Recap

Survival Skills

Founder of the Aboriginal Living Skills School, Cody Lundin shared survival tips from backwoods self-reliance to urban disaster mitigation. Less than 7% of the US population is prepared to deal with a disaster, he reported. The biggest cause of death in such situations is from hypothermia (cold) or hyperthermia (heat), so regulation of body temperature is key, he said. Having alternative heating/cooling sources is useful, he noted, adding that individual homes typically have "microhabitats" where one room will retain heat or be cooler.

During the Katrina disaster, many victims did not know simple ways to disinfect water. One method he described involves putting water in a plastic liter container (the kind that soda is sold in) and simply leaving in the sun for six hours. The sun's UV radiation kills off germs.

Lundin also discussed how to deal with a corpse during a disaster, noting that dead bodies don't spread disease, unless they died of one. To keep up morale among the living, it's important to have some type of closure ritual for the deceased, even if they are just being temporarily buried or wrapped in plastic.

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