Pocket cards
Survival pocket cards to print
The steps from 6 key lessons, sized to print two to a page. Cut them out, fold them, and keep them in your pack or first aid kit. Each card names its source and links to the full lesson.
Stop and size up
- Stop. Do not rush off. Moving in a hurry is how people get more lost.
- Look at where you are: weather, ground, daylight left.
- Check yourself for injuries, then check what you are carrying.
- Make a plan for your needs in this order: shelter and warmth, water, getting found. Food comes last.
Make water safe to drink
- Clear it first. Muddy or foul water: let it stand for 12 hours, then pour off the clear top. Or pour it through layers of sand and charcoal in a cloth, a sock or a hollow bamboo. Clearing does not kill germs.
- Boil it. Bring it to a rolling boil for 1 minute at sea level, and add 1 minute for every 300 meters (1,000 feet) above sea level. If you cannot judge the height, boil 10 minutes.
- Iodine: 5 drops of 2 percent tincture in a full canteen of clear water, 10 drops if the water is cloudy or cold. Wait 30 minutes before drinking.
- Bleach: 2 drops of plain household bleach per liter of clear water, 4 drops if cloudy. Mix, wait 30 minutes. It should smell faintly of chlorine; if not, repeat.
- Tablets: follow the package. They are the easiest thing to carry, so put some in every kit.
- Fix the taste. Pour treated water back and forth between two containers to put air in it, or drop in a piece of charcoal from the fire and let it stand 45 minutes.
- Keep clean water clean: wash your hands, keep your latrine at least 60 meters (200 feet) from any water, and never dip a dirty cup in the clean container.
- Rain caught in clean containers and water from inside living plants are usually safe as they are. Everything else, including snowmelt, gets treated.
Fire spot and fuel
- Only make a fire where it is legal. Follow burn bans.
- Pick a dry spot out of the wind, away from your shelter walls and overhanging branches.
- Gather three piles before you start: tinder (dry grass, bark shreds), kindling (pencil-thin dead twigs), fuel (wrist-thick dead wood).
- Dead twigs still on trees are drier than sticks on the ground. They should snap, not bend.
- Never use wet or soaked rocks around a fire. They can burst.
- Put it out with water and stir until it is cold to the touch.
Pick a shelter spot
- Level ground, big enough to lie down on.
- Look up: no dead limbs or dead trees that could fall on you.
- Stay out of low ground and creek beds. Cold air and flood water collect there.
- Stay above the high-water mark near any stream or pond.
- Keep it small. A small shelter holds your body heat.
Get found
- Stay put once you know you are lost. Searchers look where you were last seen.
- Three of anything means help: three fires, three whistle blasts, three piles of rocks.
- At night, fire is the best signal. Three fires in a triangle, about 25 meters apart.
- In the day, use an open spot: a clearing, a road, a field. Bright colors help.
Stop the bleeding
- Control panic, yours and the injured person's. Look for the cause. Follow the ABCs, airway and breathing first, but the survival manual adds a warning: a spurting artery can kill faster than a blocked airway, so be discerning.
- Know what you are looking at. Arterial blood is bright red and spurts with the heartbeat; it is the most dangerous. Venous blood is dark red and flows steadily. Capillary bleeding is the slow ooze of a scrape.
- Direct pressure is the most effective way to stop it. Put a dressing on the wound and press firmly with your hand. The first aid manual says hold it 5 to 10 minutes; the injured person can do this if conscious. Pressure must be firm enough to stop the flow and held long enough to seal the surface.
- Raise the limb above the level of the heart while you keep pressing. Elevation alone will not stop bleeding. Do not elevate a limb you think is broken until it is splinted, and keep a snakebite below the heart.
- Still bleeding? Apply a pressure dressing: a thick wad of padding directly over the wound on top of the dressing, wrapped tightly with a bandage (strips torn from a T-shirt or socks work) and knotted directly over the wound. Tighter than an ordinary bandage, but not so tight it cuts off the limb.
- Do not take the pressure dressing off, even when it soaks through. Leave it 1 to 2 days, then replace it with a smaller one and check daily for infection. Watch the hand or foot below it: cool, blue, gray or numb means loosen it.
- Pressure points slow arterial bleeding while you get a dressing on, by pressing the artery against bone at the joint just above the wound: the wrist for a hand, the ankle for a foot. They are less effective than direct pressure. Use great care at the neck, and never put a tourniquet around the neck.
- A tourniquet is the last resort, used only when direct pressure and everything else has failed or the limb is severed, and only on an arm or leg where life is in danger. Left on too long it can cost the limb; put on badly it damages nerves.
- How: a band at least 2 inches wide (never wire or a shoestring), placed 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters) above the wound between the wound and the heart, never over the wound, a fracture or a joint. Pad under it. Tie a half knot, lay a stick on it, tie a full knot over the stick, twist until the bright red bleeding stops, then tie the stick down so it cannot unwind.
- Leave it in full view, mark a T on the forehead, treat for shock and get help. The first aid manual says do not loosen or release it once bleeding has stopped. The survival manual allows a companion to ease it for a minute or two every 10 to 15 minutes only when there is no help coming; a lone survivor never releases it.