by Cody Lundin
Arizona has the largest variety of venomous creatures in the nation. That said, I pack a “Sawyer Extractor” suction device for nasty bites and stings. I’ve only had to use it once, but with great success, on a scorpion envenomization. I also carry a couple of specialty items, including a tube of lanolin (a topical lubricant) and Krazy Glue. I use both as first aid for my feet—lanolin on the cracks to promote healing and Krazy Glue if the lanolin fails. Get the Krazy Glue brand, not super glue, as it’s a little less caustic on the epidermis. As far as cracks to the epidermal layer, I’ve also had good results using triple-antibiotic ointment. The petroleum base keeps the tissue supple (and burns like crazy on a cotton ball!) while antibiotics help prevent infection.
I keep the contents of my first-aid kit double-bagged inside two quart-sized freezer bags. The clear plastic allows me to zero in on just the item needed. On the outside of the bag is written “first aid” in permanent marker thereby eliminating confusion if another party were to access the goods. Although, statistically speaking, dying of exposure is your main concern, injuries are very common in a survival situation; 39 percent of them require evacuation.
Uncle Peppy’s patented power pack stack:
You’re weak, weary, and worried but still need to walk.
When you’re staring into the face of death, you need every possible advantage to reverse the trend. The following recipe might give you or a loved one the needed energy boost to turn a survival situation into nothing more than a close call. Hundreds of compromising scenarios in the backcountry stem from physical exhaustion and lack of mental alertness. The two states feed off each other like a dysfunctional relationship, causing the affected outdoor recreationist to swirl ever faster down the toilet bowl of apathy. The military has been speeding for decades, and routinely uses otherwise illegal amphetamines, nicknamed “Go-Pills,” as “fatigue-management tools.” I have my own personal horror stories regarding artificially induced, chemically altered states, and by no means advocate the use of drugs. I don’t like ingesting as much as an aspirin but will if there are no other alternatives. The following recipe, like anything else, should be used with a great deal of discretion, common sense, and moderation. All the ingredients at the time of this writing are legal in most states and easy to obtain over the counter without a prescription.
The ingredients in Uncle Peppy’s potion are caffeine and ephedrine. This “thermogenic stack” has been used by body builders for decades to increase the metabolism of body fat. While we as survivors don’t give a damn about burning fat (quite the contrary actually), what we’re after is the stack’s side effect, which is increased physical energy and mental alertness. Whenever two or more drugs are combined, they achieve a completely different result, good or bad. This response is called synergy. Combining caffeine with ephedrine results in a completely different stimulant affect than taking one or the other separately.
Nearly 90 percent of Americans consume caffeine in one form or another every day, making it hands down our nation’s most popular drug. Caffeine is known medically as trimethylxanthine, and when isolated in its pure form is an extremely bitter tasting, white crystalline powder. Mainly, it’s used medicinally as a cardiac stimulant and a mild diuretic. The diuretic part is not cool when you’re trying to conserve water but caffeine doesn’t appear to increase dehydration when taken shortly (about an hour) before exercise, probably because the exercise itself tends to tone down urine production. If you’re taking this stack in the first place, it’s assumed you’re commencing upon the hike of your life, literally. As most every college student studying for finals is aware, caffeine provides an energy boost accompanied by a feeling of heightened alertness. Caffeine pills work better at enhancing performance than coffee because coffee contains chemicals that dull caffeine’s physiological effects.
Nearly two decades ago, scientists unearthed the biochemical reason why folks crave a morning cup of Java. As the body prepares for sleep, your brain creates and releases a chemical called adenosine. Adenosine binds to your adenosine receptors, which cause drowsiness by slowing down nerve cell activity. To a nerve cell, caffeine looks a lot like adenosine, so it binds to the receptor instead. Since caffeine doesn’t slow down the cell’s activity and hogs all the receptors, the cell speeds up, causing increased neuron firing in the brain. The pituitary gland sees all the commotion and freaks out, releasing hormones that tell the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline. Adrenaline, of course, has a number of effects on your body, including increased heartbeat and the opening of your breathing tubes.
