SurvivalRing

The green grass in the middle of an arid area is an indicator that water might be present. This seep doesn’t produce much water, but every little bit helps!

The Nalgene bottle, center, has a piece of parachute cord secured with duct tape. This would allow the bottle to be tied to a rope and lowered into a pool. The nalgene is flanked by two soft, roll-up water containers.

Some useful, very basic, recipes should be included any prepper/survival/ Bug Out backpack. It’s one thing to have staples, such as flour, but another to be able to consume them. And you need some very simple recipes for those times when you might only have a few ingredients.

It only took the addition of some other grains to make this basic bannock survival ration into a tasty, nutritious food.

After posting some emergency survival recipes for flour last week, I whipped up some bannock to make sandwiches for a spur-of-the-moment hike.

Sitting in the shadow of Monkey Face, in Central Oregon’s magnificent Smith Rock State Park, eating my delicious bannock and turkey sandwich, I thought about how happy I was to be there!  (The trail across the top of the rock formations is the appropriately-named “Misery Trail” and I’d had a knee replacement in September, 2009!) It also occurred to me, how easy it would be to tweak the bannock recipe to make it more healthy and nutritious.

Bannock is the traditional bread of Canada and the Northwest. Native people had no access to wheat  flour prior to the arrival of European traders, although some flour substitutes existed, like wild turnips or corn, dried and ground to a powder.

Bannock actually originated in Scotland. Because bannock could be quickly prepared from readily-available ingredients, and because these ingredients lasted a long time without spoiling, bannock became a staple of European fur traders and subsequently, the native people also.

But the original recipe is nothing but flour and water, and traditional bannock is  essentially frontier junk food.

Here’s how to add a few ingredients to make flour-based  survival foods more nutritious.

Start by amending the  flour. Basic, white, bleached all-purpose flour has virtually all the nutrients taken out of it in processing. To each cup of white flour, add one tablespoon of soy flour, a tablespoon of dried milk and a teaspoon of wheat germ. According to “Classic Sourdoughs: A Home Baker’s Handbook” by Ed Wood, such an amendment combines enzymes and creates a complete protein, similar to meat.

I’ve used this amendment for years, and you can’t taste the difference in the baked goods. Try amending the flour in all your survival recipes that use white flour, such as hardtack, and you’ll feel the difference.  Here is the traditional bannock recipe:

Bannock recipe

• 1 c flour
• 4 tsp double-acting baking powder
• 2 Tbs powdered skim milk

Stir ingredients together; stir in water to make dough moist. Knead dough until smooth. Place in greased cast iron skillet or Dutch oven over the campfire or on coals and bake about five to 10 minutes until the top is brown. Then turn the bread and brown the other side.

A handy way to prepare for a backpacking or hiking trip is to mix all the dry ingredients in a Ziplock bag. Just add 1/2 cup of water and knead in the bag. Then take out the dough, finish kneading and spread it in the pan.

(Practice baking the bannock by the campfire. Put the dough in a greased skillet, and place it near the campfire, propped at about a 60-degree angle with a stick.  Lodge Pro-Logic 10″ Skillet Preseasond. When the side nearest the fire browns, flip the bread and brown the other side. In a pinch you could bake it on a plank!)

SurvivalCommonSense Bannock Recipe

• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 Tbs soy flour
• 1 tsp buckwheat flour
• 1 Tbs flax meal
• 2 Tbs stone ground whole wheat flour
• 4 tsp double-acting baking powder

Pace all the above ingredients in a one cup measure and add enough unbleached bread flour to make one cup of dry ingredients in volume.  Add  2 Tbs powdered skim milk, and stir until thoroughly mixed.

Add enough moisture to make a moist dough, and knead until smooth. Place in a greased cast iron skillet and bake. If you’re making this inside, bake at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Except for the different ingredients, you can treat the improved recipe just like the traditional. Put the improved bannock mixture in a ziplock bag to make later on the trail, and you can cook it just like the traditional recipe.

With either recipe, bannock is a quick, easy way to make use of wheat flour. Both recipes are good survival tools that could prove to be really useful in your survival kit!

Product Links:

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*Permission *

• Shared with permission of Leon from SurvivalCommonSense.com
• Originally Posted on June 22nd, 2010 by Leon in Food and Cooking

 

At the first portage, I realized my fanny pack with all my survival gear was missing. The scout troop was about four days into a nine-day canoe trip into Northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. While everyone else relaxed, the guide and I paddled to the last campsite to retrieve my stuff. I was lucky to have noticed the missing pack when I did, and really lucky to have found it!

