SPEAR Lesson 14 Fire 1.1 Fire 101 (the basics)

Lesson 14 Fire 1.1 Fire 101

     The ability to make fire in an emergency can make the difference between life and death.  As survival skills go this one might be the top of the list.  When you are lost and away from the safety of your home a fire not only makes your body warm but it also helps to calm your mind.  Fires can keep away attackers, from large mammals to mosquitos while keeping the boogy man at bay as well.

     Now, most people have made a fire or two in their lives, but don't take this critical skill for granted because when you really need fire- failure may not be an option.
     To learn this skill properly we have to strip it down to how it works. Go back to the very basics and build from there.  To start with you need to remember that water is the opposite of fire and will be the enemy when you are trying to start one.  Water can be rain that is falling or that has fallen as well as just high humidity in the air.  If you try to start a fire early in the morning or late in the day after the sun has gone down you are going to have to deal with the dew(the humidity from the air depositing on the hard surfaces as the temperature changes).  Again, water is the enemy to fire.
     With water in mind you next need to look at where you plan to construct your fire.  Remember water and select a dry place that is going to block the wind but still allow air to move into the fire.  Air is a companion element to fire as is wood.  When you have selected a spot that is away from water you need to think like air and make sure that you know how you are getting into the fire as well as out.  If you try building your fire in the bottom of a metal bucket there will be no place for the air to get in and the fire will struggle and eventually fail.  By thinking like air you would know to make some holes in the bottom of the bucket to let the air to come in so the heated air from the fire can rise out of the top withou trying to compete with the air trying to get back into the fire to fuel it.
     So first: Keep your fire away from water and build it in a part of day that it would be affected by dew and humidity if possible.  Second: Understand how air is going to get to your fire and how the smoke and gases will escape.  This brings us to the next part of the system and that is the fuel.

Fuel:  When we talk about fuel for a fire it is commonly broken down into three catagories; Tinder, Kindling and Wood or Fuel.  The difference between these is in how fast they will catch fire and how long they will stay burning once they are on fire.
 This is determined by three key caracteristics;
     1.  The amount of surface area on the fuel type you are trying to burn.
     2.  The mass of the item which will determine how fast you can heat it up to a temperature suitable for burning.
     3.  The chemical compostion of the item and how flammable it is.

     The amount of surface area of a piece of wood can be increased by splitting it in half or even by crushing it.  The surface area of a piece of paper is increased by crumpling it up. (with this I am refering to the amount of surface area that is able to be exposed to a small flame at once).  When you take big pieces of wood and you split them down into smaller pieces of wood they burn better.  If you could split them all the way down to pieces that are as thin as a piece of hair and then cut them up into small pieces so it looked like pepper it would catch fire really fast.  You could almost start the fire by thinking about it.  But the fire will burn out very fast.  This is why you need to add pieces that you haven't split down so much next and not full size pieces yet.  You need your next fuel type to be able to be started by the first.  It needs to be able to catch and sustain fire in the amount of time that the very small pieces will provide.  If you haven't figured it out yet- the pepper pieces are the tinder and the small pieces that you add to this is the kindling.
     The kindling pieces of a fire should be small enough to be able to catch fire in the time provided by the tinder but should be able to create coal the will keep burning long enough for larger pieces of wood to catch.  When you are just starting out building fires it is helpful to over prepare by collecting more tinder and kindling than you need.  As a rule to remember you should have enough tinder to fill a one gallon bucket (think of a paint can) and enough kindling to fill a five gallon bucket.  The amount of fuel you have beyond that is based on how long you want the fire to go.
     The chemical composition is important when you are using non-wood sources for your fire.  Most things will burn but the temperature that they will burn is different which may make your fire hard to control.  It is also important to know that the smoke coming off these items will probably be toxic and the smell may travel farther than a conventional fire.  In general it is best to avoid burning things other than natural sources but if you need to use something to help get your fire started in a true life or death survival situation just use extreme caution because toxic fumes can kill you faster than the cold will.
     I am not going to discuss at this point all of the natural items that are out there to make a fire with.  I want you to look for yourself and find the items that fit the discription of tinder, kindling and fuel and to collect them from where you live and practice.  Remember that you can increase surface area by tearing up the fibers of grass of wood that you have found.  You may also split larger pieces of wood into small pieces.  Keep in mind about water and in live plants and trees the water is inside so select dead items that are off the ground and dried by the wind and the sun.  Build you fire in the middle of the day to have the best chance of success and build it off the ground and away from water.

