Tips,Tricks and Facts
- Thread starter Dies Irae
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After my run ins with it I’m not getting close enough to find out!
1. Learn at least few pressure points for self-defence
2. Learn to trust your instincts.If you feel like something is wrong....there's a good chance you're right.The brain uses a combination of logic and emotion when making decisions of any kind. ... That specific emotion, innate to us as humans, is intuition. We possess the capacity to feel, and thereby the ability to know things without consciously reasoning.
3. Make char cloth.One of the biggest hurdles in starting a fire is finding the right kind of kindling. If you can make a kindling that can catch fire quickly, you have half of your work cut out. One of the best fuel that you can make is a char cloth.
Take a small piece of cloth and shove it in a metal box or a container. Make sure that the container is sealed and throw it in the fire. Let the container burn in the fire for a few minutes. Remove it from fire and let it cool. If you did it right, the cloth inside would be completely black but not burnt. This cloth is called a char cloth. It catches fire with the smallest of sparks.
4. Process your food as far away from your shelter as possible! The blood, entrails and other stuff can attract wild animals who can sniff these things out from a distance.
5. Reinforce Your Backpacks and Clothes with Carbon Steel.Carbon steel is easily bendable and doesn't snap. You can use this to protect yourself from shrapnel, arrows, and bullets as well.
2. Learn to trust your instincts.If you feel like something is wrong....there's a good chance you're right.The brain uses a combination of logic and emotion when making decisions of any kind. ... That specific emotion, innate to us as humans, is intuition. We possess the capacity to feel, and thereby the ability to know things without consciously reasoning.
3. Make char cloth.One of the biggest hurdles in starting a fire is finding the right kind of kindling. If you can make a kindling that can catch fire quickly, you have half of your work cut out. One of the best fuel that you can make is a char cloth.
Take a small piece of cloth and shove it in a metal box or a container. Make sure that the container is sealed and throw it in the fire. Let the container burn in the fire for a few minutes. Remove it from fire and let it cool. If you did it right, the cloth inside would be completely black but not burnt. This cloth is called a char cloth. It catches fire with the smallest of sparks.
4. Process your food as far away from your shelter as possible! The blood, entrails and other stuff can attract wild animals who can sniff these things out from a distance.
5. Reinforce Your Backpacks and Clothes with Carbon Steel.Carbon steel is easily bendable and doesn't snap. You can use this to protect yourself from shrapnel, arrows, and bullets as well.
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I had forgotten all about char cloth. I now remember that back when I was in Boy Scouts I had some char cloth in my firemaking kit.
Thanks for the tips. Keep them coming.
1. Don't travel during night unless you absoutely need to.Traveling through the wilderness in the dark is dangerous. Most predatory animals are nocturnal, which means they will see you long before you see them. There are dangers in the terrain that you may not see at night, too. You can fall off a cliff or into a pit if you can’t see where you are going.
2. If there is a halo around the sun or the moon, it usually indicates that low pressure is approaching.
You can safely predict that there will be some precipitation, either rain or snow, in the next 24-36 hours. The halo is caused by refraction of light by ice crystals in the cirrus clouds. If the halo is broken, the broken side points to the direction of the incoming storm.
3. Paint the handles of your tools with bright orange paint to make them visible. You don’t want to spend precious time and energy searching for your tools if you drop them on the ground.
4. Know about medicinal plants.Pain and irritation from insect bites, diarrhea, and muscle and joint pain are common ailments in the wild. Knowing what plants will help treat these problems will help. Willow bark tea, charcoal, dock leaves, and pine are readily available and can help treat these problems.
5. Practice!Simply studying survival skills won’t help you in the wild. Practice these tips as often as possible to prepare yourself for any emergency situation. The more prepared you are, the better your chances for survival.
2. If there is a halo around the sun or the moon, it usually indicates that low pressure is approaching.
You can safely predict that there will be some precipitation, either rain or snow, in the next 24-36 hours. The halo is caused by refraction of light by ice crystals in the cirrus clouds. If the halo is broken, the broken side points to the direction of the incoming storm.
3. Paint the handles of your tools with bright orange paint to make them visible. You don’t want to spend precious time and energy searching for your tools if you drop them on the ground.
4. Know about medicinal plants.Pain and irritation from insect bites, diarrhea, and muscle and joint pain are common ailments in the wild. Knowing what plants will help treat these problems will help. Willow bark tea, charcoal, dock leaves, and pine are readily available and can help treat these problems.
5. Practice!Simply studying survival skills won’t help you in the wild. Practice these tips as often as possible to prepare yourself for any emergency situation. The more prepared you are, the better your chances for survival.
