Survival + Defense Flashcards
Signs of water
Description: Indicators in nature that suggest the proximity of water sources.
Usage: Following animal tracks, as animals often lead to water. Lush vegetation or a sudden increase in insect activity can also indicate a nearby water
Insects
Description: Small arthropods that can be consumed.
Usage: Many insects are rich in protein and can be eaten. Grubs, crickets, and certain beetles are examples. Cooking them can improve taste and ensure safety.
Safe location:
Description: A spot that minimizes environmental and animal threats.
Details: This involves surveying the terrain for signs of water runoff to avoid flash floods, checking for loose rocks or dead tree limbs overhead that might fall, and observing for signs of animal activity. A raised area is generally preferred to prevent water pooling.
Insulate from the ground:
Description: Creating a barrier to prevent heat loss to the cold ground.
Details: The ground can sap body heat quickly. Using a thick layer of dry leaves, pine needles, or grass can serve as insulation. In snowy environments, snow itself can be used as insulation as it traps air.
Size matters
Description: Optimizing shelter size for heat retention and protection.
Details: A shelter that’s just big enough for the individual conserves heat better than a spacious one. The smaller space means body heat warms it up faster and retains the warmth.
Use natural materials:
Description: Harnessing resources from the immediate environment for shelter construction.
Details: Depending on the location, this could involve bending and interweaving branches to create a frame, using large leaves or bark for roofing, or piling snow to create an igloo or snow trench.
Consider wind direction:
Description: Positioning the shelter to minimize exposure to cold winds.
Details: The entrance should ideally face away from the prevailing wind direction. This helps in retaining warmth inside the shelter and prevents smoke from a fire from blowing inside.
Windbreak:
Description: A structure to deflect or block wind.
Details: This can be a naturally occurring feature like a boulder or a constructed barrier using logs, rocks, or debris. Windbreaks not only protect against cold winds but also reduce the risk of the fire being blown out.
Waterproofing:
Waterproofing:
Description: Techniques to prevent water from entering the shelter.
Details: This can involve layering materials in a shingle fashion so water runs off, using moss or mud to seal gaps, or creating a raised floor to stay above any water runoff.
Ventilation:
Description: Allowing fresh air to circulate within the shelter.
Details: This is essential, especially if a fire is maintained inside, to prevent the buildup of smoke and harmful gases. Small openings or vents, positioned correctly, can promote airflow without letting in cold drafts.
Protection from wildlife:
Description: Measures to deter or prevent wildlife from entering the shelter.
Details: This includes choosing a location away from obvious animal tracks or nests, safely storing and cooking food to minimize odors that attract animals, and possibly creating noise or light deterrents to ward off curious creatures.
Fire triangle:
Fire triangle:
Description: The three essential components required to start and maintain a fire.
Details: These components are heat (ignition source like matches or a spark), fuel (wood, leaves, or other combustibles), and oxygen (from the air). All three must be present in the right balance for a fire to ignite and continue burning.
Dry tinder and kindling:
Description: Essential materials to initiate a fire.
Details: Tinder is fine, dry material that catches fire easily, like dried grass, moss, or fine wood shavings. Kindling consists of slightly larger materials like twigs and small branches that catch fire from the burning tinder.
Fire Safety purpose
Safety:
Description: Ensuring fires are controlled and contained.
Details: This involves picking a safe location away from flammable materials, creating a firebreak or pit to contain the fire, and always having a means to extinguish the fire quickly if needed.
Multiple purposes:
Description: Understanding the diverse uses of fire in a survival situation.
Details: Beyond warmth, fire can be used for cooking food, purifying water, signaling for rescue, providing light, and deterring wildlife.
Fire and Wind
Wind direction:
Description: Being aware of the wind’s direction when starting and maintaining a fire.
Details: Wind can blow away your tinder, make it hard to light, or spread the fire unexpectedly. Positioning your fire setup appropriately and possibly creating a windbreak can help manage these challenges.
Fire maintenance:
Description: Regularly attending to the fire to ensure it continues burning.
