Notes from “The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs”, by ShepherdFarmerGeek

Did you know that you can get an estimate of distances and elevations conveniently using nothing more than your eyes and your hands? It’s really quite amazing and useful; hikers, hunters, and preppers really need to learn these skills.

Ol’ Remus at the Woodpile Report (www.woodpilereport.com) recently recommended a book by Tristan Gooley entitled The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs: outdoor clues to find your way, predict the weather, locate water, track animals and other forgotten skills.

It sounded downright intriguing, so I’ve been reading it on my Kindle and enjoying it quite a bit. The first Appendix had the following useful distance and angle approximations (not original with Gooley) that might turn out to be really useful for those of us who can’t afford a decent laser rangefinder (or whose “decent laser rangefinder” has become a “decent paperweight” for one reason or another).

DISTANCE

trianglulation1

Before the invention of sub-nanosecond timing circuits and compact lasers, there were native tribes-people in Europe and the Americas who used body-proportion estimation to determine sizes and distances. They observed that the apparent distance our extended fingertip will “jump”, when viewed first with one eye and then the other against a background of an object or distance to be measured, is approximately one tenth the distance we are from the object in question. The further away you are, the more the apparent jump. This jumping is called “parallax” and is a consequence of having two eyes with a little distance between them.

Based on the geometric postulate that “corresponding sides of similar triangles are proportional” you can use parallax to calculate the distance between two distant objects, if you know how far away you are from them. (You are three miles from town and see two tall buildings; if your finger jumps exactly from one to the other building, they must be about 1,600’ apart: 3 miles divided by 10.)

Or, if you know the distance between two objects, you can work out how far you are from them. (You see a church that you know is 0.6 miles from the edge of a lake. If your finger jumps exactly from one to the other, then you must be approximately 6 miles away. Fractional or multiple jumps are fractional/multiples of the distance. In this example, if your finger jumped past the lake edge and the parallax jump was 1½ times the visible distance between church and lake, you would know you were nine miles away.)

This will also work if you know the approximate size of an object (the distance from one side to the other). How long is the barn you can see? How long is a typical pickup truck? How tall are the telephone poles in your area? Door heights are pretty standard, and how tall is a standard “floor” of a building? If you know A, you can calculate B and vice versa. This technique works vertically as well as horizontally; you just view the object with your head on its side (finger sideways too)!

If you want to refine this method, mark out a greater test distance of say 50 feet and have a friend with a tape measure determine your exact “jump”. (Eye separation and arm length vary.)

Here’s some more information that is not from the book: Another explanation of why this works can be found online. Also, see this reference.

Here’s a powerful example of the “corresponding sides of similar triangles are proportional” postulate. (I always wanted to use the word “postulate” in an SB article!). However, you’ll need some room to walk! This is an example of determining the width of a river, but you could use it to tell the distance to anything, really.

trianglulation

Find an object across the river (your target object, which in this illustration we will label as tree “T”), and stand facing it on the other bank. Mark point K with a pile of something or a red handkerchief or IR chemlight.

Now, squarely face the tree, hold your left arm (in this example) straight out to your side and pick a point M that is 90° from K-T that you can walk toward. (Want to make your measurements more accurate? Use your compass, like this nice one I’m recommending, to make sure you’ve made a 90° turn. Count your paces.

When you’re about halfway to M, stop and make another marker at L. (If you get to L and “shoot an azimuth” to T and it’s 45°, then K-L (the distance you just walked) is equal to K-T, and you can just stop there! Why don’t we use this property of 45° every time? Because if K-T is really far, you’ll have to walk that far as well.

Let’s say you walk 10 yards from K-L. Now keep walking to M, and count paces again. Let’s say L-M was five yards. Once at M, turn your back to the river and point your left arm again, so it points to both L and K, which you can see because you left nice markers there.

Now, when you walk forward you will be (roughly) walking at a 90° angle to K-L-M. Pick a point that’s directly in front of you, and walk towards it. Keep looking back toward the marker at L until it lines up with T (the tree) on the opposite bank. Keep track of your paces.

