Preparedness, Survival, and Primitive Skills

Since I have made about a hundred and fifty posts on this blog over the past couple of years, I guess it's about time to clarify what this blog is about. The Sensible Survival blog is really about three different and distinct areas; preparedness, wilderness survival, and primitive skills. Preparedness Everyone should be prepared for disasters, natural or man-made. The posts on preparedness are about being ready for things like temporary power outages, unemployment, natural disasters, biological accidents or attacks, civil disorder, or the complete breakdown of society. The social order may endure forever, but everybody's power will go out sooner or later, so be prepared.

Survival A significant number of people are faced with survival situations every year. Hikers get lost. Hunters on ATV's breakdown far from their camps. Motorists get stranded on lonely roads. Light planes crash. Skiers get stranded by snow storms. Etc., etc., etc. Most of these events end happily with the lost individuals being rescued within a day or two, but everyone should be familiar with the basic skills needed to survive in the wilderness for at least 72 hours. Preserving body heat, building a fire, finding drinkable water, and signaling for help are skills that can save your life in a bad situation.

Very rarely, individuals are stranded in the wilderness for weeks or months. In a situation like this, additional skills such as wild plant identification, making animal traps, cooking without utensils, making cordage, making a survival bow and arrows, and how to land navigate can help insure survival.

Primitive Skills The rarest occurrence of all is what I call a Robinson Crusoe scenario, a situation where an individual has to live for many months or even years in the wilds. This is the situation where primitive skills would come into play. How to make a fine hunting bow, making baskets and pottery, tanning animal hides, and drying meat are examples of primitive skills that you would need in a Robinson Crusoe scenario.

So, primitive skills are probably the least important skills that I blog about; but here's the thing. For a certain type of individual, like me, and maybe like you, primitive skills are fun. It's like a hobby that might possibly have a real world application at some point, but probably not. Be that as it may, I enjoy making fine hunting bows, I enjoy making baskets, I enjoy making stone tools, and I enjoy brain tanning hides; and I will continue to post about these activities along with my posts about preparedness and survival. Hope that clears things up a little.