Destiny Survival

Archive for the ‘Family Survival School’ Category

Even though gas prices aren’t as high as last summer, a lot of people are cutting back on vacation plans and staying home.  “Staycation” is the new term for it.  My thanks to a recent edition of Mary Hunt’s Everyday Cheapskate newsletter for several of the following suggestions to help make your “staycation” successful..  I’ve modified some of them so they’re oriented for survival preparedness.

First, make a plan.  Decide when you’ll be doing this.  Get the kids involved in planning activities.

            Let friends and family know, then be unavailable just as you would be on a travel trip.  Don’t let in intrusions from friends or work.

            Think like a tourist and a survival camper.  What activities can you do locally that you haven’t done?  Have fun, but be strategic, too.  How well do you know local geography, such as back roads, waterways, etc.?  Are there places near you that could have advantages for survival if things get crazy?  Are there areas to avoid?

            Change the rules.  Break the normal routine.  Shut off access to electronics and gadgets.  Eat different food than you normally would.  Try out dehydrated food, emergency food bars and MRE’s.

Camp out.  Pitch a tent and build a fire pit in the back yard.

            Make this a genuine family time.  Give attention to one another.  Talk.  Tell stories.  Read books aloud.  Think how you’d get along with one another without radio, TV, computers, cell phones, etc.

            Preserve the memories.  Take pictures and make a scrapbook if you like.  You may look back one day and realize you not only had a lot of fun, but you’ll see what great preparation this was.

            For more ideas on turning preparedness into fun family activities, click here for a free report, normally valued at $14.97.  It contains practical activities you can do on the weekend or rainy afternoons to build preparedness skills and family ties.

            Or click here for camping tips from the Camping Guy to make your next camping experience even better.

            Earlier this summer we featured Survival Sally’s series of seven articles called “Family Survival School”.  They pass along 27 suggestions for activities you and your family can do together to develop or enhance your survival skills.  Now, you can have these same 27 tips in one place, and there’s no cost to you.  That’s right.  This $14.97 e-booklet is yours absolutely free!

Among the activities, you’ll discover some  are fun and some are challenging; but the objective is to discover practical new ways of being prepared.  For example, how well could you go for a day or the whole weekend without electricity or electronic devices?  What survival supplies could you purchase from the coupons and ads in the Sunday paper?  How well can you and your children identify edible wild plants and animals?  Those are just three hints about the family activities you’ll discover in “Family Survival School”.  You can do any or all of these 27 activities.  Give one or two a try this weekend.

Of course, in “Family Survival School” there are no quizzes or grades.  Life will present you with enough tests.

            You can get your free copy of “Family Survival School”—valued at $14.97–simply by filling in your name and e-mail address in the upper part of the right sidebar on this page.  Plus, you’ll discover you get a bonus when you get your e-booklet, and everybody likes a little icing on the cake.  So, get your free copy of “Family Survival School” right away.  Start strengthening family bonds while at the same time you’re preparing for survival.

            Here we are again with another session of Family Survival School with suggestions to get your family members involved in preparing for survival.  I hope you’ll try at least one of these activities with your family this weekend.  Ready?  Here we go!

Call a family meeting and set a number of survival goals to work on for one year.  If you like, set goals for a month first, then set goals for the next three months, and so on, until you think you can plan for a year.  The idea is to set goals you can reach.  Write up your goals on a big poster chart and put it in a visible location, such as in the kitchen or dining room.  Have each family member take responsibility for various goals.  You know best what little ones are capable of doing.  Be sure to post updates regularly on the chart.  For example, put a star by your child’s name each week she learns to tie a new knot.  Use your imagination.  Be creative and have fun with this!

Spend a day visiting a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen.  You don’t have to volunteer.  For now, just see how it works and who they serve.  Many of the people you will meet who are having a rough time of it may have survival knowledge to share from their life’s experiences.

You may recall in a previous session we talked about doing without electronic gadgets for the day or the weekend.  Now take things a step further and expand on that idea.  Make a list of everyday things you could do without.  Think of things we take for granted.  Then spend a day doing without them for practice.  Do this several different times.  For example, go a day without running water.  Consider where you’d get water and how you can best use what little you would have access to.  Keep the car in the garage and walk, bike, or take the bus or cab if you need to go somewhere.  Again, use your imagination and do your best to be resourceful.  Get used to the idea of being deprived and making do.  Remember, this is preparation for survival.  One day we may be forced to do without a number of things we think we just have to have.

