by Les Stroud
Headache
Headaches are a common and potentially debilitating aspect of survival, so carry some ibuprofen or acetaminophen in your first-aid kit. Drinking lots of water and massaging the aching area can also help.
Sickness and Disease
Sickness and disease can be major or minor, but once your defenses are down and your immunity starts to plummet, you’re more susceptible to both.
Once you become sick, your energy levels suffer, as do your survival efforts. The result could be a dangerous snowball effect. If you don’t have the energy to build a shelter, for example, you will increase your exposure to the elements and your susceptibility to conditions such as hypothermia. What you do to treat yourself now will affect what happens in the minutes, hours, days, and weeks to come.
Bites and Stings
Since bites and stings range from very minor to very major events, the best approach is to avoid them by wearing proper clothing and not putting your hands or feet in dark places without first investigating. Check yourself daily to make sure no strange creatures are hitching a ride on your body. Try not to scratch bites and stings, as they may become infected.
For bee, wasp, and hornet stings, the most important consideration is whether you or someone in your group has a severe allergy. If so, you should carry an epinephrine (“epi”) pen and antihistamines.
You can get an EpiPen prescription from most physicians; just explain that you’re traveling to a remote area and there’s a chance you may get stung by an unknown insect. Be warned, however: if you have a true anaphylactic reaction to a bite or sting, an EpiPen will only help to prevent your throat from closing for about 15 minutes or so, the time it would usually take to get a victim to a hospital. EpiPens are expensive and expire after 12 to 18 months, so keep your first-aid kit updated. Carrying two EpiPens is a good idea. Note that while epinephrine opens up the airway, it does not stop the cause of the constriction. You must also take antihistamines to counter the body’s production of histamine, which is what closes up your airways in the first place.
If you get stung by a bee or other similar creature, remove the stinger immediately. This can usually be done by scraping up and away (not pulling out) from the area with a fingernail or knife blade.
Being bitten by a spider or stung by a scorpion is more serious, and little can be done in the way of treatment unless you’re lucky enough to have an antivenin on hand. If a member of your group is bitten or stung by one of these, watch for anaphylaxis, clean and dress the area, and also treat the victim for shock, vomiting, and diarrhea, should they occur. Some spider bites result in ulcerated areas that refuse to heal. Dress the ulcers to prevent infection.
Snakebites can also be serious, if not deadly, though the majority of snakebite victims suffer little or no effects from poisoning. Infection is a real concern, however, due to the bacteria in the snake’s mouth, so clean and disinfect the area immediately. Try to calm the victim and treat for shock, if necessary.
Staying calm after a snakebite is easier said than done. I can’t imagine what I would have done if bitten by a snake in the Amazon. I was miles away from anywhere and it would have been difficult to get out. And that’s the paradox: When you’re bitten by a snake, what you want to do is run for help, yet it’s the one thing you cannot do because it only serves to increase the rate at which the venom spreads through your system.
Try to determine if the snake was poisonous or not. If in doubt, assume it was! Give the victim as much fluid as possible, and remove constricting items such as belts, watches, and bracelets.
In treating snakebites, avoid the following:
Cutting: Opening the wound is ineffective in removing the venom, and the open wound might become infected.
Alcohol: Similarly, this is ineffective for wound or patient.
Tourniquet: Constricting the bite might cause more damage and pain, and even after the loss of a limb if applied incorrectly.
To treat snakebite, follow these steps:
1. Calm the patient and keep him or her still.
2. Apply a broad bandage (crêpe) tightly around the whole limb, as for a sprained ankle. This will retard absorption of the venom but still let blood through to supply the bite-wound with needed blood.
3. Check vital signs.
4. Immobilize the limb with a splint.
5. If it’s not possible to reach a doctor within hours and you have antivenin, test for allergic reaction first by injecting a little under the victim’s skin or inject antihistamine first. (Always carry an injectable antihistamine in your first-aid kit.)
Diarrhea
Diarrhea is common in survival situations and is another minor sickness that can become major.
There are two important things to understand about diarrhea. First, diarrhea is your body’s way of ridding itself of an irritant. Let it run its course for 6 to 12 hours. However, diarrhea can also rapidly lead to dehydration. Through it, you lose valuable water and electrolytes, which need to be replenished.
The best way to replenish yourself is to drink some water, preferably clean and purified. Drink small amounts frequently (which will help your bowel absorb the fluid) rather than drinking a huge amount at one sitting (which will overwhelm your stomach and trigger more diarrhea).
If you’re in a group, keep in mind that diarrhea can be embarrassing for the person who has it, so try to create an environment of understanding and comfort. You might also designate a private place for that person to go, to reduce awkwardness.
Charcoal is an effective remedy for diarrhea because it is highly absorbent, and will absorb drugs and toxins from the gastrointestinal tract. Grind a teaspoon of charcoal from your fire and mix it with water. Consume this a few times a day, as necessary.