I will list a few commonly occurring mistakes that people make when starting fires.

1. They build a fire without enough tinder for the kindling to catch
2. They collect their tinder too late in the day and the dew is already settling on it
3. They build a very nice fire ring but forget to think like air and they struggle to keep the fire going
4. They use accelerants to start the fire, like gasoline or lighter fluid, and think that it replaces kindling.  It may replace the tinder but it burns out way before it catches the wood or main fuel of the fire.

If you remember these basic things about fire you will know the answer to why you have success or why you don't have success in fire building and that is the best lesson you can have.  

Continue on to Lesson 15
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SPEAR Survival

Prepared For The Everyday

Till The End Of Days!

Are You Prepared?

Are You Prepared?

So you've decided that you needed to be better prepared.  You probably came to this decision after some event in life where you found yourself unprepared.  So you've done some research and have started prepping for a future that is unknown.  Fantastic, but are you prepared enough?  What are you prepared for?  Which areas are your strengths and which areas are your weaknesses.  For that matter, what are the areas that you should be working on?

Here is a quick list of the key areas that you need to be prepared in.  There are lots of different skills that will fit into some of these areas.  Some may be specific to your location or your age or abilities but they will all fit under these six key areas.

1.Are you prepared mentally?  Do you have the confidence to take on a huge crisis and not give up? Do you have a play book that will eliminate some of the costly time needed to make a plan in a crisis?  Do you have a positive mental attitude that will keep yourself and members of your family properly motivated?  Do you have enough experience to feel confident in your decision making?

2.  Are you prepared physically?  Is your physical body capable of dealing with the workload this will accompany a major crisis?  Is your diet under control and designed to transition into using 100% of your food stores to survive?  Are you healthy enough to be a capable and performing asset to your survival team?

3.  Are you prepared medically?  Do you have the training and the supplies to treat yourself and members of your team for medical reasons that would come from survival or combat?  Are you prepared for a possible pandemic?  Does more than one member of your team have these skills?

4.  Are you prepared technically?  Do you have the gear, equipment and food that you are going to need?  Is your load stored and planned to be moved if need be, sometimes in a big hurry?  Is your food stores enough and how much is enough?  Are your food stores safe?

5.  Are you prepared skillfully?  You may have the food and the gear but do you know what to do with what you have.  Do you practice and if so how, where and how often?  What is the best way to practice?  Do you have the skills to find what you need, grow what you need or hunt/trap what you will need to survive.

6.  Are you prepared tactically?  Are you trained and equip to defend yourself, your family and your supplies with unarmed and armed combat?  Do you know the attack and escape routes from your home or camp?  Do you have the proper firearms or weapons to defend your home and family and are your trained to use them?  Not just shoot them but how to use them to stop an attack without firing shot? 

     All these areas of preparation need to be balanced.  If you are heavy in one area and weak in another you will naturally try to survive with what you have.  If you have lots of guns but little food you will have no choice but to use those guns against your friends and neighbors to keep from starving.  If you have lots of food but can't defend them you better stuff yourself fast before someone comes and takes them away from you.

SPEAR Survival is a system that will teach you how to get better prepared in a balanced way and how to practice.  
SPEAR is an acronym for: Survival, Preparedness, Emergency Anticipation, & Readiness. 
     
 Just as a white belt learns the basics of a martial art so will you with the level one course.  Most people who have been preparing for a while will have most of these lessons covered and will only have to fill in the holes in their training.  Others will use level one to create a solid foundation for the lessons that follow which will get them better prepared in a balanced fashion.

