It all started at Midnight

Around midnight on the 27th of November I just could not catch my breath. Around 4:30 AM it started to get challenging to just breath, so I called for backup, my Mom came and took me to the emergency room.

They rushed me in, it seems breathing is an important enough issue to get you straight in past the cold and flu people. They hooked me up to 0xygen and started monitoring me and admitting me. It seems that my oxygen level was under 80 and most people are above 92 and your should be around 96 to be normal.

That day they did an ultra sound on my heart and decided that my heart was operating at only 20% capacity, most people around my age are averaging between 60% to 75%, I know that might scare you that the high number is only 75%.  They scheduled me for a Heart Catha-dire (spelling) the next day and found that I had 3 major arteries blocked at 96% or greater.

It was determined that I needed a triple by-pass operation (open heart surgery) and I had severe COPD and adult onset diabetes. Happy Birthday to me (it was 10/12 and I was still in the hospital that day).

Here is what the cardiologist said, "I don't think you will survive the surgery so we are going to cancel the triple by-pass and consider hospice for you". It says right here you are going to die boy, hey wait I am only 48. After long lectures from my Lung Doctor, my Heart Doctor, the Hospital Committee chairwomen, my Doctor, they kept me in the hospital to see if they could get me to a point that I would survive the surgery and do the triple by-pass, because of my age, if I were over 60 they would not have even tried.

On 10/7/2010 I had the triple by-pass, on 10/15/2010 they sent me home one scared young man, I have to change my life and save my life, I have to quite smoking.

More to come ....

Open Heart Surgery

Wow, I have been gone a little bit, on 9/27/2010 I had to call my mom and get a ride to the emergency room, it seems that breathing is important.

I am going to add an item to the must have list, besides water and food, it seems AIR is handy as well.

So, here is the short version, I am home from the hospital now and will give you detailed information and a play by play this coming Monday. Right now the short version goes like this, no air = oxygen mask = testing = heart cath = 3 blocked arteries = triple by pass = open heart surgery = major life changes. I will have more time this coming Monday to fill in the blanks.

Water

We have talked extensively about fire, building a fire, and for now we will leave it there, we still need to talk some more about fire, but we are off to a good start.

Water is your biggest worry, you must keep your body hydrated or you will die.

My mom said to me today that she has learned something from this blog, that, however, she is glad she does not have to worry about stuff like this.

I intend to scare her with my blog today, and therefore scare you, because water, survival, emergency preparedness is something you absolutely need to take serious, even in the comfort of your own home.

Across the United States today, there is billions of gallons of raw sewage pouring into our rivers, creeks and aqua fir. One estimate places the amount equal to the amount of water that flows over the Niagara Falls for 21 days straight.

In 2003 we had a power outage that shut down 6 states and part of Canada for 3 days. The cause, a tree that was not maintained fell on a power line Ohio. Knocking out 6 states including New York City  and some of Canada 3 days.

Our infrastructure, sewer plants, dams, bridges, roads, highways, power grid, levy’s, were all built in the 40’s and 50’s, that’s more than 60 to 70 years ago.

Many engineers predict total failure of our infrastructure in 20 to 30 years. Some say sooner, some failures we have seen when Katrina came through, when New York City lost power, when the dam in Tennessee broke and killed 300 people.

It is not uncommon today for cities to issue warnings that you should boil your water before you consume it.

I want to point out to everyone reading my blog that survival, does not just happen in the wilderness. Most accidents happen with 2 miles of your own home.

We will talk about dehydration and how dangerous it tomorrow.

How to carry a live coal

To carry a live coal you need something often called punk. Punk is simply, dried decayed tinder. You will also need something to carry the punk in after you put the coal in, something that won’t burn, and has a limited amount of oxygen, but it must have some oxygen.

Cattail heads work great, they will burn for an hour (ish) and if you carry several more cattail heads you can use one to start the other and carry fire for as long as you have cattail heads.