Let’s say M-N was 20 yards. The ratio of the distance between K and L and the distance between L and M is equal to the ratio of the distance from K to T and M to N. Gaaaa! That sounds so complicated, but it’s not! Don’t panic. Just write it out and do the simple math. (Here’s Mr. Barns, the nice math teacher, doing it for his students, beginning at the 8:14 mark: ) You just need three numbers and your “unknown” value K-T:

math

Cross-multiply, 10×20 and divide by 5 = 40. The river is 40 yards wide. (Remember when you were in high school and you thought to yourself, “I will never, ever need to use algebra or geometry for anything!” Well, looks like you were wrong.)

All you do is face the target, make two turns, drop three markers, and count your paces. It’s easy peasy. You can do this! You could have calculated the width of the river in the time it takes you to walk 35 paces. (There are several ways to do it, but I think this is the simplest.) You just need to know what to do. Doing it isn’t so hard!

Don’t like the idea of counting strides across the countryside in full view of your target? Pre-measure a length of paracord with high-visibility endpoints and midpoint and you can “measure” the baseline K-L-M at a crawl. Play out paracord for M-N and measure it later when you’re safely out of sight again. We didn’t even break out the trigonometric tables or a calculator!

Using a related principle, here are a couple of web pages that describe how to estimate distances based on angular width, with a known object height. Be sure to look at the business card you can print out and carry that will let you quickly estimate distances to objects of known size. It’s very cool!

ANGLES (covered by Gooley)

You can also use your body proportions to roughly determine angles. That might come in handy when describing the location of a hard-to-see object relative to a known object. (“He’s in the bushes 15° to the left of the biggest pine tree…”) Here’s how that’s done:

Holding your hand at arm’s length and closing one eye, the outer joint of your index finger is about one degree across. The width of your first three fingers (Boy Scout salute) = 5 degrees. The width of your fist (with thumb on top) is about 10 degrees across, and a wide open hand span is about 20 degrees (depending on how flexible your hand is!).

hands

You can use this rough approximation technique to gauge your latitude or to estimate how much longer until sunset, etc. Hint: It has been demonstrated and estimated that each finger-width between the sun and the horizon is about 15 minutes until sunset.

FOOTNOTE

In mid-March, G.P. sent SurvivalBlog the a brief article and video, which I think is worth mentioning here again. This is John McPhee’s method to estimate how far away a person is, using only your naked eyes. The article says, “100 meters – recognize a face, see what they look like. 200 meters – No face, cannot distinguish facial features. 300 meters – No hands, soldier can distinguish what the enemy is doing, but cannot make out individual fingers or the entire hand. 400 meters – The head cannot be distinguished, in fact it looks like they don’t have one at all. 500 meters – Cannot see individual legs, especially the light between their legs, an enemy is moving, but he is moving as a whole, without legs to the soldier’s eye. 600 meters – Humans look like little triangles in shape. He says, ‘A fat little triangle’.”

In the video, John is saying “yards”, but whoever summarized the article (cited above) wrote it as “meters”. The difference between the two doesn’t really become an issue until about 400 meters. (400 meters equals 437 yards, 500 meters equals 546 yards, and 600 meters equals 656 yards.) Really, given the large-ish margin for error inherent in this method, the 10% error of yards vs meters isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference. If you need precision, buy a laser rangefinder. Yes, there are other quick, effective, and convenient ways to measure distances and sizes (like measuring shadows), but this will get you started. There are quick rules for shooting up a mountainside or down into a valley. There are easy-to-calculate shortcuts to determining how fast the wind is blowing and how it will affect your bullet. Isn’t mathematics fun? And there’s so much more in The Lost Art, I hope you take the time to read it!

Now, I’m going to condense all this, print it really small, and paste it into my pocket-sized All-Weather Rite in the Rain fieldbook for future reference! (Note: either print it with a laserprinter or print it with your ink-jet printer and then photocopy it. Laser printed text won’t run and smear if it gets wet!)

Trust God. Be prepared. We can do both.

