SURVIVAL SITUATION Are we PREPARED EFRT S6 EP23

Welcome to another episode of the Epic Family Road Trip. The Empty Nest Edition. We were trying to get up to the lake but it looks like it ends here. Rough road ahead but a lot of obstacles. We were going along today and we were thinking to ourselves a couple of what-if scenarios. We think we're well prepared for any kind of turn of events and after 2020 we've really stepped up our preparedness game. But we thought why don't we pull over and see what we have. If we were in a worst case scenario situation where our vehicle was broken down or we were stuck in snow like we were last year three days up in the mountains when we only expected to spend three hours and say we ran out of fuel. Now we have auxiliary tanks but we got close even with our auxiliary tanks. So that is a situation that could occur. You're not always prepared for the weather. Think about last year. Exactly this time last year we were in New Mexico planning to spend the entire winter in the warm desert. So all our gear was warm gear and then we immediately had to return back north and sure enough we found ourselves in cold winter weather unprepared. So if you're going out on a weekend trip you're going to pack for where you're going but if you're a full-time traveler there's scenarios that happen. So we thought what if that happens we're broken down we've used up all our fuel we're out of propane now so we can't use our buddy heaters. We're out of fuel in the vehicle so the batteries are low or dead. We're out of food now in our fridge. Now you can always call for help. We have a Garmin and there's Zoleo and there's Spot and there's other satellite based communicators. But if we're scenario of complete breakdown we've typically held off you're going to hold off calling in the Marines until the very last minute. You're not just going to go oh you know what I've got a flat tire I'm going to hit the emergency button. That's something you use as a very worst case scenario if someone's badly injured and you need a medevac. But for this type situation you'd probably leave it to the last minute and then who knows you might run out of battery power and you can't charge that now and you can't make the call. So that's kind of the scenario we've kind of said what if we ended up in food water shelter and warmth are the things we need. Do we have right now in our jeep enough tools equipment and items to sustain us for a long period of time in a survival situation? Let's open the jeep and find out. It's not very cold right now so heat isn't our number one concern but we do need a fire for cooking for food so that's something to consider. When it comes to shelter we have our vehicle so even though we're broken down here we can take refuge in the tent or we could go and sit in the vehicle or even sleep in the back to stay warm. When you're overlanding that's one item that's already taken care of you have your shelter it's your vehicle. So food, shelter, water. We noticed here that there is a lake ahead so we have a source of fresh water and we'll have to filter that water and there's a couple of methods we use for that which we'll show you. We do have a solar power unit and I'm going to get that hooked up to the solar panel because we can see a little bit of sun here. Now we're in a rainy area we're on Vancouver Island Pacific Northwest it rains a lot so that's not always 100% something we can rely on is that we're going to get enough solar energy to make any difference in terms of charging and getting power. So we've got it pointed in the direction of the sun now it could cloud over any minute in fact it does quite often it starts raining and so on but let's capture what sun we can while we can. Theoretically if you have something like this you can then charge your GPS and you could make a rescue call. We're assuming we're unable to do that right now what if you damage the unit or couldn't get it working. All right in this overcast sky it looks like we're only getting we're getting three to four watts into here from the solar panel which is much less than you get on a Sunday day of course and it's going to take a long time to charge that up so we're going to leave it up as much as possible but that's not going to be a an immediate solution. Now if you're in the desert places like that you're going to have way more direct sunlight and power is not going to necessarily be your issue but you'll have other challenges like water. First thing we're going to take care of is getting a fire going let's see what we have in the vehicle for fire. There's a couple of things we carry we always have a Bic lighter they're just simple devices that seem to go when you need them even if they're frozen or wet that's one thing and then we're going to try a few fire starting methods in case we run out of fuel in our little hand lighters. So I'm just going to get the tire table set up that gives me a place to kind of set out the items we have and kind of assess the situation but you know when you're thinking when you're going out on a long trip plan for the unexpected plan for the worst if 2020 taught you anything it should be that stuff that you didn't think could ever happen can happen and will probably happen at some point so just be prepared for the worst case scenario that's prudent. I spent when I was younger about 15 years as a volunteer firefighter and even in normal day life almost on a daily basis we'd get a call to some kind of emergency when you work enough as a first responder you see that this kind of stuff goes down all the time we've pulled hypothermic people out of out of ditches and they weren't certainly expecting to their car to break down on a cold winter night and things like that it happens every single day so you can never be too prepared if you're at home with your kids you should have a fire escape plan if you're