The 5 Priorities of Short-Term Survival
Episode Stats
Summary
While we all wonder how we would fare if we had to survive for months in the wild like Brian does in the book Hatchet, the reality is that most survival situations only last a day or two. If you get lost or injured in the woods and have to spend a night out that you hadn t planned on, as my guest Dave Canterbury says, as long as you know some basic skills and pack the right gear, you can turn a potentially life and death situation into what s just a night of inconvenient camping.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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while we all wonder how we would fare if we had to survive for months in the wild like brian does
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in the book hatchet the reality is that most survival situations only last a day or two
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you get lost or injured in the woods and have to spend a night out that you hadn't planned on
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as my guest dave canterbury says as long as you know some basic skills and pack the right gear
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you can turn a potentially life and death situation into what's just a night of inconvenient
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camping dave is the author of numerous books on wilderness survival including his latest the
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bushcraft essentials field guide today on the show dave unpacks the five priorities of short-term
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survival and what you need to pack know and do to deal with the risk of venturing into the wild
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we discuss the biggest concern when it comes to first aid the three elements of a proper shelter
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dave's favorite method for starting a fire the safest bet for water purification what to look
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for in a perfect survival knife the five knife skills you should master the essential knots every
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outdoorsman should know and more after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash survival
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all right dave canterbury welcome to the show hey buddy glad to be here so you've been teaching
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bushcraft and survival skills for over two decades i'm curious how did you get interested in that and
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when did you realize that you can make a career out of starting fires and building shelters in the wild
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you know it was kind of a strange happenstance i guess i i started doing 18th century reenacting back
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in the early 90s and you know going out and doing the woods with basically loincloth and leggings and
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moccasins and all that stuff and a flintlock rifle and hanging out with other guys that did the same
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thing and so i learned a lot of those old time survival skills while i was doing that and then
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my brother-in-law actually asked me one day i was napping some flint arrowheads in my kitchen
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and he asked me one day today have you ever thought about making a youtube video this is back in 2008
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and youtube was brand new then and i was like i don't even know what youtube is and so he kind of
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explained to me i made a couple videos and the videos just kind of took off and then people started
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sending messages asking me you know hey do you teach in person and can you teach me that can you
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teach me this will you make a video on this and that and it just kind of exploded from there
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to where i i started kind of doing i opened like an online shop where i sold some of the gear and
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things that i was using in videos because people were asking where to get it and i was like well
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if they can get it for me then they'll buy it for me so kind of being an entrepreneur i did that
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and it kind of exploded to the point where i couldn't do two things at once i couldn't do all of
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that and work a full-time job as an automotive engineer so i just kind of one day came home and
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said hey i'm you know i'm gonna quit my job and we're gonna do this and she's like if you think
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it'll make a living for us then you can do it and i did it and here we are today so one of the things
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you're doing you've written lots of books about wilderness survival we're going to talk about one
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of them today but you also you're the uh an instructor the head instructor at the pathfinder school
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and this is where you teach these skills in person what are the type of people that come to you
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for for classes you know we get all kinds of people we get military personnel that come here
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we do some government contracts we've taught people like the michigan dnr guys from the up
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deep winter survival we've taught some search and rescue teams but we also teach lots and lots of
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civilians that's our main market really is civilians and we get everybody from the father and son who
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want a weekend of bonding to learn survival skills to hunters that are wanting to learn better survival
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skills for longer term hunts and treks that are way off the beaten path to just normal people who
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watch tv they're like oh survival is cool i'll learn that and they come here to learn well i'm curious
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you obviously you do you teach these skills and they can help people actually survive in the wild like
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these are things you can actually use but in your experience when you you talk to these regular
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people right these civilians or father son what else have you seen happen when people learn
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these you know how to start fires or build shelter for example you know what happens really at class
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a lot of times and really what kind of trips my trigger and keeps me doing this and my instructors
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as well my instructors eat this stuff up and i think what mainly happens is you get people that come to
