Tomorrow is never certain.  We never know when there might be a dissonance which can disrupt the comfortable nature we are used to on a daily basis. There are many different emergency events which some people prepare for but, unfortunately, most of us tend to ignore. At some point in our lives, we will have to deal with some form of natural calamity, and that is exactly why we put together this post.  In the following article, we’ll highlight some of our favorite survival skills for natural calamities for you to learn from.

Survival Skills

1. Making Shelter

You should consider your situation before planning or building any survival structure. Your shelter must be able to provide protection from excessive wind, sun, rain, snow or any kind of weather. A shelter is mostly for comfort and protection. It should protect you against animals, weather or from insects. Likewise, it must be relatively comfortable since you will have to sleep in it.

A shelter may have many different forms:

• Natural shelters include caves or fallen thick-foliaged trees
• Intermediate shelters include a ditch dug next to a tree log and covered with leafs, debris shelter, or snow caves
• Completely man-made structures which may include houses, tents or tarps

2. Gathering & Filtering Water

Human beings are able to survive for an average of 3 to 4 days without water intake. Water is highly needed in hotter temperatures. The need of water also may increase with exercise. A normal person may lose between 2 and 4 liters of water in a day under the normal condition – more in extreme weather conditions. It is suggested that you consume between 3 and 6 liters of water per day to stave off dehydration.

In survival situations where running water is not available, you need to have an adequate water supply or a way to consistently produce clean water. Without clean water, you won’t survive a prolonged calamity and therefore, you need a source that will not only provide clean water but also easily accessible every time without going long distance. Other sources of water may include; having secrete water reserves, rainwater harvesting, or storing the large quantity of clean water.  There are numerous ways to generate clean water from questionable sources filtering, purifying and boiling.

3. Creating Fire

Fire have been recognized to significantly increase an ability to survive from both the mental and physical states. It can help you warm your body, boil water, cook food, or dry your clothes. In addition, fire can also provide a psychological support by creating a sense of the safety and security.

Lighting fire without matches or lighters is a common subject in survival books and courses. You should, therefore, practice the fire making tactics before venturing to wilderness. Making the fire in adverse conditions have been made easier by introductions of fire equipment such as fire piston and solar spark lighters.

4. Food Storage

You might be surprised seeing food being low on a survival skills list. We can survive without food for much longer compared with other basic needs. According to the rule of three, a typical person can survive for up to three weeks without food.  That being said, surviving and being somewhat comfortable can be two very different things.

Having food stores in place prior to a calamity is the best way to ensure you don’t go hungry during a natural disaster.  In the off chance you’ve run out of everything, you can resort to the following means of food acquisition:

• Hunting
• Foraging
• Trading

Please make sure you can properly identify edible plants if you intend to forage.

5. Improve Your Outdoor Skills

The more you understand the nature, the better you will be able to survive. For instance, to effectively locate wild animals you will need highly tuned wildlife tracking skills.The best way to acquire basic natural knowledge is to read about plants and animals in your area and then get outside and tune your knowledge. This approach will allow you identify means of survival in the outdoors in good times or bad.

6. Improve Your Attitude

Attitude is very important in survival skills. It can even determine whether you are going to make it out of a situation alive. Your attitude will help you plan for your situation and, by doing so, you will keep your body and mind active. A positive attitude is also contagious.  If you are in a group of folks who are in dire straits, a positive attitude may help bring people together and allow them to get to safety.

7. Build Your Relationships

Solid relationships with other community members is an essential aspect of survival and readiness. One individual can’t do as much as two can do. If you involved your friend or a neighbor about it, they might agree and create a readiness plan for the entire community. Solid relationships will add an extra reliability which will help you prepared for anything.

8. Communication Is King

Communication is one of the most critical survival skills to keep up to date with.  Ensure that you have backup forms of communication such as radios, radio phones, auxiliary phone chargers or satellite phones. All these are a flexible and viable form of communication.

