Bushcraft: Survival Tips For Water And Food

Survival Skills: Water

You can survive without any food for quite some time, but if you don’t have water water you may last a few days only, depending on what environment you’re in.

This fact may be hard to get your head around but most westerners use over 120 gallons (460 litres) of water from their home and lawn taps every single day. If you think I’m way off target, the average shower takes about 20 gallons, shaving (with the water running) takes another 10 gallons, there’s cleaning your teeth at least twice a day, cleaning the clothes & dishes and flushing the toilet to include too. Can you imagine just how much water a family of five goes through each day? When most people go camping they don’t waste water like they do at home. As a preparatory exercise, observe how much water you use today. Notice every time you turn on a tap, flush a toilet, wash the dishes or clean your teeth with the tap left running. Turn the tap off between uses or at least reduce the water coming out and you’ll know how much water you can save.

As a matter of courtesy to others, make sure your group doesn’t defecate, urinate, wash the dishes or do anything else directly in the river. Water is a highly valuable commodity that must not be polluted. You certanly wouldn’t like it if you found yourself downstream from a group that’s polluting it.

If you’re not camped near a stream, use your imagination to find water. Here are some tips:

- look for indicators of life like animal tracks, green vegetation or human habitation. You can be sure water is nearby. Bees don’t fly more than 3 miles (5 Km) from their nests; flies are rarely more than 330ft (100m) from water. Ants are always searching for water and you’ll definitely find pools of rainwater around their nests.

- if the lack of water is a serious issue, do what you can to minimise body fluid loss by staying in the shade and limiting physical effort.

- there are numerous ways to trap and store water from overnight condensation, but storage is vital for daytime use.)

- if you think more information on this subject would be useful to you, learn from the pros: Survival advice on food and water.

In the past 30 years Graeme has hacked his way through the Borneo jungle with Punan nomads, stayed in the Kelabit longhouses, hunted with blowpipes, sailed the seas off Indonesia with modern-day pirates, climbed volcanoes in Java, kayaked the northern lakes of Minnesota and fished with the Portuguese sardine fleets. Having settled for the time being in West Sussex, he is now faced with a very real challenge – surviving the economic depression that will impact everyone.

His website survivalinstincts is his contribution is to help as many families build up their outdoor and other necessary survival skills as best he can.