Letter: Observations on the Fires in Canada

Hugh,

I wanted to comment on the article about the folks fleeing the wildfires in Fort McMurray, Canada. I saw some classic SurvivalBlog themes in there:

  1. Keep your gas tanks full. The gas station owner noted that people were “fighting each other to get gas, growing more and more desperate as the afternoon wore on.”
  2. Keep your gas tanks full, (yes I’m repeating myself). Later on the writer notes people were abandoning their cars on the highway since they knew they wouldn’t have enough fuel to make it to their destination.
  3. Don’t be a refugee. The folks that went to the camps not only were now at the whim of the government, but the same government that sent them there now had to try and get them out of there since it was no longer safe.
  4. Keep your head about you and use common sense. The writer correctly observed that the fire would head north and therefore he headed south, out of harm’s way. Kudos to them.
  5. Don’t trust the government to give you good advice, particularly low level police officers. (I say this as a former 23-year low level police officer.) The cops in the gas station were telling people to go north then later changed it to south. Naturally, the fire could shift directions and I have no doubt the cops told the people whatever they were told to tell them, but it turned out to be bad advice at first. I mentioned low level police officers, because in my experience they’re the last to know the important information as it filters its way down the chain of command. – Spotlight

Economics and Investing:

This Amazing Silver Trend Will Make Short Term Price Movements Irrelevant

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Of Course the US Government Will Default on Its Debt – Sent in by B.B.

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90% Off Sale On Offshore Drilling Rigs? – The oil price bust has struck the offshore sector especially hard, leading to nothing less than a fire sale of oil and gas rigs.

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Company plans to mothball Carlsbad potash plant – Note that this is a basic mineral used for fertilizer everywhere. Also ties in to reduced train loads, as it is normally shipped by rail. – I.K.

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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Flameout: Bill Whittle’s Afterburner Finale – Once you’ve watched that, please DO go and visit BillWhittle.com

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Trump vs. Hillary: What Are My Options? – Excerpt: “…I commit that I will be on my knees in the early morning praying for our nation–regardless of the outcome. For unless we are His children these elections just turn into modern day “towers of Babel” thinking ourselves so wise that we can outdo God.”

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Combat Knife Instructor Ralph Thorn shows how to “no spin” throw a knife (or just about any similar sized metal object ) in two minutes. – Submitted by T.P.

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Some good news for a change: Wyoming welder, facing $16M in fines, beats EPA in battle over stock pond – submitted by MtH

Notes for Wednesday – May 11, 2016

On May 11, 1949, Israel was admitted into the United Nations.

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Today, we present another entry for Round 64 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The nearly $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A Tactical Self-Contained 2-Series Solar Power Generator system from Always Empowered. This compact starter power system is packaged in a wheeled O.D. green EMP-shielded Pelican hard case (a $1,700 value),
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate that is good for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,195 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper with a hammer forged, chrome-lined barrel and a hard case to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel, which can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools and a compact carry capability in a hard case or 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  5. Gun Mag Warehouse is providing 20 Magpul PMAG 30-rd Magazines (a value of $300) and a Gun Mag Warehouse T-Shirt; (an equivalent prize will be awarded for residents in states with magazine restrictions),
  6. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  7. The Ark Institute is donating a non-GMO, non-hybrid vegetable seed package (enough for two families of four) plus seed storage materials, a CD-ROM of Geri Guidetti’s book “Build Your Ark! How to Prepare for Self Reliance in Uncertain Times”, and two bottles of Potassium Iodate (a $325 retail value),
  8. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  9. KellyKettleUSA.com is donating an AquaBrick water filtration kit with a retail value of $250, and
  10. Two cases of meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value).

Second Prize:

  1. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  2. A transferable certificate for a two-day Ultimate Bug Out Course from Florida Firearms Training (a $400 value),
  3. A Model 175 Series Solar Generator provided by Quantum Harvest LLC (a $439 value),
  4. A Trekker IV™ Four-Person Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $250 value),
  5. A $200 gift certificate good towards any books published by PrepperPress.com,
  6. A pre-selected assortment of military surplus gear from CJL Enterprize (a $300 value),
  7. RepackBox is providing a $300 gift certificate to their site, and
  8. Safecastle is providing a package of 10 LifeStraws (a $200 value)
  9. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Third Prize:

  1. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  2. A $245 gift certificate from custom knife-maker Jon Kelly Designs, of Eureka, Montana,
  3. A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
  4. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  5. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  6. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances,
  7. Montie Gear is donating a Precision Rest (a $249 value), and
  8. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).

