By James John
The series of unfortunate events that happened in just the first half of this year has led people to panic and think that the world is nearing its end. While the events indicate that our planet has been scarred deeply by humankind’s activities, it’s nothing like World War Z or Train to Busan. Still, it doesn’t hurt to prepare for wild happenings in the future.
Rich people have stocked bunk homes dug into the earth to prepare for any incidents in the future. A real estate developer has already started plans to sell bunks for $35,000.00. But if you don’t have this extra money to alleviate doomsday paranoia, don’t worry. What you need to do is learn basic survival skills so that you can find resources in any environment.
These skills wouldn’t come handy only in an apocalyptic scenario either. You could apply it to your regular affairs. Many survival skills could help save on expenses. These are street smarts when a crisis should happen in the future, and useful for a busted bulb at your home.
Topmost Concern: Water
Humans can survive for around a month without food. However, without water, humans can barely survive for two weeks. It is, therefore, necessary that you know how to find water. When near bodies of water, you can simply dig a well a few feet away from the river or creek. You will have naturally filtered water that, if worse comes to worst, you could drink.
To translate this into practical daily life, you could have your land checked if there is water below feasible to feed a well. Your deep-well water could be soft or hard. Hard water means it has a high level of calcium carbonate. Some people prefer hard water for drinking because it has more minerals and it allegedly has health benefits. However, hard water would leave stains on your kitchenware and leave your clothes a shade darker. So if you get hard water, you could treat it by using a water softener system.
Another practical knowledge to learn about water resources is that rainwater can be used for your daily needs. Rain is a natural phenomenon. With a simple but efficient catchment facility, you could store enough to last you at least a week and offset your water bills.
Procuring Food
Although water is the most essential need in times of crisis, you can’t go long without sustenance either. So you would need to have a sustainable supply of food. For your home, you could set up a backyard vegetable garden. With so many people realizing its usefulness because of the lockdowns in the past months, it shouldn’t’ be difficult to find DIY gardens.
To augment this initiative, learn how to source out food from your environment. Learn to fish, for example. Hunting wild game also doesn’t need you to be proficient with a gun. You wouldn’t need a gun at all if you learn how to bait and trap animals. These will all be supervised actions because you don’t want to accidentally hurt another human being hunting in the wild.
Learn what plants are edible, poisonous, or medicinal. The old generations subsisted in their environment. It’s a shame that the advancement in technology made the world abandon this very important body of knowledge. Thankfully, there are groups that are taking initiatives to relearn these knowledge systems. In the course of learning this, though, please respect the communities that have preserved their traditions and practices. Greedy people have been taking advantage of this by unlawfully patenting them without the knowledge holders’ permission.
Learn First Aid
It would be best if you learn beyond first aid, like maybe performing minor stitches, but knowing the basics will get you through life-saving minutes. Have a kit at your home all the time. Check the expiration date of the medicines and solutions inside the kit regularly so you don’t end up with an expired kit when an unfortunate moment comes. Make sure also that your kits are what the OSHA recommends for the number of people in your home.
Basic Self-Defense
Not only to survive desperate times, learning basic self-defense could get you through unexpected tight spots in the modern-day world. With people getting a bit restless because of the slump in the economy, it is not a bad idea to prepare for any attacks from desperate individuals.
So the end of times may not be the next turn of the calendar. But basic survival skills also have their practical uses in the day-to-day challenges of the modern world. You don’t need the world to end to know how to survive. And anyway, with the rat races of today, it has already been a struggle to endure.
