10 Survival Tips That May Save Your Life

If you find yourself in the wild without a toothbrush you can improvise one fairly easily. Find a young pine tree and break off a thin branch. Now shave it to a flat point and remove the bark near the end as it may contain bacteria. Chew on the end of the branch using your back teeth in order to flatten it out further and release the individual fibers. Now have at it just like you would with any normal toothbrush. Not only does it clean your teeth effectively but also leaves your breath minty fresh. Hey guys Malcolm here at Survival Know-How and that was one of 10 survival tricks I'm going to be showing you today. Stay tuned. Coffee mugs can actually make a very effective sharpening stone. Flip the coffee mug over because we want to be using the unglazed bottom. Now slowly run your blade across the bottom making sure to keep a consistent angle. You can actually see the metal filing starting to accumulate on the bottom of the mug. Flip over the blade and do the same on the other side trying to keep the same angle as before. When hiking or camping in the winter time you should store your water bottles upside down. This is because any air pockets will form at the top of the water bottle and when it starts to freeze it'll freeze from the top down. By storing your water bottle upside down you prevent the mouth of the water bottle from freezing solid. As an added precaution you should also store your water bottle inside your jacket to help prevent it from freezing solid. You can turn any water jug or bottle into an omnidirectional light by attaching a headlamp to it and shining the light inwards. You can also turn it into an emergency beacon if your headlamp has a strobe effect. You can turn any match into a waterproof match with a simple household candle. Simply blow out the candle and dip your match in the candle wax. Make sure to get as much of the wood stick as you can. There's nothing more frustrating than reaching into your bag to grab some paracord just to find it in a big tangled mess. Here's a simple method of managing your paracord that I like to use. Pinch the paracord between your pinky finger and your ring finger then begin wrapping it in a figure eight pattern around your thumb and pinky finger. Continue this process until you have about two feet of paracord left. If you're in a rush you can just wrap that paracord around itself in a half-ass method and then leave the very last loop loose so that you can wrap the end through the loop. But a much more effective method is to pinch the paracord off and then slowly and methodically begin wrapping it around trying not to overlap itself. Then once again leave the last loop loose so that you can tuck the end underneath of it. There are many benefits of storing your paracord like this. One of them is that you can attach a carabiner to it to hang it up on your walls or your backpack. But the biggest benefit is that you now have access to your paracord without having to undo the entire thing. Just simply pull on the end piece. For longer pieces of paracord it's difficult to just use your hand. For these I like to stick two stakes in the ground and then do the same thing, wrapping the paracord around in a figure eight process. Just remember to leave more paracord at the end to wrap around itself. If you ever find a really ugly and annoying knot that you just cannot undo, try grabbing the knot with both hands and actually twisting the knot back and forth. Oftentimes this is enough for you to loosen up the knot just a little bit so that you can untie it. It's very common to be left with scraps of paracord that are just too small to be useful for any big projects. In a pinch though it is possible to reattach small pieces of paracord together. Take one end and pull the outer sheath back several inches and then cut the guts out. Now on the other end take a lighter to it and try to pull and stretch out that end as much as possible. Now slide the hardened tapered tip inside the hollowed out sheath of the other end. Take a lighter to this junction and pinch on it to try to attach these two pieces. Now keep in mind this will never be as strong as the original strand of paracord but it will be strong enough to use for some smaller projects. Lightweight hammocks are a great addition to anybody's bug out bag or camping setup. They're easy to set up and I think far more comfortable than sleeping on the ground. However many of the cheap ones have one major drawback and that is that they are paper thin and you lose a lot of body heat on the lower side as the wind blows against you. Now you can buy expensive sleeping pads to go with your hammock for you to sleep on but an alternative that is very cheap and effective that I like to use is a simple workout mat. This will significantly reduce the amount of heat loss that you have on the bottom of your hammock and should make for a much more comfortable night. If you're ever in the forest looking for a source of water but all you can find is moist soil I guarantee you that you have a tool on you that can help extract that water out of the soil. Simply fill up your sock with a moist soil moss or wood and then begin twisting your sock and wringing out the water. You'd be very surprised about how much water you can actually get out of a sock full of dirt. Now this water might not smell or taste the best but it'll do the trick and if you're going to put the sock back on I recommend turning it inside out first. Thanks for watching and if you guys know any great survival tricks leave them down in the comment section below and maybe I'll feature your comment in my next survival tricks video. Don't forget to share this video on Facebook and Twitter. 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