Round 64 ends on May 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Readiness Mindset: Your Most Important Survival Tool- Part 2, by B.G.

Keep yourself from giving up.

Always stay positive. Negativity will kill you faster than the lack of nourishment, enemy combatants, or nature. It is an absolute guarantee that you will fail, if you give up. Staying calm and keeping a positive mindset will give you the mental endurance to continue on and make good decisions.

Find your mental trigger. This is what you will think about when you are on your last leg, ready to give up, or don’t think you can do what needs to be done. This will be your motivation to push that one more mile, to get up off the ground, fight through the pain, or even to eat something disgusting to stay alive. Your mental trigger can be anything from:

  • your children,
  • your spouse,
  • your parents,
  • your own selfish pride, or
  • your ultimate goals.

Now, this trigger is only to be used as a last-ditch emergency motivator. If you use it at every step and every minute you feel tired, it will start to lose its impact, so hold on to this one until you really need it; and when the time comes, pull the trigger. For smaller and more frequent motivations, come up with a simple phrase to push yourself. Personally, I use the phrase “harden up” whenever I need to force myself to do something. Sometimes I even find it helpful to imagine a specific person yelling this to me, such as a drill instructor or even a respected family member or role model.

Stay positive and motivated.

Set small, achievable goals. One way people often get frustrated is that they set these huge, unrealistic goals for themselves; and, having not stood any chance of realistically achieving them, they fail and become disparaged. Set for yourself small, short-term goals in addition to your main goal. While your main goal may be to make it to help from a plane crash hundreds of miles away from any cities, you cannot achieve this goal in a short amount of time. Instead, set smaller goals, such as:

  • make it over this hill today,
  • find a source of water,
  • find or build a shelter, or
  • start finding sources of food.

Even coming up with a concrete and complete plan is a necessary and achievable goal that will greatly increase your confidence.

One of the most important ways to avoid negative thinking is to keep your mind occupied. The more you are focusing on a specific task, the less free your mind will be to wander into self-defeating thoughts. Remember that anxiety and fear are typically irrational reactions to events that haven’t even happened yet. Too often people handicap themselves based on errant thoughts about potential circumstances that don’t even exist. Don’t dwell on thoughts about what could possibly go wrong. This will only prevent you from being able to think about how you can make things go right.

Plan for mental preparedness.

The best way to be mentally prepared is to plan ahead. People solve countless problems and complete a myriad of tasks on a daily basis. Most of these we never even think twice about. Why? Because we are mentally prepared to handle them. These range from things as simple as where to get dinner to what to do if a light bulb burns out. You can handle emergency scenarios just as adeptly as these seemingly mundane problems if you are mentally prepared for them.

The first and easiest way to be prepared for any situation is to visualize every conceivable possibility. Visualization is an extremely powerful tool. Our brains learn from experience. Our experiences are no more than memories imprinted by electrical signals in our brains. At an anatomical level there is nothing to distinguish a true memory from an imagined thought. The only difference is usually that a real memory will have other data associated with it, such as smells, feelings, and sounds. Nevertheless, these things can also be associated with visualization.

Have you ever had a dream that seemed so real while you were experiencing it? When you woke up, could you still remember the dream as if it had really happened? This is the same principal as training your brain through visualization. The trick is to visualize and think about the scenario in as much detail as you can. When visualizing a survival scenario, you want to be as thorough as possible. Imagine details of what would be going on around you, the different ways you could react, the cause and effects of your actions, and the potential reactions to your actions. Try to imagine all the sights, sounds, and feelings associated with the situation. This will help to further “burn” it into your memory.

[Additional note: It is best to be in a quiet place free from distraction while visualizing. The more absolute focus you can put into it, the more effective it will be. I recommend learning about meditation to help with visualizing. In addition, meditation is a great way to calm yourself, relax, think, and reduce stress.]

