Survival Skills without camping?

[Janne]

Of course, if you decide you want to plant a tree, you need to be very careful so you do not discover one of the ‘left behind presents’ the Brits or Americans left behind, when you dig through the concrete?

A huge amount of experimenting can be made at home, before you hit the Nature.

 

[Erbswurst]

The bomb that hit our garden exploded like expected. Probably well made British quality and not assembled by an uninterested farmer in Texas.

Why they attacked our carrots, potatoes and rabbits instead of the Flak Batteries 800 meters away you have to ask the Royal Air Force...

In our garden was nothing -- before as well as after the bomb.

 

[Janne]

They were jealous of your highly multiplying rabbits, no doubt!

Raising or growing your own food, is that not a useful survival skill?

 

[Erbswurst]

Yes, Janne, I thought about it, in my opinion the whole WW2 was only started by the Tommies, because they were jealous of our fantastic rabbits.
As you know Poland couldn't be the real reason, how they officially told, because in the end they gifted it to the Ivan.



Growing the own Food is in my opinion the nicest and most sensible hobby that is possible.
Verry well done it is possible in containers on concrete too, by the way, if one collects the rain water from the roof and uses a modern watering system that gives the plants every night the correctly amount of water.
That is complicated and can't be learned from the neighbour. But if one looks around it's probably possible to find professional gardeners ( berry and vegetable growers) in the area which use that most modern technique and can tell about it.
The results of food quality become better than in the classical way.

Is your garden really a bunker roof or something similar or is it just a real garden where you have the plants between ways of concrete tiles, a large terasse instead of lawn, like it came in fashion for house gardens in the seventies?
How many square meters do you have?

 

[Janne]

Well, The garden area in the back is about 0.25 acres. As it is excavated and filled in Mangrove swamp, the fill is not soil but excavated rock and such. The only paved area is the pool area, there we have big pots with ornamental bushes and a couple mini Lime trees.
The salt water is about 60 cm under the top of the rock fill.

To be able to plant anything, I had to manually dig out 'trenches' and fill them with imported so called soil that comes in bags, I must have bought a couple thousand of those. we built the house 9 years ago, and I am still digging and buying bags.
I have bananas, Mango trees, Lemon, Coconut. I also have ornamental psalms, trees and bushes, but those are (kind of) uninteresting for me.

I have grown from seed Date palms and Coconut palms, plus Guinep, plus the latest, a couple of Passion Fruit vines, and a Star Fruit tree. The bannanas, 7 varieties, I have found around the island, around old homesteads.

I have tried to grow vegetables, but a lot of work, and very little gain.

Technically, we should be able to survive, but badly. I have formulated an emergency procedure, and we tried it for a few days.
Our biggest problem is getting fresh, drinkable water. Hence the planting of coconut palms.

I estimate that, in an extreme emergency situation, we need to survive for about 2 months, without venturing far outside the house. In a worst case scenario, where all imports cease, the population will decrease sharply the first two months or so, then will stabilize on a for this island, sustainable level.

Fish I can do in the canal outside the house. Several of our garden plants have eatable leaves. We always have a couple of bags of brown rice and pasta ( restaurant size) which we change out once a year. The older ones we gift to Meals on wheels.
Fire - first gas ( grill), then 25 liters of Meths, then wood.
Have good firelighting possibilities, including powerful magnifying glassers and several Ferrocerium rods.

Yep, we will lose weight. And be thirsty.

Security is also taken care of. The weak point is the front door, as it is a wooden door.

House is easily defendable in a house invasion.

It will never come to that point though, except if a very bad Hurricane type Ivan - 2004, hits.

In my worst case scenario:
No water supply or water supply contaminated
No food ( we import around 99.9% of all food)
Airport non functioning, or no air travel due to ceased WW air travel

No functioning Police force. UK not being able to restore or maintain such.


Since about one year, we have had a major Green Iguana cull, so one food source is basically gone.