Dry moss, some fungus, and some mushrooms can work to carry fire as well. The best fungus for carrying fire is fomes formentarius, its common name is tinder fungus, and now you can guess why. Wrap that up in some green leaves with your coal / ember and you now have fire in your pocket.

Other Fungi that work are Phaeolus schweinitzii and Birch Fungus.

We need to grind your tinder up so it burns better. If a Birch tree is available or some other tree you can strip the bark from the tree whole, get yourself a piece about 6 inches wide and 2 feet long. Place your tinder in a nice pile about a third in the piece of Birch bark you just peeled off, put your coal in the fire, roll your bark around it like a cigar and again you have fire in your pocket.

fomes formentarius -

Phaeolus schweintzii -

Birch Fungus -

cattail heads -

Friday Night Survival Night

You have to love Friday Night on the Discovery Channel, my favorite of the Survival shows is Beyond Survival featuring Les Stroud.

Les takes us on epic journey’s and he goes to places where the “locals” are tribes of people living the way they have been living for 1000’s of years. Some tribes only recently discovered having thought to be extinct.

Today we went with Les to Madagascar. Here is the theme that I always notice in these shows. The tribesman always work together as a group to feed the tribe, the tribesman always work together to help build the huts of other tribesman. In a tribal environment there seems to be a sense of community responsibility that’s hands on. It forces you to notice that the “civilized” way of just throwing money at people is backwards.

I have enjoyed primitive craft all my life and I am not talking about painting pictures or making cute necklaces. The primitive way of living, we call it survival, they call it life and there life is dying as we civilized people fish the seas dry, hunt the animals to extinction. With all our abundance, where / when did we forget that we are a tribe? That we have brothers and sisters? I am not talking about reaching to these tribesman and building them a well, or a school house, a church, or anything, really they are fine. I am talking about when are we going to stop sticking our nose in their business, and look across the street of our own front doors and notice we have a neighbor.

On HGTV they just had a show the “greatest handyman” I thought that show was BS as well. All they did was build things. I have done handyman work on and off my whole life, and I never built anything. Most of the time it was changing light bulbs for little old ladies, or fixing a running toilet, very simple stuff that they used to be able to do for themselves. More importantly to the whole handyman experience was the time I spent listening to them tell there stories, knowing how important it was for them to just have someone who would listen, even if they are being paid to be there. If they needed some roofing done they would call a roofer not a handyman. Let me get back on point, most of the customers I helped, I wound up doing the work for little to no money, these are our neighbors, people who just need to be noticed, if you would take the time to care about one neighbor, if everyone would take the time to take care of just one neighbor, just think what a difference that would make. Don’t limit your vision to just single moms, and the elderly, if you open your eyes and your heart, you will find a lot of people in need, right in your own neighborhood.

Survival shows make survival look fun, survival is not fun. The most dangerous part of survival is depression and the psychological effects being in a dangerous situation can have on you.

Don’t you think your neighbor who can only afford to eat one .88 cent TV dinner a day does not view his existence just as desperate as someone lost in the wilderness.

I have a theory about where we have gone wrong as a society, we view depression in other people as a disease to be cured with a pill, not as a sign that they are in trouble and need a friend, that they are no longer capable of self rescue.

In a survival situation the only reason you should ever move is if you know for a fact that no rescue is coming. The choice to stay or self rescue in a survival situation occurs before the effects of dehydration and starvation kick in, in other words while you are still healthy. I assure you in a survival situation that if you get to a point of depression so sever that you can no longer self rescue, you will die. If your neighbor is that depressed, they will die, if you don’t help. So why do you act surprised when you hear about your neighbor passing away?

Now that I have totally left the grid from where I started I better get off my soapbox.

Hearing someone cry “I want to live” sometimes is a call for help and maybe you don’t own a strong enough rope, but aren’t you part of a tribe?

Back to Fire

Since fire is what got me started writing this blog, it's only right I talk about fire now.