When planning how you will deal with an emergency situation, whether ahead of time or during the emergency, use the rule of three. Come up with three solutions to your problem and focus on each one in turn, deciding whether that particular option is achievable and how. Once you’ve come up with three options, pick the best one and focus on how you’re specifically going to accomplish it. The reason for the number three is because you will either:

  • not have enough time to explore a large number of options,
  • will spend more energy over-thinking the situation than is useful, or
  • will have trouble committing to one specific plan amidst a never ending list of possibilities.

Not all options, or any for that matter, may be perfect solutions to your particular situation. The important thing is that you do make a decision. In an emergency, you will most likely not have time to sit and think of every little detail. This is why you come up with three possible directions of action and pick one. You can always adapt your plan to fit whatever may arise later on. The key thing is that you take action in a timely manner.

Once you’ve decided on a course of action, remember to break it down into small achievable goals. Take it step by step in a logical and concise manner. Given that you have the time to do so, remember to take into account any unknown variables and contingencies, such as:

  • what if your planned route is blocked,
  • what if a piece of equipment fails, and
  • what to do if you encounter some form of active resistance to your plan at some point.

Every situation will differ in how much you may be able to plan ahead of time. This is why it is best to plan for things before they happen. Nevertheless, if you are on a boat and it catches fire, obviously you don’t have time to go over every conceivable detail; however, a few seconds to think before you act can make the difference in your survival.

Remain calm and aware during an emergency.

When you are actually in an emergency situation, the most important thing to remember is to remain calm. Everything else you do depends upon your ability to think clearly and make good decisions. Many factors, such as hunger, dehydration, fatigue, weather and injuries, can affect your mental strength and stability. Regardless of your situation, remain calm and think logically about the next priority that needs to be addressed. If you are stranded and have no water, don’t start stressing out about how far you may have to trek to get to help. Focus on finding yourself a source of drinkable water; then, move on to the next priority.

Throughout every step of any survival or emergency situation, you need to maintain your situational awareness. This means being observant and aware of what is going on around you, as well as the terrain, weather, your health (both physical and mental), your supplies, and any potential dangers. Before diving head first into any predicament, especially a potentially dangerous one, take a moment to assess your situation. If you need to take a knee to focus, do so. Take in your surroundings. Pay attention to details. This can be anything from:

  • seeing which way the land slopes,
  • which way clouds are moving,
  • figuring out what part of the day it is in relation to the sun, or
  • looking to see if a crashed vehicle is smoking,
  • if a pain under your jeans is actually a cut, or
  • if the people with you are becoming mentally unstable.

Don’t forget, one of the most important aspects of situational awareness is knowing what items you have at your disposal. These can include the items in your pockets, pack, vehicle, or house. It also includes anything in your environment around you that can be used to your advantage.

In closing, I hope I have given you some ways not only to help you prepare for emergencies and survival situations but also to help make you a stronger, more skilled and more confident person. These tools and lessons can be applied to anything in life, whether it be training for combat or simply getting back in shape. Just remember that the greatest weapon at your disposal is your own brain. It carries more memory and computing power than any device you can bring out into the field with you. Take advantage of it! And remember…toughen up!

Letter Re: Maintaining Your Household in the Post-SHTF World- Part 2

Hugh,

This was an excellent article from S.T. Sanitation and cleanliness will become a major concern post SHTF. In his writings, JWR has commented on the advantage of having spring water on your property, and we can attest to that. Here’s how it works for us.

Our spring is located up at the head of our holler up behind the house. It is piped into to a 500 gallon holding tank and that is piped down to the house. From there it feeds into a wood-fired water stove (hot water and baseboard heat) as well as all the faucets and toilets. As long as your spring is higher than the roof of your house, it will give you enough water pressure. Our spring flows 500 gallons a day, and you only need 50 gallon per day maximum per adult. So anybody considering land for a survival retreat might want to put a spring at the top of your list. In our part of Appalachia, homes have been running on “mountain water” for generations. Good luck to all – HWS

Economics and Investing:

A New Digital Cash System Was Just Unveiled At A Secret Meeting For Bankers In New York. When cashless, then all purchases and sales are done digitally, and the government can steal from your account and track everything you buy or sell. They “say” it is to prevent drug trafficking. They lie. Use cash. Power out; you can buy with cash or silver. – H.L.