Moreover, have a communication plan and make sure that you practice in calm times to make sure that your plan works when things go sideways.

9. Have An Escape Plan

Having a plan to escape from different situations is key in a survival situation.  Your plans should start with your central location – do you have an escape plan for your house if it’s on fire – and build outwards.  Where do you go from work if there’s a disaster? Where do your kids go if they are at school? Where do you go if your primary escape route is blocked? Do you have a tertiary escape route?

10. First Aid Knowledge

Don’t let its ranking fool you – first aid knowledge is one of the most critical of the survival skills that you should develop. Build up your first aid kits both in your homes and in your vehicles and, above all else, build up your knowledge to treat everything from simple to severe situations. You can enroll in basic first aid classes and other natural survival tactics at some of the institutions such as Red Cross. Additionally, you can read more books that provide first aid information. Once you’ve developed your basic first aid skills, you may want to develop a knowledge of medicinal herbs and remedies.

Conclusion

Natural calamities come at the most unanticipated times.  Only developing proper survival skills will allow you to make it through these situations as unscathed as possible.

What do you think of these tens tips? Let us know in the comments below.

There are over 1 million fires reported in the US every year according to the NFPA. These fires lead to about 15,000 injuries and 3,000 deaths. Given these numbers, fire safety is of utmost concern – especially in a SHTF scenario. Preparing for a fire and having the tools necessary to suppress the flames and evacuate can be essential to ensuring your survival.

Identifying Fire Risks

Steps should be taken to eliminate fire liabilities, however, trying to prevent the outbreak of fire is obviously preferred. Overcrowded electrical plugs, unattended candles, and faulty kitchen appliances are all examples of potential fire risks. You should make sure that you and your loved ones know how to minimize these risks.  Keep in mind that, due to decorating your house, a lot of these risks are even more prevalent around the holidays.

Fires can start in all sorts of crazy ways in addition to the standard ones above. And they’re not always preventable. Some recent examples of odd fire starters include a Nutella jar next to a window, a cell phone overheating and a blender sparking flames.

While it is obviously best to practice fire prevention, it is crucial to have a plan and prepare for when a fire does break out.

Fire Safety Preparation

Preparing for fire safety involves three easy steps:

1. Smoke Detectors
   Anyone who takes preparedness seriously must make sure they have working smoke detectors throughout their home. Smoke detectors should be placed inside each bedroom, outside each sleeping area and on every level of the home including the basement. Alarms should also be placed in the living room, near the stairway to the upper level and, most importantly, in the kitchen. You should be checking your alarms once a month to make sure they’re still working According to FEMA.
2. Fire Extinguishers
   Fires can get out of control in as little as 30 seconds. Preparing in advance by placing fire extinguishers in key areas of your home can prevent the spread of flames and possibly save your house. At the very minimum, it is best to keep a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, the laundry room, and the garage. These three locations are considered high-risk areas for fires. The general rule is that you want to have the extinguisher in your hand within 6 seconds of becoming aware of the fire.
3. Evacuation
   It takes fire crews, on average, 10 minutes to arrive on-scene.  That means that it will be up to you to make sure you get out safely. Preparing and practicing a fire safety escape plan is a great idea and it can be life-saving. One key component to any fire safety escape plan is that every room should have two safe exits even if it means using a window. First-floor windows should not have bars on them that cannot be opened in an emergency. Second- and third-floor rooms should have a fire ladder nearby. Make sure that it is tested and safe. Finally, if the room is several stories up, there are other alternate evacuation methods which will allow you to safely descend from your window.

Wrap Up

Overall, fire safety is an important issue for suburban homesteaders – and anyone with a preparedness mindset – to think about.  Check on your plans, practice with your family and make sure you are not going to become a statistic.