SPEAR is a very low cost solution to solving these tough questions that are listed above.  Most people don't know where to start and have no idea where they want to go with their prepping.  This martial art system of survival will give you a simple road map to follow to keep moving in the right direction as well as teach you how to practice the skills that you already have in a method that is easy and fun.

SPEAR is free to start and free to continue to learn.  The certification and the support of people at your same level of training is the real key.  You will have access to the training forum that is relevant to your level of training.  You will be able to share ideas and ask questions of people who are proud to be studying this system and who share the same values you do.  As you grow and become better prepared you will be promoted to the next level and will be surrounded by inspiring people again that will challenge you to grow even further.

In the higher ranks of this system you will be able to teach the skills that you have to people around you and to develop a team of like minded people who can come together in a crisis.

Just as in a combat martial art, the path to mastery doesn't end at the black belt, it truely begins.  The more you know and the better your skill the clearer you see the road ahead.  It will change you physically.  It will change you mentally.  It will change you spiritually.  

Unless you have it all figured out and are prepared for anything I urge you to head over to our website and fill out the student registration form and become a SPEAR student.  

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SPEAR lesson 13 Shelter 1.2 Rule of 3, Heat Transfer and Shelter Selection

Lesson 13  Shelter 1.2 

Rule of 3, Heat Transfer, Shelter Selection

For survival you have a lot of options.

1. You can simply stay in your house
2. You can build a primitive shelter from sticks and branches
3. You can tunnel into the snow and make a cave
4. You can set up a tent or tarp
5. You can stay in a vehicle
6. You can find any other abandoned structure
7. Or you can take the shelter of someone else.

With all these options, and many more I didn't list, you have to identify what makes one shelter better than another.  If you have to build a shelter what do you have to know to make it work the first time.  This lead us into the rule of threes:

• You can live three weeks without food
• You can live three days without water
• You can live three hours exposed to the elements 
• You can live three minutes without air.

Most survivalist know this list and use it to prioritize the actions in an emergency.  Preppers use a similar formula in how they prepare for the unknown.  If you can go three weeks without food then that gets knocked off the top of the "to do" list.  Water is a little more pressing but if you are without shelter and the temperature is getting down below freezing you better put shelter on the top of that list.  The three minutes without air will come in later.

The number one reason for shelter is to protect our core body temperature.  If it goes up or down more than a couple of degrees we are facing death.  So the first thing to consider for a shelter is whether or not it will retain heat.  This brings me to the next list which is basic heat transfer:

• Conduction- This form of heat transfer comes when things are touching.  Think of electrical wire. You electricity is conducted through wires but it doesn't work if the wires aren't touching
• Convection- This is simply hot air.  Or heat that is transferred by the air.  It can transfer to your body or away from it.  To remember this think about a convection oven.  It is different from a regular oven by that is has a fan that blows the hot air around.
• Radiation-  This heat is best illustrated by a magnifying glass as it concentrates the radiant energy of the sun.  Another good example is when you are sitting in front of a fire and you can feel it heating your face.  It is the radiant heat that is doing this not the convected air.

Your shelter needs to hold in convection that comes from your body or from a fire that you build.  A solar blanket can be used to reflect back the radiation from the fire.  And by building your shelter off the ground you can avoid the loss of your body heat through conduction to the ground.

Insulation that is in our homes uses this same principle of stopping heat loss.  It creates lots of small air pockets that eliminates convection and due to the poor conduction rate of the trapped air it takes a long time for heat to transfer through it.  You winter clothes are designed to do the same thing.  If you find yourself stuck out without shelter you can fill the clothes that you do have with anything you can find that will produce those small pockets of air.  You can use crumpled up paper, dry grass, strips of cardboard or whatever you may be able to find.

The last item of heat transfer that you need to understand is evaporation.  When you want to turn water into steam you have to add heat.  When you want to turn water into ice you need to remove heat.  Anytime you change the state of an element the price you have to pay is paid in heat.  If you lick the back of your hand and blow across it you can feel it get cooler.  The saliva is evaporating and taking your heat with it.  When we sweat we do so for this very purpose.  The sweat that we generate evaporates to keep our core temperature down when it is hot or we are exerting ourselves.  If it is really cold outside that sweat will freeze and take much more heat than your body designed.