            Well, that’s it.  This is our last session of Family Survival School for now.  Oh, that’s not the end of the tips you’ll see here on John’s blog, you can be sure of that, so keep checking in to see what’s new.  There might be another Family Survival School session later, but it is the end of this series.

As I said in an earlier post, there won’t be any quiz.  Do you think you got a passing grade?  Well, you’ll know soon enough.  Life puts us all through enough tests, doesn’t it?  And the way things are going these days with things changing so fast, we all may be tested in ways we hadn’t thought of.  So, be ready.  Like the slogan at the top of this page says, “Survival—It’s about living!”

Click here for Part 6.

            Time for a few more suggestions you and your family can do together to pick up or improve survival skills.  One of the tips this week is especially good for home schoolers.

            Plant a garden, no matter how small.  Involve the whole family.  Of course, you probably already thought of that one, especially if you’ve looked at this blog much at all in the past few weeks.  If you’re a first timer, get all the knowledge you can.  Some of it won’t make sense until you’ve had some experience, but you know that’s just the way so much of life goes.  Don’t worry about how small your gardening efforts are.  Every little bit helps, even if it is growing a couple of herbs in a window sill.  If nothing else, it’s good for the soul.  Plants can really boost morale.

            Pick a room in your house and completely stock it for one year.  For example, you might pick the master bathroom and buy enough toilet paper, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, razors, Qtips, and the like to supply it for one year.  Do this for a different room each week or each month and before you know it, you’ll have quite the stockpile which will see you through any emergency.

Have everyone in the family research survival topics for one day.  Document their

findings, then report what they found out at a family meeting the next day.  This will help each one to learn more about survival.   It will especially help the kids with research, documentation, and giving reports.  If you’re home schooling, this can all be counted for school work.

            One very important survival topic is first aid.  Practice first aid skills and put together a first aid kit. After a disaster has shut down everything, especially if one of the children is ill, you don’t want to be reading a first aid handbook, wishing you had been better prepared.  Practice these important first aid skills this weekend so everyone has a basic knowledge of what to do.  Get books or a knowledgeable friend to help.

            John Wanted me to tell you that Nitro-Pak has a good first aid kit for 1-14 people.  It’s the "Group Outfitter" Outdoorsman First-Aid Kit.  Though the name says it’s for outdoorsmen, don’t kid yourself.  If things get really rough, we may all be living as if we’re camping out.  Small wounds or cuts can become life threatening if not properly cleaned and dressed.  This full-sized kit from Nitro-Pak is ideal for everything from base camps for hunting parties, scout camps, family camping trips, group backpacking or fishing trips.  It will surely serve your needs in disaster situations.

            This "Group Outfitter" Outdoorsman First-Aid Kit is designed to cover the most common injuries that can happen when you’re in the outdoors or during an emergency.  You get what you need to deal with sprains, strains, cuts, scrapes, open wounds, burns, fractures, hunting gunshot and arrow wounds, fishhook removal & treatment, and much more.  It comes with the Comprehensive Guide to Wilderness Medicine.  Discover improvised techniques on what to do when you don’t have what you need.  Know when to worry and get professional medical help.

            Click on the logo for Nitro-Pak and type the words First Aid Kits in their home page search box.  You’ll see the "Group Outfitter" Outdoorsman First-Aid Kit pictured with other kits on the page.  Click on the picture if you want to read more about what this kit includes because there’s just way too much to mention here.  This is a kit you and your family won’t want to be without.

            See you for more Family Survival School next week!

Click here for part 5.

            John asked me if I could do our little session a day early this week, just in case you’re able to do some of these activities with your family over the three day weekend.  Of course, I said that was no problem.  I’m happy to do it any time.

            As with all of the other suggestions in this series, they’re meant to be done with the whole family.  I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed.  You don’t have to do all of these at once.  Try one or two each weekend over the summer.