I’m not sure what it’s going to be like by you this weekend but here, on Long Island, it’s the middle of winter.  We’re expecting a cold, raw weekend with some snow possibly coming our way.  It’s not really going to be outdoors weather, although learning how to survive in this kind of weather wouldn’t be a bad idea.  But, with this kind of weekend in mind, I got to thinking about how I could improve as a prepper.  I came up with this list of prepper skills that you (and I) could explore and improve over a weekend.  Make me one promise – don’t just read, do!

1. Cook Something

Cooking is one of the most important survival skills and, in my opinion, is one of the most important prepper skills you can master.  You all know that food is part of the Rule of 3’s – 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food – but what you probably also realize is that food can be more than just energy for people.  It can be a comforting item, making those stressful situations a little better.  So learn how to cook.  I’ve got a few recipes on here that you can try including:

• Pancakes
• Penne alla Vodka
• Smoked Ribs

2. Go Shooting

Want to blow off some steam this weekend and have a good time doing it?  Then hit the range!  You’re sure to have a good time no matter if you’re shooting a handgun, zeroing in your rifle or popping clays with your shotgun.  Being that ammo is expensive, you could also improve your prepper skills by doing some tactical training at home.  It’s free and could be quite beneficial to you if bad times come knocking.

3. Improve Your DIY Skills

Preppers and suburban homesteaders meet at the crux of DIY.  Both sides have an innate ability to fix whatever is broken or create something out of random odds and ends.  Undertaking a project like the bullet casing earbuds I wrote about recently will improve your abilities and spark your creative nature.  You’ll start looking at common material around the house and figuring how your new-found prepper skills can use it to make something useful.

4. Start A Fire

No matter who you ask, the ability to start a fire is one of the top prepper skills – or survival skills in general – that everyone should have.  Spends some time learning how to start fires with all of these fire starters this weekend:

• Ferro Rod
• Magnesium Bar
• Lighter
• Matches
• Fresnel Lens

5. Get Your Preps Organized

Being organized now will help you avoid running around like a maniac with all hell breaks loose.  I know, you’re thinking “Really? Being organized is one of the prepper skills you’re suggesting?”  Yup, I am absolutely advocating getting organized now.  There’s multiple reason to do so including having a much better understanding of where your weakness are and how you can improve your preps.  I recommend using this planner to get your preps in order.

6. Learn The Art Of Canning

As any prepper knows, food preservation is one of the most important prepper skills you can have.  Learning how to can different kinds of food will help you build your preps up and also save you money.  I’ve actually seen canning save money in multiple ways – people are putting food away to be eaten at a later time which saves money and they usually buy food in bulk when they are canning which reduces the overall food bill when you look at it on a per meal basis.  Plus, canning is just a great old-school skill to have in your repertoire.

7. Dutch Oven Cooking

So, you want your prepper skills to be a little more rustic, do you?  Why not try dutch oven cooking this weekend?  Cooking in a dutch oven is a great skill to have if the power goes out or if you’re camping.  Plus, there is just something so much tastier (to me, anyways) about food cooked in or on cast iron than food cook with regular kitchen equipment.  Get outside, stoke the coals and learn how to make food like your pioneering ancestors used to!

8. Start A Compost Pile

Picture your garden like a bank.  The crops are your return on investment and the soil is your principle.  How do you increase your principle?  You increase the value of the soil. And you do that by adding quality compost to the garden.  Building a compost pile is one of the prepper skills that I believe every prepper – from suburban homesteader to ultra hardcore survivalist – should have in their back pocket.  It’s super easy to do and can return huge profit to you.

9. Get Your Finances In Order

You shouldn’t be prepping if you are in debt.  In fact, what use is there in prepping if you are building up your debt.  Spend the weekend getting your finances in order to achieve financial independence.  You’ll take stress off yourself, your marriage and your career.  Not to mention, you’ll be able to buy some cooler preps now that you have more disposable money because you’re not paying those monthly bills!