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What OPEC Has To Fear From The New Saudi Oil Minister

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Credit Suisse Posts Loss as CEO Signals Cost-Cuts Progress

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Record-Breaking Container Ship Ends Brief U.S. Service. Excerpt: “It soon became clear the extra capacity wasn’t needed on the Trans-Pacific lane, where a glut of shipping capacity has driven freight rates to record lows.”

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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.

Readers’ Recommendations of the Week:

Reader A.G. recommended The Invisible Front – a story of resistance against Soviet occupation post WWII.

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G.S. suggested the movie The Way – a story about an American ophthalmologist who goes to France following the death of his adult son while walking the Camino de Santiago. The father decides to walk the trail himself while coming to terms with his son’s death.

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DMS usually recommends movies but this week suggested the music of Jordan Feliz. He especially enjoys the song The River

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W.E. recommended the book The War Journal of Major Damon “Rocky” Gause.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Rod Dreher’s latest piece is well worth reading: The Porcupine Option: What Christian conservatives can learn from the Free State Project. (Dreher is well known in conservative circles for his essays on what he calls the Benedict Option–intentional communities for Christians. His plan keys in nicely with The American Redoubt movement.

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Take the Fifth — And Face Life Imprisonment Without a Trial – Submitted by T.Z.

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One of SurvivalBlog’s advertisers was recently mentioned in an interesting article submitted by multiple readers: Prepping for Doomsday: Bunkers, Panic Rooms, and Going Off the Grid

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Here are some useful things you can do with string: 19 Unexpected Life Hacks Using String. The very first one– taking a stuck ring off of your finger– was worth the watch. – Submitted by R.K.

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Having problems with mosquitoes? How about building a Mosquito trap from old tires? – Submitted by T.Z.

Notes for Tuesday – May 10, 2016

May 10th is the birthday of the late Col. Jeff Cooper (born 1920, died September 25, 2006).

May 10th is also the birthday of the late Janis Pinups (born 1925, died 15 June 2007). He was one of the last of the Forest Brothers anti-communist resistance fighters. He came out of hiding, after five decades, to obtain a Latvian passport in 1994, after the collapse of eastern European communism. (He was never issued any communist government identity papers and by necessity lived as a nonexistent ghost during the entire Soviet occupation of Latvia.)

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Safecastle’s huge Lindon Farms food bucket sale is ending May 11. Most all of the great food varieties are between 47 and 53% off, with shipping included!

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Today, we present another entry for Round 64 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The nearly $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A Tactical Self-Contained 2-Series Solar Power Generator system from Always Empowered. This compact starter power system is packaged in a wheeled O.D. green EMP-shielded Pelican hard case (a $1,700 value),
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate that is good for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,195 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper with a hammer forged, chrome-lined barrel and a hard case to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel, which can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools and a compact carry capability in a hard case or 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  5. Gun Mag Warehouse is providing 20 Magpul PMAG 30-rd Magazines (a value of $300) and a Gun Mag Warehouse T-Shirt; (an equivalent prize will be awarded for residents in states with magazine restrictions),
  6. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  7. The Ark Institute is donating a non-GMO, non-hybrid vegetable seed package (enough for two families of four) plus seed storage materials, a CD-ROM of Geri Guidetti’s book “Build Your Ark! How to Prepare for Self Reliance in Uncertain Times”, and two bottles of Potassium Iodate (a $325 retail value),
  8. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  9. KellyKettleUSA.com is donating an AquaBrick water filtration kit with a retail value of $250, and
  10. Two cases of meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value).

Second Prize:

  1. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  2. A transferable certificate for a two-day Ultimate Bug Out Course from Florida Firearms Training (a $400 value),
  3. A Model 175 Series Solar Generator provided by Quantum Harvest LLC (a $439 value),
  4. A Trekker IV™ Four-Person Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $250 value),
  5. A $200 gift certificate good towards any books published by PrepperPress.com,
  6. A pre-selected assortment of military surplus gear from CJL Enterprize (a $300 value),
  7. RepackBox is providing a $300 gift certificate to their site, and
  8. Safecastle is providing a package of 10 LifeStraws (a $200 value)
  9. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Third Prize:

  1. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  2. A $245 gift certificate from custom knife-maker Jon Kelly Designs, of Eureka, Montana,
  3. A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
  4. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  5. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  6. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances,
  7. Montie Gear is donating a Precision Rest (a $249 value), and
  8. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).

