Urban survival gear – that’s the sort of thing that most of us aren’t thinking about on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, the thought isn’t likely to cross our mind till we need it. Maybe it seems unrealistic that such a disaster will occur. Nonetheless, history is rife with examples of everyday activities such as taking a drive or hiking leading to sudden life-or-death survival situations. It happens more often than we think. Thus, it never hurts to prepare for it, and it may even save your life.

10 Urban Survival Gear Items You Should Own

Foraging Guides

Did you know that your backyard is likely full of edible foods? Many of the things that we consider weeds are actually foods and medicines brought here from overseas. Since they didn’t have any natural predators so they took off like crazy. Mallow is a good example. This cousin of the marsh mallow plant can be seen growing invasively just about everywhere, and every part of the plant is not only edible but flat-out delicious.

Learning what plants are edible and not edible in your environment can be a lifesaver if you find yourself stranded without food. This free full-color foraging guide is a great add to your urban survival gear: Wild Food School It was produced for England, but almost all of the plants can be found in the U.S. and other parts of the world. The Forager’s Harvest goes into even greater detail. It provides not only tips for finding edible plants but preparation guidelines as well. Heck, you might even save a little on your grocery bill.

Salt or Salt Tablets

Once you are foraging for food, you’ll discover that you are probably not getting enough sodium in your diet. You may become light-headed from low blood pressure. You may also find yourself urinating too much and dehydrating. We need salt to survive. Other spices help too, but if you only have room for one, make it salt.

Antibiotics

Neosporin will come in handy if you get a cut or scrape (which is guaranteed), and systemic antibiotics will be lifesaving if you contract a deadly bug. The truth is that most people die from starvation and infection after a disaster, not from the disaster itself. So, in this case, the pound of cure will come in handy for your urban survival kit when the ounce of prevention didn’t work.

Boots

Natural disasters are the most common cause for needing urban survival gear, and they almost always cause broken glass in an urban environment. Whether it’s an earthquake, hurricane or tornado, public enemy number one is the vagrant sharp object.

The only way to protect yourself from cuts and punctures as you move to a safe area is to wear sturdy shoes. If you find yourself in situations where you frequently have to wear less-than-practical shoes, keep a pair of boots with very strong soles on hand just in case. Keep a pair of heavy gloves on hand too for the same reason.

Ka-Bar

Ka-Bars are just about one of the most useful tools you can possess. They can be used to pry, hit, hammer or cut, and even as a self-defense tool. It will work as an ax for small branches for firewood as well. This extremely sturdy tool is used by members of the military as part of their urban survival gear, and only weighs about one and a half pounds, so it won’t take up too much room in your kit.

Pepper Spray

You may need this for dogs every bit as much as you need it for humans. Stray dogs tend to go feral and run in packs the longer they are left alone. While one stray dog may not be much of a threat, a pack of ten can be deadly.

Shut-Off Wrench

If you are in an urban disaster situation, it’s almost certain that broken gas lines are going to present a hazard. A shut-off wrench will take up very little weight in your kit considering it’s importance.

Slingshot

Eventually, everyone is going to run out of ammo. When that happens, a slingshot will ensure you can still find meat, as long as you are willing to learn how to use it to hunt. They are perfect for the type of small game you will find close to a city such as rabbits, squirrels, and birds. Also, unlike guns they are silent, so you will be able to hunt without fear of giving away your location.

A Multi-tool

The Ka-Bar comes in handy for big jobs, but sometimes you just have to have a tiny screwdriver to repair electronics or a nail file to keep a fingernail from getting ripped off and infected. Enter the SOG PowerAssist S66. This nifty piece of urban survival gear will just about replace an entire toolkit and is so handy you might find yourself using it every single day.

The Encyclopedia of Country Living

The author’s intention for this book was to show homesteaders how to care for their farms, with advice for everything from animal husbandry to canning to field medicine. Over the years, is has become so much more. This is because The Encyclopedia of Country Living doesn’t just explain how to take care of a farm – it’s literally Survival 101 for dummies. Carla Emery has a brilliant talent for explaining basic survival tips so clearly that it takes the fear out of doing things the old-fashioned way.

Let’s face it. Most of us aren’t just clueless about how to survive the way our great-great grandparents did, we are afraid of trying those skills because we think we might hurt ourselves. Take canning for instance. How many people do you know who refuse to eat home-canned food for fear of contracting salmonella or botulism? Yet, every year more than 48 million people get sick from food poisoning.

Most will agree that our food has become LESS healthy with industrialization, not more. Carla Emory shows us how to harvest and preserve our own food, make butter, build a cabin and so on. Some skills taught in the encyclopedia are useful right away in a disaster while others are useful for the long run. This is probably the most essential part of your urban survival gear next to the water filter we hope you already have.

Of course, there are other things that you might want to consider adding to your bug out bag. Do you have a tip to share? What is your favorite urban survival gear? Please tell us below.