10. Build A Black Out Box

This one is so simple that you should be ashamed if you haven’t done it already.  The most common event you are going to need to prep for is a power outage.  They occur more often than hurricanes, snowstorms, tornadoes or zombie apocalypses.  And building a black out box is so easy.  Spend a few hours with the kids this weekend and knock it out.  You’ll thank me later.

11. Outfit Your Automobile EDC

You spend a lot of your life in your car, whether its driving to and from work and taxiing the kids around to whatever activity they have next.  Are you prepared for an emergency if you got caught in your car?  Not sure?  Then maybe you should take a few minutes looking into your automobile’s EDC this weekend and making sure you can handle what kind of travel-trouble may come your way.

12. Get Your HAM License

Communication is one of those prepper skills that everyone talks about but very few people practice.  I’ll be the first to admit that communication is one of, if not the, weakest area of prepping for our family.  A good way to improve this skill is to get your HAM license.  Again, I can’t speak from personal experience, but everyone says it’s a fairly easy test.  They all recommend using a study guide prior to taking the test.

13. Read A Book

Want to brush up on some prepper skills, get lost in a good story or learn about the biology of your garden?  Then read a book.  Reading books is a great way to escape the world for a while and they also provide a wealth of knowledge.  You can go with a great fictional story like Glen Tate’s 299 Days series or jump into something more non-fiction like Jim Cobb’s “Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide.”  Either way, you won’t waste your time and might even learn something.

14. Go Hiking

Hiking as a prepper skill?  Believe it or not, yes.  Going out hiking puts you in the outdoors.  You get used to walking around with a pack on (ever actually spent time lugging your BOB around?), you learn what it’s like to be in the woods and you get some exercise.  All of those items are beneficial to the prepper.  Just make sure you’ve got sturdy footwear when you head out.

15. Build A Worm Bin

Remember how I said compost how you increase the principle in your garden?  Well worm castings and worm tea help as well.  It is super easy to build a worm bin and the return on investment is terrific!  For maybe an hours worth of work, you’ll be able to get pounds and pounds of great organic matter for your garden not to mention the awesome ‘worm tea’ that you can use to fertilize your fruits and vegetables.

16. Bake Fresh Bread

My buddy Mike over at The Backyard Pioneer got me into baking bread at home.  I cannot begin to describe how comforting it is to smell bread baking in the oven.  And the taste! Oh, the taste!  You won’t get this kind of taste out of store-bought bread.  Baking bread probably isn’t tops on the list of required prepper skills but there is something so very

17. Perform A Site Survey

Still not sure what to do with your suburban homestead?  How about performing a site survey this weekend?  You can knock it out in a few hours and it will give you a great idea of your land, what you can and cannot do on it and where to plant different items.  It also provides a map of your property for any future developments you want to do.

18. Outfit Your Personal EDC

Prepping is all about being prepared and the way you guarantee you’re prepared when you’re just walking around is to be fully outfitted in your Every Day Carry (EDC).  You should take some time this weekend to think about your EDC methodology consider what you’ll put in your Tier 1 and Tier 2 kits.  Regardless of where they fit into your EDC kits, I recommend the following individual items having a home in your EDC:

• Spyderco Endura 4 FFG Pocketknife
• Streamlight Stylus Pro Flashlight 
• Leatherman Multitool (the Juice S2 is discontinued)

19. Learn About Your Garden Zones

Learning about where you live is just as important as a skill for gardeners and homesteaders as understanding how your crops grow.  Prepper skills aren’t always hard skills; sometimes it’s about educating yourself.  Learning which USDA zone you live in will help you better understand which crops will grow best and when your first and last frost are.

20. Sharpen Your Knives And Tools

A sharp knife is a safe knife.  I can personally tell you that I have had more accidents with a dull tool than a sharp tool – to the point where I almost cut my fingertip off once.  Spending a weekend sharpening your knives and tools would be a great way to improve your prepper skills.  Not sure how to sharpen something? Check out this instructional video from Patrick at MTKnives.net.

