There is a wide variety of commercially available tools and equipment for use when prepping for survival. However, when SHTF and a survival situation is unavoidable, there isn’t always time to pack gear or raid the local Home Depot for supplies. As such, it’s useful to know how to craft your own DIY survival tools using materials at hand.
Making these things is also simple and easy, so even someone with little experience can do it. Here are 10 DIY projects that you can do to help yourself live through any survival situation.
Eating is one of the most vital parts of life, so it makes sense that it should be a major focus during emergencies. You need to eat in order to survive, but just because you might have left regular amenities and appliances behind, there’s no reason for you to be forced to eat with your hands. By carving wood, which can be found almost everywhere, you can create a wide variety of utensils perfect for use with food. With a little effort, you can make items such as spoons, containers, and pot hangers. You can even fashion a pair of tongs, perfect for handling hot objects.
You cannot always choose where you will be faced with adversity. However, if you find yourself next to a lake, river or the sea, then it’s a great idea to take advantage of your location, and go fishing. It’s highly probable that a fishing rod wasn’t the first thing you thought to bring when you found yourself in a survival situation, but luckily fishing hooks are very easy to make on your own and should be part of your DIY survival tools. Simple hooks can be made by bending a safety pin, but you can also easily fashion hooks from thorns, sticks, and even bones from small animals!
Although mice, squirrels, and other small rodents aren’t on the top of everyone’s list of things to eat, when times are tough, you may not have a choice. You can easily make a small-game trap from discarded trash items like plastic bottles, shoelaces and wire, which can be found in a lot of places. Once caught, these small animals are easy to prepare and do not require too much time to fully cook. If you can’t bring yourself to eating a rodent, and other game is around, you can also use them as bait to catch larger animals.
If you are forced to leave your home or dwelling when disaster strikes, then a priority on your list should be finding shelter. Shelter will protect you from the elements, such as heavy rain or snow, piercing winds and withering heat, which is important especially if you are sick or injured. Which is why shelter making is among the top priority among DIY survival tools. Using nothing more than a tarp and some paracord, you can create an adequate shelter such as a lean-to in a very short amount of time. You can also gather tree branches and debris to form less visible and more insulated shelters, suitable for colder environments.
You may now have created a very nice shelter to protect you from the elements, but it’s missing one thing: a bed. Nobody wants to sleep on the cold, wet ground, with the possibility of bugs and creatures crawling over you while you sleep. With a little inspiration, you can create your own bed to avoid this. If you are in the woods, you can use lots of branches and trees to create beds like the one shown above. It’s important to get a good night’s sleep in survival situations, in order for you to keep your energy so you can continue operating, so knowing how to build a bed a bed is a good tool to have in your DIY skill set.
In serious situations, there’s a chance you may be forced to live outside your home, away from the usual comforts of electricity, running water, and toilets. If you are out in the wild, you must take good care to properly dispose of your waste. This means doing things like separating where you will cook and eat food from where you will dispose of your waste. Failure to do this could lead to unwanted sanitary conditions and diseases, compounding the difficulty of survival in the outdoors. Luckily, you can easily make your own toilet using just a few simple items to help make the whole process more sanitary and safe.
Clean, running water is something that we all need and many of us take for granted. When SHTF, you may no longer be able to get clean water from your home, or anywhere for that matter. Hence water procurement ranks high among DIY survival tools. Fortunately, you can create your own water filter by using rocks and other natural materials, and a plastic bottle. This will allow you to filter much of the harmful impurities and organisms that may be in your water, keeping you healthy and hydrated.
At some point, you may have to leave your home in order to survive. If, like most people, you leave by car, one big drawback is that some time down the road, you may run out of fuel and be forced to leave your vehicle, and either carry or leave the items you loaded in it. However, if you drive a vehicle powered by diesel fuel, you may be in luck. Using items items that are relatively easy to get including vegetable oil and lye, you can create biodiesel fuel, which can keep your vehicle running. The good thing about this fuel is that it can also be used for heaters, oil lamps, and generators, or even be traded for other items you need.
In a prolonged survival situation, starting a garden may be a useful way of having a constant supply of food. However, growing your own fruits and vegetables may attract unwelcome visitors, like mice, rabbits, and other critters. By creating your own pepper spray, you can prevent these animals from getting to your food supply. You can easily make your own pepper spray using crushed hot peppers and you can even add garlic for increased protection. Simply apply the spray around your garden and areas you want animals to stay away from. In cases when law and order have broken down, other people may be a threat to your survival, this spray can also be used to protect yourself.
Bows and arrows have been used as a hunting tool for many centuries, but more and more people have moved away from them, and toward guns. Even so, bows have many advantages over guns. For starters, it’s much easier to craft your own bow than it is to make a gun. You can make a bow using wood from a small tree and a knife, and another option is by using pvc piping, which is cheap and easy to manipulate. An additional advantage that bows have is that it’s easy to craft arrows by hand from small sticks or even dowels, and there are many different ways to make the sharp, piercing arrowheads for them.
In a survival situation, satisfying your everyday needs will be challenging. As with many other things, there will be hardships to overcome, and you will be faced with adversity. However, having the knowledge of DIY survival tools like how to build a shelter and source food and water will improve your chances for success and make life less stressful. Hopefully, these 10 DIY survival tools will leave you better prepared, more confident, and more ready to survive.