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the school that have either never done this kind of stuff before or they're very new to it and so
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they're very intimidated by a lot of the stuff and it seems like it's a lot of information and it's
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really hard and the first couple days are really tough on people but as they start to repetitively
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learn the skills we use what we call an edi methodology here where it's educate demonstrate
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imitate and they get multiple chances to imitate these skills and then they build on each other to
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where they start off by doing one thing and end up doing 10 things at once to accomplish what you
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would need to do in an emergency scenario and they can do that in 15 or 20 minutes or less depending on
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the weather conditions and the light kind of comes on in their mind of you know i don't have to be
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worried about this anymore this is now it's becoming muscle memory to me and i can do it
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without thinking about it and so i'm much more comfortable in an outdoor environment than i was
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and now that you know you always see things on the internet in a survival situation in a survival
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situation 99 of what people call survival is nothing more than inconvenient camping and if you get that
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through your head hey i didn't plan to be here overnight but i'm gonna have to be then you've
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got it licked because the mental game is a huge part of survival yeah i know when i've done like a
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navigation course land navigation course or i've you know things like it feels awesome right in a world
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where you know you have gps that tells you exactly where you are and how to get places it's cool knowing
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that i can do this stuff without that i mean there's something i don't know like it just it's a big
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confidence boost there's no question in my mind about it i mean the people that leave here their
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confidence level is you know a thousand percent of what it was when they first showed up on day one
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and that happens no matter what the class is whether it's a survival class a bushcraft class
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a trapping class doesn't really matter what it is it that it seems to be a theme with every class that
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when they start they seem a little intimidated maybe a little shy maybe a little overwhelmed with some
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of the information that they're getting and information overload and skills but by the end
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everything is like man this is the greatest thing i've ever done so in your latest book it's the
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bushcraft essentials field guide you distill what you call your five by five survival system into this
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really easy to read and digest book you can carry it in your back pocket that's what's so great about
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it and i'd like to unpack this five by five survival system for our listeners today and so basically
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the five by five system there's five priorities you got to think about in a survival situation
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the first one is self-aid so this is like first aid but for yourself when you're in a survival
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situation right that inconvenient camping situation what are the medical conditions you have to be most
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concerned about well obviously bleeding is your is your biggest one right you you've always heard
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everybody talks about the rule of threes you know three minutes without air blah blah blah right well
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you can't go three minutes with an arterial bleed before you die so that yeah that has to be always
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your number one priority is your self-aid and bleeding and stop loss stop blood loss is probably
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the biggest part of that a twisted ankle you know something like that a jammed finger those aren't big
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deals i burnt myself pulling my pot out of the fire those are all self-aid items you need to worry
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about but as far as you know what you really want to know before you step foot in the outdoors is
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how do i stop major bleeding i love how you're your system with these uh numbers and lists that are
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really easy to remember you've got the five b's of self-aid and first one is bleeding what are the
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other b's of self-aid so they're really not in any particular order other than bleeding being the first
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priority but these are just five things that are the most common types injuries that happen in the
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outdoors obviously you're not trying to cure some chronic illness out there you're trying to attack
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things that are going to happen to you on the fly while you're hiking while you're camping while
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you're hunting so you've got bleeding you've got break sprains and strains you've got blisters
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burns and then bites and stings those are the most common things that are going to happen to you
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so if you take a wilderness first aid course or study material that teaches you how to address those
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type things you're going to be much more prepared in the beginning to go outside so like what do you
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think you should pack so you're ready to treat some of these five b's like what's like the
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essential you think you should have if you want any outdoor expedition you know i think that depends
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on your skill level i think that depends on the setting involved and how many people are there you
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know if you're from an instructor standpoint it's a little different than from an individual standpoint
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and depending on your skill level your emergency kit or your ifac your individual first aid kit could
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amount to a lot or a little for me really it boils down to i want a tourniquet first and foremost handy
