Tag: Survival Skills

Leveling Up in the Apocalypse: What Games Can (and Can’t) Teach You About Survival

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Let’s get the disappointing part out of the way: a thousand hours of zombie shooters will not make you good at surviving zombies. Aiming a controller is not aiming anything else, games pause when you need a snack, and nobody in a game ever gets a blister that becomes infected. But games are very good at training certain habits of mind, and some of them model survival with surprising honesty. Here is what they can teach you, what they can’t, and which games are worth your time.

Habits games genuinely build

  • Inventory triage. Survival games force you to decide what is worth carrying, which is the same question you face packing a go-bag. Weight limits teach you that the tenth tool is worth less than a second liter of water.
  • Planning ahead under scarcity. Resource-management games reward the player who thinks three days out: food before you’re hungry, fuel before it’s cold.
  • Cooperation. Co-op games make you assign roles, communicate clearly and cover for each other. Groups survive better than individuals, in games and out of them.
  • Calm under pressure. Repeatedly failing and trying again builds a tolerance for setbacks, which is not nothing.

Skills no game can teach

Physical fitness, first aid, finding and purifying water, fire-starting in the rain, basic repairs, gardening, and the ability to walk fifteen miles with a pack. These are learned with your hands and your feet, and no amount of crafting menus will substitute for them. Play the games, then go practice the real thing.

Video games worth playing

This War of Mine (2014). You play ordinary civilians in a besieged city, not soldiers. You scavenge at night, ration food, and make moral choices that the game never lets you forget. It is the most honest survival game ever made, and it is not fun in the usual sense. Play it anyway.

The Long Dark (2017). Alone in the Canadian wilderness after a mysterious disaster, you manage cold, hunger, thirst, fatigue and wildlife. Its attention to calories, clothing layers and the danger of a twisted ankle is closer to real wilderness survival than anything else on this list.

Frostpunk (2018). A city-builder set in a frozen world, where you run the last human settlement and decide what laws it lives by. It is a sharp lesson in how a community’s survival can cost its humanity.

Project Zomboid. A zombie survival game obsessed with the boring details that matter: boarding windows, learning to cook from skill books, and eating perishables before the power fails.

Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. Pure co-op chaos, and a crash course in communication. Teams that call out threats live; teams that run off alone die.

The Fallout series. Less about survival mechanics than about what comes after: the factions, scavenger economies and strange new societies that rise from a ruined world. Its optional survival modes add hunger, thirst and sleep if you want them.

The Oregon Trail. The original lesson in how ordinary illness, broken equipment and bad river crossings kill more travelers than any villain.

Tabletop games worth playing

Pandemic. A cooperative board game in which you work together to contain spreading diseases. It teaches the difference between treating symptoms and solving problems, and it makes coordination feel urgent.

Catan. Trading and negotiation, which is the economy you will actually have after the money stops working. You will also learn which of your friends hoards sheep.

Dungeons & Dragons. Collaborative problem-solving with incomplete information, and practice at talking your way out of a fight, which is the best way to win one.

Risk. Mostly a lesson in how overextended empires collapse. Take notes.

Board games have one more advantage: they work without electricity. Keep a few in your emergency supplies. A deck of cards weighs almost nothing and has entertained people through every disaster in history.

Which game do you think best prepares people for the end of the world? Make your case in the comments.

Map-Making 101: How to Map Your Own Neighborhood for the Apocalypse

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Your phone’s map works because of satellites, cell towers, servers and a battery, and any one of those failing turns it into a blank screen. A paper map works forever, and a map you drew yourself contains things no printed map ever will: which fence has a gap, which creek still runs in August, which house has a dog. Here is how to make one, using nothing more than paper, a pencil, a compass and your own feet.

Start with a real map

Don’t begin from a blank page. Print or buy a paper map of your area first, ideally a topographic one; the US Geological Survey offers its topo maps free to download and print. Use it as your base layer and add your own knowledge on top, or trace the roads and rivers onto your own sheet. Keep the printed one too.

