One part of prepping is gathering and storing lots of useful gear and supplies.
Another part is honing your skills so that you could likely manage without any of those supplies – if you had to.
This video will start you out with some tips on how to whip up some useful devices out of practically nothing.
Tips in this video:
1. Use an aluminum soda can, cut open, to reflect and magnify the light of a candle
2. Use a piece of cloth and two containers to purify dirty water by transferring through the cloth. Then boil.
3. Instantly light a fire without lighter fluid. Place charcoal briquets in the spaces of an empty egg carton, and just light the egg carton for a quick lunch out and about.
4. Use or burn rosemary, basil or other common herbs to repel mosquitoes and irritating insects
5. Create an instant solar oven by cutting open a box, lining the top and inside with foil. Just add sun, and your food can be warmed in just a short time.
6. When the compass gets lost in your gear, you can point towards north by static charging a sewing needle by rubbing it on clothing. Place the charged needle on a leaf floating in water, and you’ll find orientation by connecting man, metal and nature.
7. Combine cooking oil with a paper-towel wick in a spare can, and create an emergency candle… more expensive the more virgin and imported it is.
By starting to think this way, you can conceive of and notice hundreds of other ways to modify, improvise and “hack” your way through survival – anywhere, anytime.
Here are even more life hacks that could help in a crisis.
Perhaps even cooler are the “life hacks” presented by the CrazyRussianHacker:
His hacks include:
– Making a candle out of an orange peel, which provides container and wick, and vegetable oil (as above)
– Creating fire with an aluminum-coated gum wrapper connected to the opposite terminal ends of a AA battery (way cool)
– Make a makeshift harpoon-like weapon out of a wooden BBQ skewer, a balloon, and a stabilizing bottle top
– Open a can the Russian way: using just a knife and some strategic angles
– Pick a padlock with an aluminum scrap from a soda can
– Modify an aluminum can into an alcohol-fueled gas stove
– Use aluminum foil to create a battery-dud to complete the circuit when you only have one battery to power a flashlight that requires two.
– Power small devices with the miniature cells inside a AA battery by peeling it open, carefully
– Reconfigure paper clips into wire electrodes to connect batteries to a light bulb and create a flashlight.
Seriously, this guy is the Russian MacGyver!
Train your mind to re-envision the common items around you. Many of them can serve your survival needs and create comfort at times when there is little else around to work with.
There are infinite possibilities, and you are only limited by your cleverness once you understand the basic principles involved.
Read more:
Prepper’s Blueprint: All the Tips You Need to Survive Any Disaster – Must Have
These Clever 100-Year-Old Life Hacks Can Still Make Your Life Easier Today
Can’t-Do Generation: “Expect Everything to Just Work,” and Throw Out What They Can’t Fix
Heres a hack kill enemy and take all their shit
I’m an experienced survivalist, and my tip is that while your brain is the most valuable survival tool, your mind can be one’s biggest obstacle to survival!
You are dead on. It all starts with the head and trial and error…
Thats no kiddin! I have learned a LOT from trial an error. I am out of my mind so I don’t have to worry about that part lol.
You can say that again.
love the russian hack- esp wearing those dark glasses indoors. gives tangerine-candlemaking a dangerous, clandestine KGB feel. go Putin!!!
Thats no kiddin! I have learned a LOT from trial an error. I am out of my mind so I don’t have to worry about that part lol.
I was just kidding. You didn’t actually have to say that again.
Are you missing his point about the mind being a potential weak link in the struggle for survival? Attitude trumps much!
I must be one big-time life hacker then. I’ve seldom had extra money to waste so I learned the trick of substitution for all sorts of things.
A rock can do all sorts of things; the right type can sharpen a knife or even file your nails (depends on the texture). Flint can be worked into something sharp–like an arrowhead.
A stick can be a spare tent stake or something to hold my hair up off my neck (twist and stab into the twist; pick a smooth stick).
As you can see, I don’t need fancy for much. I like my duct tape; haven’t found a good substitute for that.
BTW, simple need not be ugly. Done well, it can be a thing of beauty and good use.
And, practice the art of substitution or making do often even daily. Keep the mind sharp and keeps you in practice for changing out one thing for another for when you really need it. Be your own MacGyver.
Picking locks seems pretty easy, once you see how it is done, and with a few tools you can buy off the internet. I hear lots of people store fish crackers in sheds in N GA.
You can use a paperclip as a shim to open on most combination master locks. Or a Bic Pen end for Bike Locks.
Hacking into your neighbors unsecured WiFi is pretty easy, and saves you a monthly internet bill.