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i want to be able to stop bleeding immediately if i have to from an arterial bleed then i want things
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that i can use for pressure dressings so your shemag will work for that there's plenty of things that
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you can carry in your kit that'll work for most of that stuff and then you know things that you can
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use to isolate a break or something like that obviously you can get things off the landscape and you
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have a shemag duct tape those type of things in your kit the majority of things that i carry in
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an actual first aid kit what i would consider a first aid kit would be something like a tourniquet
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and israeli bandage and some kind of blood clotting agent gotcha and with a tourniquet it's something you
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you probably need to practice you don't want to do it all the way right but like you want to know you
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want to be comfortable with how to use that thing when you need to yeah i mean that's probably the
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biggest problem that i would say in the world today of everything that you read on the internet
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is everybody understands that a tourniquet is an important piece of kit to have because it can save
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your life how to use it effectively in a short amount of time to save your life and having it
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within reach is a whole different ball game so you have to understand you have to practice putting
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this thing on you have to force yourself to carry this thing at close proximity it's not really good
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enough i would say to most people it's not good enough to have it in your backpack because your
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backpack could be over leaning against a tree when you cut yourself 15 or 20 yards away chopping wood
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right so if your tourniquet's not right there and you've got to take time to get to it that's time
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you don't really have so you also need to understand stopgap mechanisms things like your belt that you can
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pull off your waist and throw it around until you can get to a proper tourniquet so those things are
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important to understand too because nobody that's not a professional in the industry of you know an
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emt or paramedic is going to carry a tourniquet on their waist 24 7 when they're in the woods most
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people will not do that they just don't have the discipline so in the book the field guide you go
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into detail about medicinal herbs and plants what role does that play in your self-aid rubric
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again i think a lot of that is going to depend on your personal skill level and your knowledge level
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of the landscape and part of being a good woodsman is to understand what trees and plants can help you
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with things like stopping bleeding with things like an upset stomach with things like a possible
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food poisoning with things like some type of burn and there's lots of things on the landscape that
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can help you with those type issues but you have to know how to use them how to harvest them and how
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to prepare them and that's you know again that's part of that's a more advanced intermediate level
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skill than a basic level skill and this book really covers what we teach from the basic to
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intermediate level it doesn't cover what we teach in the advanced level courses however learning plants
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trees especially trees and i say i harp on trees a lot because trees are a four season resource plants
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are not so the chance of you finding the right plant at the right time of year at the right location
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when something happens to you is much less than the chance of being able to find a tree that will do
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similar or the same whether it's harvesting the inner bark the root the leaves all those types of
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things and then preparing them well what's an example of a tree that can be used for a medicinal
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purpose i think most people when they think trees think well that's just a source of firewood
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they don't think yeah for sure i agree with that yeah i mean you have to remember that oak
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is well pine let's just start with pine pine's probably one of the most common trees
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of eastern woodlands and pine has some fantastic medicinal properties a white pine all pines are
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antiseptic and antibacterial in nature with a sap that runs through them so not only is it a good
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accelerant for fire and things like that it's also a great resource medicinally you can use pine sap to
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actually pack a cavity or a cap that you lost in the woods from your mouth to pack it to keep bacteria
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out of it until you get where you need to go you can use it almost like a new skin over a large abrasion
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area you can spread pine sap over that it will protect things from getting into that abrasion and will all
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so help to give it you know some antibacterial properties and antiseptic properties as well
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and there are you can use white pine bark for bandages if you take a small sap and cut cut it
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off you can use it for a bandage you can obviously use all types of inner barks and things like that
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for splints the inner bark of certain trees does different things for you white oak i talked about a
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minute ago was the actual symbol for materia medica in europe for you know 500 years like we have
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the the cross with the snake on it in the united states the oak leaf was that symbol in europe because