 

[Woody girl]

Janne have you ever thought of raised beds and container growing for things like carrots parsip cabbage etc.?
I grow lots of things like this mainly because I find growing in the ground hard work on my back. Beans and peas are grown in a six inch raised bed set on the ground also sweetcorn and onions. But most root crops I grow in containers.
I grow carrots beetroot parsnips and potatoes in various things and mini tomatoes do well in a hanging baskets as do strawberries. It means more watering as they can dry out quicker but a good watering before you mulch the top and a watering routine last thing at night with a hose works very well for me.
My garden gets very warm in the summer. I've recorded 40 degrees in the shade on occasion!. A real microclimate.

 

[C_Claycomb]

If there were awards for leading threads off topic, you lot would need to be building extensions to house them!

 

[Erbswurst]

In Europe you probably can survive on 1000 square meters ground if you know how to grow vegetables and fruit trees professionally.

A few raised beds are surely a nice hobby but everything else than a project for independent living.

But if I would have to buy the earth I would construct round about 5 meters long raised beds, 120 cm wide.
In raised beds the work is far easier for older people who want to grow vegetables.

 

[Woody girl]

Yes true but isn't that how conversation progresses on sometimes?
Survival skills without camping can cover many different ideas. But bushcraft survivall skills without camping is more specific.
So in a way it's still topic related if not quite what was origionaly envisaged.
I'm sure that survival skills cover many many ares depending on location and circumstances. .

 

[Janne]

The OP asked about Survival Skills he could do at home ( without the discomfort of camping)

I think a situation I described (applicable to other countries too) is quite valid.
Survival:
Sleep safe
Be safe
Eat
Drink.


Every survival scenario and possible can not be practiced or even anticipated.

He can learn to make a sleeping arrangement basically on the floor in the kitchen/living room.
Cooking using the cooking methods used in nature, from basic, raw non processed or semi processed ingredients.
Water - not a bad think to learn how to sterilize water at home, using the methods he has available in Nature.

If he should decide to get one of the water filters on the market - learn to filter 'dirty' water.
Tea? Urine?

He can do lots.

 

[Janne]

Yes true but isn't that how conversation progresses on sometimes?
Survival skills without camping can cover many different ideas. But bushcraft survivall skills without camping is more specific.
So in a way it's still topic related if not quite what was origionaly envisaged.
I'm sure that survival skills cover many many ares depending on location and circumstances. .

Agree.
I see a difference between what he asked about - Survival- and what many think he asked - Skills in Nature/ Bushcrafting.


Another aspect he can learn pleasurably. - Wild edibles. Internet, books, courses.

Cooking from raw ( supermarket bought) ingredients is not so stupid.
A huge % of the European, specially British, population, life off semi prepared meals.
Buy ready peeled potatoes, carrots, or civilian RME's

Buy a whole chicken, dirty veg.
One knife, one pan, one heat source. Cook. Eat from pan.

To your question, WG:

All my plantings are on a kind of raised beds, about one foot high.
To try to distance the roots from the salt water, plus to save a little bit of the back breaking digging.
The holes for the trees I do now I am unable to did myself, so pay extra to the gardeners that come once a fortnight.
The insects, moth and butterfly larvae, plus billions of other creatures ate my early tries to be self sufficient in veg. Tomatoes, Callalloo ( Spinach eqvivalent), courgettes, beans, hot peppers, bell peppers, root veg, all failed.

I even built a 5x3 meter fine meshed cage, but even that did not prevent the smallest pests.
I do not want to spray or use chemicals.


I have 4 Deglet Date palms, 6 more Coconut palms and maybe 5-10 Passion fruit vines to plant.

I have to plant everything so it looks like a 'nice' garden, so not to lessen the value of the property.

For example, the Bananas are plnted in a semi circle around the cabana, gives both fruit, shade,
and good aesthetics.

