Friday, September 17, 2010

Wilderness Survival - Ray Mears

One of the things everyone should learn is how to light a wilderness fire and how to build an emergency wilderness shelter. In a real emergency, where there is no immediate sign of rescue, the difference between giving up and intelligent survival is the ability to create resources out of whatever is around you.

If you stop to think about the basics of your in-house resources .. they are WATER, shelter, heat (energy) and food. Water is pumped through pipes to your home, where if you are fortunate all you have to do is turn on the tap and clean fresh potable water flows out.

Shelter: bricks, stone, concrete or wood forms the walls of your home - sheltering you from the elements of heat, cold, wind, rain and snow .. but what would you do if that were not the case?

As a young child I had vivid dreams of 'the future' .. of towns and cities without power, floods destroying homes, earthquakes destroying homes, tidal waves, winds so strong they blew down houses .. and whether you want to believe it or not .. the ability to organize basic tools becomes the essential need of 'survival'.

I feel that people like Ray Mears are here to teach people - and connect people - with basic skills every human being should know .. no matter how technologically advanced they think they are.

I am vegetarian - I do not eat fish, meat nor seafood .. I was like this from early childhood .. it is just one of those things. However, I feel people should know how to survive in an emergency situation no matter what the circumstance.

Just stop to consider the fragile line your daily life requires for you to exist. You rely on electricity to heat or cool your home. You rely on water being pumped through pipes to your home (electricity). You rely on food provisions being delivered to your local store or supermarket. You rely on petrol to fill the gas tank of you vehicle.

No one teaches you how to build a basic wilderness shelter. No one teaches you how to build or light a fire in the wilderness. How many people know how to find food? How many people know how to survive an emergency without destroying the environment?

In a highly advanced society this kind of knowledge is also an essential part of the education of the people living in society. It is wrong to rely on a system so totally that should the system break down the majority of people die .. from lack of clean water, lack of food, lack of shelter and lack of fire!

I was taught the basics of living in the wilderness .. how to respect the environment .. where to build and where not to build a fire. How to build a fire. How to fish. I did not like to fish, but that is how I personally feel. Few people know how to skin and gut a rabbit. Most meat eaters do not know or cannot prepare food from an animal they have killed themselves. For example, do not eat the spinal intestine of a cooked lobster .. it may kill you '-)

In my own experience, eleven years of conventional schooling left me with next to no practical knowledge that can be applied to the real world. I was taught practical skills from unconventional sources or I learned and taught myself.

As we live in an increasingly volatile world, where nature can unleash catastrophic deluge, mudslides, volcanic eruptions, blackouts, earthquakes, hurricanes or flooding .. it makes sense that humans learn the basics of elementary survival.

Ray Mears In Sweden: Part 1

I like ray Mears, because he also teaches people to respect the Earth.