How Camping Will Improve Your Survival Skills - THE APOCALYPSE IS COMING!

Do you know how to build a campfire?

Can you make some shelter?

Can you patch yourself up if you get hurt?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you will have a better chance to survive a natural disaster or outdoor activity gone wrong.

If you answered no, get out and camp more ;)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and good day. Welcome to the Super Good Camping Podcast. My name is Pamela.

SPEAKER_01: 0:04

I'm Tim.

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

And we are from supergoodcamping.com. We're here because we're on a mission to inspire other people to get outside and enjoy camping adventures such as we have as a family. Today's episode, we wanted to talk a little bit about how camping can improve your survival skills. You just never know where you might be in some kind of situation that's unexpected. There might be some sort of natural disaster, some sort of accident. And because you've been camping, you've got the ability to handle these kind of situations.

SPEAKER_01: 0:31

Or as the days, every time I wake up these days, it might be the zombie apocalypse.

SPEAKER_00: 0:39

So some of the key survival skills that you can enhance with your camping activities are navigation and orientation skills. So using maps, compasses, GPS tools to find and follow your routes and being able to navigate unfamiliar terrain.

SPEAKER_01: 0:55

Fire building. I always consider that an extremely important one. Although I tend to carry it lighter and waterproof matches. I don't do all the bushcraft stuff, although I do know how to. I'm smart enough to grab some birch bark along the way, et cetera, et cetera. But it's important because it will give you warmth. which is a good thing. It helps you. You can do cooking over it and safety and signaling should you ever be in trouble. So all good things to

SPEAKER_00: 1:26

know. One, your fuel might run out and then you didn't gauge that properly. You've got the fire as a backup. Your lighter might not work. You run out of fuel in your lighter. I think all kinds of things can happen. Absolutely. You might need an actual ability with flint and steel or whatever to make a real fire.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45

Yes. So I... Me personally, I carry lighter waterproof matches. I carry a flint with me as well. I seem to think there's something else. Oh, the electric lighter as well. The little zappy thing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:59

A Tesla coil is pretty cool. So yeah, that's where backups of your backups is usually a good plan too.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06

Yes, except that my backpack is crazy heavy because I have four

SPEAKER_00: 2:10

backups. Not so lightweight. Shelter building skills. So that's where the necessities of you have to have food, clothing, shelter. Shelter is one of those things. So setting up tents, even making a makeshift shelter. Tarps, ropes, natural materials. materials if you had to come up with something on your own. You can experiment with different setups, especially if you're car camping. You're sort of a controlled environment. It's not the end of the world. If you haven't set things up properly, you can either redo or you can sit in your car for a while. And then being able to adapt to adverse weather conditions. And that's for, too, if you're having a bad country and suddenly a wind picks up and you haven't set up your tarp properly and now it's a parachute instead of a tarp, then you can have to adjust to those kind of things.

SPEAKER_01: 3:00

Yeah, I mean, in cases like that, Thomas and I have actually run into it where it's like, where the heck did that come from? Okay, crap. We staked it to literally turned it into a... a sail in front of our tent so that it would deflect some of the wind. We staked it all across the ground and then ran a couple of lines up into the trees. It flapped and flopped, but it kept our tent from getting blown over. I'm pretty sure it would have flattened our tent. It came out of nowhere and it was about Mach 7. So another important one, food and water procurement, whether it's through fishing, foraging... You know, you could get into trapping and things like that as far as getting safe food sources. Also, having a little, like I've got, Pamela bought me just a small, I was going to say a flip chart. It's not, but it's a small book, just like a booklet about safe wild edibles. Mushrooms are always a bit dodgy.

SPEAKER_00: 4:04

Not those kind of edibles. Not those kind of edibles. Well, the mushrooms, yes. Be careful with mushrooms. I just think it's a bit too dicey. They are those kind of edibles

SPEAKER_01: 4:12

sometimes.

SPEAKER_00: 4:13

Unless you really know your stuff with the

SPEAKER_01: 4:15

mushrooms. Mushrooms are always edible once. Yeah. And then water procurement. So whether you're filtering water, I can't speak for the entire world. I know that here, certainly here in Ontario, I think it's probably at least a North American thing. There's always something in the water. There are people that chance it. I know Adam Schultz has said a number of times that I dip my cup in the water and I drink straight from it. Good on you, man. I'm pretty sure I've had things go poorly for me after filtering water. So I suspect I'm not as... iron clad in the stomach area. Um, but filtering, you know, rolling boil for a minute, uh, over your, over whatever that fire is, uh, iodine pills, always take those with you like water purification tablets, I think is the more appropriate term.