You need several things to build a fire, first and foremost you need something to create a spark, create a hot ember, or fire itself.

If the disposable lighter in your pocket has gotten wet, and you can't use it (this is temporary, your lighter will be fine when it drys). Then your next best bet is to pull your flint and steel out of your kit, grab your steel wool while you are in your kit as well, and if you duplicated my survival kit two then grab a tinder tablet from your kit as well.

If you have built a campfire before you know you need the 3 main components, which are tinder, kindling and fuel. However, those 3 components to building a fire won't do you any good if you can't get them burning. Tinder is very dry, very flammable, and will hold a flame long enough to get the kindling burning.

Tinder - dryer lint (I have seen dryer lint fail so don‘t make this your first choice), dry crumbled pine needles, dry ground up bark, dry tree rot, dry grass, empty birds nest, etc. (hair or fur of any kind is not tinder, and paper usually does not work so well either)

Kindling - dry twigs, split shavings from a log, etc.

Fuel - logs (split is better, but fuel is the big stuff)

OK, let's start that fire, fluff up your tinder so it looks like a birds nest and about the same size as your hand, place a piece of steel wool in the center, with your tinder cube under the steel wool, if you have one. Take out your flint and steel and strike in the direction of your steel wool, it will catch quick and hold the flame long enough to start your tinder on fire, you may have to blow on it gently.

Place your now burning tinder in the center of where your fire will be. Start adding your kindling, remember to always build up, not flat. Once you have a good fire going with your kindling and some coals going, you can start adding your fuel. Now you have fire.

I need to make some sidebar notes here:  You will have to carry a ton of steel wool if steel wool is the only thing you use to get your fire started. The method I mentioned above is the method that works best for me and the method I have used 100s of times. I use the steel wool to flame up long enough to flame up my tinder nest as I described above. You can also make your own “flame ball” I don’t know what to call it, soak some cotton balls in petroleum jelly, store them in a pill bottle and stick it in your kit.

Always have a back up plan for fire, I carry flint and steel, a lighter and waterproof matches. I use the lighter first, but a lighter will not work in cold weather or at high elevations. Then matches (remember though matches are finite, you only have so many and they have a shelf life). Then flint and steel.

Then if you plan to move to another site the best way to preserve your work in building a fire is to carry fire with you to your next site, I will explain how to do this tomorrow.

It's always best to have gathered all three components to your fire before you actually start the fire, it will only take you one time to remember that you forgot some fuel and kindling, because your tinder will go out and you will have to start all over again.

Remember to build up not flat, think tepee, build your fire like a tepee not a flat wall or cabin.

Remember you don’t really need a monster fire unless you are building a signal fire, keep your fire small and under control.

Remember it is always good to practice, get your bbq pit out and practice building a good campfire if you have never done this before.

Here is a good place to talk real briefly (because I will talk about this subject in depth later) about knife selection. If you are like me you have your pocket knife, and some sort of field knife. Here is where what type of knife you carry will make a big difference. A camp knife tends to be a large knife (not to be confused with a "bowie" knife), but has a thinner blade and is great for chopping and cutting. A hunting knife is usually designed for skinning and cutting, I carry these two knifes besides my pocket knife.
Camp Knife - Schrade X-Timer Camp Knife

Hunting Knife - Gerber's Bear Grylls Survival Knife, though not available til 11/15/2010 this is a good knife.

Fire - The Iceman - Reality

In 1991 a mummy was discovered, the oldest known mummy ever, he is estimated to be 5,300 years old. He was discovered in the Otztal Alps and named Otzi.

What does the Iceman have to do with fire? What does the Iceman have to do with reality? I am so glad you asked. You see the Iceman was wearing stuff, stuff scientist were able to analyze, stuff that gives us an insight to how he lived, who he was, etc, and the Iceman wore a belt.

Every one of the reality shows, the experts are building fires by rubbing two sticks together, and that is so unrealistic it's funny.