It was a potentially dangerous screw-up. The gear had been dropped on shore during a canoe launch. Distracted during the activity, I forgot to pick up my fanny pack (can you say: “Survival Common Sense?) I wore the pack at all times and in it were my Ten Essentials, water bottle, survival gear and all the tools I’d need for the next five days. Several adults and scouts walked down the trail by the black fanny pack and never saw it.

On one Idaho elk hunt, I leaned my black 7 mm Remington rifle against a tree while I walked a few yards away to answer nature’s call. On the way back, it started to rain and I stopped to glass a promising clump of trees, then walked a little distance further to see better. (Yes, I had all my survival gear on me!) That caused a distraction, and in the gathering gloom, my black rifle blended in perfectly with the trees.  It took about 10 anxious “Oh Crap!” minutes to locate the rifle.

“Yeah, Leon quit elk hunting,” I could imagine my hunting partners saying while I searched. “He lost his rifle. Yeah, really, he lost his rifle. He leaned it up against a tree and couldn’t find it again.” And I could just imagine the ribbing I would get around the campfire that, and many other nights!

When the same pack is turned over, the bright tape on it makes it easily visible. The knife and saw are also marked with tape.

Nowadays, I frequently stick blaze orange duct tape on my hunting rifle to help it stay found and as an added safety feature. I usually wear blaze orange in the field, even when the law doesn’t require it. Well over half my outdoor gear has some sort of camouflage pattern.Premium Duct Tape 2″ x 60 yards each color

To a duck and turkey hunter, the appropriate camouflage pattern is important to success. But don’t inadvertently forget the recreational clothing patterns and colors that are also camouflage. Black, white and earth-tone colors are popular and can easily blend into the surroundings. A brown-and black or green-and-white plaid pattern is one of the most effective camo patterns available.

If your knife, canteen, glove or other item is too well camouflaged, it may be lost or misplaced. Here’s a simple solution: Take along bright, fluorescent duct tape, flagging or parachute cord and mark everything before using it. 2″ X 150′ CONSPICUITY,REFLECTIVE,TRAILER TAPE RED/WHITE
The bright material will  help you see your gear in low light.

Bob Patterson, a skilled outdoorsman and veteran hunter from Mankato, Mn.,  recommends using highway department reflectional tape to mark gear.  The tape is typically available at automotive stores. Trimbrite – Glow in the Dark Tape, 2″ x 24″ (T1805) Bob is color blind, so camouflaged gear is virtually invisible to him. If  Bob misplaced something, he could wait until darkness and see the tape markings by flashlight.

Bob runs a few pieces  of the reflector tape through a paper shredder to make ribbons, then takes along thumbtacks to attach it to trees. The shredded reflector tape works well to mark the  path to and from a deer stand.

If, for some reason, you feel the need to hide out, either from marauders or mallards, just strip the bright material off.

The best survival gear in the world does no good if you forget or lose it somewhere!

Any list you make shows your priorities, and hopefully this list will help establish some in your survival planning!

The idea behind SurvivalCommonSense.com started several years ago. As a journalist, I was often on the scene of natural disasters, catastrophes, accidents and search and rescue missions. My observations lead me to this premise: Survival is mostly psychological.

This is certainly no groundbreaking revelation on my part!

“The best survival tool is between your ears,” claims wilderness survival expert Peter Kummerfeldt. This idea is further reinforced by Cody Lundin, another wilderness and urban survival expert, who maintains that 90 percent of survival in any situation is psychological.

One goal of  SurvivalCommonSense.com is to help you develop the survival mindset that will keep you alive. So, let’s start with the baseline knowledge of what happens to people, mentally, in a survival situation. Until you know what might happen in your mind, or in the heads of the people around you, there’s no way to come up with a plan to survive.

With a survival mindset, you can survive anything. Without one, you won’t!

These five are among my favorite survival psychology books, and they deserve a place among your prepper or urban or wilderness survival tools. Here’s some good choices to get you started on creating your survival library:

Union prisoners are seen crowding near the main gate of Andersonville Civil War Prison. The prisoners had some of the psychological reactions anybody would have in an emergency!