In summary, short-term caffeine use blocks adenosine reception so you feel alert. It injects adrenaline into your system, thereby boosting energy, and manipulates dopamine production to make you feel good. Notice I emphasized short-term use. The horrific effects caused by long-term caffeine addiction speak for themselves.
Ephedrine, a close relative of amphetamine, is a naturally occurring stimulant that comes from the Ephedra bush and has been used for centuries. In the 1800s, Mormons used it as a substitute for coffee. In China, ephedrine has been used for more than 4,000 years in the form of Ma Huang. It’s sold today as pills, herbal remedies or teas, cold medicines, and inhalers; it’s also commonly used as an anti-asthmatic drug, as it stimulates the bronchial passages. Legal in most states, ephedrine can be bought without a prescription in gas stations and drugstores across the country. Many truck drivers working long hauls and students studying late into the night take it to help them stay awake. Ephedrine has recently received bad press because of its abuse in diet and energy products and the over-the-top concentrations used in various concoctions. Several enterprising lawyers even have their own Ephedra Lawsuit Web sites; simply type in how you were heinously wronged, and they’ll fight for you. Thanks, guys, for caring, and God Bless America!
Ephedrine is absorbed in the stomach, where it cruises into the bloodstream and reaches the brain. It achieves its peak effect in an hour and may last from three to six hours. Short-term effects are similar to other drugs in the stimulant class, but milder. Users may feel a sense of alertness, energy, excitation, increased heart rate and blood pressure, and the jitters. Abuse the stuff by taking too much and you could enjoy tremors, headaches, insomnia, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, dizziness, chest pain, palpitations, seizures, stroke, heart attack, and death. If any of the following apply to you—high blood pressure, liver, thyroid, or psychiatric disease, pernicious anemia, nervousness, anxiety, depression, seizure disorders, cardiac arrhythmia, prostate enlargement, or you’re taking any MAO inhibitor or any prescription drug—don’t even think about taking an ephedrine-based product without seeing your doctor first. Beware that ephedrine overdose is sometimes reached by ingesting only two or three times the recommended dose, especially when mixed with caffeine! With this product, more is not better. Obviously, ephedrine should be treated with the same respect you’d give any prescription drug.
Beware of using ephedrine if you’re taking other medications, as it’s impossible to know for sure what effect the interaction will have. Like anything dealing with biology, variation is king so experiment with this combination beforehand to see how it affects your personal body chemistry. Initially, assess your tolerance for the stuff by not taking the full recommended dosage. Many factors affect the action of drugs, including, but not limited to, mood, body chemistry, other medications or illnesses, and your psychological history. Even a medical professional wouldn’t be able to say for sure what effect an interaction would have, so play it cautious. Dosages will vary according to body weight, muscle mass, and how you personally react to the drugs in general. Some people are more sensitive than others. Remember, don’t carry anything in your survival kit that you’re not intimately acquainted with and prepared to use.
There are many caffeine/ephedrine stack brands on the market. Like anything else, knowing what to look for ahead of time will prevent you from getting ripped off. Check out the label for the amount of caffeine and ephedrine in the prod
uct. If it’s not listed, you can’t be sure you’re getting the real deal. Caffeine is found in the kola nut and gurana, among other things, so the label might read “gurana, 180 mg.” The amount of caffeine in milligrams (usually 55 mg) should be listed after the product it was obtained from and is the most important piece of information. Instead of the word “ephedrine,” the label might read Ma Huang. In general, 120 mg of Ma Huang is equivalent to around 12 mg of ephedrine alkaloids. Find a brand that has an eight-to-one ratio of caffeine to ephedrine and you’ve found the right stuff.
How much?
Individual human physiology and its reaction to any type of drug is a wild card. Even so, obvious variables dictate how much of the stack you should try, including body mass and the purity of your system. In other words, if you weigh 275 pounds of rock-solid muscle, you’ll need more for the desired effect than a 112-pound person. If you’re a coffee fiend, drinking several cups a day, you’ll most likely require more of the mix as well. A typical dose for a large, healthy male is 200 mg of caffeine with 25 mg of ephedrine. A “more is better” philosophy does not apply to the stack so if the above dosage doesn’t ring your bell, you’re either a very large person or very tolerant of the drugs. For smaller individuals or females, cut the dosage in half, 100 mg of caffeine with 12.5 mg of ephedrine.
