Prepper's Survival Hacks: 50 DIY Projects for Lifesaving Gear, Gadgets and Kits
By Jim Cobb
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About this ebook
When a catastrophic event strikes, you’ll need to rely on your skills and supplies to keep you alive. This book teaches you how to improvise solutions for the scarcities, deficiencies, and dangers that will arise in a worst-case scenario.
Prepper’s Survival Hacks offers a wide range of creative ideas for transforming cheap and widely available items into life-saving gear:
- Harvest water in a transpiration bag
- Catch food with a pocket fishing kit
- Cook using a handy hobo stove
- Craft quick fire starters in an egg carton
- Make a mini oil lamp using a mint tin
- Assemble a survival kit in a belt pouch
Jim Cobb
Jim Cobb is the author of numerous prepping and survival guides, including Prepper’s Home Defense and The Prepper’s Complete Book of Disaster Readiness. Cobb is a prepper, survivalist, and author of the website SurvivalWeekly.com. He lives in Wisconsin.
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Prepper's Survival Hacks - Jim Cobb
WATER
Common wisdom dictates that the human body can survive about three days without hydration. While that may be true in a technical sense, in the real world, the last day or two of that time period would be spent in agony and delirium. Don’t ever try to ration water. If you have potable water available, drink it. The problem with rationing is that doing so may hinder your ability to search for more water sources. A far better plan is to keep your body running as efficiently as possible as you attempt to locate additional supplies.
It is almost as important to understand that water from natural sources, such as rivers, lakes, and ponds, absolutely must be treated before consumption. Failure to do so puts you at risk for some pretty serious health issues, such as giardia and cryptosporidium. The best way to treat water prior to drinking is to boil it. This will kill anything that might be in the water that could harm you. There is no need to let it boil for several minutes, either. Just bringing it to a rolling boil is sufficient.
Of course, there are several commercial products you could purchase that will filter and disinfect your water. These include various products sold by LifeStraw, Berkey, and Sawyer. All work very well and are worthy of purchase. The trick is to make sure you have the filter device with you any time you venture into the field, just in case. That snazzy new water filtration straw does utterly no good sitting on a shelf at home while you’re dying of thirst sitting next to a pond.
Another important consideration is to carry some sort of container you can use to transport water. Many of us routinely carry some sort of water bottle with us when hiking, so that poses little issue. However, I strongly advise you to consider investing in a stainless steel water bottle rather than relying on something made from plastic. While it is possible to boil water in a plastic container if you know what you’re doing and you’re careful, it is far easier and safer to do so using a steel bottle.
A product I wholeheartedly endorse is the Aqua-Pouch, designed, produced, and sold by Survival Resources. It is basically a heavy-duty plastic bag that folds up small and flat. Keep it in your kit and you’ll always have a container you can use to transport water. It holds up to 1 liter, which coincidentally is the same measurement many water treatment products utilize.
Water is a necessity for life. It is important to plan ahead so you have the means to collect and disinfect it. The first two projects in this section will focus on water collection, followed by two projects on DIY filtration devices.
TRANSPIRATION BAG
While you’re not going to get a ton of water with a single transpiration bag, you can get a fair amount of bang for your buck by putting out several of them. Transpiration bags use the sun’s heat and energy to condense moisture from the plant and collect in the bag. They work all by themselves once they’re set up. What seems to work well is to set them up in the morning and collect the water in the evening.
MATERIALS
Clear garbage bag
Small stone
Twist ties or rope
#1The first step is figuring out where you will put your transpiration bag(s). The ideal location would have a few deciduous trees in the immediate area—large ones with branches hanging down to where you can easily reach them. Deciduous trees are the ones with leaves, as opposed to conifers, which have needles. Shrubs and bushes will also work, but the larger they are, the better. Also, take a few minutes to make sure the trees or shrubs aren’t poisonous to you.
#2Place the garbage bag over a few of the leaf-bearing branches, stuffing in as many as possible. Toss in a small stone and use it to pull one corner of the bag down toward the ground a bit. Secure the open end of the bag tightly against the branches using the twist ties or rope. You want this closure to be as airtight as possible.
#3As the day goes on, the sun’s rays will heat up the inside of the bag, forcing water from the leaves to condense on the sides of the bag. From there, it will trickle down to the rock-weighted corner. Depending upon conditions, you could see as little as 1 cup of water to as much as 1 quart or so.
#4To get the water out of the bag, you can either remove the bag completely and carefully pour it out or snip a small hole in the corner, then tie the bag tightly above that cut after emptying the water.
#5I don’t like to keep a bag on the same tree for more than 1 or 2 days, provided I have other options for placing the bag. It puts stress on the tree, of course, and while my life is worth more to me than the life of that tree, if I don’t have to put undue stress on it, I won’t.
SOLAR STILL
I’m going to be flat-out honest with you. I don’t in any way, shape, or form endorse the use of a solar still for acquiring water in a survival situation. I’m including it here for two reasons.
1In any survival manual, it is almost expected that the solar still be mentioned, and its absence in this book would be noticeable.
2I wanted to include it specifically so I could talk a bit about why you shouldn’t rely upon it.
MATERIALS
Shovel
Bucket or clean container
Large plastic tarp
Large rocks or logs
Small rock
#1On the surface, the solar still is a fairly straightforward project. Using your shovel, dig a hole a few feet deep. At the bottom of the hole, roughly in the center, place your bucket or other clean container. Next, stretch the plastic tarp across the top of the hole using the large rocks or logs to secure it in place. Finally, place a small rock at the center of the tarp, which weighs it down above your container.
#2The idea is that the sun will heat up the inside of that hole, causing moisture from the ground to evaporate, then condense on the bottom of the plastic tarp. It will then run along the plastic to the point above the bucket, into which it will drip.
Here’s the thing. The amount of water you’ll gain through the use of the solar still is, quite literally, a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of energy you’ll expend by digging the hole and setting everything up.
Don’t believe me? Go ahead, set one up tomorrow and see how well it performs. If you get more than 2 cups of water, you’ll be doing fairly well.
OSMOSIS WATER FILTER
This isn’t the greatest solution for water filtration, as it won’t do anything about bacteria and such. However, it works fairly well at taking turbid, cloudy water, such as from a mud puddle, and turning it clear by removing sediment and debris. Plus, it works all by itself once you get it set up.
MATERIALS
2 containers, such as pitchers, buckets, or glasses
Cotton rope, cotton bandanna, or paper towel
#1Place the two containers side by side. Pour the dirty water into one container. Put one end of the cotton rope into the water and run the rope to the other container. The free end of the rope should dangle