when you plan to be back.  Better still leave a trip plan with two people who you have briefed on what to do in the event you do not return.  Remember that having left a trip plan you are obligated to stick to the plan.  If you fail to leave a trip plan, or don’t update the plan, days may pass before an active search begins in your location.
Number Seven.  Be ready to deal with fear and the panic that usually results when you are confronted with a crisis.  It is ludicrous to say “don’t panic!” Everybody is going to panic.  Even the most experienced outdoorsman or woman will experience a momentary twinge of discomfort when faced with a potentially life threatening situation.  But, unlike the novice, an experienced person will recognize the discomfort for what it is  – a warning that things aren’t right!  A warning to back away and reconsider the situation.  Remember the “get-off-your-feet, have drink of water, stay put for at least thirty minutes” routine described earlier.
Number Eight.  Keep faith.  In yourself and your ability to survive based on your preparations.  Keep faith in the search and rescue system and the ability of the searchers to find you.  Keep faith in your family.  The strongest catalyst you have to keep you going, when everything appears to be against you, is your desire to be reunited with your family and friends.  Carry something to reinforce that desire – a photograph works.

The time is sure to come when you will have spend an unplanned night out. When that times comes it’s not important “what I would do” but what is important is “what you will do!”  Your life depends on it!

Water Bottles - the good, the bad and the ugly!

It wasn't until recently that I gave much thought to the containers that I carried my water in when I'm out and about in the outdoors.  Over the years I have used British and US military water bottles, bottles made from aluminum, plastic and now stainless steel.  Does it make a difference?  You bet it does!  My first awareness that there might be a problem occurred a couple of years ago when I walked into REI (www.rei.com) to replace a water bottle that I had lost. (Hate it when that happens!)  As I wandered through the isles I paused in front of a rack of Nalgene water bottles and noticed a sign that stated "BPA Free!"  What I wondered was "BPA?"  Come to find out BPA is a health endangering chemical that interferes with the body's endocrine system.  BPA leaches from your plastic water bottle into the water you consume - especially if you put hot water into your  water bottle.  This problem has been largely resolved with the production of BPA free plastic but what is not clear is how many other harmful chemicals contained in the plastic remain to be identified!  If you are going to use a plastic water bottle at least make sure it is certified BPA free.


Aluminum water bottles, both lined and unlined, are also available but once again you run into potential health problems.  Aluminum, in minute amounts, is released into the water you drink and has been linked to the early onset of Alzheimer's disease.  The water bottle manufactures have attempted to fix this problem by lining the interiors of the bottles with plastic or resin but once again you have plastics of unknown quality in contact with the water you are drinking.  Resins have been known to crack and are damaged if heat is applied to the bottle.

Which brings me to water bottles made from stainless steel.  Such bottles are widely available on the internet and from some of the better outdoor retailers.  I recommend them.  I particularly like the Klean Kanteen brand.  (www.KleanKanteen.com) Bottles made from 18/8 food grade stainless steel should be apart of your gear. 18/8 grade stainless steel is completely inert and is easy to clean. Unlike plastic, a stainless steel water bottle can be used to melt snow and ice or heat water if the need arises.  Granted they are a bit heavier but in my opinion this disadvantage is far outweighed by the peace of mind I get knowing that I am not slowly poisoning myself.