Candles for Emergency Light

Many people keep candles in their emergency supplies, so I thought I would do a little experiment to see what kind of candle will burn the longest. 

 I used six different candles in my experiment as follow: 

Candle A is a bee’s wax candle.  It is six inches tall, 7/8 inches in diameter, and weighs 46 grams.  I weighed each candle so that I could more accurately compare their burn times.

Candle B is a paraffin decorative taper; the kind of candle that you stick into a candle holder when you have a fancy dinner on the table.  I cut this candle down so that it was also six inches tall.  It has a diameter of 7/8 inch and weighs 40 grams.

Candle C is a paraffin emergency candle.  These candles are sold in supermarkets and variety stores and are specifically labeled as emergency candles.  The candle I used is four inches tall, ¾ inch in diameter, and weighs 20 grams.

Candle D is a bee’s wax votive candle.  It is 1 7/8 inches tall, two inches in diameter, and weighs 35 grams.

Candle E is a paraffin votive candle.  It is 1 ¾ inches tall, two inches in diameter, and weighs 39 grams.

Candle F is a paraffin tea candle.  It is 3/8 inch tall, 1 3/8 inches in diameter, and weighs 10 grams.  The tea candle is contained in its own little aluminum foil tub, presumably to keep the melted paraffin from running off.

So, let’s get started.  All the candles were lighted at the same time.

I turned off the lights and closed the drapes to try and get an idea of how much light each candle produced.  I don’t have anything to measure the amount of lumens each candle produces, so I just had to eyeball it.  They all look to be about the same with the exception of the tea candle which is noticeably dimmer, and the emergency candle appears to be just slightly brighter than the others.

 

At the end of the first hour the emergency candle has burned down quite a bit.

By the end of the second hour the emergency candle is getting very short. 

 The two votive candles are starting to form large puddles of wax around themselves.  I don’t know for sure, but I think that this is because the votives only get hot enough to burn the wax that is right around the wick area.  The wax that is farther away from the wick doesn’t burn.  It just gets hot enough to melt and run off.

After two hours and thirty-five minutes the emergency candle is the first to go out.

By the end of the third hour the two votive candles are getting very low.

The tall bee’s wax and paraffin candles are still doing well.

After three hours and twenty-five minutes the tea candle goes out.  It has not burned the longest, but remember, at only 10 grams weight it is the smallest candle in the test.

After three hours and twenty-nine minutes the paraffin votive goes out.  You can see that it has left a large pool of melted (unburned) wax.  In fact of the original 39 grams of wax there are 23 grams that remain as unburned waste.

The bee’s wax votive lasts for a total of three hours and thirty-seven minutes; just eight minutes longer than the paraffin votive.  The bee’s wax votive leaves behind 21 grams of unburned waste.

It appears at this point that the paraffin taper will last the longest,

but for some reason it starts melting and pooling wax rather than burning it.  After four hours and fifty-eight minutes the paraffin taper goes out.

The bee’s wax taper burns for over another hour and finally goes out after six hours and four minutes.

So to summarize the burn time of each candle:

A bee’s wax taper     - 6 hrs. 4 min.

B paraffin taper         - 4 hrs. 58 min.

C emergency candle  - 2 hrs. 35 min.

D bee’s wax votive   - 3 hrs. 37 min.

E paraffin votive       - 3 hrs. 29 min.

F paraffin tea candle – 3 hrs. 25 min.

Now it would be easy to say that the bee’s wax tapers burn longer than other candles, but let’s remember that the tested candles were all different sizes and weights.  The only fair way to make an apples-to-apples comparison is to figure out how many minutes per gram of wax that each candle would burn, and here the results are a little surprising.

The big losers are the two votive candles.  The paraffin votive only burned about 5.3 minutes per gram of wax, and the bee’s wax votive only did a little better at 6.2 minutes per gram of wax.

The paraffin decorative taper burned about 7.5 minutes per gram, the paraffin emergency candle burned about 7.8 minutes per gram, and the bee’s wax taper burned about 7.9 minutes per gram.  So these were all pretty close to the same.

The run-away champion was the paraffin tea candle which burned an amazing 20.5 minutes per gram.  By the way, I had some other tea candles that were ¾ inch tall instead of 3/8”.  I burned one of them and the results held.  The ¾” tall tea candles burned for nearly 7 hours.