“Survival Psychology” by John Leach

Some 20-odd years before the rash of “reality” or “survivor” shows, or anybody had ever heard of Les Stroud or Bear Grylls,  psychological studies resulted in a book which documented people’s  reactions  in emergency situations.

“Survival Psychology” by John Leach, PhD, of the University of Lancaster, England, was a groundbreaking study, that today is a reference source for many wilderness and urban survival bestsellers. If some of Leach’s writing or thoughts sound familiar, it is because you’ve read or heard them before!

Leach studied survivors’ reactions, including those of Union prisoners at the horrific Andersonville prison during the Civil War;  to shipwreck survivors; to people who made it through plane crashes and natural disasters.

Distilled down to one sentence, here’s what Leach found: Psychological responses to emergencies follow a pattern.

Survival situations bring out a variety of reactions – including some that make the situation worse. Leach’s studies show that only 10 to 15 percent of any group involved in any emergency will react appropriately. Another 10 to 15 percent will behave totally inappropriately and the remaining 70 to 80 percent will need to be told what to do. The most common reaction at the onset of an emergency is disbelief and denial.

“Survival Psychology” is out-of-print, as far as I know. But I’ve had no trouble getting a copy through the local inter-library loan program. Your library probably has a similar program, so check out Leach’s book. Survival Psychology

“I Sit and Stay: A Survival Guide for Kids (and parents, too!)” by Leah L. Waarvik Kids need to be outside. They need to be taking advantage of our great outdoors as opposed to vegetating in front of computer or TV screens. But anyone who goes into wilderness areas needs to do so safely, and  “I Sit and Stay” teaches your children what to do if they get lost.

Author Leah Waarvik is a search-and-rescue professional who works as part of a canine team to find missing people in the wilderness. She wrote “I Sit and Stay” after hearing stories of children who were lost and unprepared. The title says it all: Teach your lost children to stay in one place and await rescue.

Written in interesting, easy-to-understand terms, the lesson of staying-put is taught through the characters of Emma and Koa, two wilderness search-and-rescue dogs. The book also mentions and discusses three simple tools that every child (I say every person, regardless of age!) should be taught to use and carry on every outdoor excursion:

• Whistle: Always carry one on a string around your neck when hiking or camping. The child should be taught that if they get lost, they sit and blow. Rescue Howler Whistle by Adventure Medical Kits
• A pocket-sized mirror: Use this to signal search aircraft or other people. Ultimate Survival Technologies 2×3 StarFlash Emergency Signal Mirror
• A large garbage bag: With training this is to be used as a shelter. (My two cents worth is that the bag should be bright yellow or orange to aid in being found.)

After being taught how to use these items, the child should also be trained to carry these survival tools in their pockets or pack. Pockets are probably the best, since a child will probably lose their backpack before their pants! Survival Kit for I Sit and Stay A Survival Guide for Kids and Parents Too!

A survival mindset is a requirement to join this exclusive club!

“The Survivors Club” by Ben Sherwood

Most of us can’t take all the survival field classes and seminars we’d like to, and only a fool would create a real emergency to see how he might react!

Author Ben Sherwood interviewed people who have survived everything from the World War II Holocaust to the Twin Towers tragedy on 9/11. He was seeking a common ground, a kind of definition, about why some people survive catastrophes, disasters, and emergency situations and why others don’t.

His conclusion, after extensive research, is that the most important part of survival is in your mind. And – no surprise here – you must develop a survival mindset.

So where do you begin?

According to the U.S. military, you must first decide you will survive.  The US Army Field Survival Manual, in their official instruction for how to stay alive in hostile environments, offers this advice on the very first pages:

“Without the will to survive, your chances of surviving are greatly diminished,” the book states. US Army Survival Manual: FM 21-76 , Illustrated

The next step to surviving is to accept that whatever is happening to you is not unique. We all want to think we’re special, Sherwood, writes, but any survival situation will cause people to react in established behavior patterns. The sooner you get over being incredulous, the sooner you can start reacting in a positive way and come up with a plan.

Then, a survivor must do something. The most common reaction, regardless of the circumstances, is to do nothing, hang tight and wait for someone else to react first, or tell them what to do.

But surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of panic attacks during an emergency. Researchers examining crises as disparate as the WWII London Blitz and the attacks of Sept 11 found people rarely lose total control and run around mindlessly. Rather, most just freeze until they’re told what to do.

