Survival Isn't Limited To Just Those With Lots Of Money

Survival isn't going to be about who had the most money. Rather for most it is going to be who will move first and adapt the fastest. Being poor offers you a challenge. How you deal with that challenge will determine how well you will deal with and adapt to a crises to a great extent.

In each area of survival the cost of your tools isn't near as important as how smartly you use them. Knowledge is mostly free and with that you can overcome other shortages. I will try to point out what I mean in each area that you will need to cover.

Let's start with the one that seems to most concern people. You will not want to be unarmed or under-armed. That means that you will need to cover weapons for near middle and far. You may think that a fancy survival knife is important but the fact is that a big older carbon steel butcher knife is hard to beat. Around here you can pick them up for almost nothing because people want shiny stainless knives. I have several of them and love them. The shorter paring knives will do just about anything that a 200 dollar pocket knife will do.

To modify them is dirt cheap and actually pretty easy. I've made a lot of knife shieths out of the top of old worn out boots. If you want some sort of hand guard on these knives you can make one out of brass and slide it on then attach with 2 part epoxy. I usually file the front of the handles nice and flat and drill a little hole on each side of the guard. I put on the glue and then nail it to the wooden handle with small brad nails. For the middle distances offering you more reach a baseball bat or any good heavy piece of hardwood is all you need for a base. You then can make it meaner with nails or as I did the other day by installing a worn out circular saw blade on the end where I had sawed the end to split it.

Guns are nice BUT they cost. If you have the money at least try to pick up a break action 12 ga. If you just can't swing that though you can always make a bow and arrows. Even a cross bow isn't all that hard to make. There is a dude called the backyard bowyer that will tell you all about making wonderful pvc pipe bows that cost nearly nothing. I made a 40 lb bow for under 7 dollars total.

The thing about weapons is that if you are smart you can upgrade from people that underestimated you. Not starting out as a big bad heavily armed Rambo might be the thing that saves your life. The meek may not inherit the earth but if they hunker down and let the less meek kill each-other they may win by default. You can make yourself a VERY dangerous opponent without spending any money at all. Avoid head on conflict, be sneaky and never fight fair. STUDY what primitive people used. They did quite well without assault weapons or guns of any kind.

Food and water is a must. That said have you ever considered that animals live quite well without having canned foods or bottled water. There is food all around you. Your job is to learn what is THERE and how to harvest it. Learn how to snare and don't limit yourself to traditional foods. Water can be made drinkable with a lot of things. Bleach is cheap for the short term and you can MAKE water filters from sand rocks and charcoal. Learn how now and you will always be able to find a drink.

You can find pots for nearly nothing at garage sales and flea markets. Cast iron is almost unwanted now days and will last forever. I watch these survival shows and am astounded how they stupidly cook things on a sharpened stick over a fire when they have a pot. All that juice that is sizzling in the fire is the fat and nourishment. Cook things in a pot and you don't lose anything. Our ancestors knew this and the pot basically never left the fire. If you boil bones long enough they will get soft and you can eat them! Survival is going to be about letting very little go to waste.

You will need fire and eventually you are going to run out of matches. Learn how to make fire in as many different ways as possible. Kieth is and expert on the use of flint and steel and has all kinds of wonderful videos and advice. Take advantage of it now. A steel isn't all that expensive. You can make them if you know how. They will last a long long time and “flint” comes in many forms.

You will need shelter and bedding. Make your own. Wool blankets are your best friend old army blankets and such can be found used for a reasonable cost. A small canvass tarp to roll it up in with a flannel sheet and you have bedding. Plastic tarps are cheap and with that and some cord and tape you can actually make a pretty serviceable tent or an easy and quick shelter. With duct tape you can tape a plastic sheet into a tube and make a tube tent.

At the very least I always have a dollar store plastic drop cloth on hand. With that I can make a reasonably water proof debris shelter This is loose leaves and such piled up then you put some branches on top of this pile to hold the loose debris in place and crawl in. If you add a plastic layer you can be dry and warm on the coldest night.

You can put together a very serviceable kit with just a little sweat and very little money. The thing about this sort of thing is that once you make a kit and learn how to use it you can always do it again. The knowledge is always going to be safe. I have the money to buy most anything that I want but nonetheless still like to make things and try things. You never know but I know this if you have the right knowledge you will probably be one of the survivors.

 

I agree totally. Wealth has little to do with survival. Many homeless people are very resilient survivors. If course most are beggars living off the excess good nature of others, but they are also very familiar with the simple techniques of shelter & warmth. Eating undesirable food, even garbage when necessary.

 

I actually got to know a person that had lived homeless for a long time. Even after things got better he refused to go back to the traditional life style. He was sort of crazy but it was amazing how well he could live on almost nothing. He worked in the shipyard I was working at. We made very good money there yet he lived in an old delivery truck and got most of his food dumpster diving. Despite all his craziness though he was brilliant and innovative when it came to finding the things that he needed.

It was funny but there was a method to his madness. He worked there for a year. The company had made him move his truck out of their parking lot where he was living but he had continued to live in it. At the end of the year he said goodbye to us. For that year he had only cashed one check. He had to buy gasoline for the truck. He took the money and had bought a big chunk of land in Idaho and was going there where he could live in peace and never have to worry about being homeless again. He had lost everything and never wanted that to be a possibility again. He lived on a cash basis.

For him survival meant never having to worry about losing his home again. He told me one time that the worst part wasn't the living homeless and that he had sort of enjoyed it. The worst part was the way people treated him. This was a really bad time and lots of people had lost their homes. The road side parks were full of people living there and yet people treated him like it was some how his fault that hard times had struck him. He was not a bum but he was treated like one. People are cruel and stupid!

 

People are cruel & stupid in general.
But your guy had a plan & the determination to make it happen.
The true spirit of a survivor.
Good for him.

 

There are still tribes in the Philippines that STILL shun the modern world. And they are fairly happy with their simple isolated lives in the wilderness. I hesitate to call them 'primitve', because come when TSHTF, THEY will be among the few who will survive.

 

In a world of darkness the blind will lead us all.

HEY, that means that after TEOTWAWKI being an uneducated redneck will be a GOOD thing...YEA ME!!!