So there you have the great candle experiment.  Even if you have to burn two tea candles to get the same amount of light as from the other candles, you are still ahead of the game.  If you are going to lay in a supply of emergency candles I would say that tea candles look like a winner, and did I mention that they are also cheaper than any of the other candles.  Definitely a winner.

The Five Staples – Old Time Bug Out Food

There are a lot of options about what kind of food to include in a bug-out-bag, or 72 hour pack as some call it.  The kind of food you have in your pack is going to be a reflection of what your pack is intended for.  Is it to get you through a hurricane?  Is it to get you from your home in the city to a survival retreat somewhere?  Is it just the beginning rations for a long term survival situation?  Or maybe, like most of us, you don’t really know what it will end up being used for.

So, most people end up going with freeze dried back-packing meals, MRE’s, or dried and canned goods from the grocery store.  These are a safe bet, but it’s hard to carry more than a few days worth of food this way, and what if you end up needing to live off of the land for a couple of weeks or more.  Well, this is where the five staples come in.

And what, you ask, are the five staples?  Well, the five staples are a little trick that was taught to me years ago by my wilderness mentor.  We used to go on canoe trips in order to practice survival and wilderness living skills and we took very minimal supplies.  My mentor called it Daniel Boone camping.  In the food procurement and preparation department we usually took our fish spears, a frying pan, and the “five staples.”  The five staples were; (1) self-rising flour, (2) corn meal, (3) salt, (4) sugar, and (5) lard or shortening.

The main purpose of the five staples was to enhance the preparation of wild foods that we procured; but, in a pinch, the five staples could be used to prepare a couple of very basic foods that would keep us going until nature saw fit to provide us with more.

For meat we speared gar, snakes, turtles, and on one occasion a nutria.  Now all of these things can be prepared by spitting them on sticks and roasting them over a fire; but they taste about 1000% better if they’re salted, breaded with a little flour or corn meal, and fried in lard.  It takes just a miniscule amount of salt, just a couple of table spoons of cornmeal, and maybe a quarter cup of lard (save what’s left to reuse) to turn a survival situation into a picnic.  Things like wild greens and briar shoots are good, but they taste so much better with a little dash of salt on them.

Now what about the times when we weren’t so lucky at finding food?  Well how do pancakes for breakfast sound?  Take about a quarter cup of self rising flour and put about a teaspoon of sugar in it.  Add enough water to make a nice batter.  Fry it up in your skillet and you have some very good pancakes.  For syrup you can dissolve a little sugar in hot water and pour it on.  I remember on one trip we found some wild blackberries growing near the river.  I picked about a quart of berries, and while Glen was cooking pancakes, I mashed up some of the berries with sugar and a little water and we had blackberry syrup on our pancakes.  Later that evening we had a little blackberry cobbler made with nothing but berries, sugar, and a little crust of self rising flour mixed with sugar and water.

Another breakfast treat that Glen would sometimes make were his famous survival donuts.  He would mix up batter just like for pancakes, but he would cook it in little globs, about a tablespoon of batter dropped in the grease.  While the globs of fried batter were still hot, he would drop them in the sugar bag and shake them around a bit.  These little “donuts” with their crunchy sugar coating were mighty tasty.

We usually managed to come up with something to eat by dinner time, but if not we would make some hot water cornbread.  These corn cakes are really easy to make.  Just mix a little salt into about a quarter cup of cornmeal. Pour some boiling water into the mixture until it is a thick paste, about like playdough.  Pat the dough out into a cake and fry it until golden brown. You must use boiling water to make these or you will end up with a mess.  The boiling water causes the cornmeal to release its gluten and the resulting dough will stick together.  You can use this same recipe to make little cornbread dumplings to add to a pot of wild greens.  Just drop the little balls of dough into the greens for about the last tens minutes that they are on the fire.

Can you see the value of the five staples?  A pot of wild greens boiled in creek water is edible.  A pot of wild greens boiled in creek water with a little salt, a little bit of lard, and some cornbread dumplings is a real honest to goodness meal. 

If you think that you may end up needing to provide for yourself for more than 72 hours, and if you are in a position to live off of the land, you might want to think about the five staples and whether or not they might have a place in your bug out plans.

