WINTER SURVIVAL

Winter Survival Challenge

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Hypothermia pg.4-10
• Fire Building pg.11-15
• Food pg.16-19
• Shelter pg.20-23

Hypothermia

Definition For Hypothermia

• Hypothermia is when there is a dangerous drop in your core body temperature.
• When your body isn't able to produce enough heat to warm you because you are too cold.
• When your body temperature drops to about 35degrees celcius.

What Causes it to Happen

• Low environmental temperature.
• When you are in icy water for a long period of time.
• Overexposure to cold winter wind or heavy winter snows.

What Happens When You Get it

• Your core body temperature drops.
• Your heart, nerve system and other organs don't work normally.
• Can lead to complete failure of your heart and respiratory system to death if not treated.

Symptoms

• Uncontrollable shivering.
• Cold, pale, blue skin.
• Memory loss
• Mild unsteadiness.
• Numb hands and fingers.
• Confusion to the brain.
• Drowsiness in whole body.
• Obvious exhaustion.
• Slow pulse and breathing.
• Dilated pupils.

Who Are At Risk of Getting Hypothermia

• Elderly people that are over the age of 75.
• Babies and young children
• People who eat drugs and drink alcohol.
• People who are very thin and have low body fat.
• People who are wet from any cause.

Tips to Not Get Hypothermia

• Work at 60% effort
• Don't get wet and stay dry.
• DO NOT SWEAT.
• Dress for the weather.
• if inner layer is wet, take it off.

Fire Building

How to Build One

• Make a flat spot on the ground(best if dry land)
• Construct a platform out of rocks or logs.
• have a large flat rock in the center of your platform.
• find something dry, thin and fine to use as a tinder bundle so that it is easy to light and burn.
• Find some dead/dry pieces of a plant so that you can use it as fuel for the fire.
• Build your T-pee or any other structure onto your platform.
• Light your tinder bundle and nudge it into your structure.
• Give it a little breath.
• keep adding more fuel to your fire little by little when you need it.

Why do You Need a Fire

• To keep you warm when you are cold.
• To give you light in the dark or to find your shelter/camp.
• You need it to cook your food with so you don't starve outside in the wilderness.
• It also scares to animals away so they don't eat you.

What to Use to Light Your Fire

• A match.
• A pocket lighter(or any lighter).
• Lenses like eyeglasses,magnifying glass to focus the sun light onto your structure to burn the pieces and start a flame.

Tips to Build Your Fire

• Build your fire on dry land.
• Find fuel that is as thin as a pencil lead.
• If you break a branch, and it snaps you know it's dry.
• Keep your fuel and tinder bundle dry and out of the snow.
• do not build it under a tree because it will melt the snow on the tree that will put you fire out.

Food

Poisonous Foods in the Winter

• Mushrooms like the California Fungi(that looks like the worlds healthiest fungi, Shiitake mushrooms).
• Poke-berries and Nightshade berries: look like blueberries.
• Holly berries: red berries.
• and many other plants that have red or white berries or something on that plant that looks like beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, or melons.

Edible Foods in the Winter

• Rose Hips: look like tiny red tomatoes and boil 10-12 of them for about 3-5 min(mash up with spoon or something).
• Wild Water Cress: found in tight bunches of bright green plants near the water. Consume it quickly and eat it raw in salads or alone.
• Cattails: ONLY eat the stalk. Filled with vitimin C (eat raw or boiled).
• Burdock: a medium size plant with big leaves and dead brown thistles in the winter. Extra boil will make them tender and it taste like a mix of parsnip and carrots.
• Freshwater Clams: find them by running your gloved hand over the bottom of a creek or river bed. Eat them by boiling them thoroughly to kill the Parasites.(tips: the smaller ones are more tender and know which types of clams are endangered because they are federally protected).

Tips to Know if the Plant is Edible or Not

• IF IT HAS:
• Milky sap.
• Spines, fine hairs, or thorns.
• Beans, bulbs or seeds inside pod.
• Bitter or soapy taste.
• "Almond" scent in the woody parts and leaves.
• Grain heads with pink, purplish, or black spurs.
• Three leaved growth pattern.
• Then it is not edible but some plants do have these things, and are still edible.(It's just in case you accidentally did eat a poisonous plant).

Shelters

WHY DO WE NEED A SHELTER

• For natural threats, such as extreme weathers like heavy snow, blizzard, and torenados.
• Dangerous creatures like wolves, foxes, and bears.
• Security against other human beings.

How to build a shelter

• find a suitable place to build your shelter on (dry land or put planks of wood on top of the snow).
• Search for an object to brace your shelter against such as a long, large, thick piece of wood.
• Find long sticks to lean against your horizontal brace to form walls.
• Pile or lean some small branches and twigs onto your longer stick to fill in the gaps so no snow or rain can leak through.
• Now pile some small debris such as leaves on branches, grass and moss over the frame.
• Finally, dig a place to build your fire on/in and make a bed out of leaves.

When Should You Build Your Shelter

• Morning till noon is the best time to build your shelter because you still have daylight, you are fresh from the night, you don't have to rush in getting your shelter done (which will make you sweat), and you will have more energy.

THE END