Details: This includes adding fuel as needed, repositioning logs or branches for optimal burning, and ensuring good airflow without over-oxidizing the fire.
Wood Types
Wood types:
Description: Recognizing the characteristics of different woods and their burning properties.
Details: Some woods, like pine, ignite easily but burn fast with a lot of sap and smoke. Hardwoods, like oak, burn slower and hotter. Knowledge of local wood types can optimize fire management.
Extinguish fires:
Description: Ensuring fires are completely put out before leaving or sleeping.
Details: This is vital for safety and preventing wildfires. Using water, dirt, or sand to smother the fire, ensuring no smoldering embers remain, is critical.
Fire reflectors:
Description: Structures that reflect heat back towards a specific direction.
Details: Made using logs, rocks, or other materials, these are positioned opposite the fire, directing more heat towards the shelter or sitting area, maximizing warmth.
Rule of Threes:
Description: A universal distress signal.
Details: Whether it’s three whistle blows, three fires in a triangle, or three gunshots, the pattern of three is internationally recognized as a call for help.
Mirrors:
Signals
Loud noises:
Description: Creating audible signals to alert nearby rescuers.
Details: Whistles, gunshots, or banging metal objects can produce loud sounds that carry over long distances, especially in quiet wilderness settings.
Night fires:
Description: Fires specifically designed to be seen at night.
Details: These are typically larger and brighter fires, often enhanced with green foliage to produce more smoke or using certain materials to produce distinctively colored flames.
Mirrors:
Description: Reflective devices to signal distant searchers or aircraft.
Details: By angling a mirror or any reflective surface towards the sun, one can create a bright flash of light. This flash can be seen from a great distance and can be used to signal aircraft or distant searchers.
Navigating
Basic navigation:
Description: Fundamental skills to determine direction and move purposefully.
Details: This includes using the sun’s position (rises in the east, sets in the west), recognizing star patterns like the North Star in the Northern Hemisphere, and understanding basic map and compass skills.
Inform others:
Description: The importance of letting someone know your intended route and return time.
Details: By informing others of your plans, rescuers have a starting point and a general idea of where to look if you don’t return as expected.
Landmarks:
Description: Using natural or man-made features to aid in navigation.
Details: Recognizable features like mountains, rivers, or unique tree formations can be used to orient oneself and prevent walking in circles.
Clouds and Water
Sun and stars:
Description: Celestial bodies as navigation aids.
Details: The sun provides a general east-west axis. At night, certain star patterns, like the Big Dipper pointing to the North Star in the Northern Hemisphere, can provide direction.
Cloud formations:
Description: Observing clouds to predict weather patterns.
Details: Certain cloud formations, like cumulonimbus clouds, might indicate storms, while high, wispy cirrus clouds could indicate a change in the weather.
Follow water:
Description: Using water bodies as navigation guides.
Details: Streams and rivers often flow downhill and can lead to larger water bodies or human settlements. Following water can also ensure a supply of freshwater.
Cloud Type
Cumulonimbus Clouds: These are large, towering clouds that can span high into the atmosphere. They indicate thunderstorms and can be associated with heavy rain, thunder, lightning, and even tornadoes.
Cirrus Clouds: These are high-altitude clouds that appear wispy and thin. They are often seen in fair weather but can indicate that a change in the weather is coming.
Stratus Clouds: These are low, gray clouds that often cover the entire sky like a blanket, leading to overcast conditions. They can bring light rain or drizzle.
Cumulus Clouds: These are white, puffy clouds that look like cotton. They indicate fair weather, especially when they are scattered across a blue sky.
HOW TO IDENTIFY IT
Perhaps the most well-known tree in the western world, Georgia is full of all types of oak species, from the white and red oak, to the willow and water oak and beyond, it’s doubtful that you do not have an oak species on or near your property. Oaks have lobed, waxy leaves and large, spreading crowns that may be globular or semi-circular in nature. Most species grow tall and display huge canopies, making them excellent shade trees for properties and parks.