The Search for the Perfect Hatchet

 

I was reading Woodcraft by Nesmuk the other night, and I was amused to read that he had spent 12 years in search of the right hatchet to carry while hiking in the wilds.  He is a fast learner.  I’ve been looking for the right hand axe for 50 years, and I’m not sure that I’ve found it yet.  I’ve always been looking for an axe that’s light and convenient to carry; but it needs to be rugged, well balanced, and heavy enough to do camp chores.  The following is a brief, illustrated history of my quest.

I all started when this was sitting on the mantle for my 8^th Christmas. 

It was a Boy Scout hand axe, and man was I excited.  It was a good axe and I carried it on many hikes and camps.  I still have it, obviously; and I keep it for sentimental reasons; but I no longer carry it.  It’s a little on the heavy side, and I don’t really care for the balance, but it’s a pretty good axe.

I tried a light-weight, back-packers hatchet; but it was just too light. 

It was not much better than a sheath knife for cutting or splitting wood, and the poll (the hammer end) was so narrow that it was useless for things like driving tent stakes, mashing up coffee beans, or cracking hickory nuts. 

Handy for dressing a deer, but as an all around camp axe, it just wasn’t the one.

I carried a tomahawk for a while, but I it was pretty heavy and I didn’t like the balance. 

The fact that it didn’t have a flat poll to hammer with was pretty inconvenient also.  You could use the front to hammer, but it was about as likely as not to glance off what you were hitting.  I kept the tomahawk, but now I only use it for a throwing axe at mountain man events.

I bought a Fort Meggs axe, but I was splitting some light wood and broke the handle the first time I put any side-ways torque on the axe.  It was just too light. I don't have it anymore so I can't include a picture, but it is really small.  The handle is thin all over, and inside the head it is really thin, only about 3/8 inch.  So, not really up to the job.

I thought maybe I could kill two birds with one stone by carrying a knife that was big enough to serve as both knife and hatchet.  I picked up a Pakistan Bowie knife and carried it a few times. 

I’ve heard that these things are made out of what ever is laying around, and some are good steel, and some are bad.  I got lucky on this one, as it seems well tempered and will take and hold a good edge.  But it missed the mark on several fronts.  It was too big to be a good camp knife, and not heavy enough to be a good axe.  Also, it didn’t fill-the-bill as a hammer. 

I tried a machete for a while.  I figured that East Texas is kind of a jungle so maybe a machete would be appropriate.  

It was nice that it had a saw on the back, but you can't really hammer with it, and I hated the way it was always banging on my leg when I walked.  So, I only pull this one out when I'm specifically going to be hacking brush and vines.

Currently I am carrying a hatchet that may be a winner. 

I have been using it for about five years and it has held up well.  It is light, but it feels good in the hand.  It will cut down small trees (3 or 4 inches in diameter) and it will split light wood.  It has a nice big head on the front and serves well to hammer in tent stakes, mash up berries, crack nuts, and etc.  It may be the one….. or then again, it may not.

I round out my woods tools with a Russel knife that a friend gave me, and a pocket-size Leatherman multi-tool.  I find that with these three implements I can do just about anything that needs doing in the woods.

The Home First-Aid Kit

Whether you’re a prepper or not, every home needs a first aid kit.  I’m not talking about the stuff that you keep in your medicine cabinet.  When there’s an accident or injury it is not a good time to be digging through cologne bottles, out of date prescriptions, vitamins, and make-up to try and locate bandages and anti-biotic ointment.  And be honest; how many times have you ended up driving to the store because you were either out-of or couldn’t locate what you were looking for in the medicine cabinet.

If you are a prepper you probably have some medical supplies stored up.  You don’t want to be breaking open a bottle of 1000 acetaminophen tablets because one of the kids came down with a cold and you hadn’t noticed that the 50 tablet bottle in the medicine cabinet was empty.  Or maybe you’ve injured yourself when you’re working in the garden or out in the woods.  You need sit and hold direct pressure on the wound while your spouse or one of the kids goes to the house to get some tweezers, a bottle of water, an irrigating syringe, a roll of gauze, some bandage tape and some anti-biotic ointment.  Wouldn’t it be a lot easier, and save a lot of time if all you had to say was “Run to the house and get me the first-aid kit and a bottle of water.”

So, just like every home should have smoke alarms and fire extinguishers; every home should have a first-aid kit.  The kit should be of a reasonable size so that it is portable.  If you are going on a long drive or a vacation you should be able to grab it and throw it in the car or truck.  It should stay in a readily accessible location, and everyone in the family should know where it is.