          The other thing that happens when we sweat and it it cold our clothes get wet.  The reason this is bad goes back to conduction.  Remember all those little air pockets in our clothes, well they are now filled with water.  Water transfers heat ten times more effectively than air does.  If you get wet and it is cold you need to get out of those wet clothes and into dry ones as soon as possible.  If you don't have dry clothes you need to build a fire and dry your clothes if front of the fire.  Don't wear them when you are drying them.  The steam could burn you but it is better to take your chances with the cold air then it is to let the cold water suck the heat out of you.

Oh yeah.  The three minutes without air.  Don't make a shelter so tight and closed up that you don't let in any fresh air.  If you sleep in the cab of a vehicle and there are a couple of people with you the air will only last a couple of hours with the windows all closed up.  Make sure that you have a fresh source of air to keep from falling off into that sleep that you don't wake up from.

Continue on to Lesson 14

Start at the beginning:  Lesson 1

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SPEAR Survival

Prepared For The Everyday

Till The End Of Days.

SPEAR Lesson 15 Fire 1.2 Fire Purpose and Safety

Why is fire so important? 

SPEAR Lesson 15 Fire 1.2 Fire Purpose and Safety

          In wilderness survival the most popular lesson that you will find probably has to be fire starting.  This is mostly because it is an easy lesson to do and it films well. But here in the SPEAR course we need to look at this lesson a little deeper to find out why we need to know this at all.  

          Fire was undoubtedly a game changing skill for primitive man.  It allowed them to cook their food, heat their bodies and keep away predators.  In the pioneering days of the US they used fire to do much of the same things with just better equipment and skill.  Fires were used to smoke meat and fish to prolong their shelf life and the fires that warmed them were put into small wood stoves that allowed them to use it as a stove to cook on as well.

          Today the very same things apply.  The improvement from the prehistoric times to the pioneering times continued into today. We have made improvements to the way that we start fire and how we use fire as well as how to keep the fire under control.  For survival training though we have to pretend that none of these advancements were ever invented.  You need to be able to use fire in its most basic form so you don't get too comfortable with modern items that you may not have when you need them.

          Lets take a brief look at some potential hazards you might face where fire would save your life:

1.  You are out hunting and you twist an ankle making walking impossible.  The temperature is dropping into the single digits tonight and you are already feeling the chill.  Without a fire to get through the night morning will probably never come.
2. The power has gone out and you have to cook the food in your freezer before it is all spoiled.  Without fire to cook the food  you might need to eat uncooked meat leading to food poisoning or just lose it all.
3. You are lost in the woods and need to find your way out.  You have enough food in your back pack to last for two more days but your canteen in gone.  You find a small stream where you can fill up your canteen but you don't know if the water is contaminated with bacteria or parasites.  Without a filter or disinfectant tabs the only way to treat the water is to boil it.  If you were to choose to drink the water you could start to show symptoms in as little as 24 hours. This would make moving very difficult and escape almost impossible.  More than likely you would become dehydrated and within days would perish.

Fire is an essential skill that everyone should know and one that SPEAR students will master.  To have the ability to make fire and cook food will make the difference between life and death in a long term crisis.  

          Fire making is important but fire is a dangerous element that can cause serious damage.  When you use fire or practice with fire you need to make very sure that the fire is out when you are done.  Forest fires will ruin your training area and potentially do far worse than that.  Make sure that you put enough water on your fire that it stops steaming.  This may take several trips to the creek for water but it is a great rule to live by.

          In a long term disaster the fire departments might not even be still in operation.  If you are careless around your house it may burn to the ground from the smallest of fires without proper equipment to put it out.  

          The final item on this lesson is one that you won't find in many of the other fire lessons or classes out there.  The energy of fire.  I am not referring about steam power or anything like that.  Fire itself has energy, fire is energy.  The kind of energy that you can feel deeper than your body.  