One of my favourite advices for after SHTF scenarios is from a game i used to play a few years back :
Raiders can't be bargained or reasoned with, and there ain't no use surrendering, cause they'll just shoot you anyway. So run, hide or... fight, if you've got the balls and the guns. But for God's sake, don't go wavin' the white flag. They'll just strangle you with it.
Raiders can't be bargained or reasoned with, and there ain't no use surrendering, cause they'll just shoot you anyway. So run, hide or... fight, if you've got the balls and the guns. But for God's sake, don't go wavin' the white flag. They'll just strangle you with it.
1. If all you have is a small headlamp, grab an empty jug of water. Fill it up and wrap the headlamp around the outside of it with the light facing in. You now have a light that can project in 360 degrees.
2. Learn to make rope from willow tree branches.The rope is a critical resource in the wild. It is essential to tie things, to make shelter and even in hunting. You can make a robust and sturdy rope from the skins of willow branches.
3. Learn to make a torch.A torch is an excellent way to illuminate your path in the dark. You can also use it as a weapon to ward off attacks from wild animals. To make a torch, find a branch of a tree and split it in half. Stick a piece of bark in the fork and light the split end, that's all! Birch tree branches make great torches.
4. Treat blisters ASAP.When you walk for a long distance, it is common to get blisters on your feet. If you don’t take care of these blisters as soon as possible, they will prevent you from covering distance. If the blister has already been formed, just punctured to relieve the fluid buildup. If you sense that a blister may be forming, use a small piece of duct tape to prevent it.
5. Use duct tape to keep your shoelaces tied.
When you walk through bushes and thickets, your shoelaces can be quickly caught in the branches. It can cause you to lose footing or fall. Use a duct tape to tape the loose ends of your laces to your upper ankle. This way, there will be no open laces to tangle.
2. Learn to make rope from willow tree branches.The rope is a critical resource in the wild. It is essential to tie things, to make shelter and even in hunting. You can make a robust and sturdy rope from the skins of willow branches.
3. Learn to make a torch.A torch is an excellent way to illuminate your path in the dark. You can also use it as a weapon to ward off attacks from wild animals. To make a torch, find a branch of a tree and split it in half. Stick a piece of bark in the fork and light the split end, that's all! Birch tree branches make great torches.
4. Treat blisters ASAP.When you walk for a long distance, it is common to get blisters on your feet. If you don’t take care of these blisters as soon as possible, they will prevent you from covering distance. If the blister has already been formed, just punctured to relieve the fluid buildup. If you sense that a blister may be forming, use a small piece of duct tape to prevent it.
5. Use duct tape to keep your shoelaces tied.
When you walk through bushes and thickets, your shoelaces can be quickly caught in the branches. It can cause you to lose footing or fall. Use a duct tape to tape the loose ends of your laces to your upper ankle. This way, there will be no open laces to tangle.
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It's not the big animals we have to worry about, they pretty much know that encounters with humans are fatal and avoid humans like the plague. It's the small ones that will getcha
Cottonmouth Moccasin (Less likely to run away than other snakes. If not angered they may slither away, but once they get their dander up, it's a fight to the death every time)
Red Paper Wasp (Rated 3 on the 4 point Schmidt Pain Index. They are even more irascible than cottonmouths)
Yellow Jacket (only 2 on the Schmidt Index, but they come at you in a swarm if you step on their nest)
Cottonmouth Moccasin (Less likely to run away than other snakes. If not angered they may slither away, but once they get their dander up, it's a fight to the death every time)
Red Paper Wasp (Rated 3 on the 4 point Schmidt Pain Index. They are even more irascible than cottonmouths)
Yellow Jacket (only 2 on the Schmidt Index, but they come at you in a swarm if you step on their nest)
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1. Survival isn't a game of chance it’s a game of skill, so learn as many skills, techniques and survival strategies as you can. Take courses, read books and magazines, watch YouTube -– just be careful where you look.Choose skills that work for you, develop your own technique and hone it. Think of skills as tools.
2.Remember in disaster situations that most homes have a hot water heater with anywhere from 40-80 gallons of fresh water storage that can be drained and used.
3. A sheet of aluminum foil is very handy for creating a dry fire base by laying it out on the ground to start a fire on. You can also cut strips of it and short out a battery to create a spark. Fold up a sheet for your kit.
4. A shelter is an important survival tool in the wilderness. It can protect you from the weather elements as well as some wildlife. Making a tent can be quite simple. However, avoid the following mistakes while building one.
Although there may be water all around you in the wilderness, drinking water from a stagnant puddle or a lake is not advisable. Drinking from a flowing stream is always better than drinking from a stagnant pool of water. However, there can be a situation where you may not have any option. In that case, you can construct a portable water filter. Here is how you do it.