You can buy pre-packaged first-aid kits, but I have not been real impressed by the ones that I have seen.  To get a well equipped one is a costly endeavor, and most kits seem to be long on cut and abrasion care and short on a lot of other things. 

You can build your own first-kit, as I did, but I will say right up front that it was not cheap.  I probably spent about $50 on our kit, but I feel comfortable with the contents, and I feel like it will handle most common home or travel emergencies.  Of course first-aid is meant to be just that.  If you have a serious injury that requires debriding and sutures, the first-aid kit is not going to handle it.  The first-aid kit will allow you to control the bleeding and help avoid infection until you can get professional medical help.

I was very lucky in obtaining a case for my first-aid kit.  My wife brought an old first-aid box that was being replaced home from her work.  The box was in good shape, of course the few items left inside of it were either dried out, torn open, or out of date; so they went to the trash.  I cleaned the box up, and my wife used her vinyl cutter to make a new label for the front of it.

Now came the stocking with first-aid supplies.  Here is what I ended up filling the box with:

For Wound Care

            2 pair non-latex exam gloves

            large syringe for wound irrigation

            6 q-tips

            tube of triple anti-biotic ointment

            30 sterile adhesive bandages

            10 butterfly bandages

            10  2” x 3” non-stick gauze pads

            1 roll  2” guaze

            1 roll ½” adhesive tape

            1 small tube surgical adhesive (Super Glue)

            1 pair small scissors

For Disinfecting

            1  2oz. bottle of jelled alcohol hand sanitizer

            100 alcohol prep pads

For Removing Splinters

            tweezers

            plastic tube containing 3 needles

            disposable lighter to sterilize needle tips

For Removing Objects from Eye and Eye Irritation

            small mirror

            magnifying glass

            eye drops

For Pain Management

            40  500 mg acetaminophen caplets

For Digestive Problems

            3 rolls Tums anti-acid tablets

            12 generic Imodium gels for diarrhea

For Colds and Allergies

            6 eucalyptus lozenges

            24 generic Benedryl capsules

For Burns, Stings, Poison Ivy, and Skin Irritations

            1 tube 1% hydrocortisone cream

For Muscle and Joint Pain

            1 tube menthol and methyl salicylate cream (Ben-Gay)

To Help Treat Shock

            1  reflective mylar survival blanket

For Dental Emergencies

            4 tongue depressors

            1 oz. bottle of oil of clove (for toothaches)

            dental repair kit to temporarily replace lost fillings and secure loose crows and caps

For Dehydration

            1 pack of electrolyte replacement (Gatorade) to be dissolved in one quart of water

For Snake Bite

            snake bite kit (to be used only as a last resort when no professional medical care is possible)

So, here’s my finished kit.

Of course you may need to add other things to your kit.  You may need to include an emergency asthma inhaler or some epi-pens if you are allergic to bee stings.  If you have small children you may want to include some syrup of ipecac.  I personally would like to include an Ace Bandage for wrapping sprains, but they are just too bulky to fit in my box.

When you get your kit put together, be sure and put it in an easily accessible place.  I hung my kit on the inside of the coat closet door, right next to my front door.  It’s easy to get to, and it’s easy to grab on the way out the door and throw in the car.

By the way, I never claim to be the end all and know all.  If you can think of something that you think I need to add (keep in mind that this is a first-aid kit, not an EMT bag) then let me know in the comments.

 

Preventing Scurvy, Rickets, and other Vitamin Deficiency Diseases

I have never personally known anyone who suffered from scurvy, rickets, beriberi, or pellagra; but at one time these diseases were very common, some were epidemic.  All of these diseases have one thing in common.  They are all caused by vitamin deficiencies.  Scurvy is caused from lack of vitamin C.  You probably heard in history class how sailors of old suffered and died from scurvy until someone figured out that eating citrus fruit prevented the disease.  British ships started carrying barrels of limes for the sailors to eat, and hence the name “limey.”

Rickets is caused by vitamin D deficiency.  Vitamin D is found in dairy products and eggs.  If you look at a milk carton you will probably see the phrase, “Vitamin D Fortified.”  The wide availability of dairy products and the addition of more vitamin D has virtually eliminated rickets from the modern industrialized world.  Incidentally, unlike most vitamins your body can produce its own vitamin D but this requires exposure to sunlight.  You’ve probably heard the phrase, “vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin.”  That’s what it means.