SPEAKER_00: 5:14

Yeah. Uh, first aid and emergency. So just, Things happen. You twist your ankle, you get a cut you weren't expecting to get, and you've got to know how to handle that when you're out in the wild. And the same things could happen if you got in a car accident and suddenly you're in a situation where somebody is bleeding and you have to figure out what to do to stop that bleeding.

SPEAKER_01: 5:34

You're in the middle of nowhere. You may or may not have an SOS-enabled device with you.

SPEAKER_00: 5:41

Well, it might take hours, even if you do, for someone to get to you. So you've got to figure out some way to stop bleeding or deal with a burn or something in the meantime.

SPEAKER_01: 5:50

Yeah, absolutely. That's a thing that was bugging me for a long time. So I'm really glad last year, Thomas and I took the wilderness and remote first aid. Resource management. So there's a thing where you need to use your brain. You know, you look at suddenly... You have an issue where you have limited resources, whether it's canoe went over and half of your food went away, but you still have, you know, 16 days till you can get out or whatever the situation is.

SPEAKER_00: 6:21

Um, that happened with Darren with ride, pedal, repeat, just talking about that exact scenario. So you're saying

SPEAKER_01: 6:27

I didn't come up with that

SPEAKER_00: 6:28

on my own. They had to rejig their plans and coffee was one of those vital things that.

SPEAKER_01: 6:35

Yes, that's exactly what it was too. That's funny. Cause that was the comments on, on the video. Uh, it was like, Oh man, I can't believe you lost that coffee although it's a travesty cancel the trip yeah so yeah you need to you need to give some thought to how you how now you have to manage those resources it goes it also goes back to um you know foraging and and fishing and and whatnot too to supplement what resources you have it could be

SPEAKER_00: 7:02

you have a kid on a growth spurt while you're in that country so many times so

SPEAKER_01: 7:08

many times um But say you've mismathed and you don't have enough fuel to get you through. So how are you going to do some cold soaks? How's that going to play out? How are you going to problem solve? And how are you going to adjust your planning next time so that you'll improve your potential for survival in whatever it is that you're doing?

SPEAKER_00: 7:34

Which leads me right into adaptability and problem solving. So you're always going to run into something. So weather forecasting is not a perfect science. Sometimes you were expecting beautiful sunny day and lo and behold, wind and a thunderstorm came up or equipment fails. So your tent leaks when you weren't expecting that or your sleeping pad suddenly has sprung a leak and now you're sleeping on hard ground or your route, you were paddling along thinking that you were going to be able to paddle through, but then it's low ground. water and you can't get through so now you're portaging instead. So all kinds of things that you have to be able to adapt to on the fly and not necessarily be able to like you'd like to be able to plan everything to the T but your best laid plans of mice and men you end up with some kind of variable that you weren't expecting. But so then you're forced to problem solve and be adaptable on the fly.

SPEAKER_01: 8:29

Well, it's funny that literally that entire list, despite the fact that I'm not out there like a lot of our pals are all the time, I have experienced every single one of those things. So why are survival skills important? The zombie apocalypse, obviously, but emergency preparedness, like you just, you don't know, especially with, I'm going to swing it towards, you know, climate change. You don't know what's going on anymore, you know, for things like, you know, I think in the entirety of recorded history, less than one hand, to the best of my knowledge, we can count the number of times tornadoes have hit in Ontario. Two of those are in my lifetime. That's pretty scary, man. We get pretty dire warnings. I mean, thankfully, weather prediction is better than it used to be. So that's probably why we get warnings and, you know, butt covering 101, right? Make sure people are safe. If it took a little bit of time out of your day to go and shelter or whatever. Just stop being outside doing whatever things you're doing. Things are happening at a higher rate, things, weather events or natural disaster type things are happening all over the world. But, you know, I'm thinking specifically about here at home, happening at a much higher rate than they ever have and to a level that we've never seen before. I mean, we had a day where we had over 100 millimeters of rain. I'm pretty sure that was a record, like never, ever, ever happened before. And we had all kinds of flooding. Like, you know, I remember a double-decker GO train that which is our public transit, long distance public transit, down towards the lake at the bottom of the Gardner Expressway here in Toronto. And the water was, it was a single decker. That's all you could see. The water was that deep for so much like that. That was literally a lake, man. It was insane. So that's what... being prepared to survive things because stuff like that is happening. Wildfires, you know, name it, you name it.