If you have electrolyte replacement powders in your first-aid kit, they will help replace the electrolytes lost through diarrhea. Loperamide is also useful to have in your kit; it can plug you up in cases where the diarrhea just won’t stop. I’d let the diarrhea run its course for at least a day before resorting to loperamide.
Blisters
Blisters also rank high on the list of problems that start out minor but can become major. The best way to treat blisters is to prevent them from happening in the first place, by keeping your socks and feet dry and clean.
If you do develop a blister—particularly on your foot—do not puncture it or otherwise open it, as this makes it susceptible to infection. Rather, apply some sort of padding to relieve pressure and reduce friction. Stay off your feet as much as possible until the blister subsides. If you have a blister that breaks open, treat it as an open wound.
Wounds
Wounds can be minor or major. If they’re major, the biggest risk is excessive bleeding. The most significant risk from minor wounds is infection, so clean the wound immediately and cover it with a clean dressing. Change the dressing at least once a day to prevent infection. If you don’t have any extra clean dressing material available, you can reuse the existing dressing by boiling it for at least three minutes to sterilize. Allow it to cool before applying. Let the wound air dry during that time. Gaping wounds can be closed with the butterfly sutures in your first-aid kit.
If you have antibiotic cream, apply it to the wound. Antibiotic pills should be used only for treating wound infections, not for preventing them.
Infections
In a survival situation, there’s a very good chance that a wound may become infected. You can tell by the redness that appears around the wound and the consistent discharge of pus.
Treat infections by applying warm compresses on the area for 30 minutes three or four times daily. Change the compress as it cools. You can also drain the wound by opening and poking it with an implement you’ve sterilized, such as a knife tip held in a fire and then allowed to cool.
Altitude Sickness
Depending on how high you are, altitude sickness can range from mild discomfort and shortness of breath to life-threatening cerebral edema. Sympto
ms range from drowsiness and weakness to persistent rapid pulse and vomiting.
The best way to cure altitude sickness is to get the victim to lower altitudes immediately. Some victims of mild altitude sickness can control symptoms by consciously taking large, exaggerated breaths.
Group Versus Solo Survival
IF YOU’RE INJURED, YOU’RE FAR BETTER OFF in a group because you’ll have people around who can help you. Members of the group can lift and move a sick or injured person.
One difficult decision you may have to make in a survival situation is whether to leave an injured person or stay with them. If you are in a group of two, leave only if your travel partner’s injuries are life-threatening, you can’t help him or her, and you know where safety and help lie. Before leaving, stabilize the victim, place him or her comfortably in a shelter, and mark the area so that you can find it on your return.
In larger groups, send the fastest and most capable travelers for help while others stay behind to tend to the wounded. Again, those who leave should do so only if they are sure they will be able to reach help.
Chapter Fourteen
ESSENTIAL SURVIVAL SKILLS
Like your prehistoric ancestors, you have the ability to harness those great human qualities of adaptability and ingenuity that could save your life during a survival situation. Whether it’s making a fish hook from the bones of a decaying animal or a crude knife from a piece of rock, the ability to improvise and create survival tools from materials at hand will help you when you’ve got nothing else with which to work.
Think Like a Sculptor
ALTHOUGH MOST OF US ENVISION WILDERNESS as being completely untouched by humankind, the world is not that big anymore. In many ways, this is not a good thing, but it may help you in a survival situation because you are more likely than you think to come across abandoned junk that may be useful.
Some of the best places for finding useful odds and ends are coastal regions, where the sea often washes up intriguing bits. You should look upon this stuff as if you were a sculptor: Don’t consider what it is, but what it could be. That piece of scrap metal might look like a piece of garbage, but if you change your lens you might see six fish hooks, a knife blade, and a pot for melting water. When I was in Labrador, I came upon an empty can of naphtha gas. After a little cutting, bending, and reshaping, I had changed it into a simple wood stove.
In the Kalahari Desert, the most effective “junk” I found included a few jars and cans in an old truck. They worked like a charm to trap scorpions, which were the basis for my diet there. In Alaska, the roof of my shelter was two big pieces of plastic that I discovered under a couple of rocks. All of it started as garbage, but for me it meant survival.
Think Simplicity
ALTHOUGH THERE IS A DESIRE AMONG HARD-CORE SURVIVALISTS to make elaborate and sophisticated tools in the bush, I’ve found that the best man-made survival tools are the most basic. A simple snare, a simple fish hook: these are often the most effective things you can make. Creating complex traps, snares, and shelters is fine when you have time and energy, neither of which you typically have in abundance in an emergency!
Survival is a humbling situation. Any notions you may have entertained about building incredible tools will be swept away quickly (right behind those ideas you once had about the importance of staying clean).
Attempting to construct complex survival tools can lead to immense frustration as well. The worst thing you can do in a situation like this is spend hours trying to build something, only to find that it doesn’t work. A simple version often suits the purpose but takes only a fraction of the time to make.