on the road you should have a plan for when things go bad so if you get into trouble the day after you went grocery shopping or a few days after you're fine but what happens if you get into trouble and it's the day before you're going to go restock on our travels the last five years we've had some situations we've been stranded in the mountains we've run out of fuel with one of our vehicles in very remote areas thankfully we had two vehicles and that gives you another level of comfort traveling with a buddy it's always a good idea but here we are the kids aren't here right now we're by ourselves so that adds another layer of that you need to be prepared for this time last year it was March of 2020 we were down in New Mexico and we had been off grid for some time we came but not you know listening to the news all that stuff just kind of enjoying life and spending time in the wilderness but we ran we got low on food so we went into town to shop and the shelves were empty so immediately we went to as many stores as we could in order to collect some items that we normally didn't carry in the past and we we now do and we'll never change that you've got your normal meals your food all the delicious meals Carol makes for us but when you run out of that you have to have some staples some items that are non-perishable are easy to make and that can provide a lot of calories for you to stay alive so we're going to show you one or two simple things you can do but we're also going to give you a list of what we carry in terms of emergency kit it's stuff that we don't use for regular meals it just sits there just like we have spare oil and radiator fluid and things like that we've got spare food items that we don't eat but if we got into a situation they'd be there for us I started pulling some stuff out we've got a handsaw here that's really handy to have it always works as long as your arm works and firewood is usually not a problem at least here and we've been in the we found cacti dead cactus there's almost always some kind of fuel around to take a bit of it'll just take you scrounging and gathering and all of that burns calories so the food item is going to be very important in a minute but we've got a an array of knives here and as you know we're down to one vehicle the other vehicle is stocked with a lot more stuff we have a lot more knives and things like hatchets and I've got an axe in here which is really important for splitting wood and things like that and then we found in our pack we have some little fire starters and these are great but they're not going to last forever and but they they do definitely help getting a fire going especially when it's wet we found some candles in our kit that can help keep you warm if you're down you know in a really dangerous situation perhaps it's all snowed and you can't get a fire going you just light a candle and you can hover around those guys it also provide a bit of light and then hand warmers those are going to give you 10 hours of heat but after a couple of days you know we'd be out so those things are great and should always be in your kit okay so if you don't have one of these simple little lighters or it runs out of fuel you're down to flint and steel and this normally has a rod in here that we strike to start a fire but we just as we pulled it out we noticed it's gone missing somewhere along the way we didn't notice it could be in the other jeep but that illustrates a scenario where it would be good to have a backup so i'm going to go into my backpack and i think we have a smaller kit where we may have a flint and steel in there all right in here we have one of these little survival kits fishing line and things like that so that's kind of good we've got an emergency blanket there's another one in there these are great if everything else goes wrong you can use these to capture body heat and keep yourself from getting hypothermia and here's what i was looking for one of these little rescue type flint and steel we're already creating a spark there so that's good all right i'm not going to go through everything in here but that's always a good idea if you enjoy hiking you have yourself a hiking kit ready and that's as important as if you break down here we went hiking the other day down into a wild valley we're the only ones within many many miles and it was icy down there now when i was a firefighter i remember helping to carry a guy who had gone on a hike and ended up breaking his leg quite uh quite a serious break way down at the bottom of a valley and we carried him out of there and that was in my mind as we're walking across these boardwalks with a little layer of ice on it what happens if one of us breaks our leg it can be very serious you can go into shock all kinds of things can happen when you're down there you need to be prepared so we have these kit these uh backpacks kitted out pretty good a small medical kit we won't go into on this video what we carry but this is a basic medical kit that you can buy and then we have a my medic here kit which is a little more advanced and then we have even bigger units but um just a good reminder to have that with you because you never know what's going to happen this is one of those foldable sinks i think that'll come in handy here in this scenario another thing to keep in mind if you are looking for ways to get a fire going don't just look in your normal gear look for other alternatives for instance cotton and vaseline work great for starting fire it's even in a downpour so we checked in our toiletry bag so we carry toothbrush all the normal stuff and we found these cotton swabs and we'll go through carol's bag and find what we have what we can find but there is always vaseline that's something we've been carrying just knowing that it's good for fire starting but even more important when we're in the desert last year we're