.22 Caliber Tripwire Sentry Alarm Mines

An early warning system to protect your bug-out camp from intruders is an important consideration. Those intruders might be men with evil intent, or perhaps a bear looking to fill its belly with whatever food you have in camp. In either case the sound of a gunshot can frighten away the intruder, while warning you that someone or something is approaching your camp.

A useful alarm system for protecting your camp is the .22 Caliber Tripwire Sentry Alarm Mine. These mines fire a .22 caliber blank (Ramset Powder Load) when something disturbs the tripwire connected to the mine’s trigger. 

Placed along the approaches to your camp, these mines can be nailed or tied to a tree, or pushed into the ground using the attached ground spikes. To use the mines, run a tripwire across the approach to your camp and attach the tripwire to the mine’s trigger. When the tripwire is disturbed the striker is released, firing a Ramset Powder Load used to arm the mine. (Note that an actual .22 caliber round will not work in these mines. You must use the Ramset Powder Loads.) The report of these loads is quite loud (similar to a .22 caliber rifle), serving both to warn you of danger and to perhaps frighten away approaching intruders.

On-Line Survival and Preparedness Courses

Today there is an on-line course for almost anything that you might want to learn, and that includes courses in survival and wilderness first aid. But, can you really learn to survive in the wilderness by taking an on-line class? A similar question might be, can you learn to survive by reading a survival manual? As with any skill you first have to acquire foundational knowledge, and thereafter apply that knowledge to develop the skills yourself. On-line courses, reading survival manuals, and watching videos all help you develop that foundational knowledge. 

To begin your on-line survival training start with a short, inexpensive, course such as the "Essential Guide to Survival in the Wilderness with Nothing" . This on-line course is taught by Thomas Schorr-kon, who runs a survival school based in the UK. In addition to taking the on-line survival course, you should take a basic first aid course, which is available on-line from First Aid for Free. 

Some of the outdoor magazine publishers also offer courses and instructional videos on their web-sites.  A couple of examples include:

• American Survival Guide University
  
• Outdoor Life University - Fundamentals of Wilderness Survival

If you find that you enjoy on-line training and are able to learn and develop skills from these courses, you might want to continue your training with these courses as well:

Alderleaf Wilderness College, Essential Wilderness Survival Skills ($195.00)

Wilderness First Aid Basics ($149.00)

  

Major universities such as the University of Pittsburgh offer Disaster Preparedness courses through Coursera. 

"Introduction to Community Emergency Response Teams" (IS-317), is an independent study course, offered by the American Federal Emergency Management Agency, which serves as an introduction to CERT for those wanting to complete training or as a refresher for current team members. There are six modules in all. Topics include: Introduction to CERT, Fire Safety, Hazardous Material, Terrorist Incidents, Disaster Medical Operations, and Search and Rescue. The on-line course takes between six and eight hours to complete. 

There are no doubt many other on-line survival and wilderness medicine courses available. The courses mentioned above are just examples of what is available. You can also build your own course or knowledge base by finding on-line references and resources and using them to develop your personal survival knowledge and skills. Some examples of these resources include YouTube Channels like: 

• Survival Lilly (Austria)
  
• North Survival (Sweden)
  
• Survival Russia (Russia)
  
• Wilderness Outfitters  (United States)

And survival focused web-sites like: 

• Equipped to Survive
  
• Canadian Wilderness Survival 

Regardless of how you gain your knowledge, the important thing is that you always continue to learn and develop new skills in whatever you choose to do.

Figure 4 Deadfall

Other trapping information can be found in A.R. Harding's 1907 book: Deadfalls & Snares

http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/11624792

Crosman 1300KT Customized Pellet Gun for Survival

I previously wrote about pellet guns for survival, and recommended the Russian made ‘Ataman M2R Ultra Compact Carbine’ as one of the best pellet guns made. This is certainly true, but the Ataman M2R is somewhat expensive ($1400 American Dollars).  At the lower end of the price scale I mentioned the ‘Crosman P1322 American Classic Multi Pump Pneumatic .22-Caliber Pellet Air Pistol’. The Crosman P1322 is a good gun, but it could use a few upgrades to make it a great gun. Fortunately, the American pellet gun company, Crosman, has a custom shop that will do just that.