SPEAKER_00: 10:37

Well, it builds confidence. So suddenly when you're in these unexpected situations and you have to know how to handle them or come up with some solution, then you are no longer as anxious if you are in unfamiliar surroundings or in your unfamiliar territory of things that you weren't expecting to happen. You suddenly have a certain amount of confidence to be able to know, okay, I've handled things before. I know I can handle things again.

SPEAKER_01: 11:02

Self-sufficiency promotes independence and non-reliance on on others. So it doesn't take away from resources that may be needed elsewhere if you can wrangle your own stuff. And I'm speaking for myself, that makes you feel better at the end of the day, that you can take care of your own stuff, not in a, I'm pretty sure I know, no, you actually can't do

SPEAKER_00: 11:25

it. It also promotes environmental awareness, which we're big on that. Encourages more respect for nature, better understanding of the importance of nature, but also appreciation of our surroundings and our ecosystems.

SPEAKER_01: 11:39

Survivor skills, I've already touched on this a bit, but they might be critical for When you're doing outside activities, whether it's tobogganing, I'm thinking winter things, but skating, you're out for a canoe trip, you're hiking, you're hunting, because that has so many things that could possibly go wrong, right? Disasters, there's my weather thing, but floods, earthquakes, even something as simple as power outages. How do you deal with that, right? Especially... You know, it's like, oh, sun's going down and then power outage. We're going to be in the dark shortly. Where is your emergency? Because again, back up, back up, back up. Not only do we have satellite communication, I'm usually carrying my cell phone with me, but we also carry an emergency radio that has lights on it, can pick up a.m. AM, FM and weather bands on it. Solar powered, crank powered, however you want to do that. So it sits here in our apartment at home and then I take it and then bring it back and put it here in our apartment at home for when the inevitable power outages do happen.

SPEAKER_00: 12:57

And flashlights and candles and

SPEAKER_01: 12:59

all the things for lights.

SPEAKER_00: 13:01

And it might be useful if you're traveling in remote areas where you don't have access to immediate help. So that's where backcountry camping for sure applies And so then how exactly does camping enhance those skills? It gives you this real world scenarios where you can practice. And certainly with car camping, it is more of a kind of safe space where you can try building a fire and it's not the end of the world if you couldn't get the fire to go. But it gives you this ability to practice it so that when you are cast into that situation unexpectedly, you have those skills that you've already practiced.

SPEAKER_01: 13:35

You get better at things like muscle memory is a thing. Repeating, repeatedly doing a task, whatever that is, will make you be, probably make you be better at it, but certainly make it be a no-brainer. You just automatically, that's your go-to. That's what you do. So that'll make you more prepared in the future for whatever the heck comes down the pipe.

SPEAKER_00: 14:06

One, it certainly encourages also like teamwork and collaboration. Like a lot of these things are things that outside of camping or adventures, hiking, whatever, that in your everyday life, it's important to be able to work as a team. So whether you're working as a team with your colleagues, whether you're working as a team with your spouse, it gives you the ability to collaborate with other people. And in some sort of critical life-threatening situation, you have to to be able to collaborate with other people.

SPEAKER_01: 14:32

Yeah, and doing these sort of things, they're part of camping anyhow for the most part. It's a pretty low pressure way to learn, to gain experience at it, to do that repetitive muscle memory sort of thing and spread them around. Whatever the group, if you're solo, kind of hard to spread it around. But as soon as you hit tandem and up, whether it's family, friends, friends, whoever the heck is out with you, spread it around the team, you know, let them, okay. So tonight I'm, I'm going to make the fire or do the cooking or water purification, or, you know, I bang myself up enough that we get plenty of practice putting band-aids and stuff on.

SPEAKER_00: 15:15

Thanks honey for giving us the experience.

SPEAKER_01: 15:17

There you go. You're welcome. Somebody's got to take it from the team. Yeah. You know what? It's, it's a, It's one of those words, you know, it's not somebody looking over your shoulder and you did it wrong. It's like you can all learn from that experience. It's a pretty easy way to do

SPEAKER_00: 15:33

it. Yeah, and fun. That's it for us for today. Thank you so much for listening. We will talk to you again soon. If you would like to reach out to us, we are on all the social media and you can always email us at hi at supergoodcampaign.com. That's hi at supergoodcampaign.com. And we'll talk to you again soon. Bye. Bye.