A Survival Tips and Techniques Blog | UrbanWoodsman.com

David Wilcox introduces 3 ways that capos can save your life in “Survival techniques using a capo”. Created by Moving PIxel Productions www.movingpixel.ca Inspired by Sayvee (web fuel for artists) http Follow David Wilcox www.davidwilcox.com

Bieng able to navigate using nature is an extremely useful skill, always be aware of what direction you are travelling and allways tell someone where you are going

Survival sometimes means improvising with personal possessions. Learn about surviving by using personal possessions from an Eagle Scout in this free survival skills video. Expert: John Stewart Bio: John Stewart is an Eagle Scout with the Boy Scouts of America and has instructed boy scouts on climbing, outdoor skills, pioneering, wilderness survival and kayaking for the past nine years. Filmmaker: Reel Media LLC

Tree bark can be helpful for starting fires or using as a scraping tool. Learn how to find and use tree bark for wilderness survival in thisfree outdoors video. Expert: John Stewart Bio: John Stewart is an Eagle Scout with the Boy Scouts of America and has instructed boy scouts on climbing, outdoor skills, pioneering, wilderness survival and kayaking for the past nine years. Filmmaker: Reel Media LLC

When straw grass is still green it can be used for bedding. Learn how to find and use straw grass for wilderness survival in thisfree outdoors video. Expert: John Stewart Bio: John Stewart is an Eagle Scout with the Boy Scouts of America and has instructed boy scouts on climbing, outdoor skills, pioneering, wilderness survival and kayaking for the past nine years. Filmmaker: Reel Media LLC

Using a compass involves holding it as level as possible, finding the desired direction or bearing and using the magnetic north needle as reference. Use a compass to navigate through the wilderness with life-saving tips from an experienced wilderness expert in this free video on surviving outdoors. Expert: Matt Preye Contact: www.weu.com Bio: Matt Preye has been kayaking for 15 years in both whitewater and recreational kayaks. Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso

A bankruptcy is one of the worst experiences any person can go through. Most likely there have already been terrible things happen to cause the bankruptcy. On top of dealing with the first tragedy there is even more stress and sleepless nights with foreclosures and bankruptcy looming overhead.

People who are trying to survive bankruptcy are a lot like those that are lost in the wilderness. In both situations you’re trying to recover from having everything taken away from you. Just like surviving in the wilderness there are some guidelines that will help you survive after bankruptcy. This is still life and death.

Step One – Stay Positive.

In all the turmoil it’s critically important to stay mentally positive. Those that are lost in the wilderness and survive have one thing in common: they stay positive. Remember to stay calm, get your bearings, and think optimistic. Once you have your directions stay the course. Changing directions over and over will only get you even more lost. Find any clue that indicates your direction. Once you find your true north work very hard toward that direction.

Step Two – Avoid Excess Risk

When people get lost they are disoriented, confused, and make poor decisions. One of the poor decisions they make is taking on unnecessary risk. Many people have died in the wilderness while trying to climb a cliff face, cross barren wastelands, or swim turbulent waters. At the time these seemed like the only option to get where they needed to go. This is simply not true.

Avoid doing anything financially risky after bankruptcy. Betting everything you have in Las Vegas, starting a high-risk business, or buying lottery tickets with grocery money are all bad ideas. Remember, your purpose is to survive. Surviving takes patience. Being rescued right away doesn’t always happen so don’t expect it, or even worse, force it. Time and good judgment will bring you through.

Step Three – Be Creative with What You Have

A safety pin can save your life in a wilderness setting if you can catch fish with it. Most people that make it in a survival setting use anything they can find. They think outside the box and use every item creatively to make it work for them.

The same idea works in recovering from bankruptcy. After the process is final, most creditors won’t want to work with you. You need to start building good credit quickly. Use your car, your jewelry, or even some cash to use as collateral to get any kind of credit. A great place to start is by getting bad credit or secured credit cards. After you’ve got that card set it up on automatic payments and let it fix your credit on autopilot.

Survival takes a lot of energy and patience. You will do great if you stay positive, avoid risk, and are creative with the things you already have. Good luck, you can do it!

Google Tech Talks January 18, 2007 ABSTRACT We’ll cover: -approapriate attire for wilderness activities (“cotton kills”) -how not to get lost Once lost: -signaling for assistance (both day and night) -building land markers to indicate direction -choosing a location for shelter -building shelters -finding and purifying water -basic medical kit and its use -basic land navigation (and direction determination) without a compass -also, well cover “child SAR”, so parents are encouraged to …

Geocaching is an up-and-coming outdoor sport, quietly gaining in popularity worldwide.  Its primary purpose is recreational, and there are literally thousands upon thousands of hidden caches that span the globe.  But this is only one use for a handheld GPS (Global Positioning System).

Spinning off of geocaching for recreational use, geocaching can also come in handy for survival purposes.  Here we will explore some of the ways that a GPS unit can be employed from an emergency preparedness standpoint.

There are a ton of good reasons to record waypoints (longitude and latitude coordinates) for survival purposes.  For starters, you should mark down a remote camping spot that you have identified as being suitable to set up your living quarters and that is favorable for supporting wildlife and other living things.  The site should be in close proximity to a water source, and not be so well known that it becomes overcrowded and unproductive.  Along with this site you should also record coordinates of nearby edible plants, roots, and berries.  These should be researched well, and you should be confident that they are in fact edible and are not poisonous or contain other toxins.  A field guide with pictures and descriptive text will help you to identify the ones your body can safely digest.

Further along the “trail” you may decide to mark a spot that is rife with critters for you to trap.  These may just end up being a decent source of meat for you; after all, everything tastes like chicken anyway, right?  Don’t let not having a refrigerator “spoil” things for you.  Dig a deep, wide hole that you can put some sturdy plywood over and cover with dirt to act as your cooling unit for foods that require refrigeration.  You might also decide to do something similar for other items you’d like to store, such as an axe, flint and steel, a saw, a pair of binoculars, or whatever.  Don’t forget to record these locations’ coordinates as well.

Another very useful waypoint for your consideration is a cave.  Should you be lucky enough to find one that you could fit in and use for shelter, by all means record this, too.  While were on the subject of survival, make yourself a hooter dart.  If you got hungry enough you might kill and cook up some bat.  Who knows, it might be a gourmet food (somewhere in the world).

Now, this is not meant to be an episode of Fear Factor, so settle down.  But you may need some “creative” sources of protein in an emergency/survival situation.  So mark a location where you have witnessed aplenty the following: red ants (bigger and tastier than the black variety), grasshoppers, and night crawlers.  These won’t all likely be plentiful in the same location, so look around and record your results accordingly.  And remember, protein is a must– why do you think when the food bank comes around asking for foodstuff donations, items high in protein are at the top of their list for requested items?  Chocolate makes everything better.  Just melt some chocolate over the campfire and cover these creatures to eat them for practice.

Another idea for something to mark is a honeycomb.  Look around for some wild honeybees.  If you find their home, and it’s close enough to the ground, bingo!  If it is in a hole in a tree, for example, and you need something sweet (and you were feeling really adventurous) you could build a fire at the base of the tree to smoke them into a hypnotic state while you stole away their golden juice!

To sum things up, these are a few of the serious and not so serious (but plausible, nonetheless) ideas of waypoints that you might want to record now before an emergency happens.  Don’t forget to record an area dense with dry wood for fire making.  The reason for recording all of these coordinates is for all of you folks with Halfheimer’s that forget the simplest things from one moment to the next.  But seriously, everybody forgets some things, and why risk a great find in the outdoors?  Record it!