not we weren't used to such dry weather and we ended up using this just to keep our skin from drying up so we're good in terms of getting a fire going i think well today we're going to do the cotton and vaseline trick see if we can get that going there's all kinds of other ways of getting fires going and we'll put a link to a video that daniel did last year with his favorite tinders and make sure you watch that gorilla tape and this is going to come in handy for lighting a fire i'll show you a little trick on that some sunscreen this is good especially in the desert and then these we have a bunch of these uh blocks are energy chew if you're out of food and you're low on energy these will give you a lot of calories just from each one of these little blocks and these came in handy in fact pretty much saved pete's life before we knew he had type 1 diabetes we didn't know what was on we were on a big hike in the desert almost got stuck overnight because we had to climb out of a canyon which was an intense climb and pete was getting hit with low sugar and we had no idea but carol pulled one of these out of her pocket and he was just completely drained of energy i mean he's an athletic guy he's normally the first guy up the hill but he was uh struggling and it was getting dark and we didn't know where the the trail led and all that carol gave him one of these and that got his energy back up and we've used them from time to time and they stay they last forever and they're easy to throw in a backpack good thing to have so i think we're in pretty good shape we could last quite a few days out here of course in an emergency situation you have to be extra careful not to injure yourself so be very careful using sharp tools out here one method i i often chop away at the wood but you can make if you want to be very careful you set it on and then just use the force of it down like that another way is to use a knife you're just splitting wood and set the knife on there and then tap it with another piece of wood it's a great method to create some tinder so if you have cotton balls those are the probably the best these things are pretty good because there's cotton inside you kind of pull them apart to fluff them up a bit and have a few on standby another thing is we found uh some tape we always have tape either uh duct tape which works great or gorilla tape and what i'm going to do is create these little a little roll these are light easy and burn fast and these will keep it going for some time because that's what you need to get wet wood going so just take a chunk off of there about a foot and just start rolling it up what we're trying to do is just create a little torch something like that and then look at that it's going and then you want to get your tape in there asap try to light the end of that now i have more cotton and but i don't want to use it because i don't know how long i'm going to be out here and how long i'm going to need it so keep that because that helps you get a fire going and it it's amazing how fast it lights even in wet conditions our wood is a little bit wet but it's going here um getting started underneath there i threw on some leaves but even even they're wet so really the cotton got the duct tape going and the duct tape burns slow and for a long enough period of time that you can get your kindling going and the leaves or whatever other burnable materials you can find another good idea is to work with the wind there's not much of a breeze going on right now but it is coming in this direction so position the fire where the wind will help you get it get it going all right so the wind is helping us out here but it's incredibly difficult sometimes to get a fire going with wet wood you know you get the cotton and the vaseline going and that's your initial flame and the tape or whatever you use keeps it going for a while but then to get the wood igniting when it's wet is difficult this stuff has got moisture all through it it's you can hear it and uh any tinder we've been picking up is completely soaked it's not raining at the moment but it just stopped raining and it's been raining for days and all winter so everything's very very wet but here we go we're getting some flame back found a piece of cardboard in the in the jeeper fanning the flames so here we go it's finally catching hold yeah we finally got the wet wood fire going and i think it's going good enough that we can leave it for a little bit we had to really maintain that to get it going so keep that in mind now we've got to start thinking about food i've got a fishing rod here we do have a spool full of line and we've got a little bit of tackle some basic lures and some hooks and we could forage for worms and things like that so that's good to know if we got to the point where we need protein we can go fishing as you know water is needed to sustain life we have a life straw water filter we use this to get clean water out of streams and lakes because we're in the pristine backcountry a lot of the time and you can almost drink right out of the the streams and lakes but we filter it always and so there's some if you don't have one of these and you're caught in this situation there's a couple other ways you can purify water one of them the most simple once you have your fire going get some water in your whatever pan or or kettle you have and boil it boil it for five minutes and that will remove a lot of the bad stuff another way is to capture rainwater if you're in a place where there is such a thing in fact here we wouldn't have a big problem with water there's tons of water sources and it rains all the time so we could use something like this our our sink little kitchen sink deal or you could use a garbage bag or plastic bag whatever you can find and capture rainwater this thing just pops up you got yourself a tub we could use the tarp off the top of our