Survival Basic Series DVD Part 1

Description

This DVD will be given away at the Outdoor Retailers Show in Utah during and after our seminars. Just thought I would add it here as well in segments for you guys. Thanks for your support!

http://www.thepathfinderschoolllc.com

Tags: Pathfinder,Survival,Bushcraft

Video Transcription

okay so we're in it emergency situation we've got lost we've got stranded we're going to have to wait for someone to come and find us we've left a very good game plan everybody knows exactly where we should be but we don't know exactly where we are maybe we've twisted an ankle a little bit and we just can't get out before nightfall so we're stuck here what items do we have in our pack and what can we do to make ourselves visible and make ourself comfortable control our body's core temperature and create a microclimate which is what's important to understand is to create a microclimate and hydrate ourselves to avoid the effects of hypothermia or hypothermia stay with us we're going to have a look at that right now okay first things first

first thing I want to do is if I know I'm lost and I hope that someone's going to come looking for me or I want somebody who just happens to wander by to notice me the first thing I need to do is contrast with the local environment many of us make the mistake of wearing drab clothing into the woods because we don't really want to be seen we don't want to be noticed we don't want to leave a large footprint when you're in a situation that you need to be found you need to leave a footprint so the first thing I'm going to do is pull a bright orange shirt of some kind that I've got stashed in my pack out of my pack and I'm going to put that on now I'm visible to anyone who might be around or looking for me okay as you can see we've just got a small daypack here and this contains enough emergency gear in it with plenty of room left over for me to put snack items and things of that nature a GPS if I wanted to carry one spare clothing extra outerwear any of those things what I have in this kit now is only what I consider necessities for an emergency situations so understand that on top of this you would carry other things because part of micro climate control is understanding that your first layer of defense against the elements is the clothes on your back you should always be dressed and prepared for any environmental changes for the seasonality in the geographical location that you are in the keys to microclimate control are understanding the triangle of micro climate control as we teach the Pathfinder system which is the three ways or the three sides of that triangle that control your body's core temperature that you gain or lose heat and that is micro climate control conduction convection and radiation so we need to be able to control those three elements either in our favor or to our advantage however you want to put that so that we can not lose body heat or so that we can cool down in a hot environment or gain heat in a cold weather environment what we're going to talk about today is not a really really cold weather environment we're going to talk about a shelter you can set up spring summer fall three seasons that will help you to maintain your body's core temperature and effectively make a microclimate that can be seen from a long distance so if we unpack our pack for a minute because we always keep our shelter element at the bottom out of the way because hopefully it's the last thing we're going to need and we'll discuss all of these items as we go that we have in our pack our shelter element consists of a bright orange emergency reflective reusable space blanket we carry several stakes so that we don't have to waste time and energy looking for these things and they can also be used multiple functionally as toggles we have a heavy three mil garbage can liner into our drum liner that we can use for a moisture barrier on the ground we can stuff it with leaves to make a sleeping bag or sleeping pad or we can use it for rain gear if we need to and then we have a couple different elements of cordage in this pack that we can use to help us set up this microclimate and cordage is an important thing to understand that you're going to need it's one of the five seasons of survivability so that basically makes our microclimate that we need if we're going to have to stick it out for a night or two before we can get out we also have a micro fleece queen-size blanket now we can use in the summer winter or fall and then of course we should have the clothing our back and the clothing in our pack which includes outerwear so this is our shelter let's get this set up stay with me okay so the first element of my shelter kit is just a piece of portage I prefer orange for everything I can get emergency wise and it's 25 approximately feet long and it's a piece of paracord and it has two loops tighten in with just an overhand knot I'll show you the advantage of those loops as we go through this the first loop we're just going to pull all of our line through and it's going to create a slip knot so that when we pull this over to our other tree effectively creating a ridge line which keeps us from having to cut anything that supports our shelter I like mine about waist high and we'll go to the other tree and tie the other knot okay when we get to our other tree we're simply going to wrap our line all the way around the tree again I like to start about waist level and I can adjust that height to adjust the pitch of my shelter whether I want to lose heat or gain heat or keep convection or reduce convection within my shelter if I have a fire in front of it or to reduce or increase the amount of breeze coming through my shelter and how much heat I hold in or let out by raising and lowering this pitch the higher it is the more he's going to release the lower it is the less heat is going to release then I'm going to pick a spot about a foot and a half out from that shelter and I'm going to tie very simple knot where I just turn a loop over in the line and pull it through creating a slipknot like this that I can pull against as a pulley but will come out very easily