2.Remember in disaster situations that most homes have a hot water heater with anywhere from 40-80 gallons of fresh water storage that can be drained and used.
3. A sheet of aluminum foil is very handy for creating a dry fire base by laying it out on the ground to start a fire on. You can also cut strips of it and short out a battery to create a spark. Fold up a sheet for your kit.
4. A shelter is an important survival tool in the wilderness. It can protect you from the weather elements as well as some wildlife. Making a tent can be quite simple. However, avoid the following mistakes while building one.
- Never build a shelter on damp ground, ever.
- Never build a shelter on highlands or top of hills. The wind can get cold at night and with no trees to resist; you run the risk of your shelter blown away by the gusts.
- Similarly, avoid making a shelter in the bottom of a narrow valley. Cold wind collects there are you will have a tough time during the night.
Although there may be water all around you in the wilderness, drinking water from a stagnant puddle or a lake is not advisable. Drinking from a flowing stream is always better than drinking from a stagnant pool of water. However, there can be a situation where you may not have any option. In that case, you can construct a portable water filter. Here is how you do it.
- Find an empty bottle or a container: Any empty container will do. If you can’t find one, you can always make one using birch barks.
- Poke small holes in the bottom of the container: Make small holes with a pencil or a stick.
- Now fill the bottle up to an inch or two with following material: Coarse gravel, coarse sand, charcoal and fine sand. You can get the charcoal from your fire that you made in step 2. Just collect the charcoal and crush it up into a fine power.
- Add water to the top layer of fine sand. As water percolates through the fine sand, then through the charcoal, the coarse sand, and the gravel, it will get filtered. Collect the water coming out through the openings you created.
Found this elsewhere
I once heard a fire inspector say that he never slept any higher up than on the third floor of a hotel. Also, he would always demand a room facing the main street and never the back alley. The reason was that the ladder of a fire truck typically can't go any higher up than the third floor. If you are stuck any higher up, no one can get to you. Also, a huge fire truck can't fit in a back alley. So even if you are not even too high up, there will be no ladder available anyways. He also said that he always had a fire mask ready by the bed. Apparently most people die from smoke intoxication and sometimes you only have minutes from you hear the alarm until you pass out. You may get out of your room but you will probably die in the hallway. So always ask for a room on the bottom floors, with windows facing the main street and bring a fire mask
I once heard a fire inspector say that he never slept any higher up than on the third floor of a hotel. Also, he would always demand a room facing the main street and never the back alley. The reason was that the ladder of a fire truck typically can't go any higher up than the third floor. If you are stuck any higher up, no one can get to you. Also, a huge fire truck can't fit in a back alley. So even if you are not even too high up, there will be no ladder available anyways. He also said that he always had a fire mask ready by the bed. Apparently most people die from smoke intoxication and sometimes you only have minutes from you hear the alarm until you pass out. You may get out of your room but you will probably die in the hallway. So always ask for a room on the bottom floors, with windows facing the main street and bring a fire mask
You sure that picture isn’t a copperhead?It's not the big animals we have to worry about, they pretty much know that encounters with humans are fatal and avoid humans like the plague. It's the small ones that will getcha
Cottonmouth Moccasin (Less likely to run away than other snakes. If not angered they may slither away, but once they get their dander up, it's a fight to the death every time)
Red Paper Wasp (Rated 3 on the 4 point Schmidt Pain Index. They are even more irascible than cottonmouths)
Yellow Jacket (only 2 on the Schmidt Index, but they come at you in a swarm if you step on their nest)
That's not a cottonmouth nor a copperhead. Not a snake local to Texas.
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Definitely a cottonmouth. I've seen plenty that looked just like that. The easily recognizable feature that gives them their name is the white inside the mouth. Young cottonmouths have a more vivid banding pattern than when they get older, very striking. As they get older the bands get wider and they get progressively darker until they are almost all black. Another feature that is more pronounced when young is the yellow tip on the tail.
Copperhead banding pattern is different, with the dark bands being roughly hourglass shaped.
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I’ve handled 100’s of snakes in my lifetime, usually the only one running towards one while everyone else is running away. One thing I’ve learned is there can be a huge difference in appearance from one individual to another, and from a juvenile to an adult. I grew up in central Florida and 98% of all the cotton mouths were very dark there. The shape of this guy in the picture looks right but I’ve never seen one so light colored.Definitely a cottonmouth. I've seen plenty that looked just like that. The easily recognizable feature that gives them their name is the white inside the mouth. Young cottonmouths have a more vivid banding pattern than when they get older, very striking. As they get older they get progressively darker until they are almost all black. Another feature that is more pronounced when young is the yellow tip on the tail.