Splice off your Cable with a tee and run a line to your neighbors and then split the bill. Old Poor Student College trick, done it.
Use a shaker hose to empty gas out of a car’s gas tank. Just don’t be smoking when you do it.
Drill a hole in the end of a FMJ round to make it a fragmented hollow point round upon impact.
You can steal your neighbor’s wife when he ain’t looking, cause her husbands out with his buddies bowling every Thursday night. Just send her back home by 10 pm.
~WWTI…
WWTI, the place where my supplies are stored is protected 24/7/365 by someone I know and trust even when I’m not there. any strangers that go there uninvited will ‘disappear’, so they better forget it, unless they want to take the dirt nap.
B he keeps insulting you.
Gettin ready to head to the hills and setup my new long range wide area wireless surveillance system. Totally self contained (solar) in addition to the system I have (30X zoom) that monitors a gate 1/2 mile away. Early warning is one of the best things you can have. I also use and recommend the dakota alert driveway probe setup and the motion sensor setup too. 1/2 mile range no problemo! They make 2 kinds so be sure to get the one that has 1 watt output. For the probe alert use a mag mount mobile antenna with sma connector for best results. The motion sensors have an extendable antenna built in. Using a baofeng UV5R and sound activated switch I can turn it on from a Loooong ways away 🙂
And with a 2 watt video transmitter connected to a 2.4 GHZ. 16 element yagi I can recieve the video a Loooong ways away too lol.
Hey Genius, It the dakota alert driveway probe setup and the motion sensor setup too. 1/2 mile range no problemo!
It that the pressure signal buried in the tire tread path, when driven over, the pressure pad is activated? Good for gate entrances, etc…
~WWTI…
No, it is the magnetic probe style that detects vehicles moving by.
The one with the rubber hose is short range and you can see the hose. The magnetic probe is completely hidden (buried alongside the road) and the unit has an sma antenna jack so you can use an external antenna for longer range. You can get a probe with up to 125 foot long wire to the transmitter unit too.
Yes you can ha ha
Bolt cutters are pretty fast and handy too lol 😛
0k use a car battery and AN banana a #2 washer, get motor oil , fish oil, vitamins which are of organic value and just donate everything…..But wait if you order now….But wait.
Or just use a bic lighter, dependable, durable, and I have shitload of them lol.
Yep I bought 400 lighters off Amazon for just $80. And you can adjust the flame size up to 8′ to 10″ inches like a torch, by carefully removing the silver flame guard, and by turning the little black wheel counter clockwise. Check flame size after every short adjustment, to desired flame length. A 10″ torch flame thrower is pretty cool when starting a fire in windy conditions. You can’t do that with matches. They are soooo 1950’s obsolete. Just make sure you take a black sharpie and write torch on the side of the lighter, so you know which lighter is a torch. Don’t want to burn your eyebrows off when lighting up your favorite tobacco.
~WWTI…
Nice Wtf awsome
TRUMP trump trump
TRUMP trump trump. Seriously what is better nutrigrain bars or mountainhouse
Mtn. House will last 25 times longer, enough said.
Mcgyver?Hah!There is nothing Warchild cannot fix with a wad of bubblegum/a piece of tin foil and one used prophylactic!
I saw the hack on how to turn a lemon / orange peel into a candle this week on a cooking show. Funny to see the same thing show up here.
If you need to use an orange for a candle you ain’t in very good shape and probably won’t last very long lol.
It is cute. Cheaper to just buy various types of wick and have it on hand. Everything from 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch wick along with candle type wicking, you can get a roll of each pretty cheap. There is also wicking that doesn’t burn, I forget the name of it. But for simple light I have clear glass oil lamps that burn paraffin-type lamp oil that doesn’t smoke.
Same here. Oil lamps and parrafin. If I run out I have a stash of kerosene too. I got a 50 foot roll of 3/4 wick for like 25 bux online. I wonder how paracord would do as wick lol. You can make wick out of old clothes too. 1 part diesel to 3 parts gas fire backstarter for wildland firefighting) works too but stinks lol.
Yep. Pretty basic. No need to reinvent the wheel. The thing is, once you don’t have instant light you go back to waking up at dawn and working until dark. A house becomes a shell, not a hangout, without power.
I liked the balloon/skewer weapon.
As for the McGyver meme, you can carefully unpeel the cardboard tube. Then crumple it to make it soft. Next spread it out flat again and wipe away your cares. You’ll find it surprisingly velvety.
I wouldn’t advise cutting soda cans for any reason after the SHTF unless absolutely necessary. The metal is very sharp and hard to cut with a knife, and you don’t want a serious cut when medical supplies and services are either unavailable or overwhelmed.