Round 64 ends on May 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Readiness Mindset: Your Most Important Survival Tool- Part 1, by B.G.

Whether prepping for a EOTWAWKI situation or any potential disaster or emergency in everyday life, the most important and powerful tool at your disposal is your own mind. A person can have all of the fanciest survival gear and equipment, but without the proper mindset and training it is all nothing more than a cool looking, expensive pile of useless junk. Even a person who has studied countless books, guides, and manuals for every survival situation imaginable can be rendered completely inept in the moment of an emergency, when all that knowledge is needed the most.

If you wish to avoid being one of those who either freezes up in indecision or breaks down under the stress of the moment, then you’ll need to cultivate a mental and emotional toughness that will get you through any circumstances life may throw at you. With the proper knowledge, practice, and training, you too will be able to train your brain to:

  • maintain your composure during high-stress situations,
  • quickly adapt to new and rapidly changing events around you,
  • lessen the shock and crippling terror caused by extreme circumstances, and
  • strengthen your ability to think effectively during an emergency.

The other most important skill to learn in the area of mental preparedness is to teach yourself how to remain positive and to avoid letting yourself slip into the different kinds of negative thinking that will greatly hamper your ability to successfully handle emergency situations.

Cultivate a strong mental toughness.

First things first, everybody has a breaking point! Whether it is something as traumatizing as seeing a loved one killed in front of you or the frustration and hopelessness of being trapped somewhere for days or even weeks on end, each individual person has a limit to how much they can endure psychologically. The trick to improving your readiness mindset is to push this limit further and further before some kind of disaster or emergency occurs. Just like the saying, “the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle,” this is also true of your mental strength. Some would have everyone else, and even themselves for that matter, believe that they are the toughest, hardest person to walk the Earth and that nothing could ever break them. Many times, these are the same people that freeze up or shut down when a high-intensity situation actually presents itself. Never have too much pride to admit that you can always learn more and constantly improve your skills. There is no such thing as a finish line in training! You can always be stronger, faster, tougher, and smarter!

This brings us to the first rule of mental preparedness: be realistic. If you are filling yourself with false bravado and acting as if you have no need for strengthening your mental mindset, you are only depriving yourself. Unfortunately, this attitude can get you and the people around you injured or killed. It is better to keep an open mind and be receptive to learning anything and everything you can than to be stuck in a real life emergency and realize that you have no clue what to do. Not only that, but you are just as likely to do the wrong thing, which could also cause more harm than good. Being a hot-shot and acting as though you know everything will only make you look stupid and force you to waste time and energy on fruitless endeavors. Don’t guess; know! Don’t assume, just because you are smart, that you can just “figure it out” as you go. There is no substitute for knowledge and experience.

Another part of being realistic involves knowing your own physical and mental limitations. For example: don’t assume you can fight off an attacker if you have never had any kind of self-defense training or experience. Don’t lie to yourself. Just because you’ve seen fighting on TV or you may have even read one of those hand-to-hand combat guides, it doesn’t mean you’ll magically be an expert the first time you try it for real. If you have never done something before, don’t just assume that a surge of adrenaline will give you some kind of super powers to do it later. This is a good way to get yourself killed or injured.

Along with being realistic is knowing your limits. Test yourself. If you are serious about preparing for any kind of emergency or survival, you should be training yourself physically as well as mentally. In doing so, you will learn what your physical limits and capabilities are. Plan your survival strategies accordingly.

Mentally push yourself.

The number one way to increase your mental preparedness and mental strength is to push your mental limits. To do so, you need to get out of your comfort zone. Some examples of this would be:

  • read a book, instead of watching TV;
  • walk or ride a bike to the store, instead of driving;
  • eat healthier foods, even if you didn’t previously like the taste;
  • wake up earlier to go for a jog before work; and
  • drink water (preferably filtered water) instead of pop.

