The Woodsman's Journal Online: Winter Survival for Tommy...Part Five©

This is Part Five of a five part series, to read Part Four, go HERE – Author’s Note.

According to the “Rule of Threes”, the most important thing you need to do after building a shelter, is to build a fire and get some water to drink and some sleep. After that it is time to make signals to attract attention.

Sixth, build a fire and provide warmth and hot drinks and food.

Fire

Fire is the only comfort of civilization that can easily be taken with you into the wilderness IF you are prepared and have learned how to build one. Fire provides warmth, discourages wild animals, allows for thawing and disinfecting water, and provides a large measure of mental comfort and support.

There are three fundamentals involved in creating and building a fire can be best represented by the fire triangle, these are a source of a heat, fuel, and oxygen.

In the wilderness, fuel is typically wood, like tinder, kindling and logs. Wood fuel in the Arctic is scarce, in the Arctic natural fuels are the fats of animals. Oxygen is found in the air around us, which is made up of 21% oxygen. The source of heat can be anything from a lighter, batteries sending a spark into tinder, a magnifying glass concentrating the energy of the Sun, or a match. The best way to produce a flame or a spark is with a match or a lighter.

Damp matches, maybe dried by brushing the tip through your hair several times or by drying them in the sun.

Tinder is any, very fine, dry, flammable substance that can take a spark or catch on fire easily, kindling catches the fire from the tinder and as it burns it provides enough heat and flames to light your fuel wood on fire. Tinder is the smallest, finest, and fluffiest of the three and has the greatest surface area, it should be no larger than a pencil lead; and kindling should be no thicker than your thumb, while fuel wood is the largest, around the size of your wrist, and has the least surface area.¹³ Adequate supplies of tinder, kindling and fuel, should all be gathered before you start your fire.

If you have a candle, light it first and then use it to light your tinder.

To maintain a fire inside a shelter, you must provide ventilation to supply the necessary oxygen for combustion and to exhaust the smoke. DO NOT build a fire close to, or inside the fuselage of a crashed plane, because airplane fuel might continue to vaporize for many hours and there is a risk of fire.

For more on building a fire, read “Could You Survive, Survival Priorities©”, HERE, “The Top Ten Wilderness Survival Skills...Number Six©”, HERE, “The Top Ten Wilderness Survival Skills...Number Seven©”, HERE, “Remember This If You Want to be Warm ©”, HERE, and “Your Campfire and How to Use It ©”, HERE.

Water

Water makes up two-thirds of your bodies weight, and a deficit of just 10%¹⁴ will cause symptoms of severe dehydration and a loss of effectiveness, so STAY HYDRATED! Also, hydration increases your blood volume, and this can help prevent frostbite and hypothermia.

In a cold weather environment, imperceptible perspiration is produced at a rate of 17 ounces (500ml), or just over two cups of water every 24 hours! Your exhaled breath is always fully saturated, and the amount of water you lose every 24 hours as you breath is another 17 ounces (500ml). To rid your body of the waste products of metabolism, you will urinate at least 8 to 17 ounces (250 to 500ml), daily. On the plus side, metabolism will provide you with between 10 to 17 ounces (300 to 500ml) of usable water, depending on the foods you eat. What this all means is that even if you are lying still, you will still need to drink at least 50 ounces (1500ml) of water every day!¹⁵

A cloth bag full of ice, suspended by a fire with a pot below it to collect the melted water, photograph by the Author.

Sources of drinking water in the Arctic, or other cold regions, can be found in freshwater ice, snow, or old sea ice, from which the salt has been removed by repeated thawing and refreezing. Hard packed snow is better than light fluffy snow and freshwater ice is beat of all, as it takes 50% less fuel to melt ice than it does to melt snow, to obtain the same amount of water.

Remember, not all water sources are drinkable, if the water source is obviously polluted, surrounded by bones, or has no life in it, look elsewhere for something to drink!

DO NOT eat snow as it dehydrates and cools your body! Small quantities can be melted in your mouth or hand before being swallowed. Also, snow can be packed into a sealed plastic bag and put inside your clothes, but not against your skin, to melt. But be careful! This is a slow process, and it might chill you, and put you at risk for hypothermia.

In a cold weather survival situation, whenever possible warm up your drinking water. Drinking warm water will help you keep your body temperature within the normal range and provide hydration.

