Approx reading time: 7 minutes
Preparing for economic collapse and ensuring robust financial health requires taking deliberate steps to protect assets, minimize risks, and sustain financial stability amid potential economic upheavals. How to prepare for economic collapse Although it's difficult to...
You know, when you're out there in the wild and medical emergencies occur, it's a whole different ball game compared to our usual everyday life. The real kicker is when you’ve got a medical emergency and there’s no doc around to bail you out. That's when having some...
Preparing and getting ready for home emergencies such as fires and power outages necessitates a thorough strategy to ensure that you and your family can respond effectively and remain safe. This process includes recognizing potential threats, devising a plan, and...
When prepping for natural disasters, navigating a crisis and resolving conflicts isn’t only about having supplies ready; it’s about effective communication and conflict resolution.
When things get rough, you know, like really rough, it's amazing how much having a strong community can help folks get through it. It's about bouncing back, lending a hand, and tackling problems together. When everything seems to go haywire, having a close-knit...
If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s the fact that survival situations are never going to unfold as you predict or expect. You can have all of the gear ready, plan ahead of time and still be forced to make a decision you aren’t even expecting. In other words, you’ll be forced to improvise and adapt for survival.
In fact, sometimes the pre-planning and timely purchases that you make can actually work against you. This is because you are relying so heavily on their literal use instead of thinking in terms of how you can achieve a goal by using them in a way that they weren’t necessarily created for. Hard to comprehend?
What happens way too often when things don’t go as planned is you begin to panic, when instead, you really need to keep a level head and be able to improvise and adapt for survival whenever possible. Being able to think quickly and make decisions is a vital skill preppers need to master.
For example, you may have thought ahead of time to have a water filtration system for clean water ready – or a quality tent to protect you while bugging out. But in a situation when either of those are compromised, what would you do?
You need to be able to look at what you have on hand or what is around you so that you can find alternative methods to have protection from the elements or purify the water that you need to stay hydrated.
This kind of skill, being able to adapt for survival, is important in many different areas of survival also, whether it’s regarding your food and water, first aid measures, or even self-defense and security. By knowing how to effectively use your “improvise and adapt for survival” mode, you’ll be able to rise above any type of dire circumstances whenever your pre-planned methods and supplies fall short for any reason.
Before we start looking at how supplies can be used or how your planning may need to be altered, let’s talk about your decision making skills. This is where you need to begin when you are wanting to master how to improvise and adapt for survival.
Making a decision when you are calm and comfortable in your own home is one thing. We can all do that. However, when you find yourself in a stressful survival condition, the decision making process is automatically altered and your senses are heightened so that you may not have the best ability to do what is logical, but rather what feels like a better option. It’s a natural reaction and is perfectly normal.
What you want is to train your mind to have the highest cognitive function possible whenever you are in survival events. You don’t want to make a knee jerk decision or even be paralyzed in your decision making whenever it really counts. You have to adapt for survival.
Many people that have trained for something and have certain gear on hand for what they’ve trained for, have trouble seeing any acceptable alternative option in that very moment. You absolutely need to become disciplined with your decision making. You have to rehearse certain scenarios so that when you are faced with something being compromised or not quite as expected, you are able to adapt for survival and do what needs to be done with ease.
In the military, they use a system known as OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act). This can help you very much with situational awareness so that you are always mindful of your options and keeping your stress level low so that you can think clearly and rationally when needed most.
Remember, just because we don’t want to immediately act based on our gut instinct, that doesn’t mean your gut instinct is wrong. You still want to take that into consideration, but also have the clarity needed with your brain to take the right action, because it might not be what your gut tells you.
Now let’s look at different gear and common items that you may have on hand that you can begin looking at in different ways when you have to adapt for survival. Many people think they will need to purchase survival gear in particular and only use that in this type of event. Wrong.
Often common household items are going to come in very handy in an emergency. For example, something as common as needing water is something that might make people panic initially.
You might be looking at the survival water storage options you purchased that are now damaged in some way (or even stolen from you) and immediately assume you have no way to store water. When actually the truth is, you have many plastic bottles around your home that you can repurpose after a little bit of cleaning.
Or, maybe your first aid kit was somehow damaged or lost, and you aren’t looking at simple clothing that you could turn into a bandage or to create a splint from if someone has a sprained ankle, but instead panic.
Many people purchase useful things like signaling gear in case they get lost, or solar ovens for cooking in survival situations. But if you don’t have those at your disposal at a certain time, think simply: you can use tin foil for cooking over a fire, to signal for help or even to help with warmth.
Some of the survival gear that you purchase will already have multiple uses. Paracord is a good example of this. It can be used to help you build shelters, to trap game, for fishing and more.
Duct tape, which you most probably already have lying around your home or may have purchased for survival purposes, also has multiple uses. You can patch a hole in a tent, secure something in place, use it as a bandage if necessary, or even restrain someone in a security threatening situation.
Then there are tools like a Swiss army knife. This or other multi tools can help you in many ways during the survival event. But you can also take other scraps around your property or elsewhere and use them in innovative ways for survival.
In a dire situation, you could easily break a side mirror off a car to signal for help, for instance, or cut out seat belts so that you have a strong wrote to use for pulling something or someone. You could even find some PVC pipe and close one end of it to have a container for your water if necessary. This are just some ways you can improvise and adapt for survival when needed.
Don’t just think about how you can use things for other purposes – but also when you might need to use an improvisation and adaptation mindset. I’ve mentioned water purification earlier. You might have to use sand and rocks or a piece of clothing to help filter out debris the best way possible, which will almost always be accessible to you.
If there is no small or large game, and you can’t find enough plants to forage for food, you might have to resort to eating insects – or fashion a spear to fish with if you don’t have any line.
When it comes to shelter, you might have left without a tent that you had prepared when you bugged out. So you’ll have to look around and find what can work as shelter-building materials. You might find some trash (like cardboard that’s been discarded) or scrap material you can use for shelters, too. With a little work and maybe some duct tape or rope, you can easily adapt those to suit your needs.
Your first aid methods might require you to adapt for survival, too. You might use feminine hygiene products to stop bleeding from a wound, for example. You may have to use sticks and paracord to put a splint together, or similar.
Even with self-defense and security measures, you may have to improvise and adapt. You may be caught in a situation where you don’t have any of your self defense gear. So you’ll need to use something else as a weapon, maybe a tree branch or a piece of pipe.
This might also be a cast iron frying pan, a broom handle, or you could break the leg off of a chair or table, or grab something else to defend yourself with. You can always use empty cans that you string together and place strategically to create a makeshift alarm so you know if anyone has breached your property.
And so on.
The thing about survival is, it requires a level head and adaptive responses to whatever is happening around you. One thing you can expect for sure is the need to improvise and adapt for survival.
Once you begin to play difficult scenarios in your mind that will have you considering what you’d do without your gear or existing plans, it strengthens your ability to get through these situations. It will never be what you have expected, that’s for sure – you’ll need to find a way to adapt for survival.