         The energy, or chi, of fire is what makes you relax and just stare at it for hours.  It helps your brain settle and focus.  It helps your soul heal.  Small campfires are the first lesson of magic in this course.  The next time that you build a fire take some time and just sit and enjoy it.  Feel it, not just in your skin, but in you spirit.  Feel it connect with your spirit and see where it goes.

          This magic is very helpful to calm a scared group.  Before you explore your options start a nice fire and let people connect.

Please share your comments on fire magic below then go out and make some magic or your own. 


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SPEAR Survival

Prepared For The Everyday

Till The End Of Days!

SPEAR Lesson 11 Water 1.2 Water Safety

Core Training
Lesson 11 of 25

Water 1.2 Water Safety

Now that we have established the importance of water and how your body will suffer without it we have to discuss where to get it.  You can't just drink from wherever you want.  This is obvious for most people but to make this as basic as possible so that everyone is on the same page from this point forward it must be included.  Pure water is not the best thing for us.  Pure meaning distilled water or water that has almost all impurities removed.  The minerals that are in the water for the most part are good for our bodies if not required.  A clear fresh spring would probably be the top of the water gathering list.
          Water that comes from lakes and streams can be used but it needs to be filtered, treated or boiled to make it safe.  The reason for this is that the water you may be contaminated with bacteria and parasites that will make you sick.  Filtering the water through a high filtration filter that is designed for it will take them out of the water while boiling it will kill them.  The third option is to treat the water with a chemical like chlorine or iodine.  These kill the contaminates but leave them in the water.  This is how most of our municipal drinking water is treated.
          The water from our home plumbing is safe as long as the source of the water isn't contaminated.  If you have town or city water that is pumped in from the street it is probably going to be safe unless there has been a major disaster that has left the water treatment facility abandoned.  If you find yourself in a long term crisis and are waiting it out at home you need to evaluate your water situation and make decisions early.  Filling as many containers as possible in the beginning is a smart choice.  You never know how long the water will stay on.  Most water systems rely on gravity to provide the water pressure to get the water up to the upper floors of buildings and houses that are located on the top of hills etc...  The water is pumped from the source, either a reservoir or a well into large water towers that hold the water.  After a crisis the water will stay in that tank until it runs out.
          If you have well water at your house chances are good that you have clean drinking water that has been pumped up from the water table a couple of hundred of feet below ground.  Almost all contaminates get filtered out from the soil leaving the water safe to drink.  Although sometimes your well housing itself can get contaminated from water coming down the pipe from the top.  It is best to have it tested yearly or simply pour some bleach down the pipe every year and let it kill everything,  A gallon of bleach in the pipe will kill anything in the pipe but can be dangerous to plastic pipes so dilute it with water before you dump it in.  Let is sit for an hour and flush the pipes by running the water to pump the bleach out.  Usually when the smell of bleach is gone it is safe to use but run it another ten minutes to be safe.

          The well has one great Achilles heal and that is that it requires electricity to run the pump to get the water out.  It is possible to have another well put in with a hand crank or to have a hand pump added to your existing pump.  The easiest way to ensure that the water keeps flowing is to have a backup electric system like solar and batteries or a propane generator that you can use to run the pump to fill containers.  It doesn't make sense to have your generator running all the time just for the convenience of running water when you can store water and save your fuel.

          Water storage is the next part of the lesson.  If you don't have the capacity to store water at home you need to consider that a top priority.  Water containers don't need to be anything fancy they just have to be clean and safe to store water.  You can use old milk or soda bottles that have been washed out to save costs.  I would use my bathtub to store water only as a last resort or just for cleaning purposes.  Remember we are trying to keep bacteria out of our bodies.

          Urban water collection offers it own set of challenges.  The chemicals that could be in water that is found could be not only bad for you but could be deadly.  With how important water is, if you find yourself running low when a crisis outlasts your storage you need to find ways of gathering rain water or you need to find your way to a place where the water can be free of chemical contaminates.  If you are completely opposed to leaving your home or neighborhood then you should use that information when doing your emergency planning and practice water collection now to be ready later.