If possible, always disinfect drinkable water, and the best way to do that is by boiling, the CDC states that “Except for boiling, few of the water treatment methods are 100% effective in removing all pathogens”¹⁶ The CDC suggests that prior to boiling, cloudy water should be filtered through clean clothes, or left to settle, before drawing off the clear water for boiling. The CDC recommends heating water to a rolling boil for one minute, and for an additional three minutes at elevations above 2,000 meters (6,562 feet), to ensure that the water has remained hot enough, for long enough, to destroy any dangerous pathogens. Similarly, the National Wilderness Conference advocates bringing water to a rolling boil for one minute at sea level and boiling it for an additional one minute for every 1,000 feet (305 meters) above sea level, to ensure that dangerous pathogens are destroyed.

But remember “you can’t cure dead”, so if the only drinkable water you have, has not been disinfected, drink it anyways.

If it is cold and you are at risk of hypothermia and frostbite, drinking plain water is your best option, avoid caffeine, and other stimulants, alcohol, and especially tobacco. Tobacco and caffeine are vasoconstrictors, and causes blood vessels to narrow, and they may increase the risk of hypothermia and frostbite. And DO NOT DRINK ALCHOL, it is not a stimulant! It reduces shivering, which is one of your body's ways of keeping warm, and in small amounts, it is a vasodilator causing blood vessels to relax and widen, flooding cold blood from your extremities into your torso. At larger amounts, it is a vasoconstrictor and has the opposite effect.

As a note, while tea and coffee are mildly diuretic, compared to the amount of water consumed, the effects are minimal. So, you can drink tea and coffee, in reasonable amounts, and stay hydrated. For more on this read “Drinking Black Tea to Stay Hydrated...Say What?! ©”, HERE.

For more read “Melting Snow and Ice ©”, HERE, “Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble...The 5 Stages of Boiling©”, HERE, “...No soldier should Drink any water without it Being Boiled...©”, HERE, “Water Disinfection: When is boiled, boiled enough…? ©”, HERE, and “They Can’t Cure Dead ©”, HERE.

Food

Food is usually the last thing that you will need in a survival situation, although in a cold environment you will need calories to keep the heat furnace going.

A good rule of thumb to remember though is that, if you don’t have any water to drink, DO NOT EAT! While this is true in general, and in particular with protein rich foods, carbohydrates as they are digested produce metabolic water and can be eaten when water is scarce.

Metabolic water is the water produced when food is digested. If available, eat sugary foods like sucking candies or packets of sugar. The digestion of carbohydrates produces a net gain of metabolic water as they are digested by your body and will provide energy to run your heat furnace. Proteins, on the other hand produce the least metabolic water, and in fact require the metabolic water that is produced, to excrete the urea and other waste products of protein digestion.

In a survival situation all cooking should be by boiling or stewing and the water used to cook the food should be saved and drank, because a large amount of sustenance from the food will be in it.

And seventh, and last, prepare and layout distress signals.

Remember, it is not always easy to see you or the wreck, so you need to make it easier to be spotted, and that is where signals come in.

The simplest distress signal is an “SOS” signal, tramped out in the snow. The letters should made by stomping out wide paths for form letters at least ten feet (3 meters) square and ten feet (3 meters) apart. It would be better to make the letters using a 6 to 1 vertical to horizontal ratio, where the vertical lines are 60 feet tall (18 meters), and the horizontal lines are ten feet wide (3 meters). If possible, rocks, wreckage, or pine boughs should be laid in the tracks to emphasize the letters.

Large ground signals are a good idea, because sound doesn’t travel well over or through snow, so if you are inside a snow covered shelter, you might not hear the approach of a rescue plane or helicopter. Conversely, rescuers might not be able to hear shouts, whistle blasts or other load noises that you might make. It might be a good idea to leave your shelter on a regular schedule, or if there are several survivors to take turns as a spotter, to watch for rescuers. And don’t forget to have flares, bonfires, torch trees, signal mirrors and other means of alerting passing rescue planes ready and waiting.

In the end, winter and Arctic survival is all about preparedness and knowledge, so hopefully if you ever find yourself in a winter wilderness survival situation, this will help.

Don’t be that guy!

Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Cold Feet...Wet Boots! ©”, where we will talk about how to keep your feet warm and dry and how to prevent trench foot.

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site. I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

Notes

¹³ Increased surface area is the reason why small fine tinder and split logs, which have a greater surface area than whole logs, catch fire and burn faster. Oh, and whole logs are frequently covered with bark and bark is naturally fire resistant.

¹⁴ For context a US gallon (3.78 liters) weighs 8.34 lbs. or 3.78 kg.

¹⁵ Sailing Directions (Planning Guide) for the Arctic Ocean, First Edition, by Defense Mapping Agency, page 291

¹⁶ “A Guide To Drinking Water Treatment and Sanitation for Backcountry & Travel Use”, CDC

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