The Coconuts are easy. I plant them inside the hedges towards my neighbors. The passion fruit on a wall, towards next neighbor.

Plus, I do not want to spend a fortune on watering, so the water thirsty plants have pipes leading from the AC units watering them.

Even if the OP has no garden, he can still 'practice' for survival.
Use pots on the windowsills, plant herbs, leeks, maybe potatoes in a bucket.

 

[Woody girl]

I have my winter window sill garden going at the moment. Mustard and cress pick and come again lettuce and some micro greens ie pea shoots beetroot leaves and a pot of spinach leaves all of which I eat as a winter salad. It's nice to have fresh greens without having to brave the wind rain and cold to harvest or shop.
Definatly a survival trick for me!

 

[TLM]

On water a sun still could be a working solution, at least for drinking water.

How to practise at home:
- buy a reasonable knife, practise:
- whittling
- peeling an apple in one continuous spiral
- dressing a chicken, preferably a dead one
- practise sleeping not in bed, floor, hammock, hanging upside down from tree, all help
- practise using fire and/or simple burners for cooking and eat it too
- thought practise "what if"

After those done go out and see what happens. For the first time I would suggest a place not very far from civilization.

 

[Woody girl]

Practice dressing a chicken preferably a dead one. Is that so that it won't object to wearing clothes?
so sorry, I just have a crazy mental picture, and I'm laughing myself into a coughing fit. (Coffin fit?) Must have a lie down

 

[Robson Valley]

It is a challenge to get those wings pulled out through the sleeves, right?

 

[TLM]

If the chicken is not dead one would have start by killing it. That is usually taught at a later stage ...

I remember that my first times in the woods were somewhat uncomfortable, but if one knows the basics it is not difficult to tackle uncomfortabilities one at a time. It does not take all that long, usually.

 

[C_Claycomb]

Yes true but isn't that how conversation progresses on sometimes?
Survival skills without camping can cover many different ideas. But bushcraft survivall skills without camping is more specific.
So in a way it's still topic related if not quite what was origionaly envisaged.
I'm sure that survival skills cover many many ares depending on location and circumstances. .

Conversations can ramble, although it may be annoying when you start by asking a question then two or three folk take the discussion in a direction that suits them more than it suits you.

Forum threads are not the same as conversations. Conversations, words on the breeze, cannot be referred to for years afterwards. Forum discussions can be, and are often read again years later. Rambling off topic means that people who are reading for the main subject can lose interest, makes it harder on them. Also, people who might have been interested in the off-topic discussion will never find it because it is buried 6 pages back in a thread who's title doesn't relate.

We have had complaints about it. More than once when people are explaining why they no longer post here. And the same three or four names always get mentioned. Far more complaints than we have ever had about threads staying on topic denying the chance for a chin wag.

 

[Janne]

I do not think I ever slept comfortably outside a bed. The older I get the harder it is to find a semi decent place.
I estimate I have 1000+ nights out so far, and the most comfortable were the ones in a snow cave.
There is always something that bugs me. Uneveness, insects, something.
Having a very bad lower back has not helped.
Snow I can sculpture to a decent shape.

Maybe you could get a Pheasant to practice on? Must be plenty around now? Preferably a dead one..

 

[Woody girl]

Conversations can ramble, although it may be annoying when you start by asking a question then two or three folk take the discussion in a direction that suits them more than it suits you.

Forum threads are not the same as conversations. Conversations, words on the breeze, cannot be referred to for years afterwards. Forum discussions can be, and are often read again years later. Rambling off topic means that people who are reading for the main subject can lose interest, makes it harder on them. Also, people who might have been interested in the off-topic discussion will never find it because it is buried 6 pages back in a thread who's title doesn't relate.

We have had complaints about it. More than once when people are explaining why they no longer post here. And the same three or four names always get mentioned. Far more complaints than we have ever had about threads staying on topic denying the chance for a chin wag.

Point taken on my part. Will try to not ramble except in the wild.