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the oak is such a powerful medicinal tree anything basically that you have wrong with you from the
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neck up you can address with the inner bark of white oak you know there's a sore throat and stuffy nose
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all that stuff can be affected with a simple decoction of white oak inner bark and imagine this is the
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sort of thing using plants as medicinal herbs it's something you need to actually do with an expert so you
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know you're doing it right you can't just read about it on the internet you probably need to actually
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do this stuff yeah i mean you can always i would never dissuade someone from self-training most of
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the 99 of the training i have was self-taught so i would never dissuade someone from that but what
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happens with training and the reason people go to training is number one they're getting expert advice
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but number two they're also reducing the learning curve dramatically from how long it takes to learn
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something on your own so the next priority in your five by five survival system is shelter i'm curious
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is this in an order so it's like did shelter come before fire for a reason shelter is before fire for
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the reason that your clothing is your first line of shelter defense it shelters your body from the
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elements and so clothing has to be a priority very close to the top of the list because if your clothing
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becomes compromised then your first line of defense against the elements becomes compromised as well
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so shelter really has to become second over fire because of that gotcha so the first rule there is
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wear clothing appropriate for the environment you're going to be in exactly and environmental changes i mean
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obviously i'm not sure where you're out of but in here in ohio indiana kentucky area the weather can
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change swing 50 degrees in a single day very very easily and you can experience you know three to four
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seasons in a day depending on the time of year here as well it could be 70 in the afternoon and that
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night it could snow it's just the way the weather runs here so you have to be prepared not only with
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the clothes that you're wearing but with the clothes that you have packed in your backpack to be sure
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that you are prepared for any elements that may come or so beyond clothing what are some like basic go-to
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shelters that people should know how to make when it comes to shelter more importantly even than
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shelters to build like what you're talking about like tarp configurations obviously correct right yeah
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okay more important than that is understanding the elements of a shelter that's not as simple as just
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putting up a tarp a tarp's just like putting on a raincoat or a wind jacket it's going to keep you from
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wind it's going to keep you from rain and keep you from snow but it's not going to do anything for you
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as far as being able to sleep because you have other elements you have to think about so when you
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learn to build a shelter there's really three main elements you have to understand and that is you need
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something to sleep in something to sleep on and something to sleep under and the under becomes the
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tarp something to sleep in becomes a sleeping bag or a bivy bag and the on becomes something that you can
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sleep on top of on the ground that will insulate you from conduction from the ground in cold weather
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so you need all three of those elements within a shelter it's not as simple as i'm going to carry
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a tarp or a space blanket and i have a shelter to build a proper shelter it takes three elements
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so for the sleeping on what do you recommend for for that for the installation you know it depends
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again on your on the situation if you are obviously if you're going into the into a wilderness area or
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into the country or whatever you call it with the intention of camping then you're going to take all of
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your camping stuff you're going to have a sleeping pad you're going to have a sleeping bag you're
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going to have a tent it's the problem that you run into is when you don't have that kind of stuff
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and everyone should carry a certain amount of emergency gear with them even if it's just for a
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day hike and so the three things that we usually tell people to carry is we tell them to carry an
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emergency space blanket a large contractor trash bag like six mil trash bag and that becomes your
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mattress if all else fails you can stuff that thing with debris and get that four inch offset
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of insulation from the ground and then obviously you need something to sleep inside of and that could be
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as simple as a small bivy a stuffable sleeping bag that becomes very small something that will protect
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you you know we make a survival bivy that will actually take it down to about 40 degrees if you're
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wearing proper clothing that you know is the size of a baseball it's not the optimum thing obviously but
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for one or two nights you could use it and you can always stuff that with more insulation if you need
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to and just slide into it like a squirrel's nest on the space blanket you pointed out i thought this
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interesting in the book you want to get an actual like an actual good quality space blanket not like
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those like cheapo ones that you can get at walmart right that fold up into like a little square
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yeah i mean those origami blankets i call them you're never going to get that thing back to where it