PINE
PINE
HOW TO IDENTIFY IT
Like the oak, there are several species of pine all throughout our state – and they are numerous. These evergreens grow quickly compared to other trees, and young pines typically have a slenderer form and round as they age (much like people!). More common species in Georgia include the white pine, Virginia pine and loblolly pine.
The white pine grows from 50 to 200 feet tall (depending on its surroundings) and exhibits soft, blue-green needles. The Virginia pine is shorter, growing 15-40 feet tall, while the loblolly can shoot up to 90-110 feet tall. All three types of tree have rough-hewn bark, though the white pine is not quite as “flaky” looking. Pine wood is also soft, which makes pine trees notorious for bending – and snapping – under the weight of winter ice or spring/fall storm winds. Despite being evergreens, all pine trees also shed their needles in the fall.
MAPLE
HOW TO IDENTIFY IT
There are a wide variety of maple species in Georgia, though the most common are the red and sugar – though silver and Japanese are also very common. Most maples have large leaves, and all are palmate (lobes spread out from the stem). The bark of a young maple is generally smooth, but it gets rougher and cracks as it ages. But what really sets the maple apart are its fall colors.
Sugar maple leaves turn orange to red in autumn, while the red maple bursts into yellow and red. The silver maple’s leaves generally turn a shade of yellow, while the Japanese maple’s leaves (which are generally smaller and more delicate looking than other maples) can run a gamut of pale yellow to brilliant orange or blood red and even a darker, rusty shade.
MAGNOLIA
HOW TO IDENTIFY IT
There are several different species of magnolia – eight of which are native to the United States – and these magnificent trees can suit any garden, yard or growing condition. They range from the huge, low-branched climbing delights you may know from your youth, to smaller, decorative plants. Notable for broad, waxy leaves and large, white flowers, the magnolia also has a smooth, gray bark.
HOW TO CARE FOR IT
Most magnolias thrive in full sun or partial shade, and they are resistant to most pests and diseases. These landmarks of the southeast handle heat and some drought well. However, young magnolias require regular watering for two years until they are established.
In these instances, consider utilizing a drip irrigation system to keep the tree continuously supplied with moisture. You should also fertilize a young magnolia – though mature trees do not require fertilizer. These trees also do not require much pruning other than to lop off damaged branches or to shape it for aesthetics. The best time to prune a magnolia is immediately after the tree finishes blooming in late spring or early summer.
HICKORY
HOW TO IDENTIFY IT
A tree capable of reaching remarkable heights (mature hickories are usually taller than 60 feet) and girths (usually around 40 feet), the hickory displays pinnate leaves (veins in neat rows spreading from the long center vein of the leaf) that grow in compound sets. Its trunk is gray to brown and grows coarser with age, often displaying a diamond pattern. The mature hickory also produces a hard nut, which can damage cars and make a nuisance of itself if you need to mow anywhere near the tree.
EASTERN RED CEDAR
HOW TO IDENTIFY IT
A conifer native that can reach heights of 65 feet, the redcedar is easily identified by its dark green scale-like leaves, blue berry-like cones, and stripy, red-hued fibrous bark. This cedar can either dominate a landscape with its full-spreading leaves that can reach up to 25 feet in diameter and flourish from tip to ground. Or it can just as easily produce spindly outputs, depending on where it is grown. It also provides a memorable, piney aroma.
DOGWOOD
HOW TO IDENTIFY IT
One of the most iconic flowering trees in Georgia, Dogwoods produce beautiful white blossoms in the spring, and its leaves turn a deep red-orange in the fall. Its fissured gray bark is also unmistakable, and mature dogwoods reach heights of 15-20 feet.
HOW TO IDENTIFY IT
A native species to the United States, the Beech can reach heights of 120 feet and can live for 200-300 years. However, they are sometimes hard to pick out simply because they like to establish themselves in near-full shade. Beeches have smooth silver-gray bark and actually keep their leaves during the winter – though they turn brown and are paper thin.
