20 Unconventional Wilderness Survival Tips

Here’s an useful video from AlfieAesthetics giving us 20 wilderness survival hacks that use commonly available items and could potentially keep you alive in desperate survival situations!

1. Use a zipper to make an improvised fish hook. Break / cut open the loop and sharpen it (using a stone if necessary).

2. Similar technique with soda can ring pulls.

3. When you run out of bullets, use the spent bullet casings to make home made arrowheads. Use stone to sharpen the flattened casing as required.

4. Dry out your boots by heating up rocks on the fire and then putting them inside your boots. NOTE – I do not advise this at all and have to disagree with the video here. Rocks can explode dangerously from being placed on fires if there is water trapped inside them. Even though it looks dry on the outside this could happen. Skip this one!

5. House keys can be used as a primitive saw in situations where you only need to make small notches. A new / unworn key will work better than an old worn one – sharper edges!

6. Pluck some lint from your socks to harvest a little natural firestarting tinder. I’m laughing but yes this would work. Navel fluff? Never tried it so can’t vouch.

7. Gather pine needles, crush them and rub onto your clothing as a makeshift mosquito repellent. Burning the needles on the fire might help too.

8. Crack open a flint rock by striking two together. Flint flakes can be extremely sharp and can be used to make a makeshift knife or axe.

9. Replace your bootlaces with 550 paracord, which has a ton of emergency cordage uses.

10. The entire bootlace can be pulled out to make a string for a “bow drill” firestarter.

11. A birthday cake candle is very small and will burn for a few minutes – helpful as anything when you are down to your last match! Those “trick” relighting candles make a great windproof candle also.

12. Foam from your backpack’s padded straps makes a useful emergency firestarting material, though note that it will give off very toxic plastic smoke (use in desperate survival situations only!)

13. A plastic water bottle can be used like a magnifying glass to start a fire.

14. You can actually use a plastic bottle to boil water (though again, plastic will leach into your water so this is not advised unless you are truly desperate. Short term survival use only! On a relative scale it’s probably less deadly than microbes from a random water source but I wouldn’t do this unless I really, really needed to.)

15. A plastic bottle can also be used to make a water filter. Cut off the top and put in moss and gravel to use this as a first stage filter, then use the boiling technique above.

16. Make makeshift chopsticks with two trimmed sticks with a twig or stone in between. Better than touching your food with dirty hands.

17. Take a piece of charcoal from your fire (after it’s cooled down!) to reignite using a spark later.

18. Make a miniature stove from a cut-open soda can using the “Capital I” technique. Don’t breathe the fumes as the paint burns away.

19. Drill two holes in a ferrocerium rod so that it can be attached to a zipper pull, giving you a firestarter that’s available at all times.

20. A defunct cell phone can be dismantled to provide some useful survival materials. The shiny layer can be used as a signal mirror. Circuit boards can be used to make arrowheads and sharp cutting tools (careful of the sharp edges). The magnet could be used to make an improvised compass (I’d sooner pack a small compass but hey, it’s useful in a pinch.

20 Unconventional Wilderness Survival Tips! – Graphic © off-grid.info. Images: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stIjgEaES60