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came from in that bag nobody's going to be able to do that and they're very flimsy they're they're not a
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trashy piece of gear they're not something that's not worth having one of especially because it's so
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small you can put in your pocket however if you're building an emergency kit that wouldn't be my first
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choice my first choice would be a reusable emergency space blanket that's going to be more robust if i
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have to use it for a ground sheet if i have to use it for some type of rain gear in emergency if i have
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to hunker around a fire with that thing and wrap it around me to trap body heat i want it to be more
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robust than just that thin piece of mylar all right so we talked about shelter so if you just
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got something you can like you talk about that trash bag the space blanket and maybe just an
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emergency bivy bag you're going to be good for most situations we're going to be better off than not
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having it that's for sure right well so beyond that like let's say you want to start thinking
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about more complicated shelters like a lean-to or whatever is there one that you think that it's good
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to know once you understand the elements of the shelter then it's shelter design and we teach
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five shelter designs here at the pathfinder school as our mainstay so you have you know and you can do
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all of these with emergency space blanket and a trash bag so you have a lean-to which is basically
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two points on the ground two points suspended you have a plow point which is a triangular shelter
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where you've got three points on the ground and one point suspended to a tree or a pole you have a fly
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which allows maximum airflow if you're trying to keep yourself cool in hot weather which has no points
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touching down and two points suspended and then you have a raised bed which you can use your trash bag
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for this to suspend your bed completely off the ground on tripods and then last but not least you
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have the typical a-frame where you have four points touching the ground and two points suspended and
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that's going to give maximum trapping of heat if you can stuff one in there with your backpack or
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whatever and we have one open then you're going to trap more heat that way in cold weather environment
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we're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
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and now back to the show let's start with the next priority which is fire why is fire so important
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in a survival situation even if you're in a warm climate well number one for water disinfection
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i mean groundwater disinfection is important for any time and you can carry filters and things like
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that obviously if you are just hiking around and you're carrying some of my water filter with you
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but the problem with water filters is they have a lifespan and if you don't have a brand new one in
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your emergency kit who knows what the lifespan is going to be the one you've been using for the last
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10 hikes so you need to plan to be able to boil water and so that's the number one priority of the fire is to
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be able to boil water then number two is obviously signaling for rescue because fire is a good way to
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signal for rescue if you're trying to be found then there's a multitude of other things that fire will
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do for you from you know obviously keeping your body warm rapid rewarming from the inside if you can
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heat water up and drink it things like creating a hot pack with your water bottle that you can put
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against your body while you're sleeping or down at your feet if your feet are getting cold you can use that
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fire to sterilize instruments that you have to use to like pick thorns out or stingers or splinters or
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things like that out of your skin you can use the ashes and the charcoal the charcoal is good if you
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feel like you've been poisoned you can basically mix the charcoal in a slurry of water and drink that
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and it will absorb some of those toxins and make you throw some of that stuff up the ashes are
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antiseptic in nature they're a good styptic and they'll stop surface bleeding and capillary bleeding
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very well like from a shaving cut or something like that so there's a multitude of things that fire
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can do for you in a survival scenario so the very important aspect of survival in general is to be
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able to start a fire on a moment's notice do you have a preferred fire lay you know what
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my preferred fire lay is a pile of sticks i i think i think that i think that most people
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overthink the fire lay unless you are purposely building a fire for a certain reason like you're
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trying to build a top-down fire where the thing burns from the top down so it burns longer overnight
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with bigger logs and things like that that's a purpose-built fire but to get a fire going
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immediately really you just need a good large tender source and a pile of the smallest
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driest sticks you can find because fire loves chaos so if you've got enough airspace underneath to
00:22:59.160
create a venturi effect or updraft so that that fire sucking air from the bottom and pushing it up
00:23:04.580
and you've got plenty of airspace for it to breathe and you've got dry sticks that can catch fire quickly
00:23:09.500
with lots of surface area because they're small you don't have to have a particular fire lay
00:23:13.720
you just need a pile sticks on the fire what about fire starting methods do you have one that you