Caffeine and ephedrine can be tweaked in their amounts until the cows come home, all with varying effects. Increasing the caffeine component of the stack might be the way to go if you wish to boost the overall dosage, especially if you’re a coffee drinker, but do so only in 50 mg increments and don’t exceed 400 mg overall. Increasing the ephedrine to 50 mg can get ugly, and can lead to jitters and nausea, at times with no tangible stimulant effect. Going over the 50-mg mark can lead to feeling mentally spaced out and “uncomfortable.” In short, increasing the dosage of ephedrine has little if any benefit other than creating an unpleasant experience.
While large doses of the stack don’t cut it, regular, multiple doses throughout the day (no more than three to four in a 24-hour period) seem to work well. In addition, if you can manage it, any amount of sleep between doses intensifies the stimulant effect. Long live the all-powerful nap!
Unfortunately, both caffeine and ephedrine are water hogs. The stack should be taken with a half quart to a quart of water if possible. When you feel the effects of the stack diminish, chugging another half quart to a quart seems to revive the stimulation. Believe it or not, taking too much caffeine can calm you down. Overdo it on the stack and you might find yourself feeling lethargic and sleepy. Drinking a quart of water seems to reverse the trend.
I in no way advocate the abuse of any drug. Consider the preceding information, if you choose to use it, as it is intended, as one more tool in your arsenal to keep you and those you care about alive.
7.5-minute
topographical map and compass:
Finding out for certain if you’re really up Shit Creek.
If you know how to use them, a decent map and compass can save you a considerable amount of time and trouble in the outdoors. Either one might provide clues that prevent a survival situation from developing in the first place. The advantage of a topographical map, or “topo map,” is that it provides a bird’s-eye view of several square miles of land, complete with terrain features and other goodies. The term “7.5-minute map” refers to how much land the map represents, and are the same maps typically carried by SAR personnel. Although you can buy topo maps that show a lot more miles, the more land that’s displayed on the same size paper, the less detail is rendered. Once you understand how to read a topo map—again, something you should do before a survival situation—all those little squiggly lines start to form a picture. Mountains and hills seem to spring up from the paper while canyons and arroyos carve deeply into its flatness. After awhile, the map takes on a three-dimensional image of the land you’re walking upon, which is precisely the point. A road map is not going to tell you that your proposed route of travel has a 300-foot canyon in the way. Backcountry topographical maps also include many other details, such as waterways, swamps, windmills, cattle tanks, Indian ruins, roads, trails, power lines, mine sites, and ranch houses.
There are dozens of compasses on the market, many with bells and whistles specializing in a certain aspect of orienteering. For most outdoor adventurers, a simple baseplate compass works great in conjunction with a topo map. Many people I know carry a baseplate compass around their neck as part of a wilderness necklace. I also carry a small combination compass and thermometer that hangs from a zipper on my fanny pack. This provides a quick, general-purpose directional bearing without having to unpack the kitchen sink.
Using a map and compass is an art form. Using both effectively will require additional reading and practice from one of the many orienteering books available. It is very easy to get yourself screwed around and end up traveling in exactly the opposite direction you intended to go. For some folks with limited knowledge regarding their use, having a map and compass might provide the false confidence needed to make a bad situation worse. Like cutting edges and fire, both are simply tools and must be used repeatedly in order to gain proficiency. My guess is that many people who carry a compass have no clue as to how to use it. While the same can be said for a map, at least the person purchased it for a specific outdoor area, thus the act of purchasing required some advanced planning and thought. Grandma won’t buy you a specific topo map for Christmas unless that’s what you’ve asked for, but she will get you a compass as a stocking stuffer. If I had to choose between one or the other, I would choose the map, hands down. There are several alternative ways to tell what direction you’re traveling in but very few that let you know what’s over the next ridge.