How long has it been since you put your bugout bags together?  If it’s been a few months, it’s a good idea to dump out everyone’s bags then repack them making sure the clothes still fit, especially for growing children.  Test batteries to see if they’re still good.  If not, replace them.  If they’re somewhat low, use them up in other things around the house, such as radios, toys, and such.  Check food items to see if they’re still edible.  You shouldn’t have to worry about long term storage items, unless it’s really, really been a long time since you’ve looked things over.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, check for anything that’s outdated and replace it.  You might even think of something else to include that you don’t have in your bags already.

Buy, rent, or borrow an item and take a day to teach the whole family how to use it.  items may include a compass, metal detector, GPS, and so on.  Really, when you think about it, there’s always something new to learn or discover when you’re making survival preparations and acquiring new skills.  Each new experience can be its own little adventure.

Think back to your younger days and help your kids build a fort either in the back woods, the back yard, or even in their bedroom.  Put up a makeshift tent for shelter.  For that matter, if you have camping tents, take time to get reacquainted with how to put them up.  Then, why not camp out in the yard overnight?

That leads into this next one, though you don’t already have to be camped out to do it.  Make a campfire, tell stories, and make S’mores. This should teach a number of lessons, such as how to make a fire, how to share information through storytelling, and how to cook over a fire.  This would be a good time to put your Dutch oven to good use.

Put together a communications plan and test it out.  The first thing you’ll want to do is determine what methods you would use.  You may want to experiment with several ways to communicate, such as cell phones, walkie talkies, Family Radio Service handheld radios, CB, or even get amateur radio licenses for each of you.  What if the Internet is down or electricity is out?  You might need to use a runner to connect through various emergency contacts to relay messages.  Think of different scenarios and consider what you’d have to do to keep in touch with one another or with family and friends.  When you’ve chosen a method to try one weekend, put people in different locations to test it out.  

            Well, that’s enough to chew on for now.  I hope you’re taking notes.  No, there won’t be a quiz later.  Survival situations offer their own tests.  If you’ve missed anything we’ve covered so far, you can click through for earlier posts.

            Have a happy and safe Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Click here for Part 4.

            Have you tried any of the family activities I’ve shared with you so far?  Here are a few more for you to get the family in on.  Try one this weekend.

            This one’s a tough one, knowing how addicted most of us have become to our gadgets and computers.  Turn off all electronics for the weekend.  If that’ seems like too tall of an order, try it for a 24 hour period, then try it for the weekend a few weeks later.  Leave off your TV, computer, cell phone, iPod, and so on.  You know what the biggies are in the family.  Everybody in the family has to participate in this.

            Now, this isn’t a game you can just shrug off.  As has happened a couple of times over the past winters, the power was out for days and many folks were in shock because they didn’t know how to live without their precious  electronics gadgets.  Flooding and storms have knocked out power for many this summer, too.  How will you cope without air conditioning this summer or no heat in the winter?  Now is the time to think about it.  You know, I hear in the news that a lot of people can’t pay their electric bills, so the utility company cuts their power off.  I hope that doesn’t happen to you.  Take the opportunity to use this electronics free day or weekend to focus on other activities such as reading, playing games, baking cookies, gardening, or working on that certain project you say you never have time for.

            Our next activity is a different kind of challenge.  Have a "no spend" weekend.  How well can you and your family go for the whole two days without spending a dime?  It’s such a temptation to run to the nearest convenience store to buy a gallon of milk or those nasty cigarettes, but what if you couldn’t do that?  What if it weren’t possible?  What if banks were closed or unable to operate for some reason and you and everyone else couldn’t get to their money?

            Our last family activity suggestion today is also financially oriented.  Have a family council meeting and set a financial goal together, then brainstorm ways to reach your goal.  Whether it is a camping vacation, buying storage food and survival supplies, or paying off a debt, have the whole family get involved.   No reason the children shouldn’t be in on this.  This affects all of you.  Research the amount needed for your goal, then have everyone get busy on reaching that goal.  Do things like recycling cans, selling stuff on EBay, or mowing yards.  Get creative.

            I really would like to know how you make out when you try these ideas on for size with your family.  Don’t be afraid to leave a comment and share the good, the bad, and the ugly.  More next week.

Click here for part 3.