00:23:18.080
recommend for a survival situation yeah it costs a dollar 79 it's called a bic lighter yeah that is
00:23:24.280
always going to be my number one priority or my first choice because it gives you instant flame
00:23:29.300
and bic lighters are very robust i mean you can get them cold and you can warm them up you can get
00:23:33.280
them wet you can dry them out you can pretty much run over them with a vehicle and you're not going to
00:23:37.060
break them and even if they run out of fluid they'll still spark so they can still start a fire for
00:23:41.360
you if you've planned ahead then i would say probably next to that would be a ferrocerium rod
00:23:46.600
only because of the longevity of the rod versus the longevity of the flint and the lighter and the
00:23:52.700
longevity of fuel that you have that should be your next choice would be the flint and steel
00:23:56.400
or the what people call flint which is a ferrocerium rod and then the last choice for me would always
00:24:03.980
be a magnification lens probably on my compass that i could light charred material with off the
00:24:08.500
landscape once i have that next fire mentality in place i start my first fire and i immediately
00:24:14.340
char something off the landscape or a piece of clothing like cotton material so at the next fire
00:24:19.200
any of those fire starting elements will give me a burning ember well you mentioned char what for
00:24:23.920
those who don't know what that is what is char and how do you make it okay so char is a very
00:24:27.980
important thing that's very underrated in the survival world char material is basically carbonated
00:24:33.880
natural material so whether it's a cotton piece of cotton bandana a piece of your blue jeans that
00:24:39.520
are made out of cotton or something off the landscape that will readily char like punky wood
00:24:44.540
something that has lots of surface area where the wood's starting to rot away those things can be put
00:24:49.280
into a sealed container and your water bottle and cup will work for that without the lid on it cover
00:24:54.020
them up put them in the fire and you're basically carbonizing that material and not allowing oxygen
00:24:58.840
in for fire to happen you need fuel heat and oxygen if you don't get any oxygen in you're just creating
00:25:05.000
a large lump of coal just like they make charcoal now like they made charcoal pencils in the past and
00:25:11.580
that material will readily take a low temperature spark and create a live ember so whether it's a
00:25:17.840
magnifying glass in the sun a small strike off a ferrocerium rod or even the spark from a
00:25:24.000
spent beck lighter will light that material and give you a live ember to put into a bird nest
00:25:28.240
to give you the next fire what's your take on things like the bow drills is that more just
00:25:32.780
interesting to know as opposed to that wouldn't be your first go-to no i mean we teach the bow drill
00:25:39.300
fire here we teach hand drill we teach pump drill and all of those things have lessons built into them
00:25:44.220
of how to handle material off the landscape and variability within a process i don't really teach them
00:25:49.200
as a survival technique per se because i think if you've gotten yourself into a situation where you
00:25:54.480
have to make a bow drill fire you've done so many things wrong already you i mean yeah it just should
00:26:00.000
never happen and the chance of someone being able to build a fire like that off the landscape are very
00:26:05.280
very slim if they haven't done it hundreds of times all right so we've talked about self-aid we've talked
00:26:10.220
about shelter we talked about fire the next part of the five by five survival system is hydration
00:26:14.980
so how long can we go without water like what is it like three days or what's the rubric the the rule
00:26:20.320
of thumb is three days it's like the rule of threes which in my opinion doesn't really count for much
00:26:25.400
to be honest with you because most of that stuff has so many variables within it that you can't call
00:26:31.880
it you know i'm saying if you 90 of people go to the woods dehydrated to begin with because as a as a
00:26:38.400
race we don't drink enough water we drink milk we drink pop we drink energy drinks we drink beer
00:26:43.840
but we don't drink much water drinking more water is becoming a thing now that we're all feeling like
00:26:49.400
we all want to be healthy the more people drink more water but most of the time people go to the
00:26:53.920
woods already partially dehydrated they'll add to that heat stress exercise and the dehydration becomes
00:27:01.220
that much faster so that three days can be dramatically reduced depending on what you're doing what your
00:27:08.100
hydration level was to begin with that can go down to you know in a sunny arid environment where you
00:27:14.460
have no shade that could go down to hours what are the biggest issues when it comes to hydration in the
00:27:20.060
wild truly speaking i think the biggest issues are people just don't do it enough i think people forget
00:27:26.700
to hydrate i know that happens here at the school no matter how much you tell people to hydrate they
00:27:31.200
forget and we almost invariably get someone who gets at least slightly dehydrated almost every class
00:27:36.720
because they just haven't drank enough water it's not because they don't have the availability
00:27:39.840
it's because they just don't do it so i think that when you talk about in the wild i think that you
00:27:45.200
should plan to at every time you cross some type of water source you should plan to hydrate whether
00:27:51.160
that plan becomes i'm going to use a water filter or i'm going to stop and i'm going to boil enough
00:27:55.160
water to carry with me to the next water source then you need to be collecting water at every
00:28:00.020
opportunity and drinking water at every opportunity because the best canteen you can carry is your belly
00:28:04.960
all right so make sure we go out into the wild have water on you or then along the way look for
00:28:10.460
water and uh for recommended for water purification boiling water is probably your best bet i mean it's
00:28:16.620
going to be your safest bet is to pre-filter that water through a bandana or something like that and
00:28:21.880
then boil it however there's lots of water filters on the market that are 99.99999 percent effective
00:28:28.900
and there's nothing wrong with that the problem is that they're unreliable sometimes unless they're
00:28:34.940
brand new and even then if you don't filter the water prior to using the filter you those filters
00:28:40.060
tend to get clogged up very badly and then you have another problem so even with a great water filter
00:28:45.220
like the grail which is probably my favorite water filter i tend to pre-filter my water if there's any
00:28:51.140
turbidity in it whatsoever before i put it through the grail so the last thing in the five by five
00:28:56.360
survival system is navigation and signaling what navigation like basic navigation skills you think
00:29:01.740
people should have in order to survive in the wild well i think everybody should learn to use a compass
00:29:08.180
well enough to walk a straight line to shoot a bearing keep the needle in the doghouse leapfrog their way
00:29:14.020
from point a to point b so that they are walking a straight line because that the lateral drift is really
00:29:19.600
the main reason for carrying a compass to begin with if you don't have a map then the only thing that
00:29:24.380
compass really does for you is keep you in a straight line and that's why people walk in circles
00:29:29.180
over time is from lateral drift and a compass eliminates lateral drift so being able to shoot
00:29:34.900