While my wife, Sue, and I spent the year living off the land in northern Ontario, we wanted to make a blanket of rabbit pelts. We figured we’d need about 100 pelts, and my first thought was to build an elaborate set of snares and traps. In the end, though, over a few weeks, I set out a couple dozen simple snares, which were really effective and took very little time to construct. I’m sure I wouldn’t have had any better luck with a more elaborate setup.
Get Over the Squeamishness of Destruction
ONE OF THE THINGS THAT MANY PEOPLES TRUGGLE WITH, even under the most dire Roll or rough up strands circumstances, is destroying something they cherish to make a survival tool. But there’s really no other choice: if it’s ultimately going to save your life or limbs, do it. Whether this be cutting your credit card into pieces, filing your house key to a point, cutting up your car seats, or burning the spare tire in your car to attract attention, recognize that these are actions born of necessity.
At the same time, however, you must have the foresight to visualize whether the object you’re destroying may be more useful to you later in its original form. You don’t want to sacrifice your snowmobile’s windshield, only to get the machine going later and suffer frostbite or hypothermia on the way home because you’ve got no protection from the wind.
During the winter of 2008, a Utah couple got lost with their vehicle and was trapped in the snow in a remote area. Following their 12-day ordeal, they explained at a news conference that they had seen one of my shows, in which I explained how to cut the stuffing out of car seats to make “snowshoes.” They did exactly that and walked through the deep snow to safety without losing their toes or feet to frostbite. They had had a decision to make: keep their car seats intact or survive. They chose life.
Tools You Can Make
ONE OF THE MOST OFTEN IGNORED BUT SIGNIFICANT BENEFITS of making your own survival tools is not the purpose they are meant to serve, but how the act of creating them prepares you psychologically for your ordeal. The creative process will keep your mind focused, distract you from the misery of your circumstances, and generally improve your mental state. Sure, you may make a snare or a trap and not be successful with it at first, but making the effort is much better than doing nothing at all, because doing something, anything, gives you hope that your efforts may bear fruit. This all ties into the all-important will to live: if you have a reason to survive, you likely will make it through alive.
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STROUD’S TIP
In a survival situation, you must exist in a constant state of hope if you are to make it out alive.
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Making Rope
Making your own rope from natural materials may sound complex, but it’s easier than you think. And having rope will greatly improve your chance of survival because it can be used in so many different ways.
Rope helps build traps. It fixes clothing, ties off wounds, holds shelters together, and binds your stuff together when the time to travel comes. My favorite rope-making materials are milkweed stem, evening primrose bark, spruce roots, and cedar bark. Rope from trees is typically made from the shredded inner bark. As with finding plants to use for tinder, your efforts here will helped immensely if you understand characteristics rather than memorize names. Quite simply, you are looking for anything fibrous.
The problem with rope making is that it’s not always easy to find the right materials, especially because they are seasonally dependent. In other words, some plants become most fibrous in late fall or early winter, when they have dried to the point that they’re no longer green. For others, such as tree bark, the best time is early spring.
If you are fortunate enough to have caught a large game animal, sinew and rawhide work well as rope (particularly for binding and lashing things together), although these are fairly involved undertakings. Sinew is the product of the tendons (strands lying flat against the leg bones). To make sinew, first dry the tendons, then rub them on a rough surface (or smash them with a club or rock) so they separate into fibers. These fibers can then be used as rope; they work better when moistened.
Rawhide is thin strips cut from the animal’s hide and can be used even if the fur is still on.
Twisting Rope
1. It may sound complicated, but basic rope twisting is simple. Start with fibrous material, such as husks from the yucca plant. Separate the
husks into strands.
2. Gather sufficient strands to be able to build a rope as thick as you need it. Roll or rough up strands together to get separate pieces.
3. Twist each piece between two fingers in a clockwise motion. Then, wrap the two pieces together in a counter-clockwise motion.
4. This simple method works with many different types of materials.
5. Once you’ve completed winding the pieces together, you will have a strong rope to use for many purposes.
Making Rope from Sinew
1. Rub the sinew on a rough surface to separate it into strands.
2. These fibers can be woven together to form a durable rope.
Making Knots
A NATURAL PARTNER TO ROPE MAKING is the ability to tie knots. Like many survival skills, this one can be overlearned, because there are hundreds of different types of knots, some of which have very specific uses.
You don’t need to learn hundreds. I’ve found that knowing just a few simple knots will help you through almost any survival situation, enabling you to make more effective shelters, fishing implements, snares, and traps.
Les’s Top Three Knots
Bowline: The bowline is a perfect survival knot because of its great strength and the ease with which it can be tied. It forms a loop (though not a noose) at the end of a rope, and it is typically used for securing a rope to an object.
To tie a bowline, start by making a loop a short distance from the end of the rope. Pass the working end of the rope up through the loop, wrap it around the base, and pull it back down through the loop to finish the bowline.