Going on-line to the Crosman Custom Shop http://www.crosman.com/custom-shop/ I built my multi-pump survival pellet gun, starting with the Crosman 1300KT .22 caliber (basically the same as the Crosman 1322) as the base. I ordered the following upgrades to the gun:

• 14.6" Lothar Walther Match Barrel (.22 Caliber)
• Long Steel Breech
• Shoulder Stock and Forearm
• Black Muzzle Brake
• 2x Pistol Scope
• Trigger Shoe 

My customized air gun is pictured at the top of this article. And the cost for this gun? $183.95, and for an additional $10.00, I added a lifetime warranty on my new pellet gun.

This customization, takes a good pellet gun and turns it into a great survival pellet gun.  The longer barrel gives additional velocity to the pellets, and the addition of a pistol scope improves accuracy for hunting small game (i.e. hare, rabbit, and squirrel). So, if you are thinking about adding a pellet gun to your survival gear, but don’t want to spend $1400 for an Ataman M2R Ultra Compact Carbine; consider designing your own custom pellet gun with the Crosman Custom Shop.

Survival Fishing Kits

A small fishing kit adds little weight to your survival gear, while providing you with the opportunity to supplement your diet with freshly caught fish. As part of your basic survival supplies a small fishing kit, such as the Best Glide ASE Survival Fishing Kit or the Vigilant Trails Pocket / Survival Fishing Kit should always be included. You can, of course, assemble a kit like this yourself, tailoring it to meet the fishing needs in your area of the world.

In my basic fishing kit, I like to include a couple Fisher’s Yo Yo Fishing Reels. These reels will automatically retract the line and reel in a fish after it takes the bait. Including a couple of Yo Yo reels lets you keep additional lines in the water, increasing your chances of catching a fish.

Including a gill net in your fishing kit adds to the bulk of the kit, although it adds very little weight. Set a gill net up on a small stream or brook. Fish that attempt to swim through the gill net are caught and can be used for food or bait. Gill nets can also be set up to catch birds.

If you plan to do a good deal of fishing, either to supplement your survival food, or simply while hiking or camping, a telescopic fishing rod is the way to go. These rods fit easily in a rucksack and provide you with a true fishing rod and reel. Both the Sougayilang Spinning Telescopic Fishing Rod and the Go Back Trail Fishing Rod Reel Kit are good choices for portable fishing rods.

Not every hike by the lake shore or along a mountain stream is a survival situation. Having a small fishing kit in your pack may be just a good way to catch your dinner while enjoying a day out in nature. So before your next trip, consider adding a fishing kit to your outdoor supplies.

Can You Live Off the Land and Survive?

When planning for survival, many people think that they will be able to live off the land and survive. Whether this is possible or not is both location and skill dependent – are there plenty of wild edibles at your location and do you have the skill (and knowledge) to gather that food. The bottom line however is one of calories. Can you take in more calories than you burn? If the answer to that question is yes, then you will be able to live off the land. If the answer to that question is no, then there will come a time when you will have to obtain an alternate food source or starve to death.

How many calories do you need to survive? To just survive you need to take in enough calories to meet your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is the number of calories that your body needs when you are remaining still and resting (i.e. no activity). There are various ways to calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate, but one of the most common and accepted methods is the Mifflin-St. Jeor Equation. This equation takes into count your weight, height, age, and gender. The formulas for men and women are:

Men
BMR = 10 x weight (in kilograms) + 6.25 x height (in centimeters) - 5 x age (in years) + 5

Women
BMR = 10 x weight (in kilograms) + 6.25 x height (in centimeters) - 5 x age (in years) – 161

Add to your Basal Metabolic Rate the calories needed to replace those burned based on your level of physical activity. There is a calculator here that can help you with these calculations: http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html. Because you must work to gather food in a survival situation, you should set the activity level on the calculator to "Very Active" or "Extra Active", depending on how you envision your survival activity. The calculator will return a different number of calories based on goals for either weight loss or weight gain, but the result that is important for survival is “Calories/day to maintain your weight.” Using this calculator, we see that a 35-year-old man, 5’ 10” tall, weighing 180 pounds, who was very active in a survival situation would need 3,032 calories per day to maintain his body weight.

The number of calories will vary somewhat from one person to the next, but 3000 calories per day is a good estimate of what you will need to survive long-term in the wilderness while living off the land.

Here are the calories you will gain from a serving (80 – 100 grams / 3 - 4 ounces) of game that you might be able to trap or hunt in a survival situation:

• Rabbit – 175 calories
• Squirrel – 102 calories
• Woodrat / Packrat – 195 calories
• Racoon – 1017 calories
• Duck – 109 calories
• Frog (legs) – 73 calories
• Rainbow Trout – 111 calories
• Crayfish – 74 calories

As you can see, with the exception of racoon meat, most survival type game and fish will return very few calories. Plant food returns even fewer calories.

