It’s simple really, but you actually have to THINK a lottle. (LOTTLE is my word for little when little is used wrongly in sarcasm) Seriously, you need to think a LOT about survival and what it means to you. I cannot tell you what “survival” means to you. Well, I can tell you, but I will probably be wrong. So, instead, let’s look at textbook definitiions, then, take those and try to adapt them to a few situaitons and then you can come up with your very own, personalized, clear definition of survival. OK?
Looking at dictionaries online, I find the following;
1. the act or fact of surviving (active, present) or condition of having survived (past tense definition)
2. the act or fact of surviving, especially under adverse or unusual circumstances (getting closer…)
3. of, pertaining to, or for use in surviving, especially under adverse or unusual circumstances: survival techniques (eh, sorta…)
4. A living or continuing longer than, or beyond the existence of, another person, thing, or event; an outliving. [1913 Webster] – dang, that is competitive language, isn’t it?
5. a state of surviving; remaining alive – BINGO
There you go, 5 definitions, all alluding to the idea of survival, but with no specific criteria like how long, survival from what and so on… Drilling down, we need to decide WHAT we are surviving? Cancer? Disaster? Nuclear blast? Gunshot wound? Severe sunburn? Each one of these requires different techniques, periods of time, tools, whatever. So, for the sake of this article, I am not concerned with cancer survival, and realistically, if you’re reading this then you are probably not trying to figure out how to survive cancer. This is the wrong web site for that.
Disaster? Ah, that is a very likely area you may be wanting to think about more in relation to survival.
Nuclear blast? Well, generally, the idea of that is SO extreme, and clasically depicted as something nearly no one survives except for Eli and a few other movie characters.
Gunshot wound? Sure, that can be a very real concern for some of us.
Severe sunburn? Nah, probably not. All kidding aside, let’s take disaster as the WHAT we are trying to learn a little more about surviving. Now, considering that a lot of people live in or near urban areas like Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, etc. and you are not out in the boonies, it would be good to have a survival kit that would support 1 person for a week, at the bare minimum, in your home. Multiply that kit times the amount of people in the household.
That’s a good start, but what if you’re not home? Many of us work outside of our homes, so the chances of you not being home is at least a 40% chance, right? (10 hours away from home equals 41.7% of a 24 hour day…). A small 3-5 day kit in your car is probably a good idea since you may be in transit, at work, at a shopping center or some other place where you have nothing but your own personal property at your disposal.
Recently, in the snowstorms on the East coast and upper midwest, the folks who were stuck at home had to survive. Freezing temperatures, loss of power, loss of gas (heat). No access to extra fuel. What’s in your house is all you have… then, add the unsavory folks who would rather rob you of your preparations than make their own and suddenly your survival landscape changes dramaticially. Now, you need to defend your family, or yourself, and your property from these folks who did not prepare and their only plan was to steal from YOU. Got a gun? Got ammo? Think about it… this does not only apply to snowstorms. I live in earthquake country and when the big one hits, and it will, things will be so fouled up that you will not be able to count on your “public servants” to protect all you have worked hard to have and to survive on, so in my personal, household survival kit is a gun and plenty of ammo.
WATER! You need water, period. Lots of it. As much as you can reasonably store or carry. Everyone has heard the factoid rule of 3′s, right? Rule number 1: You can live about 3 minutes without any air/oxygen Rule number 2: You can live about 3 days without water Rule number 3: You can live about 3 weeks without food So, assuming you’ve got air with enough oxygen, next in line is WATER. So, what is “enough” water for one person? Since survival tends to work around “minimums”, let’s go with that as a starting point. MINIMUM water intake, per day for one person is about 3 liters a day, or for us Americans, 3 quarts. A gallon of water weighs 8.5 pounds, so that is about 6 pounds of water for each day. 18 pounds for the 3 days that you are likely to be out of water in a disaster. Is that TRUE? Only 3 days? Reeeeeaaaallllly? No, that is is a best case scenario like a medium earthquake where water can be brought in with some relative ease. Can you say Katrina? Try weeks and months for tons of people. Can you stock up, or a better questions is, SHOULD you stock up a 1 month’s supply of water at home? That is where your brain has to do some exercise.
Remember, somewhere in most homes is a water heater. It has a tank. The home has pipes holding water, assuming they were not broken in the disaster. That is quite a bit of water! Toilets? Sure, those tanks hold a lot of water! Icemaker in your freezer? That ice is, tada, WATER! What about when you’re away? Same rules apply. Carry as much as you can, reasonably, in your car/vehicle. Maybe carry a small, portable filtration straw or bottle with a filter. Most buildings have water pipes, tanks, etc. too where you can get water from for drinking. OK, so the point about water is well made, right? Good.
Now what? Well, in general, I go along this line of thinking… WATER, FOOD, SHELTER, CLOTHING as the super basics of surviving. In that order too. Now, again, exercising the brain a bit more, if you’re in a snowstorm then you might put shelter further up the list so you don’t freeze to death. Clothing might actually be second, then water and food. But, why put them in any order at all? Really – why? Because the circumstances will dictate the order, or no need for order – you might actually need more than one of these 4 items at the same time. But, let’s follow the original order and take up food as the next thing to worry about in a disaster. Food at home: Ya, you have food in the house right now, I am sure of it. But, is the food going to last through a lengthy event? What is lengthy? Let’s go back to our minimums for some very basic guidance – food = 3 weeks. So, now ask yourself this – if something happened that isolated me from getting any additional food for 3 weeks, do I have enough to eat for 3 full weeks? [Per person in the household] Oh, now that changes things a bit doesn’t it? So, the short answer, and the most correct one, is you can never have too much food. PERIOD. But, we all don’t have the money, space or the knowledge to store that much food. We’re gonna give you an idea of 3 weeks of food for one person and you can adapt and change it to your liking, but what we recommend WILL work, you just may not like it. But, survival is not about “liking” things, it’s about, well, SURVIVING!
OK, so food – how much? About 1500 calories per person, per day. You can go gonzo with your food storage plans, or, keep it really simple. I like simple for the most part when planning for SHORT-TERM emergencies. Short-term is 4 weeks or less. For such emergencies you can stick with canned foods, energy bars (variety is the key for bars), freeze-dried foods. If you really don’t want to think about it too much, but you want to be prepared, hit Costco – they’ve got a couple different survival food kits available for reasonable prices and good shelf-life.
Because this is getting long, I will continue it in 4 or 5 days with a bit more on food, some information about shelter and clothing.
Thanks for reading!
- James