Gear

  • A baseplate compass, the flat clear kind with a rotating dial, which costs about as much as a sandwich
  • Graph paper, so you can keep a consistent scale
  • Pencils (they work wet and erase) and a fine waterproof pen for final lines
  • A ruler or the edge of the compass
  • A clipboard or a stiff folder, and a zip-top bag for rain

Measure distance with your pace count

Surveyors and soldiers measure distance on foot by counting steps. Mark out 100 meters (or 100 yards) on flat ground, walk it at a normal pace, and count every time your left foot lands. Most adults land somewhere around 60 to 70. That number is your pace count. Now any distance you walk can be measured: 130 counts is about 200 meters. Expect your count to rise on hills, in mud and in the dark, and recheck it with a full pack.

Get your directions right

Use the compass to take a bearing on each road, trail or landmark as you go. One wrinkle matters: a compass points to magnetic north, not true north, and the difference, called declination, can be more than 15 degrees depending on where you live. Printed topo maps list it in the margin, and NOAA publishes it online for any location. Write your local declination on your map so you never have to look it up again.

Mark what matters

A survival map is about what you can find and what you should avoid. Make a simple legend and mark:

  • Water: creeks, ponds, springs, rain barrels and public spigots, with a note on whether they run year-round
  • Shelter: sturdy buildings, overpasses, barns and anything with a roof that a group could reach
  • Resources: pharmacies, hardware stores, gas stations, fruit trees, community gardens
  • Help: fire stations, hospitals, schools and churches that serve as shelters, and neighbors with useful skills
  • Hazards: fuel storage, chemical plants, rail lines, flood zones, dams, steep slopes and bridges that might be closed or fail
  • Rally points: where your household meets if you are separated, near home and outside the neighborhood

Plan your routes

Draw at least three ways out of your neighborhood, in different directions, and at least two routes from work or school to home. Walk them. You will find that the obvious route crosses a highway with no pedestrian crossing, or that a promising shortcut ends at a locked gate. Mark your walking times on each route.

Use color, carefully

Color makes a map readable at a glance: blue for water, green for resources, red for hazards. But one in twelve men has some form of color blindness, and colors fade, so give every color a symbol too. A red skull is clear to everyone.

Protect it, copy it, update it

Laminate the finished map or keep it in a waterproof sleeve, and make copies for everyone in your household and one for your go-bag. Then update it twice a year. Stores close, trees fall and creeks dry up, and a confidently wrong map is worse than none.

Have you made a map of your area? Tell us in the comments what surprised you most when you walked it.

Apocalypse Crafts: DIY Projects That Actually Help (and a Few That Only Look Cool)

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The internet is full of apocalypse craft projects, and a surprising number of them would get you killed or simply not work. So here is our list of DIY projects worth starting now, while the hardware store is still open, each with an honest note on what it actually does. At the end are a few crowd favorites that look great on a post-apocalyptic mood board and do very little else.

Worth making

1. A rain barrel. A food-grade barrel under a downspout, with a screen on top to keep out leaves and mosquitoes, will collect a startling amount of water: a little over half a gallon (about 0.6) per square foot of roof per inch of rain. Treat it as garden and washing water by default. Before you drink it, filter it and then boil or disinfect it, because roofs collect bird droppings and whatever the shingles are made of.

2. A layered water filter. Gravel, sand and crushed charcoal in a cut-down bottle will clear out sediment and improve taste and smell. It will not reliably remove bacteria, viruses or parasites. Use it as the first stage, then boil the water for a full minute (three minutes at high altitude) or treat it with disinfecting tablets.

3. A first aid kit you actually understand. Building your own kit is better than buying one, because you learn what everything is for. Start with adhesive bandages, gauze, medical tape, an elastic wrap, antiseptic, tweezers, pain relievers, any prescriptions you depend on, and a card listing everyone’s allergies. Then take a first aid course, because a kit is only as good as the hands using it.