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SPEAR Survival

Prepared For The Everyday

Till The End Of Days!

Martial arts Survival Frame of Mind

          Having the proper frame of mind in a crisis is easily the most important factor to getting through it.  Someone with a depressed mental attitude won't have the strength, mentally, to dig deep and push through the hard times to survive.   For the most part your mental attitude is defined by your character itself as well as your environment but there is work that you can do to improve it.

         In general survival the best thing you can do is simply practice.  By putting yourself in mock situations you will feel far less panicked when it really happens.  For example, to spend time hiking and camping would make being lost in the woods less stressful than it would to someone who doesn't spend much time in the woods. In the martial arts the same method applies.  The more time you spend sparring makes actual confrontations easier to handle.  As your skill improves your self esteem and confidence also improve.   This leads to having a Black belt attitude.
        
         Black belt attitude permeates into every part of  life.  If defines your character and makes critical decisions easier to make.  A strong belief in who you are and what you are capable of will go a long way in staving off the "I quit" attitude.  

         SPEAR craft involves every part of life and allows for much more practice than simply mock survival situations.  When you practice you feel more confident and less apt to panic in an emergency.  So practice often.  Small portions of training everyday will define your character and when you feel this new status or title you will be far more effective.

SPEAR Survival Lesson 10 Water 1.1

Core Training
Lesson 10 of 25

Water 1.1 Water 101

          Water has so many uses that we tend to take for granted on a daily basis.  We use it to bath, we wash our cloths with it, we wash our dishes, our car and our animals with it.  Most importantly though we drink it.  Now if you had to forego the washing of yourself and your cloths, dishes, car and animals you would survive just fine.  You, however, cannot forego the drinking of water.  Your body is comprised or almost 75% water and every organ and system of your body uses it in one way or another.  When these systems start receiving less and less water and your body becomes dehydrated they start shutting down non essential portions and work at only a percentage as normal.  When your life is on the line the last thing you need is for your brain and body to let you down because you didn't have enough water.

          Water is a huge importance in your life and to be really serious about preparing and surviving you need to change the way you look at it and use it.  Most people spend a majority of their lives dehydrated to a certain degree.  Our diets in america are almost designed to make us that way.  What I want you to change is to start learning for yourself the signs of dehydration and the effects that it has on the body and your brain.  You need to drink more water everyday and make it a positive change in your lifestyle.  You never know when you are going to be forced to react to an emergency or crisis and by being fully hydrated you are going to be thinking your best and be able to more your best.

          Drinking water on a day to day is important but during an emergency it is going to keep you sharp which will give you an advantage.  Rationing will be a normal part of life in a long term crisis but water shouldn't be on the rationed list.  Water stored at your home is the next part of the lesson.  At this stage of training you should think about having a solid 72 hour survival kit at home.  The standard for water stored is one gallon per person per day.  This is not just drinking but for cooking as well.  So if you live alone you should have three gallons of water stored. Easy, Right?  

          Once you have the water stored it is best to rotate your stock so it doesn't just sit in plastic jugs for a couple of years.  Simply drink a gallon and put aside a new gallon.  If you are filling from your own tap then just dump and refill.  Fresh water just tastes better and you morale will thank you for keeping your supply fresh.  If you are storing for a large family or for longer term then you might consider storing in five gallon jugs.  I use the water bottle jugs from water bubblers with a sandwich bag taped on the top with electrical tape.  They were free and store well with a nice handle for pouring.  I also like that they are clear and I can see what is in them.  If you use these make sure to store them in a dark place so the sun doesn't encourage things to grow in your water.

          The next part of basics of water is cooking.  If you have a nearby water supply that you can tap into to bring home to use for cooking then you can use that instead of depleting your drinking water supply.  I wouldn't count on that and store less water though.  In fact, store more!  As important as this it to your health and life, and also that it is nearly free, you should make this your number one prepping priority.  Store as much as you can and keep building.  Remember, in a crisis you have no idea what will come next and when a family finds there way to your door and is on the brink of death from dehydration you probably aren't going to kick them to the street.  

