Tag: survival

Emergency Gear to Carry in Your Car

Posted by The Team –

by Misty S Bledsoe

What would you do if you were unexpectedly stuck in your car?//Photo courtesy of gracey/morguefile.com

You never know when you will be stuck in your car. Maybe there is a blockage on the freeway or a road gets blocked and you feel as though you may be stranded. If you have the kids with you, do you have snacks on hand? How about medications and water? What about warm weather preps?

  1. Start a box that is designated to stay in the trunk of your car or truck that is designated for emergency gear. Rubbermaid containers with snug lids work well for this.
  2. Put the jack and all necessary accessories to change a tire in this box or tub. Make a list of other things you could need.
  3. Include a first aid kit, a large water bottle for each passenger your vehicle can carry, and a spare change of clothes. The most important changes of clothes should be extra underwear, plenty of socks (in case they get wet) and t-shirts. Extra t-shirts/sweatshirts can be layered for passengers in the winter months or can be used to hang in the windows to block sun in the summer months depending on the situation.
  4. Carry things like a small bottle of aspirin, Tylenol, Ibuprofen and Imodium. You can usually find these or their generic equivalent at your local dollar store. Carry extra medications you may be required to take in case of an emergency.
  5. Pack candles, flashlights and a fire source such as matches or extra lighters. Keep matches and lighters away from children. These can be used for light or to start a campfire if you’ve gotten lost in the woods or are trapped in a blizzard. 
  6. Consider word puzzles, coloring books and crayons and other fun type of games for kids and adults alike.
  7. The last important item: Toilet paper.

Even if you only have water, toilet paper and snacks you will be better off than if you had nothing. Do your best to be thorough however and customize the box to meet the needs of your family. Carry your emergency box whether you ever use it or not. You will find over time you will end up using at least one item and you’ll be glad you took the 30-60 minutes to prepare for your families safety.

Important!

**This list is not all-inclusive. Nothing can ever prepare you 100% fully for every conceivable emergency. You are still in charge of making your own decisions. Be as detailed as you can think of will only help you in the long run. Consult expert survival advice when preparing for dangerous trips or otherwise may run into dangerous rather than inconvenient situations while traveling.**

Everyday Emergency Awareness and Preparation

Posted by The Team –

by Misty S Bledsoe

A lot of speculation is happening around the globe in terms of end of the world, or end time apocalyptic events. Each religion has their own viewpoint and even those among the Christian religion have varying interpretations. I subscribe to my own personal beliefs on the matter but no matter how you view it, things in the world are bound to get worse for many people before they get any better.

Being prepared to survive in any situation requires knowledge, training, and a certain level of comfortableness in dealing with potentially catastrophic situations. If you’ve never thought about how to survive when life is turned upside down, one thing that anyone can do is simply begin to be aware that it could and might happen. Thousands lost their loved ones in a tsunami, Hurricane Katrina will forever be remembered by most, and right now in far reaching countries, children die from starvation and disease daily. Men and women fight to keep us safe overseas, regardless of your stance on the issue.

What types of things do you do now to be more prepared? Are you prepared enough? There are several types of incidents, natural and otherwise as outlined in history, that cause delays for supplies being delivered to grocery stores and interrupt water and power supplies.

Be more aware of your every day surroundings. How would handle it if you could not get your kids from day care because traffic is snarled? What would you do if everything seemed normal, yet when you got home and turned on the water to start dinner, nothing came out of the faucet? After investigating, you learn it’s happening to all your neighbors. No notice, no information from the city, no ETA of resolution, and no plausible explanation. How would that affect your daily life?

This actually happened to me one night and the water outage lasted nearly three hours. Since, I had a supply of emergency water equaling about 20 gallons or so stashed under my sink, I was prepared. I did not alarm my children or send them into a panic, but instead started boiling water to make macaroni and cheese for dinner. I put on pots of water with the largest pots I could find and began to warm them, one to wash dishes with, and the others to mix with a bucket of cold water, producing a “just right” temperature and introduce the kids to bathing with a bucket of water instead of a shower if I had to.

Luckily, the water came back on. I replaced my water supply and continued on with life. If I didn’t  have emergency supplies on hand, the situation of not having water coming into my home with two small children could have become stressful and uncomfortable.

The more prepared you are now, the less stressful it can be weather out very uncomfortable and possibly life changing events.

Book Review: How to Stay Alive in the Woods: A Complete Guide to Food, Shelter, and Self-Preservation that Makes Starvation in the Wilderness Next to Impossible

Posted by The Team –

Misty Bledsoe: Fern Leaves

Misty Bledsoe: Fern Leaves

By Misty S. Bledsoe

The last time I flew, I remember looking down periodically at the landscape below, marking the water, the mountains, and overall terrain. I would also ask the stewardess where we were over periodically for point of reference. I was not worried that the plane would go down, but I knew after reading this book, that if it had and I actually survived that I would have a better chance than normal of surviving as long as I remembered key things.

Author Bradford Angier originally published this book as “Living off the Country: How to Stay Alive in the Woods” in 1956 and carries the language of the time. Sentences and paragraphs are formal and to the point.

Have you ever wondered what you would do and how you would survive if you found yourself lost in the woods? This book covers 285 pages in its paperback form on everything you would need to know.

For anybody who is the survivalist type or you just have always wondered how is staying alive when lost in the woods with very little or no supplies possible, this book is a must read. After reading it, I personally recommend that each person in your party have one on their persons as a reference when hiking, camping, skiing, day hiking, backpacking, or even just traveling.

The book is broken down into 26 chapters in four parts ranked for priority and reference: substance, warmth, orientation, and safety. Each chapter is evenly spaced and relatively easy to read. The author includes pictures, patterns, and speaks in detail about food finding, water, shelter, and first aid.

He discusses candidly about prevention of getting into these situations to begin with but if you ever find yourself in one, it can obviously mean life or death trying to escape it. It’s obviously much better to be well versed in these techniques just so you have the knowledge of it and hopefully you will never have to use it.

This book is not a quick broken down version of survival techniques you may find in any local bookstore. This book is jam packed with detailed information on how to survive in just about every capacity you can think of if you are lost and have no supplies or little supplies, regardless of how you found yourself in that situation.

He goes into how to do this despite any unforeseen weather such as drenching down pours to even unexpected snow, snow shelters, and quick shelters in the woods. Consistently throughout the pages, Angier details priorities given the particular situation he is discussing in a “if this is the condition, you need to do this kind of shelter if available then concentrate on food” type fashion and when its visa-versa he will tell you. Reading the entire book, the reader begins to get and instinctive feel for priorities depending on the given situation.

It needs to be known that no one book can contain all the material necessary for survival, neither can just by reading it will ensure ones survival if lost in the woods. However, if a person is only going to have one survival book in their home library, this is the one I would not be without.