• Cattail provides only 7 calories per ounce. 
• Apple provides 14 calories per ounce.
• The inner bark of the Pine tree provides just 31 calories per ounce. 
• Acorns however provide 142 calories per ounce, but remember this is per ounce of the meat of the nut, not including the shells and caps.  

Generally speaking, you will burn more calories than you will gain while hunting and gathering wild foods. In any bug-out situation you must have a supply of food to sustain yourself while supplementing that food supply with wild edibles. In addition to calories, the human body requires proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. These are all provided in wild foods to one degree or another, but again in far smaller amounts than one might hope for when trying to live off the land.

Mors Kochanski in his book Basic Safe Travel and Boreal Survival Handbook wrote:

"In attempting to live off the land, it is more preferable to only drink water, than to eat less than the minimum number of calories required each day. In not meeting the basal metabolic rate, which may be from 1,100 to 1,700 calories per day, there is such a disproportionate use of protein reserves in comparison to fat reserves that one may die of protein depletion in at least a quarter of the time compared to fasting. In fasting there is a more balanced use of proteins and fats so that a healthy person of normal weight of 65 kilograms (143 pounds) will not begin to suffer any irreversible deficiencies for at least six weeks. Overweight persons may get by longer than this. The record stands at over a year."

So, can you live off the land and survive?  For an extended period of time I would say no, at least not in a survival situation where you are attempting to either remain undetected and hidden in a specific area, or where you are travelling across the land from one place to another. This of course does not mean that you should totally ignore hunting, trapping, and gather of wild plants. These things all supplement your diet; but when preparing for a survival situation it is essential that you have a good supply of food to sustain yourself before you begin your hunting and gathering efforts.

Emergency Ration Food Bars

Emergency Ration Food Bars are designed to sustain a person for two or three days during an emergency situation, until additional food can be obtained. The food bars come in foil packages, with each package containing six to nine food bars. Each package contains 2400 - 3600 calories (400 calories per bar), and weighs around 725 grams (a little over one-and-a-half pounds). Advertised shelf-life on most emergency rations is around five years. 

Emergency rations are manufactured by several companies, such as Datrex, Mainstay, Marine Pro, SOS Labs, and Tac-Bar. Regardless of the company manufacturing the rations, they all have generally the same taste and texture. Most taste vaguely like a lemon shortbread cookie. All of the rations are fortified with vitamins and minerals to help sustain your health during an emergency.  

In a situation where you are stranded and simply sitting and waiting for rescue (such as in a lifeboat) emergency ration food bars may be ideal. In a survival situation where you must be more active these rations provide a good supplement to other food sources, and will certainly meet their purpose of sustaining a person for a couple of days.

I keep a couple packets of Marine Pro food bars in my pocket whenever I am out in the forest. These Russian made bars are a bit smaller in size than those made by companies such as Datrex and SOS Labs, but still provide 800 calories per bar (2400 calories for three bars to a pack). In addition, I keep a couple of 125ml (4 ounce) packets of emergency drinking water along with the Marine Pro rations. In my truck and cached at my bug-out location I keep a Tac-Bar ration kit. Also, cached at my bug-out location are a few bottles of Survival Tabs.

Survival Tabs are worth mentioning here because they have a very long, 25-year, shelf-life. I personally have Survival Tabs that bought 13 years ago, and they still are edible and retain their texture and taste. Unlike emergency ration food bars, Survival Tabs come in a canteen-sized bottle and are similar in size to chocolate malt-ball candies. Each bottle contains 180 Survival Tabs. Each individual Survival Tab contains 20 calories, so a bottle has a total of 3600 calories (20 x 180). Survival Tabs advertise these bottles as a 15-day food supply, but that would only provide a person with 240 calories per day. Like other emergency rations, Survival Tabs can be expected to provide a few days sustenance, but probably would not last for 15 days if you were doing any work and expending energy. That being said, Survival Tabs make an excellent supplement to other food sources during a survival situations, and their 25-year shelf-life makes them a good choice for your survival caches.

The only potential caution for storing emergency ration food bars is to ensure that the foil packaging does not get torn or punctured. The packaging is generally very tough and tear-resistant, but they can be torn or punctured by a sharp object. This is one reason that I like the Tac-Bar ration kit, which comes packed in an ‘ammo can’ to help protect the rations from being accidentally torn or accessed by rodents or insects.  

Emergency food rations are not something you would want to live on for a long time, but for their intended purpose of sustaining a person for a few days during an emergency they are an excellent addition to your survival gear.