So we keep reading The Survivors Club, because we all want to know the secret, the one thing that can make a difference between living and dying.

What is the secret of survival? Sherwood asked Ray Smith, former Marine Drill Instructor, with 27 years on active duty in the Navy as a survival instructor. Smith is the author of  How to Survive on Land and Sea. Smith’s answer is simple.

“Faith in God,” Smith says “It’s a major factor in all survival scenarios.”

I first ran into the writings of Viktor Frankl, eminent psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, when I was in graduate school. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning remains one of my favorite books. So it was no surprise to me that Frankl was mentioned in The Survivors Club. Frankl developed a survival mindset to get through Auschwitz.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing:” Frankl observed, “The last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Purpose gives you the why – the meaning and mission – in your life. It also gives you the power to survive.

“The Survivors Club” deserves reading and re-reading. It teaches about the most important part of any survival situation: Your reaction to what is happening to you.The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

Deep Survival is another great choice for your wilderness or urban survival library!

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Lawrence Gonzales

I read “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, And Why”  in a few marathon sessions. The fast-paced accounts of real life survival situations are mesmerizing. It’s a good survival mindset read and I couldn’t help wondering what I might do in some of the situations.

In the book, Gonzales mentions 12 points that disaster survivors seemed to have in common.  These points are definitely worth reading and thinking about, even if you don’t get anything else out of the book.

1. Perceive, believe: If there is any denial, it is counterbalanced by a solid belief in the clear evidence of their senses. In other words, survivors establish a survival mindset immediately. They see opportunity, even good, in their situation.
2. Stay calm (use humor, use fear to focus) In the initial crisis, survivors use fear, and aren’t ruled by it.
3. Think/analyze/plan: Survivors quickly organize, set up small manageable tasks. In other words, they’re using the STOP tool.
4. Take correct decisive action: Survivors were able to convert thoughts to action. They deal with what they can from moment to moment, hour to hour.
5. Celebrate successes: This is important to maintaining motivation and avoiding hopelessness.
6. Count you blessings: Be grateful you’re alive.
7. Play: Sing, play mind games, recite poetry, count things etc.
8. See the beauty: Survivors are attuned to the wonder of the world.
9. Believe you will succeed: All the above practices lead to the point where survivors become convinced they will prevail.
10. Surrender: Let go of your fear of dying. This is the type of thinking John Leach calls: “resignation without giving up. It is survival by surrender.”
11. Do whatever is necessary: Survivors know their abilities and don’t over or under estimate them. They believe anything is possible and act accordingly.
12. Never give up: There is always one more thing you can do.

“The Unthinkable” is a thought-provoking look at what happens during emergencies, before help arrives.

“The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why”  by Amanda Ripley

Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, writes about the human psychological reaction to disasters. Ripley covered some of the most devastating disasters of our time, and retraces how people reacted. She interviews leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists and other disaster experts. She comes up with the stunning inadequacies of many of our evolutionary responses.

Ripley’s book is not about disaster recovery: It’s about what happens in the midst  of one – before emergency personnel arrive and structure is imposed on the loss. Ripley describes a “survival arc” everyone must travel to get from danger to safety.

If you’ve ever thought about a disaster and possible reactions to it, then you’re on the right track. Ripley starts the survival arc process with the thought “I wonder what I would do if…”

Here’s the survival arc progression, according to Ripley, of a typical reaction to a disaster situation:

• Denial: This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening to me.
• Deliberation: We know something is terribly wrong, but don’t know what to do about it.
• The Decisive Moment: You’ve accepted that you are in danger, deliberated the options and now it is time to take action.

Anybody with a “Be Prepared” mentality hopefully moves quickly through the initial denial phase. We’ll also hope that you have read and studied survival techniques so you will be able to deliberate effectively and move on to the decisive moment phase.

But even if you think you’re prepared mentally for surviving a disaster,  “Unthinkable” is a book you need to read.  You must understand what goes on in your head during a disaster before you can use your tools. You’ll need information and techniques to respond correctly.

Some of that information can come from “The Unthinkable.” The book’s information is a powerful survival tool.

Recommended Reading:
Surviving a Wilderness Emergency
Build the Perfect Survival Kit

When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikes
98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive

Other Survival Books

Posted on June 4th, 2010 by Leon in Recommended Readings