Survival Skills: Four Easy Summer Survival Hacks

If you lack the right tool for the job, harness your natural creativity and make the tools you need! Here are four survival hacks that could be very valuable in a summer wilderness survival scenario.

Light A Match Without The Strip - When the striker strip on a match box is too worn down to be useful, you can still light safety matches with an alternate heat source.

Modern safety matches offer us an easy way to start a fire in many weather conditions, but there’s a catch. Unless you’re using “strike anywhere” matches, the striker strip on the match box needs to be intact. Without the correct abrasive surface (containing the right chemicals), your safety match is more like a piece of kindling than an ignition method. We can fix that, however, with one simple survival hack. If the phosphorus head on the safety match can get hot enough, it will burst into flame without being rubbed on a striker strip. A sunny day and a magnifying lens (or parabolic mirror) can come to the rescue in this situation. Simply focus a beam of light on the match head, and in mere seconds (if you have the angles right), the match will ignite. Yes, you could also just light some tinder with the same optical fire starting method, but if you have the matches, why not use them?

Flush Out A Wound - Those ubiquitous disposable water bottles can do more than just transport clean drinking water. You can actually use them to irrigate dirty wounds.    

Hopefully, we all skate through the summer without incurring any injuries, but to be realistic, this is a little too much to hope. Injuries sustained in the outdoors are common and they are often dirty. Fortunately, a simple disposable water bottle can be quickly modified to produce a stream of pressurized clean water to flush dirt and debris from wounds. Just use the tip of a knife or some small sharp object to pierce the cap and squeeze the bottle to produce a stream of water for wound cleaning. Once flushed, pat the wound dry and bind it with the cleanest materials available (ideally gauze and dressings from your first aid kit).  

Use Plantain On A Sting - This lowly weed is surprisingly virtuous when it comes to healing.

We’re not talking about the starchy banana called “plantain” here. This plantain (Plantago major) is the common lawn weed that can be seen growing wild around the globe. There are several species present in North America, and all are suitable for sting relief. This plant is especially seen in sunny locations during the summer season. Simply crush a leaf or two, until the juices flow out, then apply this paste to the bite location. Leave it in place, ideally, binding it down again the skin with a band-aid or a dressing. Reapply as needed. This medicinal form is called a poultice, which is one of our oldest ways to apply medicinal plants. This same plantain poultice can be applied to cuts, scrapes, scratches, and burns.     

Use A Real Sharpening Stone  - With any use in the field, your knife will get duller and duller as you work. Thankfully, a natural sharpening stone may be as close as your nearest creek.           

Before we had man-made oil stones and diamond stones, our ancestors simply used the available rocks to sharpen their blades. Natural Arkansas stones still honor this tradition, though these are quarried and cut into perfect little slabs. Most commonly made from novaculite (which means “razor stone” in Latin), Arkansas stones give us a taste of old-fashioned knife care, but this is not the only type of stone that will work. Visit your local waterway and pick through some of the flat or rounded stones that you find there. Estimate their abrasiveness, dampen them with water, and try them as sharpening stones. You might be surprised at the effectiveness of the right stones. I sharpen my blades and tools by making little circles against the stone surface, but you can move the metal in any pattern you like (as long as there’s movement to wear away the metal).

Hands-on survival training is fun and useful. Consider taking a class and learning these skills and many more.

 Written by Tim MacWelch First draft published on outdoorlife.com