an azimuth follow that travel bearing and understanding how to leapfrog from one point to the next so you
00:29:40.260
don't have to look at the compass continuously is probably the mainstay of skills you need so that
00:29:45.720
you can at least walk a straight line in one direction and like navigation is definitely one of those
00:29:50.140
skills you need you actually need to do it to understand it i've you know you can read about
00:29:54.220
this stuff but i think that the game changers when you actually learn how to you know shoot azimuth
00:29:58.880
things like that that's how it just you you it the light bulb will go on once you do it i agree with
00:30:05.280
that wholeheartedly i mean i think that people don't understand the power of that right there the the
00:30:11.620
power to walk a straight line even is something that people don't understand until you take them out
00:30:16.380
and put them in a squared off coordinate area and tell them to walk straight from one side to the
00:30:20.600
other and they can't do it you know they they're going to be off one one direction or the other
00:30:25.800
once you put a compass in their hand and say plug this bearing in and now walk from this tree to that
00:30:31.400
tree to that tree that are in that same line of travel and get to the other side and you get where
00:30:36.360
you're supposed to be the light bulb automatically goes on hey now i got it or you put them on a
00:30:41.540
navigation course you give them an azimuth from one point to the next and they find it by walking that
00:30:46.040
straight line that's when the light bulb comes on that man this is a tool i need to have
00:30:50.860
we're signaling you mentioned fire can be a good signaling tool any other tools you like for
00:30:54.820
signaling i mean your your compass should have a mirror on it for sighting so you should have a
00:30:59.440
signal mirror readily built into your compass it's not the best signal mirror because it's got a
00:31:03.920
shrouded it's got a shroud around the mirror itself so when you get to that 270 trying to reflect 270
00:31:09.800
you have a problem but it's a good good signaling device fire's a good signal device anything that you have
00:31:15.300
that's orange is a great signaling device within your kit so space blankets should always be bought
00:31:20.760
orange not green or camouflage you're not if you're going to use a space blanket you don't want
00:31:25.160
to be secret squirrel you want to be able to you want people to know where you're at so taking that
00:31:29.360
space blanket that's five feet by seven feet taking it out of the package at your house before you ever
00:31:34.820
need it and putting sos or three big black x's on the back of that that are universal signals for
00:31:40.580
needing help as soon as you erect the shelter you've put up a five by seven signaling device
00:31:45.680
that can be seen from the air on the ground and then really i tell my students that you should carry
00:31:51.340
a triple x 4x something that's two or three times bigger than what you would ever wear t-shirt that's
00:31:57.420
orange that's 100 cotton throw it in the bottom of your pack and if something happens to you put that
00:32:04.040
thing on over everything else you've got so you can be seen so we uh we did the five by five so we got
00:32:10.220
self-aid shelter fire hydration navigation signaling i noticed that food isn't in there why is that
00:32:17.060
well there's several reasons food's not in there number one food's not a priority in the short term
00:32:22.280
of survival it's just not most people have plenty of food in the tank already most of us are you know i
00:32:28.900
don't think there's very many people out there that are five or ten pounds overweight nowadays some a
00:32:33.380
lot more than that so you've got some food storage already and in a 72 hour scenario it shouldn't be a
00:32:40.100
problem for you not to eat other than psychologically it's not going to do your body any harm for you not
00:32:46.860
to be able to eat for two or three days people go a lot longer than that without food the problem
00:32:51.240
becomes the psychological factor of not having food but in a two or three day scenario that shouldn't be a
00:32:57.020
problem either so food should be the last thing that you think about now obviously once you've got
00:33:01.960
all your survival priorities taken care of now it's time to think about the peripheral things okay well
00:33:07.420
can i go over to this pond and catch some fish or catch a frog or grab a snake to eat you know things
00:33:12.860
like that those are your peripheral things that you think about after your survival priorities have all
00:33:17.800
been handled and checked off the list gotcha so yeah again survival it's not like my side of the
00:33:22.580
mountain you're not sam gribbley making a an oven inside of a tree and cooking
00:33:26.440
things like yeah okay you don't have to worry about that it shouldn't be i mean that's long-term
00:33:30.700
survival that's a that's living off the land that's pioneering that's a whole different concept
00:33:35.280
than you know i just flipped my four-wheeler on in a ditch while i was scouting this year's deer hunt
00:33:42.740
area and i twisted my leg and now i'm gonna have to wait for somebody to come and get me because i can't
00:33:48.380
walk so we've been mentioning you know some gear throughout this conversation but one thing you did in
00:33:53.340
the book what i really liked is you provided a a list of five containing like just some really
00:33:57.640
basic essential gear for survival situation and you call it the five c's of survivability what are
00:34:03.800
the five c's so your number one is a cutting tool of some sort and those five c's aren't single
00:34:10.100
necessarily single items they're five categories right so you should have cutting tool or cutting tools
00:34:16.600
right my recommendation to most people is a folding saw a belt knife and some kind of a pocket knife or
00:34:22.580
sak so you got plenty of things that you can use to cut your second c is combustion devices to start
00:34:28.880
fire again we talked about three and most of the stuff falls into those categories should have three of
00:34:33.620
these things your cover element is going to provide in on under so there's three things there
00:34:39.860
your container should be a metal container that's impervious to fire single walled and it should
00:34:47.460
have you should probably have two of those and at least one nesting cup so you've got three containers
00:34:52.460
and then the last one is cordage and cordage is what you're going to use to tie lash and bind everything
00:34:58.520
you can carry one type of cordage or 10 types of cordage but i would say at least some kind of a
00:35:04.020
mariner's bank line or what's called a tarred line and then also paracord would be the minimum
00:35:09.880
and like how much space does this stuff take because it sounds like a lot you know it sounds
00:35:14.740
like a lot but you could put it in a 10 liter dry bag or a 10 liter day pack okay so it doesn't take
00:35:21.400
up yeah i mean if you think about like so like a bic lighter you could just keep that in your pocket
00:35:24.560
correct uh flint and steel that's super small a good knife you're gonna have that on your belt
00:35:29.520
probably yeah i mean you definitely want a belt knife something that's full tang now if you're
00:35:34.200
just going out you know day hiking or something you might be able to get away with a non-full tang
00:35:38.740
knife if you're not going to beat the crap out of it and it's not really really cold weather but i
00:35:43.900
would recommend a full tang belt knife and i would recommend a folding saw and then again like you said
00:35:48.740
