Survival Skills

The time to learn survival skills is not after the world has just experienced a complete economic meltdown. Some of the most valuable skills are not the ones that can be learned overnight.

Preparing Children

Most adults feel like it is their responsibility to keep the family safe in times of disaster but your kids need to have some skills in case the man or the woman of the house is not available to act. Five skills you and your children should have are:

• CPR and AED certification - Performing CPR can be a long exhausting effort. If their dad falls victim to a heart attack, mom or granddad may not be the best candidate to save dad’s life.
• Basic First Aid - If your kids are out playing somewhere and no adults are around, someone needs to know what to do if little brother is bleeding to death.
• Know Personal Information - If your child is dialing 911 from a cell phone, 911 dispatch may not be able to track it. Your children need to know their address, their home number or their parent’s cell numbers as well as a landline, if they have one. They should also be educated on when it’s appropriate to call 911.
• How to deal with Fire - Your children should know how to use an extinguisher. They should also know when to use one and when to just run out of the house for safety.
• Outdoor Survival - Your kids should know the very basic survival skills so that they can make it in the wild for at least a couple days until they are found. You don’t want them running around in circles confusing would be rescuers.

Military Skills

Different branches of the military have been around for a long time and for good reason, they teach survival skills and excel in:

• Military personnel always carry basic first aid kits, and more importantly, they know how to use them. If you or your friend is injured, you may not have time to wait for someone trained in first aid to show up to help.
• S.T.O.P. That means stop, think, observe and plan. Take a break, calm down and assess the situation before you react; it may just save your life.
• Even the lowliest member knows some basic self- defense. Under normal circumstances, you cannot count on the police arriving in time to save you, but if you are attacked, you can bet it will come at a time when police are not around and YOU will have to save yourself.
• You have to improvise to survive, so you have to know how to adapt to any situation and make the right decisions. If you are in a time of total economic collapse and you are left to your own devices to protect your home and your family, you will have to think on your feet before someone desperate comes along to take what you have.
• Military people know how to build a shelter and so should you. You never know where you or your family could be when the bomb goes off, or we experience a complete economic collapse and paper money is no longer valued. You may no longer have a home, but you need to have the survival skills to build a shelter that will keep your family safe for a few days, or perhaps much longer.

The Apocalypse

Sometimes the biggest deterrent to survival is not believing the apocalypse could actually happen. Even if an apocalypse never happens it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be prepared. Most basic survival skills are appropriate today, for example, self-defense skills your child learns to survive in a lawless society, he or she can use to deal with school bullying.

You do not need an apocalypse to use survival skills, as you can use these lost on a hike, or stranded in an unexpected blizzard. The same first aid skills you use to stop from bleeding to death after being shot will come in handy if you accidently sliced off your finger during a woodworking project. You do not have to believe in an apocalypse to develop disaster preparedness skills, as you can use them for the personal emergency of today as well as in an epic disaster.