and once I get my line through that knot I can then use that like a pulley to tension or tighten my line at that point I'm going to tie very simple trucker's hitch by pinching this off throwing all of the line over the top just like this pulling a small loop toward me and grabbing the line through it and pulling that loop tight and what that does is that tensions all of that up and we're going to use this loop to our advantage in just a minute and we can take the excess line if we want to and we can wrap it up for now we may use it later for something else but for now we'll just wrap it up we'll turn a couple of half inches over the top of it to keep it in a neat coil so we're not tripping over in the middle of the night just like that okay so now we have a simple and effective Ridgeline now what I'm going to do with this box and this tarp is 5 feet by 7 feet and you can see it's very very bright orange which gives us a 5 foot by 7 signaling device looking up into the canopy we have a fairly clear area that if helicopters were coming over looking for us they would definitely see this also somebody walking through the woods along this path is going to see this because it's very large we're going to take one of the corners in a diagonal direction and we're going to take this loop and we're going to simply put it through this corner and this gives us a little more versatility with our tarp and I'm going to slide a stake in that and then pull that cinch knot down tight and what that's going to give me as a solid spot to the shelter to begin with ok so now I have the front corner of my tarp setup I have other corners with me and I always want to carry a good cutting tool with me this one happens to be a more 840 mg high carbon steel cutting knife I have my belt knife as well but I could put this knife in my pack as a backup or maybe I'm only carrying a pakistan life on my day hike or whatever but i want a good fixed blade knife this is a very inexpensive fixed blade knife that a very good edge and a sail needle taped to it which is one of the 10 C's of survivability that we'll talk about during this DVD but a good cutting tool is really your number one device that you need to carry with you so we're going to use our cutting tool now to cut some cordage all we're going to do is cut several pieces about a foot long we're going to cut three of them one two three we'll set our cordage to the side put our knife in the sheath and all we're going to do is tie these with an overhand knot so that we've created a loop in all three of these very quickly and we will use these lines to stake the corners of our tarp down okay at this point we have effectively created a microclimate now what we need to do is something on the ground we can't put our micro fleece blanket on the ground if we're afraid it's going to rain or the ground is damp we can use our trash bag as a moisture barrier but we need to avoid conduction if it's cold weather in warm weather it's not that big of a deal it's just going to be an uncomfortable night on the hard ground in cold weather we need about four inches of insulation that's compressed which means we need some debris and leaf matter in here for this demonstration and 3-season weather you're not going to be too bad off you can use a trash bag if it's wet for moisture barrier you've got your micro fleece blanket

you can put those inside and be fairly comfortable you've got a reflective surface inside here so if your fire is out here or on this side it will bring heat in and cause convective heating if you're afraid that you're going to overheat or you're trying to create a microclimate of shade only you would set this tarp up in a different configuration and you would flip it the other direction to reflect the Sun off of you but for good signaling with this orange side out you have a big advantage okay to change this shelter from a diamond wedge plot point configuration into more of a lean-to that will give you more breeze flow and give you convective cooling all we need to do is pull this corner out which means all we have to do is draw our stake out it comes out very easily lay our tarp in the diagonal fashion or the rectangle fashion adjust our loop out and put it through the corner directly across the rectangle side put our stake back in and pull it down we can then come over here with one of our other stakes to the front like this you can see that now we have the rectangle side across and if we take one of our loops and make a prusik out of it by passing the knot over the line through a loop three times we then have what's called a prusik style knot which is a self tightening type knot we can then use part of that loop again through our stake by placing it through the grommet hole and I'm doubling this over when I put it through the grommet hole because I've got that knot there to catch it slide my stake through it and then pull this until it's tight and now I've created a toggle with that stake that's going to hold that talk just like that once I have this completed all I need to do now is take the back corners out using my loops exactly as I did the first time we stake this shelter out and using two of my stakes and with this I have created a very simple lean-to type structure convective breezes can't blow through I can put my fire out as far as I need to if I don't want heat reflecting off of this I can flip it over if all I'm looking for is shade but again this orange signaling device gives me a big advantage once I've got my shelter set up I need to enhance this as a signaling device I can do that with my duct tape which is also one of the 10 C's of survivability we'll put three black X's at least a foot long on the back of the shelter to be a visual signal from above three X's means no longer can't proceed need help okay now that we have three X's on the back of our shelter we have a nice big 5 foot by 7 foot visual signal to the air giving contrast to the ground that we can no longer proceed and we need help you