Beriberi is caused by vitamin B1 deficiency.  Vitamin B1 is found in nuts, seeds, and legumes among other things.  Beriberi became epidemic is Southeast Asia when the population switched from eating natural brown rice to polished white rice.

Pellagra, which is caused by vitamin B3 deficiency, was long associated with poverty areas of the Southern U.S. where cornmeal was the staple.  Vitamin B3 is found in fresh meat, peanuts, green peas, and sunflower seeds.

The widely varied and vitamin fortified diets of today have virtually eliminated these killers of olden times, but they could easily reemerge.  All of these diseases are associated with narrow, repetitive diets.  People who eat the same few things over and over.  Kind of like you might end up doing in an apocalyptic survival scenario.  A broad knowledge of edible wild plants and their vitamin content could help you get the nutrients that you need, but it just makes common sense to also store multi-vitamins along with the food that you store. 

A years supply of high potency multi-vitamins and minerals for one person costs less than $25 and takes up about as much room as a canned soft drink.  I would highly recommend that you include multi-vitamins and minerals in your storage program; two or three years worth for each person.  Hopefully this would be enough time to re-establish agriculture, animal husbandry, barter, and trade; so that you could obtain your vitamins from a healthy and varied diet.

As with any chemical product, heat and light are the enemy; cold and dark will slow decomposition.  Store your vitamins in the refrigerator or freezer and date and rotate just like you do your food.   

Good-Bye Little Buddy

My daughter rescued Sammy as a puppy.  She assured us that he was a Chihuahua, but it was obvious to everyone that he was not.  He grew to be a medium small dog.  He was a funny looking little guy with a long body, short legs, and a lab looking head and coat.  He was no show dog but we loved him dearly.  He spent the last four or five years of his life here with us on the farm, which he greatly enjoyed.  He had the gentlest disposition and the most soulful brown eyes that you have ever seen.  He alternately terrified or was terrified by our cat, depending on his mood that day.  He was a fierce protector of his home, but he didn’t like guns and he was terrified of thunder.  When a storm came it was into the house and under the bed.  He would be waiting for me outside the kitchen door every morning so he could have a special treat, and he, in company with our Catahoula, followed me around the farm all day so we could keep each other company.  Sammy passed away last Saturday from congestive heart failure at the age of eleven.  I cried like a baby when he didn’t come for his morning treat and I found him laying in the front yard.  He was a good little dog with a gentle soul.  Run and play in heaven little buddy.  I love you, and I will miss you.

Some Thoughts on Personal Hygiene in a Post Apocalyptic World

Most of us today have rigidly entrenched habits of personal hygiene that simply won’t be tenable in a post-apocalyptic world.  Many of the personal hygiene products that we use will no longer be available, and to continue our current lavish use of hot water would be labor intensive in the extreme.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that a lot of what passes for personal hygiene these days really has nothing to do with hygiene but is really just unnecessary beauty treatment.  I’ve done some thinking about this and tried to imagine what would really constitute necessary hygiene under potentially adverse conditions.  Some of the circumstances I envision are as follow.  (1) You won’t be able to run to the drug store and buy personal hygiene products; (2) medical help will be anywhere from scarce to non-existent so disease and injury preventing hygiene will be very important; and (3) obtaining and heating water will be a lot of work.  So let’s think about what we need to start doing, what we need to continue doing, what we need to do but not do as often, and what we can do without.

Dental Hygiene

This will be an absolute necessity.  An abscessed tooth that would be a 45 minute visit with the dentist today, could be a death sentence if no dental care is available.  I don’t even want to think about having a tooth extracted without some sort of dental anesthesia.  So brushing after every meal and flossing will be more important than ever.  By the way, you can buy dental floss in bulk for way cheap.  200 yard rolls cost around $2.50. 

Hand and Foot Care

First of all, hands and feet should be protected from injury.  Closed toe shoes should be worn at all times, and steel toe work boots should be worn for nearly all outdoor tasks.  No bare feet!!  It may work okay for Cody Lundeen or Amazon tribesmen, but it is foolish for the rest of us to risk a cut that could become infected when all we have to do is put our shoes on.  Feet should be washed daily and clean socks should be worn every day.  Toenails should be kept trimmed straight across to avoid ingrown toenails.