an sak will fit in your pocket so you're looking at all these five items you know most of your
00:35:53.640
combustion devices are going to fit in your pocket most of your cover elements are going to easily fit
00:35:58.260
into a small dry bag or day pack and then your container everybody carries a water bottle anyway
00:36:03.540
why not make it metal and so that's going to fit in your backpack on the side of your backpack and
00:36:08.280
then cordage doesn't take up hardly any space at all you can sit on the bottom of your backpack
00:36:11.300
so you mentioned the knife the the full tang knife it's like a good survival knife what are the elements
00:36:16.420
of a good survival knife you think you know what i think is that there's a lot of confusion
00:36:21.440
about knives i think that there's a difference between you know a bushcraft knife and a survival
00:36:28.240
knife a survival knife is something that you could use for a crowbar if you had to and not break it
00:36:33.760
and you could also use it to baton wood with if you had to and at the same time it has to be small
00:36:40.180
enough in size that you can do some fine carving with it in case you have to carve things like
00:36:45.320
tent stakes in case you have to make notches to put things together for shelters any of those types
00:36:50.800
of things you've got to have a knife that's small enough to do that but some of that can be done by
00:36:54.940
the knife in your pocket so that knife that you're carrying on your belt just needs to be a robust
00:36:59.200
enough knife that you're not going to break it if you twist it side to side or if you start beating
00:37:03.840
on it really hard with another log to break into dry wood from a wet log situation or split small
00:37:09.240
wood down into kindling and uh here in the book you list out five criteria that you think you know every
00:37:15.320
belt knife should have the first one is full tang we mentioned that one that's just one continuous piece
00:37:20.020
of material throughout from the blade to the end of the handle you want a sharp spine because it's
00:37:25.380
going to allow you to use it as a striker for a ferrocerium rod you can also use that to process
00:37:30.940
you know make tender with you want your knife to be carbon steel because it's easy to sharpen but they
00:37:36.080
can also be used as a flint and steel ignition you want the blade to be about four to five inches
00:37:41.180
this will allow you to process wood for shelter building or fire lay materials and then you want a
00:37:47.080
simple grind just a blade the single bevel like a v grind or a saber to zero grind and that just makes
00:37:53.920
things easy to sharpen so those are the five qualities you want in a belt knife you also list
00:37:59.760
five essential knife skills you think you should know on how to handle your knives so what are those
00:38:04.680
skills i mean i think that everybody should understand how to be able to cut down a sapling
00:38:10.820
to able to make feather sticks if they need to and do fine carving work i think you have to with any
00:38:20.320
knife you should be able to strike a ferrocerium rod and that comes down to the attributes of the
00:38:25.080
knife because you never use a blade for that you should use the spine of that knife you should
00:38:29.180
understand how to use that knife as a flint and steel device in emergency where you can just pick up a
00:38:33.660
rock banging on that knife and get a spark so that your next fire mentality can be utilized with charmed
00:38:39.620
material and i think that everybody needs to be able to understand how to baton a knife so you're
00:38:45.380
asking for five and i gave you more than five there but i think that the base of that is you know can i
00:38:50.680
cut down a tree can i can i make proper firewood materials can i do carving with this blade can i start
00:38:57.500
fire with this blade in two different ways yeah people would be surprised you think i can cut down the
00:39:01.200
shoe with the knife but you can't it's not you're not going to be felling a big giant sequoia or an oak
00:39:05.940
it's like you know small and you just kind of beaver it right like you kind of you do like what a beaver
00:39:10.460
do you kind of take chunks out of it until absolutely absolutely and that's you know i tell people a lot of
00:39:15.260
times in my classes that when you're talking about survival you're talking about trees and you're talking
00:39:20.900
about cutting down trees you don't need anything over four inches anyway four inches is a big enough tree
00:39:26.800
as a cylinder to make good firewood and four inches on a live tree is structural if it's hardwood
00:39:33.980
so if you're trying to make a structure four inches if you're trying to make fire four inches
00:39:38.080
you don't need anything bigger than that so your knife only needs to be large enough to take care
00:39:42.180
of four inches of lumber what about knots are there essential knots do you think everyone should know
00:39:46.580
for a survival situation yeah we teach several knots here at the pathfinder school but at the basic
00:39:51.120
level you know you need a slip knot that you can turn into a rope tackle you need a half inch that
00:39:56.140
you can tie that off with a slippery half inch you need a bowlin knot so you have an end of the line
00:40:00.600
loop that can be put under any amount of pressure and be able to get it done quickly and easily
00:40:04.980
you need a double fisherman's knot or a single fisherman's knot that you can use to make
00:40:08.940
a prusik loop and then you need to understand how to make a prusik hitch if you can do those things
00:40:14.260
on a marlin spike hitch you can take care of 99 of anything you'd want to do at camp okay well let's
00:40:20.240
imagine let's say someone's uh listening to this stuff like this sounds great but i might not have time
00:40:24.900
to get to a survival school can you practice these skills even if you live in like the suburbs
00:40:29.500
or the city i can practice these skills in your backyard i mean there's no no question about it
00:40:35.660
you can practice these skills in a park you might not be able to sleep overnight in a park
00:40:40.040
but you could surely find some kind of state land somewhere or a campground that you could
00:40:44.540
you can definitely spend overnights outside in your backyard for sure so there's really none of these
00:40:49.920
skills other than part of it which a navigation is a little harder practice you need a bigger area to do
00:40:54.740
it but again i go back to you know all cities have parks and most parks have trees or some type of
00:41:00.520
a landmark that you can use to set up a short navigation course for yourself well dave this
00:41:05.520
has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book and your work
00:41:08.820
so the best place to go honestly if you really want to find everything you want to find link wise
00:41:15.700
is to go to my instagram which is pathfinder survival and hit the link tree in my instagram because that
00:41:21.460
has links to my website my school my author page on amazon my amazon influencer page my website where
00:41:28.320
we sell gear and my facebook my youtube and my twitter are all on that link tree fantastic well
00:41:34.380
dave canterbury thanks for your time it's been a pleasure hey buddy i appreciate you man thank you
00:41:38.020
my guest today was dave canterbury he's the author of the book the bushcraft essentials field guide
00:41:42.400
it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere check out our show notes at
00:41:45.500
aom.is slash survival we find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic
00:41:49.440
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at
00:42:00.260
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