4. An upgraded go-bag. A backpack packed with water, a filter, food for three days, a flashlight with spare batteries, a multi-tool, a rain layer, copies of important documents and some cash. The craft part is fitting it to you: pack it, wear it for a long walk, then take out everything you resented carrying.

5. A reinforced safe room. A closet or interior room with a solid-core door, long screws in the hinges and strike plate, and a supply of water and light inside. The best upgrades are boring ones: three-inch screws that reach the wall stud make a door far harder to kick in.

6. A dehydrated food stash. A dehydrator (or an oven on its lowest setting) turns surplus fruit, vegetables and lean meat into food that lasts months. Vacuum sealing extends that further. Label everything with the date, and rotate it into your normal meals so nothing quietly goes bad.

7. A beginner’s garden. Start with things that forgive mistakes: radishes, lettuce, bush beans, zucchini and potatoes. Food-safe containers work fine on a balcony. The real skill is learning your own growing season, and that takes a year or two, which is why you start now.

8. Paracord gear. Standard 550 paracord has seven inner strands you can pull out for thread, fishing line or snare wire. A bracelet or belt woven from it is a convenient way to carry ten to twenty feet of strong cord everywhere you go.

9. A needle compass. Stroke a sewing needle along a magnet in one direction twenty or thirty times, lay it on a leaf floating in still water, and it will turn to point north and south. You will need the sun or stars to tell which end is which. Practice it now, because a craft you have never tried is a craft you cannot do under stress.

10. Soap. Cold-process soap is made from oils and lye, and it is genuinely useful for hygiene. Lye is caustic, though, so learn from a proper soap-making guide, wear gloves and eye protection, and never improvise the measurements.

Popular, but don’t count on them

  • Can-tab chainmail. It looks fantastic and protects you from almost nothing. Wear it for style.
  • Garden-light phone chargers. The tiny panels on solar garden lights are made to trickle-charge a small battery. They cannot meaningfully charge a phone. A real folding solar panel made for devices is cheap and works.
  • The solar still. The classic dig-a-pit-and-cover-it-with-plastic still produces somewhere between a few spoonfuls and a cup or two of water a day in most conditions, often less than the sweat you lose digging it. It’s a fun experiment and a poor water plan.
  • Home distilling. Building a still to make alcohol without a permit is illegal in the US, and a badly run still can concentrate methanol, which causes blindness. Store a few bottles of something you like instead.

What projects have you actually built and tested? Tell us in the comments, especially the ones that failed. Those are the most useful stories.

Choosing the Best Shoes for the Apocalypse (and Keeping Your Feet Alive in Them)

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When the cars stop and the transit shuts down, your feet become your only transportation, and a blister you would shrug off today can become an infected wound that stops you cold. Armies have known this forever: soldiers are taught foot care because a unit that can’t walk can’t do anything. Here is how to choose shoes for the apocalypse, and how to keep the feet inside them working.

Choosing your shoes

  • Fit beats everything. The best boot in the world will cripple you if it doesn’t fit. Shop in the afternoon, when feet are slightly swollen, and wear the socks you’ll actually use.
  • Break them in now. Stiff new boots raise blisters. Wear them on walks for a few weeks before you ever need to rely on them.
  • Boots or trail shoes? Hiking boots support ankles and protect against debris; trail running shoes are lighter and dry faster. For walking over rubble or broken glass, boots with a sturdy sole win. For long distances on roads, many people prefer lighter shoes.
  • Waterproof has a trade-off. Waterproof membranes keep rain out but also trap sweat, and once water gets in over the top, they are slow to dry. In wet climates, some hikers choose quick-drying shoes and accept wet feet.
  • Look at the soles. Deep, grippy lugs for mud and slopes; stiff soles for rocks and debris. A worn-out sole is a slip waiting to happen.
  • Keep a pair everywhere. At home, in the car, and under your desk at work. The shoes you’re wearing when disaster strikes are the ones you’ll walk home in.