          If future lessons on the topic of water we are going to cover multiple ways to treat, filter and boil water to make it safe.  We will also cover livestock and gardening watering, water travel and even water power generation.  We will also discuss to potential hazards to drinking water and how to recognize them. 

In the next lesson we are going to cover water safety to explain why you can't just drink from a stream and how to treat your water to make it safe. The goal is that by SPEAR level 10 you will be capable of finding water and staying hydrated no matter what life throws at you.  You will also be capable of using this amazing resource to grow food, provide effective transportation, and even generate some power for you home.

Continue onto Lesson 11

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SPEAR Survival Lesson 9 Nav 1.2

Core Training
Lesson 9 of 25
Nav 1.2 Polaris and the sun

Let me start this lesson with a couple of explanation to the mentality of this system.  First of all keep in mind that this is the most basic levels of knowledge for the ten branches of training.  They are intended to simply insure that everyone is on the same page as the lessons get more involved.  Secondly it is important to explain why this is important to survival.  There are thousands of skills out there you can try to learn to help yourself be better prepared for an uncertain future.  The question is which one is more important and should be learned first?  Without knowing what is coming there is no way to answer that question.  The only thing that we can do is to sharpen the best tool that we have, ourselves.  I don't mean just is learning skills and buying gear, I am talking about making yourself better.  Better informed, better trained, better equipt and better prepared.
          The martial arts is about striving for perfection.  You work on a technique until it is flawless.  You work on your character to make it the same.  A black belt represents the best that we can be physically as well as mentally and spiritually.  That is why is lends itself so well to survival and prepping.
          You can have enough food for two years and enough bullets to shoot a million attackers to your home but if you are not ready in your mind then you will lose everything, one way or another.  These skills in this course are just simple lessons to give you an understanding of the ten branches and a solid foundation of knowledge that we can build upon later.  Before you learn to run you must first learn to walk.
          Navigation is one of the ten branches of knowledge in SPEAR Survival because without the ability to move you are stuck in one place and that is dangerous.  You will need to move at some point in an emergency whether it is to get home or to get to a family members house.  You might be at home and need to go out an find resources when you don't know what is going on in the world just a couple blocks away from your house.  Basic navigation will be essential for you to be able to move but also to be able to move quickly and unnoticed which we will cover in a future lesson.
          Remember, at this point you are just a white belt and these simple skills need to be practiced over and over to become part of who you are in order to proceed.  It doesn't matter if you have a black belt and karate somewhere else, if you can't put on a white belt and humble yourself to some basic skills then you won't be accepted into most martial arts schools.
          Lets get started, Polaris is the proper name of the north star.  It is a constant in the sky and doesn't move.  It will always be north of your location which makes it great to navigate by.  The north star will help you orient your maps to find your direction without a compass.  To find the north star you can use a simple trick that I learned as a kid.  Find the big dipper  (you know, the pan shaped constellation) and locate the two stars that make up the side of the pan that are farthest away from the handle.  Now take the distance between those two stars and multiply it by roughly two and a half going up from the pan in a straight line using those two stars to find Polaris.  You can't assume that the brightest star in the sky is going to be the north star because if a planet is visible it will usually be brighter than Polaris.
          Polaris is a simple method of finding north while the sun is a bit more complicated.  The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.  I live in the northern hemisphere so that means that the sun at noon will always be directly south of my location.  If you have a watch and know the time of day you can guess which way is south and you will be close enough for simple navigation.  If the sun in almost set you are looking south west and if it is rising you are looking south east.  This changes depending how far away from the equator you are.  The farther away you are the further south the sun travels.  The sun also is lower in the sky in the winter months than in the summer months.
          Regardless of all that, here is a fool proof way to find north if the sun is shining.  Take two sticks and put them in the ground sticking up so that the shadow of the first stick goes over the shadow of the second stick.  You now have two stick that are in line with the sun.  Wait thirty minutes or so and put another stick in the ground that is in line with the shadow of the first stick.  If you connect the two second sticks together in a straight line and put a stick in the middle of those two the line that is formed from the first stick and the new stick in the middle will point due north in the direction away from the sun.
          By knowing north and south you can use that in your basic navigation to be able to move around.  You can head north and continue in that general direction by using the track of the sun.  You can find the moon and set your direction of travel for the next day.
          This is the basics that you need to understand about navigation.  These lessons will make you better today and that is the goal.  Remember, Polaris is north and the sun is south.