I encourage all outdoor recreationists to take a course in basic orienteering. Classes are often available cheaply through a local community college, Search and Rescue Posse, or from the neighborhood camping store. I’ve taken several orienteering classes and still feel somewhat incompetent with full-blown orienteering. The reason: I don’t use it enough to stay in practice. It doesn’t take long for brain fade to play havoc with your orientation skills. Take refresher classes often, especially if you don’t use the skill much in the field.
What I do in the bush, with or without a map and compass, is pay attention. I pay attention to where I’m going, making mental notes of unusual terrain features, human-made objects such as fences and cattle tanks, and where the sun is in relation to the horizon. As I live in a passive solar home, I pay attention daily to the sun tracking across the sky. In the wintertime (in North America), the sun hangs low in the southern sky and reaches its lowest point by winter solstice. Over the next several months, the arc of the sun climbs higher and higher until it peaks out during the summer solstice. Watching the sun, paying attention to where it rises, its track path, and where it sets, gives me a sense of direction and provides me with a definite 180-degree flip on my return trip home. In other words, if I start hiking west early in the day with the sun at my back, I know in general that to retrace my steps to the east late in the day, the sun should be at my back again. Tracking the sun also gives an accurate reading of how many hours of daylight remain. Obviously, sun tracking is ineffective in certain parts of the country or on overcast days.
I also pay attention to where I’ve come from and am frequently looking back over my shoulder as I travel. This acquaints me with how the terrain will look on the way back. If I don’t return using the same route, at the very least, it opens my eyes to more turf, allowing me to gain a greater awareness of my environment. When a coyote moves, it doesn’t just look straight ahead. Its head and body are in constant motion, taking in and processing as much of its surroundings as possible. It can’t afford to pass up life-giving opportunities.
Some people are gifted with a natural sense of direction. Some couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag. If you’re the latter, pay special attention to your training and the extra steps necessary to stay foun
d in the wilderness. Regardless of your experience, anyone can become lost—or as some like to say, “temporarily disoriented”—in the woods. I consider myself as having an exceptional sense of direction, and I’ve been lost more than once. The easiest way to not get lost is to stay found every step of the way.
Two candy or nutrition bars:
A little glucose rush for that
final push to save your tush.
Food is not a priority in a modern-day survival situation. Seeing as how the world record for fasting was 72 days, accomplished in a snake-filled, glass coffin no less, skipping a lunch or two seems acceptable. Although hunger is uncomfortable, especially when combined with wilderness stressors such as heat, cold, altitude, bugs, wind, and increased physical activity, food-deprived folks can still function for a long period of time. Most Americans possess extra calories around their middle or elsewhere to go well past the statistical three-day scenario.
In my understanding, the most difficult thing about being hungry is thinking about being hungry. The average person eats one ton of food every year, so for the lion’s share of the population, having no food for a few days is not that big of a deal. Granted, day one sucks as well as day two, but by day three the body starts getting the message. Fasting (deliberately not eating) has been around for thousands of years. In some religions it is standard practice. I have fasted several times and if you’ve never tried it, I highly recommend that you do. Fasts that last longer than 2 or 3 days poop out liver glycogen completely and use up nearly half of the muscles glycogen stores. After this, if the body’s still without grub, literally and figuratively, the body synthesizes glucose through our old friend gluconeogenesis. Ketone bodies are then formed by the oxidation of fatty acids that are utilized as energy by the muscles and brain. In a normal-fed individual, ketone oxidation accounts for less than 3 percent of the total energy bill for that person. Longer fasts produce so many ketone bodies that they provide for more than 40 percent of the body’s energy requirements and up to 50 percent of the brain’s glucose needs. Eventually, the longer the fast, the less glucose the body uses, therefore reducing the amount of cannibalization the body must undergo to support gluconeogenesis. Real-life starvation scenarios, such as the Donner Party in which far more women survived than men, show that women may have a metabolic advantage over the guys. Some factors are apparent, such as a typical lower lean body mass and a higher percentage of body fat, yet other differences are still up for study and speculation.