Copperhead banding pattern is different, with the dark bands being roughly hourglass shaped.
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Here is a montage showing how the colors and bands change as a cottonmouth ages:
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I was on a canoe trip one time and we beached on a sandbar. There was a little cottonmouth on the sandbar no bigger around than a pencil that looked just like the one in the picture (open mouth and all)
And that was HIS sandbar and he was not going to give it up. He came at me unprovoked when I stepped out of the canoe and I had to beat him back with the canoe paddle. He never backed down an inch as I beat him to death with the paddle.
And that was HIS sandbar and he was not going to give it up. He came at me unprovoked when I stepped out of the canoe and I had to beat him back with the canoe paddle. He never backed down an inch as I beat him to death with the paddle.
Yeah, I’ve had them come at me before too. Very territorial little beggars and not afraid of anything. Very different from most snake species.
Here in the states there’s like 1.5 average deaths per year from snake bite. Definitely not deserving of most people’s irrational fear of them. Now, gangrene and tissue damage is a whole other story, but deaths are really rare.
The last cotton mouth I saw was nearly black but you could make out the bands if you looked close . It was on the upper end of Woods Reservoir where its almost a wilderness area . There's no mistaken the copperhead for me . Iv had to many run ins with them .
I have an agreement with all snakes. In their natural habitat, I will leave them alone, IF, they will leave me alone. In my yard / living space. they will most like be killed upon sight.
Growing up there were a lot of copperheads around the farm and cottonmouths down at the creek and around the pond. We had several different types of rattlesnakes too out in the fields. We were always taught not to reach into or kick a pile of leaves but to use a rake or hoe, and to be careful when walking through tall grass or around the water. We did kill quite a few of those snakes over the years.
When I was a boy diamondback rattlers were common over 6’. Now, due to people not just letting them be but actually hunting them they are close to endangered and you hardly ever see large ones anymore. I agree I really don’t want them close to the house but even poisonous ones have their place in the world.
- 1. Learn at least few basic knots.
2. Most poisonous snakes have a pupil that resembles a cat's; an oblong shape with peaked ends, like a slit in the center of the eye. Non-venomous snakes usually have round pupils. There is always the exception. The coral snake, a very venomous snake in the United States, has round pupils.
3. If you encounter a mountain lion maintain eye contact. Never run past or away from a mountain lion. Don't bend over or crouch down. Aggressively wave your arms, throw stones or branches, do not turn away.
4. The first thing you should do if you're stranded in the wild is find a source of drinkable water. The most obvious sources are streams, rivers and lakes. Animals always know where the water is, so be on the lookout for wildlife or animal tracks. Lush green vegetation is also a sign that water is nearby. Swarming insects may be a hassle, but they also signal that a water source isn't far away. Bird flight paths in the morning or evening can point you in the right direction. Stay on the move until you find a water source. When you pause to rest, use your ears -- rivers can be heard in the quiet woods from great distances. Remember that water always flows downhill, so low-lying areas and valleys are a good bet.
5. Always have some aluminum foil with you.
Too many uses to type them all so just a few.
Boiling Water. In any survival situation, it is important to stay hydrated. ...
Signal for Help. ...
Make Fishing Lures. ...
Water Bottle Repair. ...
Sharpen Dull Scissors. ...
Fix Loose Batteries. ...
Keep Your Matches Dry. ...
Scrub Dirty Pots and Pans.
Etc.etc.etc
No need to carry the whole roll but at least few folded pieces
Thanks for the tips Dies Irae. When it comes to snakes, I am not going to get close enough to look them in the eyes.
JackDW you dont know what you are missing.... could be love at first sight if you would just stare in its eyes for a bit ☺
But if the snake already managed to bite you there is no point in keeping distance anymore and eyes are one more thing to help you know what you are dealing with.Same goes if you killed it and want to eat it
But if the snake already managed to bite you there is no point in keeping distance anymore and eyes are one more thing to help you know what you are dealing with.Same goes if you killed it and want to eat it
Hey, snakes make great pets. They don’t bark, they don’t need to be taken out to do their business, as a matter of fact they only do their business like once a month, they only need to be fed every few weeks, and if you forget to check on them they are fine. They are also tasty in a pinch! Seriously, they aren’t slimy and mostly only bite when threatened. Don’t just go hunting to kill them for no reason.
Remember, in a fire where the smoke is bad, get flat on the ground. The air at the bottom foot is usually free of smoke, and you can see.
These are a must have and come in camo.
https://www.amazon.com/foil-blanket/s?k=foil+blanket
These are a must have and come in camo.
https://www.amazon.com/foil-blanket/s?k=foil+blanket
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