Socks matter as much as shoes

Wool socks, merino especially, stay warm when wet, wick sweat away from the skin and resist odor. Cotton socks hold moisture against your feet, which causes blisters and cold. Carry at least one spare pair and rotate them, drying the damp pair on the outside of your pack.

Foot care in the field

  • Treat hot spots immediately. The moment you feel rubbing, stop and cover the spot with tape or moleskin. A minute now saves days later.
  • Keep feet dry. Take boots off and air your feet at rest stops, and dry them thoroughly every night.
  • Trim toenails straight across to prevent ingrown nails, which can become infected.
  • Watch for infection: spreading redness, heat, swelling or pus around a blister needs attention.

A history lesson: trench foot

During World War I, soldiers standing for days in cold, waterlogged trenches developed trench foot: numb, swollen feet whose tissue began to die from prolonged wet and cold, even without freezing temperatures. It disabled huge numbers of troops until armies enforced dry socks, foot inspections and rubbing feet with whale oil. The lesson still holds. Wet feet for days will cripple you, so dry them at every chance.

And yes, style

Function comes first, but there’s no rule against boots you like looking at. You’ll be wearing them a lot. A pair of bright laces is a small, cheerful act of defiance against the end of the world.

What’s on your feet right now, and could you walk twenty miles in it? Be honest in the comments.

Icebreakers for Survivors: How to Meet Strangers and Build Trust After the End

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Icebreakers have a bad reputation, thanks to years of awkward work meetings. But after the end of the world, meeting strangers stops being optional. New people turn up at your door, groups merge, and everyone has to decide quickly who can be trusted with the water supply. The awkward get-to-know-you game turns out to be an old and serious survival skill. Here is how to break the ice when the stakes are real.

First meetings

When strangers arrive, slow everything down. Meet outside your shelter, in daylight, with a few people present. Offer water before questions; it costs little and sets the tone. Then let people talk. Where they came from, what they saw on the way and what they know how to do will tell you most of what you need.

Icebreakers that do real work

1. Skills round. Everyone names one thing they know how to do and one thing they’d like to learn. You’ll find your future medic, mechanic and cook in five minutes, and everyone gets to be useful immediately.

2. Show and tell. Each person shares the one object they carried from their old life and why. It’s a quick, gentle way to learn about someone, and people rarely lie about the thing they chose to save.

3. Two truths and a lie. Silly on the surface, and quietly useful: you learn how people tell stories, and how good they are at bluffing.

4. Apocalypse trivia. Questions about survival skills, local geography and old pop culture. It’s a game, a test of practical knowledge, and the start of a lot of arguments about movies.

5. Survivor superlatives. After a few weeks together, vote on awards: Best Scavenger, Most Likely to Fix Anything, Worst Snorer. It turns shared hardship into shared jokes, which is how groups bond.

6. The bucket list. Everyone names something they want to do in the new world. It moves conversation past survival to hope, which newcomers need as much as food.

Trust takes time

Icebreakers start relationships; they don’t prove anything. Wise groups extend trust in steps: newcomers share meals first, then work, then watch duty, and only later get keys to the stores. Pair new arrivals with a long-time member who can show them the ropes, and give them a real job right away. People who feel useful and welcomed rarely want to leave or cause trouble.

Keeping in touch at a distance

Before the collapse, our version of this post was about video calls. Afterward, the closest equivalent is radio. Amateur radio operators run regular “nets,” scheduled on-air meetings where stations check in one at a time, report news and pass messages. A scattered network of survivor groups can do exactly the same with a few radios and an agreed time. See our apocalypse skills guide for getting started with radio.

What would you ask a stranger before you let them into your group? Tell us in the comments.

