Wilderness Preparation for Kids

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(updated)

Ah, camping in the National Park.  Warm days and cold nights.  Birds chirping, chipmunks scampering, and a brook bubbling nearby.  Peace and tranquility.  A stark contrast to the chaos of your hectic work and kids' schedules.  For the first time in months, you sit down to read a book.  You glance over to your smiling spouse doing the same.  You catch a glimpse of your two kids playing near the tent.  Time slows down.

Sometime later, your daughter disturbs your serenity, "Colton's gone."
"What do you mean Colton's gone?  Where is he hiding?"
Now, you see on her face and hear in her voice real concern,  "He's gone."

Your son is missing.  What should you do?

Hasty Search

Once you realize your child is missing, actively search, not become a missing person yourself.

Activate Search & Rescue

If you do not find your child quickly, get help.  Search & Rescue (SAR) volunteers would rather be recalled knowing your child is found safe versus losing precious search time while you 'make sure' the child is actually missing.

Preparation

Before you and your family venture out, train and equip each family member to deal with becoming lost and spending an unexpected night alone in the wilderness.  Basic training and equipment greatly increase the odds of surviving the ordeal.     

Stop Moving.  The moment you realize you're lost, find a safe spot^1, and stop moving. This helps rescuers find you faster.

Build a Nest.  Make a nest of boughs², pine needles, leaves, or anything else to keep you directing off the ground.  Sitting directly on the ground sucks the heat out of your body.³  A small foam pad works great.  

Emergency Shelter (immediate action shelter⁴).   Put on your whistle (see below), climb into your emergency shelter, and sit in your nest on a foam pad or your backpack. 

Whistle.  Once in your shelter, start blowing your whistle every 10 minutes or so.  The sound of a whistle carries much further than your voice. 

Water.  Carry at least a quart; more if you are in an arid environment. 

Food.  A favorite candy bar or two will do two things for you:  1) help maintain a positive attitude, and 2) stoke your body's internal furnace generating heat from within.  

Something from home.  A small toy or stuffed animal can do wonders for maintaining a positive attitude.

Footnotes

¹Choose a spot clear of potential falling objects from the environment (branches, trees, rocks, etc.)
       

²Boughs: It could be pine, spruce, fir, etc.

³Conduction:   The transfer of heat through direct contact with an object.  Heat flows from the warmer object to the cooler one.  If you sit on the ground, heat conducts away from your body and into the ground. 

⁴An immediate action shelter is a windproof, waterproof barrier that traps your body's heat.  Choose a blue shelter to maximize your visibility to SAR.

Survival Gear
Whistle
Immediate Action Shelter (adults)
Immediate Action Shelter (children)

Water Balance

We need water to live.  In fact, 65% of our weight originates from nothing but water.  

Water makes up the largest component of blood.  Water carries the heat necessary for thermoregulation; water removes wastes from the body; water lubricates organs and joints; and water provides the necessary environment for all the body's chemical reactions.  Therefore, to function properly, the body needs to continuously maintain proper water levels.  Survivors accomplish this by focusing on replacing their water losses with similar water gains to maintain balance.

Under normal conditions, an average person loses approximately 1.5 liters of water per day (for our discussion, quarts and liters fill up approximately the same volume).  Specifically, our bodies lose about 0.5 liters through the skin, about 0.5 liters through the lungs, and about 0.5 through urine every day.  Conversely, our body usually gains around 0.5 liters from the metabolism of food leaving us with a normal drinking requirement of about 1.0 liter of water per day.

Environmental conditions, level of activity, diet, or illness can affect the water balance in our body.  Hot environments pull water from our body via sweat.  Add in exercise, and we can lose up to two liters of water per hour.  Additionally, very cold dry environments pull as much as 2 liters of water per day from our bodies simply through breathing.  Protein-rich foods extract water from the body as well.  Urea, a toxic by-product of protein metabolism, requires additional urine production in order to be expelled from the body.  Illnesses causing vomiting or diarrhea speed up water losses, threatening the balance even more.  Any of these factors easily tip us into a water deficit (or dehydration) unless we replenish the lost water immediately.   

   

Under normal circumstances, we simply replenish the water by drinking more.  Problems arise, however, if the water deficit occurs when a natural disaster, emergency, or accident at sea prevents ready access to safe drinkable water.  Therefore, it is critical to plan and prepare for our water needs before a crisis hits.

How To Make Safe Drinking Water

Often natural disasters like hurricanes make water unsafe to drink.  Here are a few tips to protect your family from contaminated water.

(Step One: Pre-filter the water)
If the water looks dirty, pre-filter it through any porous fabric such as a cotton t-shirt. The clearer the water, the less time it takes to disinfect.

(Step Two: Disinfect the water)
Choose any one of the following three methods to kill harmful water-borne pathogens:

1) Boiling
Bring the water to a rolling boil. Let the water cool. The water is now safe to drink. Or,

2) Chlorine Dioxide Tablets
Always read manufacturer's instructions on package.  We recommend a contact time of at least 30 minutes.  Or,

3) Chlorine Bleach
Add three to five drops of household chlorine bleach to one quart or liter of water. We recommend a contact time of at least 30 minutes. (Unlike boiling and chlorine dioxide, bleach does not kill cryptosporidium.  Use bleach only if you cannot use one of the other two disinfection methods.)

If you have any questions, please post them. We will answer them.

Links to videos demonstrating how to build fire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ao82OM_mGY&list=PLFiefxNdkmyiGZITRObzgd4MZeX0vMDW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w15A0b-iAAQ&list=PLFiefxNdkmyjSk4ciaQI9W0fBEGf2ugFo