These are just a few simple things you can do to overcome your mental complacency and make yourself more adaptable to any situation. The goal is to train your brain to be more willing to do whatever needs to be done and to break your psychological resistance to doing things that may seem hard or unpleasant. This way, should you ever be in an actual survival situation, you will be more mentally prepared to do whatever you have to do to survive.

Another aspect of strengthening your mental toughness is to push past those thoughts and feelings of wanting to stop. For example, before getting out of the shower, turn the water temperature to cold and push yourself to do it longer each time. This will not only increase your mental strength but also your mind will get used to the feeling of “shock” from the cold water. One day, should you ever find yourself in a situation where maybe you fall through the ice atop a pond, you will be used to the initial shock of the cold water and will be able to react quicker. Remember, the point is to train your brain to be used to any situation that may come at you.

This also includes building “muscle memory”. Obviously, your muscles do not possess an actual memory of their own. It is the brain that remembers specific muscle movement that has been repeated thousands of times. It is said that it takes repeating something 2,500 times for it to become muscle memory, or instinctual. Think about something you do, or have done, for years. Whether it be riding a bike, typing, starting your car, or opening a can of pop. Over years of doing these things, it almost feels as though your body is in auto-pilot because you have done it the same way over and over again to the point where you don’t even have to think about it to do it. This same technique can be used to prepare yourself for survival scenarios.

By practicing something over and over, you will train your brain to be used to the situation. Then, when the real thing happens, you will already be used to what you are supposed to do. This will make it easier to focus your mind on other details. This is why soldiers and sports players run drills repeatedly. This way, when it comes time to do it for real, it is burned into their memory, giving them the ability to focus on other specific details unique to the moment. In addition, you will be much calmer and more confident in yourself, knowing that you’ve practiced many different scenarios, thereby making you that much more able to handle any emergency that may occur.

Out of all of the possible survival skills and tools that a person can acquire, mental preparedness is not only the most important, but it has the added benefit of being free. One need not spend exorbitant amounts of money or have any storage space limitations for this set of tools. In addition, the more you strengthen your mentality and thinking skills, the less money you will end up spending on things that you could possibly do without. For example: there are many tools and items that it may seem like you need but can be improvised if given the proper knowledge and practice. Someone with an extensive set of survival skills can be dropped into the forest with nothing more than a knife and flint and can take care of all of his basic needs by using these two simple tools. He can fashion weapons, make shelter, hunt/kill/cook food, distill water, and even make clothing. He can do all of this with two simple tools, the skills and knowledge to put them to use, and the mental strength and will to survive.

What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger…if you let it.

For me personally, I have gained more mental strength from the hardships, trials, and tribulations I have endured throughout my life. The trick is to analyze the situation afterwards. What did you do that helped get you through it? How did you keep your mind from shutting down or giving up? What seemed to help your attitude at the time?

It’s easy to understand how somebody who has never experienced any hardships in their life could break down under the pressure of an emergency. Likewise, someone who is used to hard situations won’t find it all that shocking when another one presents itself. For example: someone who is used to going out into the wilderness alone with nobody else to rely on may not only find himself absent any sense of being overwhelmed if they became stranded miles away from civilization, but they could even find that they are comfortable in that situation. Conditioning is just as important from a mental standpoint as it is physically, more so even, in my opinion.

Another benefit of having experienced difficult situations is that you can look back at those experiences and tell yourself that you’ve been through worse; that this is nothing compared to that; or that if you could make it through the difficulty of the past you can make it through this challenge. I’m not suggesting that anyone purposely put themselves in dangerous or life and death situations on purpose; however, what you can do is to incrementally increase the difficulty of your training. Push yourself to walk farther than you think you can. Teach yourself to navigate without a compass. Force yourself to remain hidden in one spot for as many hours as you can. These are just a couple of examples of things you can do to train yourself for possible survival scenarios. The mental toughness training will come from the fact that at some point during these exercises, your brain will begin trying to convince you to give up. It is only when you push through these thoughts that you begin to strengthen your mental (and often, physical) preparedness.