Apocalypse Skills: Twelve Things Worth Learning Now, From the Obvious to the Obscure

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Skills are the one survival supply that weighs nothing, never expires and can’t be stolen. They also take time to learn, which is exactly what you will not have once things go wrong. Here are twelve worth starting now, roughly in order of how often they will matter, with a concrete first step for each.

The essentials

1. First aid and CPR. The most valuable skill on this list, because injuries are the most common emergency of all. For an adult in cardiac arrest, hands-only CPR means pushing hard and fast in the center of the chest, about two inches deep at 100 to 120 compressions a minute. Learn it properly, along with how to control serious bleeding and apply a tourniquet. First step: take an in-person first aid and CPR class through the Red Cross or a local hospital.

2. Making fire. Lighters and matches are best, so carry several. Then learn a ferrocerium rod, which throws hot sparks even when wet, and practice building a fire that catches: tinder, then pencil-thin kindling, then larger fuel. Friction methods like the bow drill are worth trying once to learn how hard they are. First step: light a fire with a ferro rod in your backyard or a fire pit, then try again in damp weather.

3. Finding and purifying water. Know where water is near your home and how to make it safe: filter out sediment, then boil it for a minute or use disinfecting tablets. First step: find the nearest creek or pond on a map and figure out how you would get water home from it.

4. Growing food. A garden takes a season or two to learn because every yard has its own soil, light and pests. First step: plant one easy crop this year, such as bush beans or potatoes, and keep notes.

5. Preserving food. Drying, salting, fermenting and canning turn a good harvest into winter meals. Canning comes with one serious rule: low-acid foods like vegetables, beans and meat must be pressure-canned, because a water bath does not get hot enough to prevent botulism. First step: make one batch of refrigerator pickles or dried fruit, then follow a tested recipe from the USDA or the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

The practical

6. Knots. Four knots cover most situations: the bowline (a loop that won’t slip), the clove hitch (tying to a post), the taut-line hitch (an adjustable tent line) and the sheet bend (joining two ropes). First step: practice each one until you can tie it with your eyes closed.

7. Basic vehicle care. Changing a tire, jump-starting a battery, checking the oil and finding a leak will keep you moving. First step: change one of your own tires in the driveway before you ever have to do it on a highway shoulder.

8. Navigation without GPS. Read a paper map, use a compass, and find north at night. In the Northern Hemisphere, follow the two stars at the end of the Big Dipper’s bowl upward to Polaris, the North Star. First step: buy a paper map of your county and find the North Star from your yard.

9. Sewing and mending. Clothes, packs, tents and boots all tear, and new ones may not exist. A needle, strong thread and a few basic stitches will keep gear in service for years. First step: repair the next thing that rips instead of throwing it away.

The obscure

10. Radio. When phones and internet fail, amateur (ham) radio still works, and it is how emergency news travels after major disasters. In the US you need an FCC license to transmit, and the entry-level Technician license is a multiple-choice exam. First step: buy a cheap handheld scanner or emergency radio and listen first.

11. Moving quietly. Whatever you are avoiding, noise gives you away. Walk heel to toe, test the ground before shifting your weight, tape down anything in your pack that rattles, and learn the hand signals your group will use. First step: pack your go-bag and walk around the house without it making a sound.

12. Duct tape repairs. Not glamorous, but duct tape will patch a tarp, splint a broken tent pole, seal a leaky boot and hold a blister bandage in place. First step: wrap a few yards of it around a water bottle or a pencil so it is always in your pack.

Which skill would you add? Tell us in the comments, along with the one you are learning right now.

Survival Skills Checklist: First Aid and CPR [Certified CHECK]

Posted on by tavia.

Resource Roundup [6/21]

Posted on by Safety and Survival Council

America

Are you fat enough to survive the zombie apocalypse?

Howard Schneider takes an odd look at politicians to determine if they’re fat enough to survive the apocalypse…

Governor of New Jersey at a town hall in Hills...
Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, at a town hall in Hillsborough, NJ 3/2/11 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If they’re super-fit and fat-free, are they better off when the dead rise?