Hands should be washed before every meal and immediately after handling any material that may cause bacterial infection.  Work gloves should be worn when performing any task that could cause cuts or abrasions.  Nitril gloves should be worn when processing game or handling any kind of decayed material or human or animal waste.  The thing that we’re trying to avoid here is infection.  The tiniest cut can become infected, and without antibiotics that could mean death.  U.S. President Calvin Coolidge’s son died in 1924 from a blister that he got while playing tennis.  The blister became infected, and since antibiotics had not yet been developed, he died.  Enough said?

Bathing

The fact is that most people bath too often.  Bathing too much washes away natural oils and friendly bacteria that help protect the skin.  Most dermatologists agree that bathing once every two or three days is more healthy and better for the skin than bathing every day.  Let’s face it, most of the time when we take a shower, it’s not because we’re dirty; it’s because we think we might smell bad, or because we feel a little sticky.  The daily bath is one of those cultural phenomenon, kind of like Mother’s Day, that was created by an industry that reaps huge profits on the event.  It’s like, “You smell bad and people won’t like you so you better take a bath, and your skin’s all dry now from bathing so you need to rub on some of our moisturizer, and your hair is oily so you need to wash it every day, and now your hair is all dried out so you need to use our conditioner.” Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching $$$$.

So how often do you really need to bath?  I’ve done some research on that, and I can’t come up with a definitive answer.  Most of what I have read has a pretty strong bias toward the modern fear of the human smell, so it’s hard to tell what the bathing requirements are for actual good health.  I’m going to have to fall back on my Dad’s childhood on an East Texas cotton farm in the early 1900’s.  Besides his parents there were six kids in the family.  They had to draw all of their water from a well and heat it on a wood stove.  Grandma’s rule was you wash your feet every night before you go to bed, if something specific gets dirty you take a sponge bath, and once a week they would draw water and heat it for a tub bath.  My Dad lived to be 90 and his brothers and sisters lived ranging from 88 to 100 years, so I guess that was healthy enough.

There is, of course, the smell factor.  The human body has an odor.  We have been taught that this odor is offensive, and so we try to either wash it away or cover it up.  I imagine that washing it away, other than a cold water sponge bath, will probably be out due to the amount of work involved.  I don’t think that covering up the human smell with deodorant or cologne will be very practical either.  For one thing these products will not be available unless you stockpile them or manufacture them from natural sources.  I suppose you could rub yourself with mint leaves or something of that nature, but there is a second and more important reason to avoid sweet smelling colognes.  Mosquitoes.  Sweet smells, especially fruit or flower smells, attract mosquitoes; and that is something that we certainly want to avoid.  Over one million people per year die throughout the world from mosquito bourn illnesses, mainly malaria.  We wouldn’t want to do anything to attract these little killers.

So I imagine that we all probably just have to smell a little bad.  The good news is that everyone will smell bad, so it will quickly lose its social stigma.  It has been my experience on long backpacking trips that everyone smells horrible for about the first three days; and then, all of a sudden, the smell seems to be gone.  I think the current term, according to one T.V. commercial that I have seen, is nose-blind.  You just get used to it and don’t notice it any more.

Hair

Over the years I have had hair of every possible length.  At one time I wore my hair in a ponytail that fell to the bottom of my shoulder blades.  A pain to wash, dry, brush, etc.  Currently I have a shaved head.  Once again a pain.  You have to shave your entire head every couple of days to keep it slick.  I imagine that in a post-apocalyptic scenario both of these would be out.  I think that the most practical length would be as short as you could cut your hair with scissors.  Here’s my thinking.  The shorter your hair, the less likely that you will be troubled with critters like head lice.  Short hair is easier to take care of.  It looks neater, doesn’t get tangled up in stuff, and requires less soap or shampoo to clean it. Short hair makes it easier to treat head wounds.  Now days if you go to the hospital with a head wound, the first thing that they are going to do is shave the immediate area so that it can be bandaged, stitched, or whatever.  This is why the military wants combat troops to have short hair.  Shaving your head would put you in needless danger of a cut becoming infected.  So hair cut short, but without shaving, seems to be the most practical solution.

Shaving the face should probably be avoided for the same reason as shaving the head.  A minor nick can become septic, and without antibiotics this could be deadly.  Sorry girls, but I think the same logic will apply to armpits, legs, etc.  So it will be short beards for men (currently very stylish) and hairy legs for women (not so stylish).

I don’t know if this is correct thinking or not, but it makes sense to me.