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Have you ever watched television shows like “Naked and Afraid” or “Man vs. Wild” and wondered if it would be possible to survive if you were trapped in the wild? Well, it is possible if you know how. But if you are in an emergency situation you aren’t likely to have a guidebook to show you what to do. You need to know ahead of time how to take care of yourself and your loved ones if you are trapped in the wild. Here are just a few of the wilderness survival skills you should know.

5 Wilderness Survival Skills You Need to Know

How to Find Clean Water

You have a maximum of three days to survive without water, so this is your first of your wilderness survival skills you need to learn. How you find your water will depend on where you are and what supplies you have.

Desert or Arid Region

• If you have plastic bags or tarps: collect water by building a solar still. There are many optional pieces of equipment needed, but all you really need are a few rocks and a large amount of clear plastic.
• If you have no tools: Look for wildlife. Wildlife congregates near pools of water. Swarms of mosquitoes, animal tracks and circling birds can all lead you to sources of open water.
• Extract water from a cactus.

Forest, Jungle or Mountains

• If you have plastic bags: collect dew and condensation by tying plastic bags around tree branches. This technique is called using transpiration bags.
• If you have open containers or large tarps: collect rainwater.
• If you have no tools: dig a seep. You can collect and drink water from streams but there is no way to know if it is safe. You can improve safety by filtering it a bit with a seep to remove some bacteria and pollutants.

Of course, the best tool you can carry in any survival situation is a water filter or purifying equipment that is rated to remove dangerous bacteria and chemicals. All of the wilderness survival skills in the world won’t matter if you are suffering from dehydration due to bacterial poisoning.

How to Find Safe Food

Learning how to forage for food when you run out of supplies is among the most important wilderness survival skills. In most places –  even the desert – we are surrounded by edible plants and food sources. Just because we usually turn our noses up at them for not being the tastiest doesn’t mean they aren’t nutritious.

You can find nutrition in everything from mushrooms, wild greens, berries, nuts, fruit, fish, game, and even bugs. But you must be very careful when learning how to forage for food though because some things that look good and even taste good are quite poisonous. This is especially true for mushrooms, berries, and certain greens.

In addition, certain game needs to be carefully prepared to prevent contamination. Some game can harbor dangerous pathogens as well. Rabbits can carry tularemia for instance. There are many online resources that can help you learn more about how to forage for wild edibles.

How to Make a Fire

A fire can help you to purify water, cook food, help you stay warm, keep wild animals away and even signal that you need help. Learning how to build a fire no matter what is available is one of the must useful wilderness survival skills available. It can and will save your life and even make you comfortable in the worst situation.

There are many creative ways to start fires without using traditional tools. You can even do it using a bar of chocolate and the bottom of a soda can. Basically, you just polish the bottom of the can until it’s nice and shiny, point the concave surface toward the sun and hold dry tinder in the focal point. Voila! Nonetheless, there are plenty of other methods to try.

How to Stay Warm

This is literally one of the most vital wilderness survival skills. Hypothermia is a leading cause of death for those who are caught in the wild. Staying warm is staying alive, but sometimes it isn’t possible to make a fire even with the skills you learned above. So, it’s important to learn other ways to stay warm.

To start, don’t get cold in the first place! It is much harder to return your body temperature to normal if you let it fall. This means starting out with the right clothing. You should always have these things with you, either in your car or a backpack or stored where you can easily access them:

• Warm, waterproof, well-fitting boots.
• Long underwear.
• A very warm, preferably long coat.
• Warm, waterproof gloves.
• Poncho.

Make sure all of these supplies are loose fitting. Loose fitting clothes help to trap air between layers, which will keep you warmer.

But what if you don’t have any of these supplies? Make a debris bed. This can help you to stay warm with nothing more than the clothes on your back even if you don’t have a shelter. If you are caught in the snow, building a snow cave can provide warmth. However, snow caves can save or kill. Using a structure like this is dangerous without the proper know-how, so you need to learn what is the safest way to use this survival tool.

How to Find Your Way Home (or Anywhere You Need to Go)

Navigating the wilderness has become one of the lost wilderness survival skills. People no longer learn placement of the constellations during the seasons or how to use a compass because they have phones equipped with GPS.

If you can’t see the sun during the day or the stars at night, which is the simplest way to find north (or northish), there are other methods you can use. One of the niftiest is to make an improvised compass. Basically, you stroke a needle of ferrous metal against silk, or even your hair, in one direction only until it’s magnetized. Then, when hung (horizontally of course) from a piece of string or floated on water on a thin piece of wood to insulate it, it will align itself with the north and south poles. Then just use what little light is coming through the clouds and the time of day to judge which of the directions is north. You can now be sure you will not be wandering in circles and can navigate in a basic direction, if not precisely where you need to go.

Now you know what you need to learn, but gaining all of the wilderness survival skills you need is a work in progress. It’s best to know how to do these things before you need to do them because it’s too late to learn when you are in an emergency situation. Start with this guide, but continue learning as you go. This short article is just a beginning towards a journey to learn the ultimate skills in self-sufficiency and survival. Remember, knowledge is the most important survival skill of all.

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