tent to funnel it towards a cast someplace to capture it and store it but here's some items out of our emergency food kit and we keep it separate from the kitchen we store it up in the aloe box on vandy and here we store it in the waterproof bags keep it away from the kitchen the reason you do that is if it's in the kitchen and you find a nice bag of rice one night you're going to make rice for dinner and then when you if you do get in a situation of survival you're not going to have it so keep it separate and we have things like oats a big bag of oats that gives you a lot of calories especially when you're getting low or completely out of food rice is the same flour is high in calories and you can make things like bread and today carol's going make you some survival bread which is the most basic bread but it'll keep you alive almond butter that is a great source of healthy fats and energy baking powder and yeast we do have some instant yeast so you can make bread with yeast but if you run out of yeast you can use this very simple method of just salt flour and baking powder which is what carol's making today some jams that are unopened if you make bread it just puts a smile on your face to have a little bit of jam on it oil we have all kinds of different oils that we keep separate olive oils grapeseed oil almond oil and lard lard comes in handy in the survival situation as well you're not going to rely on butter you're going to run out of that real quick this will help you in that scenario bags of different spices and things like that so you've got yeast we've got some different broths that we can make up if we have water and you can just get a broth going that is handy and the thing about all this it's all non-perishable gravy mixes we've just taken down a sampling because we have quite a bit of stuff to take care of a family of five so let's get into making a simple survival bread carol's going to make it using a cast iron skillet and we have a mixing bowl in the in the jeep so i think we have everything we need to stretch this out for a long period of time and keep ourselves fed while we work on ways to get out of this situation so in a situation where you're stressed and you're scared and you're working you're burning a lot more calories than normal and so you need high calorie food ready to go something easy to make and survival bread is going to be a good little recipe for you to have okay now we've let the fire burn for some time and it's pretty much a bed of coals you want bread to cook on a on a low heat so there's some good heat there but it's not too hot so i'm going to get the pan okay i'm just going to set the pan up right in the middle take this off and then we're taking a pot and putting it over to let the bread rise it's not going to rise like a full loaf this is just a very basic bread but it will rise a little bit and we're going to cook on one side for about seven or eight minutes and then flip the bread over and cook the other side i guess we could have left it a little bit longer yeah this is why we're practicing our coals are not that hot actually so now we're just stoking up the fire it makes more coals because it wasn't hot enough for the for the bread so a little bit of a redo on that one it smells like it's a little burnt no it's just right i'm just going to test it out if it comes out with dough on it it would need a little bit longer so let's eat so we're just going to let it rest for just a few minutes well it looks delicious that is really good oh wow it's going to do more than just keep us alive that's uh it's a tasty piece of bread it's uh it's flat bread that is really good i'm surprised it's delicious this is awesome ah we're gonna make it we're gonna survive we could make this every day over and over again with the amount of flour we have a little bit of salt a little bit of baking powder this is so good oh my goodness daniel and the kids are gonna love it this is this was really fun and we're super happy you guys came along with us and we polished that one off this now if we were truly surviving we'd probably ration that jam a little yeah we would not do that but and pete and i to do this we actually we didn't eat all day um so as you could tell i wasn't talking very much in the video because i was just like brain fog and like whatever what a difference now that i have some food in my tummy boom i'm talking and everything else it was kind of like that situation when we were in the past and the kids were just exhausted we were all kind of getting a little bit on edge you pull out that snickers bar and everyone it was just an instant turnaround just having that little bit of something in your tummy so now i could save your anyways i hope you guys enjoyed this video we had a lot of fun i highly recommend you as a couple as a family do this exercise whenever you can if you go out camping use your regular conveniences two of the nights but then on one of the nights just make an exercise create a scenario say we ran out of propane we our lighters don't work we we are stuck in the wilderness what are we going to do let's get a fire going it's raining let's work on it you know might take you an hour to get the fire going but man it's good practice and they say repair your roof when it's not raining and the same with this prepare yourself for a survival situation when you are not in a life-threatening or survival situation do it when you have the comforts and the time to practice thanks for watching thanks for being part of our channel patrons we appreciate you and the support you give to this channel the kids give their greetings from montana they're doing great and they say hi and we'll all be back together pretty soon we are formulating our plans of what our next steps are going to be so stay tuned for all those exciting adventures ahead and in the meantime we'll see you down the road