Let's back track, the Iceman wore a belt, and not just any belt.

Otzi's belt was made of calf leather, it was approximately 2 yards long, 2 1/4 inches high in the center and tapered to a 1/4 inch at the ends. That made it long enough to wrap around his body twice, with enough left over to tie it. This is a lot of belt to just hold up a loin cloth, his leggings were tied to the belt at the sides, a flint dagger and a 5 inch piece of antler that was obviously a flint knapping tool also hung from his belt. So, this belt served a much greater purpose than just holding up his pants.

A belt this long could be used to assist you in climbing, and old time rock climbers out there will remember the swami belt.

A belt this long could be used to support a heavy load, Otzi was found with a backpack, he could have used the belt to support the backpack the same way we do today with modern backpacks.

However, we still have not gotten around to the important part, fire, and reality. No more history lesson, back to the belt, in the back of the belt was a pouch, this pouch was the same size as the belt and approximately 8 inches wide. Inside this pouch was his personal survival kit. I have said it 100 times and I will say it 100 times more, a survival kit is no good if you don't have it on you, even the cavemen knew this. This survival kit consisted of 5 items.

The belt pouch contained 3 flint tools, 1 bone awl and a lump of Fomes fomentarius or, true tinder fungus.

The 3 flint tools are made from similar, if not identical flint.

1. The scraper: 2.63" long, .5" wide, .31" thick. It has a thick triangular cross-section and has been worked on all edges. There are traces of "sickle gloss" which indicated it was used in cutting grasses or grain stalks. It would be a good tool for cutting, planing and scraping.

2. The drill: Length 1.94", width .5" tapering to .25", thickness .27".  It has a square cross section that is much broader and thicker at one end tapering to a fine point. This makes it ideal for hand drilling or it could have been hafted to a shaft.

3. Small flake: Length .85", width .5", thickness .1". This small fragment would have been difficult to hold but its thin edge would allow for fine carving, notching.

The bone awl is probably made from the long leg bone of a goat, sheep or ibex. It's length 2.75", width .22".  In following the natural shape of leg bones, it has a curved cross section at the center with one end finely worked to a point, the other being slightly rounded. The point was sharp enough for making holes to repair his clothing.

The true tinder fungus consists of approximately four pieces which when put together, are about 2" square. This fungus can be found on dead and dying birch and beech trees and is parasitical. Fomes fomentarius is an important part of a Neolithic fire making kit.  The inner layers must be cut out and then pounded or ground to enhance its spark-catching qualities. This prepared fungus together with flint and iron pyrite will catch a spark that can be blown into an ember and was a primary fire starting technique used in the Neolithic. Even into modern times, Fomes is still used medicinally and to make a suede-like felt, used as a craft material.  Microscopic analysis of the tinder fungus in the pouch showed traces of iron pyrite particles in its fibrous structure, although no pyrite was discovered near the Iceman or his equipment. Perhaps his care and experience carrying live coals lessened his apparent need for making sure he had pyrite in his pouch.

Yes, the Iceman carried live coals, just like the mountain men of the fur trade era, just like our native Americans, we have not rubbed two sticks together to make fire in a very long time, apparently for over 5000 years.

So, for the record, even the caveman did not rub two sticks together, and that is what this has to do with fire and reality. I love learning primitive skills, and I know how to build a fire rubbing two sticks together, but it is an art form, the reality shows don't even bother to teach you how to prepare the bottom board correctly.

Don't make me a hater, I love the survival shows on the Discovery Channel, Man, Women Wild, Duel Survival, Man Vs. Wild I just wish they had just a tad bit more reality.

In my Tips and Tricks section (the link is on the left side of the page) I have included my modern version of a fire starting kit that should always be in your survival kit, and if you are following my rules I have one survival kit that stays in my pockets at all times and in my pocket is a disposable lighter.

So don't forget to Be Prepared and bring fire with you, either in the form of flint and steel, a lighter, or even some tinder.