Description: Thorny shrubs with dark, sweet berries and serrated, compound leaves.
How to Eat: Berries can be eaten fresh, used in jams, jellies, pies, or smoothies.
Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale):
Description: A plant with toothed leaves and bright yellow flowers.
How to Eat: Leaves can be added to salads or sautéed. Roots can be roasted and ground as a coffee substitute. Flowers can be used to make dandelion wine.
Wild Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana):
Description: Produces small, sweet red berries with trifoliate leaves.
How to Eat: Berries can be eaten fresh or used in desserts and jams.
Cattail (Typha spp.):
Description: Tall plants with long leaves and a brown seed head, found in wetlands.
How to Eat: Young shoots can be eaten raw or cooked. The rootstock can be ground into flour.
Chickweed (Stellaria media):
Description: A low-growing plant with white star-shaped flowers and oval leaves.
How to Eat: Leaves, stems, and flowers can be eaten raw in salads or cooked as greens.
Lamb’s Quarters (Chenopodium album):
Description: A plant with triangular, toothed leaves.
How to Eat: Leaves can be eaten raw or cooked, similar to spinach.
Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana):
Description: A tree with round, orange to reddish fruits and elliptical leaves.
How to Eat: Fruits can be eaten raw when fully ripe, but they are very astringent when unripe.
Wood Sorrel (Oxalis spp.):
Description: Clover-like plant with trifoliate leaves and small flowers.
How to Eat: Leaves, flowers, and young seed pods can be eaten raw, offering a tart flavor.
Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata):
Description: A vine with purple flowers and lobed leaves.
How to Eat: The fruit, known as maypop, can be eaten raw or made into jellies.
Violet (Viola spp.):
Description: Small plants with heart-shaped leaves and butterfly-like flowers.
How to Eat: Leaves can be added to salads or cooked. Flowers are edible and can be used as garnish.
Pawpaw (Asimina triloba):
Description: A small tree with droopy, broad leaves and large, custard-like fruits.
How to Eat: The fruits can be eaten raw when ripe, tasting somewhat like a banana or mango.
Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis):
Description: A shrub producing clusters of small, dark purple berries.
How to Eat: Berries are used to make jams, jellies, and elderberry wine. Note: raw berries should be consumed in moderation, and other parts of the plant can be toxic.
Groundnut (Apios americana):
Description: A vine with compound leaves, small fragrant flowers, and tuberous roots.
How to Eat: The tubers can be boiled or roasted and have a nutty flavor.
Daylily (Hemerocallis spp.):
Description: Plants with long, arching leaves and large, colorful flowers.
How to Eat: Flower buds can be stir-fried or boiled. Tubers are edible when cooked.
Clover (Trifolium spp.):
Description: Recognizable by its trifoliate leaves and ball-like clusters of tiny flowers.
How to Eat: Young leaves and flower heads can be eaten raw or cooked. They can also be dried and used as tea.
Ramps/Wild Leek (Allium tricoccum):
Description: A wild onion with broad, lily-like leaves emerging from the ground.
How to Eat: Both the leaves and bulbs can be eaten raw or cooked, offering a strong onion-garlic flavor.
Mulberry (Morus spp.):
Description: Trees that produce elongated, sweet berries, either red, black, or white.
How to Eat: Berries can be eaten raw, used in desserts, or made into jams.
Yarrow (Achillea millefolium):
Description: Fern-like leaves with clusters of tiny white flowers on top.
How to Eat: Young leaves can be eaten raw or cooked, but they have a bitter taste. Often used medicinally.
Wild Garlic (Allium vineale):
Description: Grass-like leaves with a strong garlic smell and tiny bulbous roots.
How to Eat: The entire plant, including bulbs, stems, and seeds, can be used as a garlic substitute in cooking.
Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus):
Description: A tall plant with yellow, sunflower-like blooms
and knobby underground tubers
.
How to Eat: Tubers can be eaten raw, roasted, boiled, or fried. They have a nutty, slightly sweet flavor.