Or would New Jersey’s Republican governor, Chris Christie — the self-proclaimed “healthiest fat guy you’ve ever seen” — fare better in a food-deprived environment with his stored surplus energy?

Might our female politicians — say, a comfortable-in-the-wild Sarah Palin or Iraq veteran Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) — tap their survival skills, as well as women’s generally higher body-fat percentages, and take control?

What about President Obama? Thin, yes, but not in that amped-up way that makes you think he’d fall apart if he had to hunker down for a couple of days without a GNC JackedPack.

[via The Washington Post]

 

Canada

Flooding hits Alberta province, forces 75,000 people from their homes in Calgary

Oh no. Pray for Char and the moose and the other Canadians — even Chad and Avril–, it looks like the earth is rearing up to wash away the plague that is humanity (specifically Canadians)…

[via CNN.com]

 

Great Britain

Official Trailer for Cockneys vs Zombies (Coming to the US August 2nd 2013)

Who’d win in a fight, a zombie or your granddad? What about a race? These are the deep questions that will be answered in the upcoming Cockneys vs Zombies.

COCKNEY
A native of the East End of London, born within hearing of the ringing of the Bow Bells

ZOMBIE
A supernatural power or spell that according to voodoo belief can enter into and reanimate a corpse

SYNOPSIS
The Bow Bells Care Home is under threat and the McGuire’s – Andy, Terry, and Katy – need to find some way to keep their grandfather and his friends in the East End, where they belong. But, when you’re robbing a bank, zombie invasions makes things a lot harder. And let’s face it, they need all the help they can get when their bank-robbing experts turn out to be Mental Mickey and Davey Tuppance. As contractors to an East London building site unlock a 350-year old vault full of seriously hungry zombies, the East End has suddenly gone to hell and the Cockney way of life is under threat. Equipped with all the guns and ammo they can carry, it’s up to the gang to save the hostages, their grandfather, and East London from zombie Armageddon.

[via Hulu]

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Apocalyptic Entertainment: Terra Nova

Posted on by Safety and Survival Council
Fair warning:

I find it hard to get on-board with shows where the first person to die is Unnamed Black Bad Guy. Quickly followed by the group to teenage idiots suffering the serious injuries of Frantic Black Girl Who Flees and Black Guy Who Serves as Useless Main Character’s Shield.

Do you ever watch a new show and get the feeling you shouldn’t get too attached because it won’t last? Thinking in the back of your mind, maybe six other people in the entire world are watching this.

This is how I feel about Terra Nova. I’ll watch for as long as they air it; though I’m not expecting that to be longer than half a season. Why? Because it’s really expensive and just really okay.

The story and characters aren’t so gripping and compelling that I’m forgetting to eat or even forgetting to fold laundry so I can pay full attention.

The family the show focuses on is a family of five and I can only remember the name of the youngest daughter –because she’s a source of conflict by existing. She had maybe five lines, but Mom, Dad, Daughter 1, and Son are just not super engaging.

Continue reading “Apocalyptic Entertainment: Terra Nova”

Being selected by natural selection

Posted on by char

Despite what some people think of him and his theories, Darwin was definitely onto something when he came up with natural selection. He was right, too—only those who’ve adapted enough to survive in a particular environment will, well, survive.

If you think about it, post-apocalyptic Earth will be natural selection come to life. People who can’t adapt to their new environment will die. Or they’ll be eaten by zombies, turned into vampires, or assimilated by aliens and/or evil robots. Either way, they won’t be around to share their lack of survival skills.

If you’ve managed to live long enough to get to the post apocalypse (meaning you didn’t die during the apocalypse itself), then you’ve got a leg up already. Congratulations, you’re one of the survivors. But don’t think this means things are going to get easier. Oh no, the hard part’s just begun.

Because now, you have to stay alive.

Good luck with that.

Continue reading “Being selected by natural selection”