21. Plan Your Spring Garden

There is absolutely no better way to shake the bone chill of winter on a cold, snowy night than to flip through seed catalogs while you plan your spring garden.  Planning a garden is both exciting and therapeutic.  You can explore all different kinds of produce that you might want to grow and also relax knowing that you won’t have a push in the spring to get your seeds on order and your planting all planned out.

So there you have it – 21 great ways you can improve your prepper skills this weekend.  Most of these tasks are free or fairly low in cost.  All of them will make you a better suburban homesteader and a better prepper.

What are you going to try?  Let us know in the comments below.

Fire tinder is the building block of any good fire.  But where can you find any?  The good news is that there are everyday items accessible to the suburban homesteader which are readily available and easily used as fire tinder.  Some are common fire tinder items, some are not.  I’ll let you be the judge of what works best for you, but I can tell you that I have used each and every one of these fire tinders with success in the past.  Good luck!

Dryer Lint

Anyone who’s unfortunate enough to have a fire in their house cause by a backed up dryer vent knows just how quickly dryer lint can ignite.  The good news is that dryer lint is probably the easiest fire tinder to acquire around your house – and it’s free!

Every time you do laundry, simply scrape the dryer lint screen and throw that wonderful stuff into a plastic bag.  I keep a gallon size resealable bag of it constantly full and replenish my numerous tinder kits as required.

As I mentioned, dryer lint is a great fire tinder because it catches a spark rather easily and essentially free.  The downside is that it burns rather quick so you best be ready to go once you get those sparks going.

Cotton Ball

Cotton balls work much the same way dryer lint does as a fire tinder.  They have a huge amount of surface area and can catch a spark relatively easy.  The real secret to cotton balls is to coat them with petroleum jelly.  A few sparks from a ferro rod and you’ll have a strong flame that will last a few minutes and will not go out but for the nastiest of weather.

The cotton ball in petroleum jelly combination is a favorite amongst most outdoorsman and definitely has a place in all my tinder kits.

Birch Bark

Birch bark, like paper, is easy to ignite with a match or lighter.  The other upside is that it’s readily available and free.  As with dryer lint, you can keep this fire tinder in large, dry containers at home and dispense as required to different tinder kits.  What’s good to know, however, is that you’ll be able to pull birch bark off of trees in the woods, leaving you with an option if you are completely without a fire tinder.

Fritos

You know that we don’t promote unhealthy eating here at Suburban Steader.  Fritos, or most other chips, are one of the most unhealthy snacks you can eat.  But, they are also soaked in oil which means they are able to sustain a flame for a fairly long amount of time.  You most likely won’t use Fritos as a fire tinder if you have a ferro rod, but a match or lighter will easily light your chip and allow you to build a fire.  Here’s video proof:

[youtube_sc url=”adqdwspLuj0″ title=”Fritos as a fire tinder” width=”575″]

So, do we suggest you keep Fritos around for health reasons? Absolutely not.  But, it is not a bad idea to keep a small package in your kit for a SHTF type scenario.  Plus, you’re stacking functions here – fire tinder and food.  Even if they are unhealthy.

Chap Stick

If you’re like most people, you carry some kind of chap stick in your pocket.  It has more uses than I can describe in this article (check out Sensible Prepper’s 25 SHTF Uses For Chap Stick).  Assuming you have chap stick, you have fire tinder.  The combination of chap stick and a cotton swab will allow you to build a candle of sorts which will burn for as long as it takes for you to start your fire.  Again, you’re stacking functions since the chap stick has so many functions outside of fire tinder.

[youtube_sc url=”sFGZhAxKgmY” title=”Chap Stick as a fire tinder” width=”575″]

What Do You Use For Fire Tinder?

I hope you got some useful ideas out of this article.  Each of these five fire tinders has their own ups and downs, but they are all useful in their own way.

Do you use any other random items regularly (or not so regularly) as fire tinder?  How about anything weird or different you use to start a fire?  Let us know in the comments or on our Facebook page.