We live in a world marked by modern conveniences, which is really great. Modern technologies allow us to find our way, stay warm, find shelter, and even get the food and water our bodies need. While this is totally fine, have you ever thought of uncertainties that nature may present?
What if a heavy storm knocks power out? What if your phone battery dies in the middle of nowhere? Definitely, you need a few skills to survive these inevitable life moments.
There are plenty of basic survival skills that everyone needs to know and practice. While most of them look less important to learn, they can potentially save your life, depending on the situation. This post will cover some of the basic survival skills you need to learn.
Of importance, until you get out into the field and practice any survival skills, all you have is a false sense of security.
Survival skills everyone should master
To prepare yourself for whatever might befall you, here are basic skills you can learn on your own to prepare yourself to handle most survival situations:
1. Finding water
When it comes to surviving, water is often the first thing that people look for. After all, nothing is more critical to survival than clean, drinking water.
Finding food and water is a skill that people used daily for survival that has since been forgotten. While there is no guaranteed way to look for water, it is obvious that streams are found downhill or in crevasses where hills meet. If you can't find a water source, you will need to explore the area further. Lush areas with green vegetation and animals are likely to have water.
Rain, snow, and dew are other reliable sources of clean water you can collect. In extreme conditions, you can squeeze water from vines and thistles.
Most importantly, don’t drink any water you find. Make an effort to purify or boil it. This takes us to the next survival skill.
2. Starting and tending to a fire
Even if you find a flowing stream with what seems to be clean water, make an effort to make it safer for drinking. In the wilderness, you will need to know how to start a fire to boil your water. Fire will also give you life-saving warmth, help you cook, scare predators away, and even other people notice your location.
While starting a fire with a lighter can be easy and quick, you need to learn how to start a fire from scratch, which requires practice and patience. One of the techniques is making a flint that can generate sparks. You can also short-circuit your battery to create sparks.
The most important thing is to practice and master how you can start a fire in different weather conditions. There are a whole lot of effective techniques to create fire by friction.
3. Foraging for food
While you can survive for a few weeks without food, as long as you have clean, clean drinking water, having the skill to hunt and forage for food is critical.
There are lots of edible wild plants that you can eat while in the wilderness. However, you need to be super keen; otherwise, you may find yourself feasting on poisonous fruits.
You will also need to learn and master hunting, trapping, fishing, and any other technique you can use to get food.
4. Building a shelter
Once you have water and food, the next most obvious basic thing you want is to find somewhere you can hide from the elements. The type of shelter you can build and how to build it depends entirely on where you are, how long you will stay there, and the available resources.
Basic requirements are branches for poles plus some clothing, a tent, or leaves to cover the finished structure. There are a lot of factors to consider as well. For instance, walking distance to water source and chances of immediate surroundings catching fire.
5. Basic first aid
There are times when it is difficult for emergency services to reach you when you are sick or injured. Being able to administer first aid may save a life at such critical moments.
Apart from knowing how to use a first aid kit, you should be able to come up with creative ways to offer first aid using what is readily available. For instance, creating a brace with tree branches and harvesting natural medicine.
Final thoughts
Learning basic survival skills is a great way to prepare yourself for uncertainties. Practicing and mastering these skills can bring you closer to nature and help you save your life should things go wrong.
If you want to go beyond being just a beginner at this or any other skill, and work toward developing a real mastery, then you are going to need a deeper and more powerful strategy.
A winning mindset is a state of mind that allows you to enter a flow state at will. You do this by programming your subconscious mind.
Believe it or not, most of what you do throughout an average day is NOT freely chosen by your normal waking consciousness even though it may seem that way. The truth is that most of what you do on a day-to-day basis is done on autopilot. An example of this would be when you’re driving your car and as you do so you get bored and begin daydreaming. Before you know it, you find yourself several miles further down the road with absolutely NO memory of having driven those last several miles.
So, who exactly was driving while your waking consciousness was in la-la land, and how exactly did you manage to avoid an accident? Your subconscious mind was in control. You already spent years programming your subconscious with how to deal with a broad range of possible driving scenarios and thus it had no trouble taking the wheel while your waking consciousness took a little break. In other words, you were able to take effective actions without having to THINK about them.
