THIS GUEST ARTICLE IS WRITTEN BY REDBEARD 3. RB3 IS A FORMER MILITARY SERE INSTRUCTOR FOR A WESTEUROPEAN COUNTRY. READ PART 1 OF THE PLWF SERIES HERE.
Lets continue the PLWF scheme.
First of all, speaking about hydration: How much do you drink everyday?
I guess about 2-3 liters. That’s enough if you have a normal day in the office.
How about if you do sports or other physical challenging tasks?
Right, your amount of water will be increased.
To stay hydrated is one of most import aspects in a survival situation.
You can survive 3 days without water, but I wouldn’t recommend to do so!
It also depends on your physical and environmental circumstances.
We will stick to the middle European environment, so it won’t be difficult to find water sources which are drinkable. But always keep in mind to ensure that the water you try to consume is good to go.
The easiest way would be, to boil the water. You will kill all of the bacteria’s but you are also losing all minerals by doing so. To get some minerals back you can use the mineral powder, like you have in every MRE.
The next thing would be the water straw. It’s an easy way to drink straight from the water source. But you can’t fill it in your canteen. Expect you are using some of the bottle compatible models out there. By using that method you can filter only the bacteria.
The most common and widely known, as well as accepted method by the German military are Micropur tablets. Those iodine tablets will kill the bacteria’s in your water source, but it is still vital to filter the water for particles. Please read our full article on water processing here for more details.
Food
Food is the least important point in our scheme. You can survive 3-4 weeks without food.
But food keeps you in a good mood and it retains your ability to perform more physical challenging activities during a survival situation. Without food you are sooner or later forced to perform a “hole up” strategy to ensure your recovery.
There is a broad variety of survival food. Everyone of us know the EPA of the Bundeswehr or the MRE of the US Army. They are made for staying outside, but they are not made as survival food, especially considering their calorie to weight ratio.
So let’s talk about dedicated survival rations. In the German armed forces, there are two different survival rations, one with 800kcal mainly for aircrews and the second one has 1000kcal for the infantry.
The market offers plenty variants of emergency rations.
I like to recommend you to look for one without wheats. You may ask why?
To digest the wheat, you need more water. Without water, your digestion will not work anymore. So you should keep that in mind.
But what about hunting and eating plants? You should consider this as a really, really dangerous thing. Hunting and searching for plants is time and calorie consuming. Searching for edible plants in the right amount of calories will mostly consume more energy than finally eating the plants will return to your body. Fishing or setting up traps can be a good way to go. But you should concentrate on water and location instead of focusing on food.
Conclusion
A survival situation won’t be that comfortable as you may imagine.
One of the most important aspects will be your mindset and the ability to quickly analyse a situation by setting priorities. If you are not willing to survive, you are almost dead. You can have the best and most expensive survival equipment. But if your skills and mindset are not matching to the situation you will get into big trouble. Now that you know the whole PLWF Scheme, you may be able to more accurately differentiate what’s important, what is comfort and what is just about stupid, romantic ideals of survival.
You decide if you prepare your kit right, including emergency rations, filters, lighters, maps and signaling devices which will transform into speed, endurance and a higher chance of survival. Or if you like to be out there with a rescue blanket, a knive and a ton of fishing hooks, spending your days desperately hunting, trying to strike fire with stones and just collecting leaves while burning your last calories.
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