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SPEAR Survival

Prepared for the Everyday

Till The End Of Days

SPEAR Survival Lesson 8 Nav 1.1

Core Training

Lesson 8 of 25

Navigation 1.1 Street Maps and Compass Points

     When it comes to moving around in unfamiliar territory there is no more important item to have than a map.  GPS units and cell phone apps are very handy on a day to day basis but in a real emergency I don’t want to put my life in the hands of anything that fragile which is connected to systems that might not be in place when you need them. 

             Street maps can usually be found in a book that covers most of the surrounding towns.  These maps will show you routes to locations as well as alternate routes to travel if the main road is blocked.  They also show the location of water features that you can use to get water from or to use as a natural blockade.  

            As was covered in the total load lesson on these maps you can write in your rally point location and highlight the best routes of travel to get in and escape.

            To use a street map isn't as complicated as topographical maps.  They don't need to be aligned with north and you don't have to own a compass, although it does make it easier.  You simply have to find the road that you are on and follow it until it meets another road to find your location.  From there it is merely a matter of left and right turns to get you where you want to go.  If you are traveling in unfamiliar places during times chaos it is best to plan your route carefully and study it before you leave.  The last thing you want to happen is get detoured down a dead end street into unsafe surroundings. 

            The best street maps that I have found include topographical detail as well.  Meaning that there are lines on the map that indicate the change in elevation.  I will cover this in greater detail in a future lesson but for now if you are going to buy a map book try to get one that is topographical.

            Map books should be kept in every vehicle that you own with up to date rally point information.  You should also have laminated pages in your core bag that has just your rally point information and any information of resources that you add to it.  This map will have markings for possible caches that you hide and store.  

            Compass Points.  Most people understand the basics of how a compass works.  The needle points north.  But there is a little more that you need to understand to master the use of this important tool.  Yes it is true that the compass does point north, but it doesn't point to true north (the pole of the earth that the planet actually spins on).  Magnetic compasses point to magnetic north which is a couple of degrees different than true north.  This number changes depending on how far away from the pole you actually are.  For our lesson on street maps this wont be an issue as a general direction of north is good enough.

            A magnetic compass is just that, magnetic.  The little needle that point to that faint signal up north can be interfered with by man made magnetic sources.  To get a true reading on your compass you need to be away from your vehicle as well as any large metal objects.  If you try to use your compass while sitting in you vehicle the magnets in the speakers of your door could give you false readings.  That is just a disclaimer as I would rather you stayed safely in your vehicle while you navigate, just understand that if you get some crazy readings that might be the case.

            To use your compass you need to just find out where north is and turn your map in that direction.  This way the streets that you see out your window will be going in the same direction as they are on the map.  In future lessons we will cover how to use your compass to it maximum potential but for now it just has to point north.  

            Magnetic north is an area near the north pole that is a part of the magnetic pole of the earth.  The magnetic field of the earth pulls down at this point and this is why it attracts the tip of the needle in your compass.  There isn't a manned outpost up there with a machine that makes this field for use with your compass. (just to be clear)

            And lastly I need to add, there is a threat of a form of solar flare that will come from the sun that could be so powerful that it actually reverses the magnetic field of the earth.  This would make your compass actually point south instead of north.  I have heard many reports of what would happen if this did take place and they range from sudden extinction to a more slow paced change of our weather system and the start of another ice age.  You can do your own research on this topic if you are concerned about this threat.  I mention it because there is a slight possibility of this happening and if it did it would obviously change this lesson.  To be as prepared as you can be the more information you have the better.

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