Survival Myths You Probably Believe

The first Survival Myths post went over so well I thought it was time for a second in the series with more to follow I’m sure. This series might never end with there being so many survival myths out there and more coming out all the time. Today I’m going to dispel a few more and try to give you some good advice to follow instead of the bad information that’s out there. So lets delve into some popular myths out there about how to survive that are wrong and could get you possible killed following.

The Northstar is the Brightest in the Sky

The Survival Myth that the Northstar, Polaris, can help you navigate by being the brightest in the night sky and will point you north. I had heard this one long before ever getting into survivalisim. It’s one of those things that people hear and just parrot back to others like it’s fact etched in stone. This is completely false though. Polaris is about the same brightness as ever other star and easily missed. If you can find it and are in the Northern Hemisphere it will point you north. I found a good page on how to locate and use it to navigate here.

Solar Still In A Desert For Water

This one is in all the survival manuals and thrown about as fact in the community, By lots of people that have never made one. Not that I have ever made one, here in Tennessee I’m surrounded by lakes and rivers. Two of the biggest experts I admire in the community, Ron Hood and John McCann, have both tried it and experimented with it. I know by smashing this as a myth I will piss off a lot of people that believe everything they read. Digging a hole big enough for this to work in the desert, in the heat, is hard work. You will waste tons of calories and water through perspiration. Then end result will be a sip of water for all your work.  The best advice seems to be to find the lowest spots where water would collect. If there is and vegetation or is you are with wreckage collect the dew at dawn. That is the easiest method. We already covered why not to drink from a cactus. If you are not in a desert you could more effectively use a solar still however you would be better off using transpiration. Gather branches of trees and shrubs and put a clear plastic bag over it with a rock weighting one corner down. Water will collect in there and you can quickly set up many of these with little effort.

That wraps up another installment of the survival myth busting. Hopefully you learned something from this post. So many of these false truths are around the battle to get rid of them is a long one.

Did you learn something in this post? Have a favorite Survival Myth? Let me know in the comments?