Whether preparing for a disaster in the middle of New York City or on the top of a remote mountain, there are some skills you need to prepare. These skills form the basis of your personal survival plan.
Fire Starting:
Fire is your friend in a survival suituation. It provides you warmth, light, a way to prepare food, and a sense of hope. While you can purify water via other means, fire can be the most accessible. It also requires no special equipment. Be sure that you know multiple ways to start a fire. Bow drill, flint and steel, ferro rod, and magnifying glass are all viable methods.
Water Purification:
While fire will help you purify water, you should be familiar with multiple ways. Sometimes it may not be viable to build a fire due to security or movement. There are commercial filters and chemical treatments, but ther are also D. I. Y. solutions. A few drops of bleach in a gallon of water and it will be purified of most pathogens after sitting a bit. The small amount of bleach is not harmful to drink. An improvised filter made from a bottle, charcoal, and cloth is better than nothing.
First Aid:
The ability to apply basic first aid to yourself or members of your group is essential. Cleaning and dressing minor wounds, stopping bleeding, splinting sprains, and caring for burns are a few items that fall into this category. While more advanced skills would be helpful, they ae not for everyone. Some that would be helpful would be suturing (stitches), field setting broken bones, re-setting dislocated joints, and tourniquet application. Not only are these skills useful for you and your group, you can barter these skills with others.
Hunting and Gathering:
Being a master hunter or knowing every single plant in your hemisphere is beyond most people’s time allotment. It is very good to have a basic level of skill in hunting, trapping, and gathering. Study and practice of basic traps, simple hunting skills, and plant identification will give you a great basis to allow you to feed yourself after your stock of suppleis run out.