Looking To Learn A New Skill? These 10 Skills Can Save Your Life In A Survival Situation

If you are looking for a new hobby and don't know where to begin, allow me to make a slight suggestion. While all hobbies are great and have a purpose, wouldn't it be more exciting if you knew your hobby had more than one benefit. For example if you wanted to live a healthier lifestyle and your hobby was cooking those two go hand-in-hand. Well, what if your hobby provided you will skills that could save your life in a survival situation? That sounds mutually beneficial right? Surprisingly not all of them may be exactly what you would expect. Here are 10 skills that can save your life in a survival situation.

1. First Aid and Medical Needs

This skill can save your life in a survival situation and on a day-to-day situation. Having knowledge of first aid and medical needs can prove to be beneficial no matter where you are. You should know the basics from how to clean a scrape and take care of an insect bite to how to properly handle frostbite and bone fractures. Additionally, you should learn CPR and trauma treatment as well. You never know when disaster might strike and these skills could save your life or someone else's.

2. Swimming and Water Safety

While swimming may seem more like a fun hobby or a way to stay in shape you never know when it could save a life. If you are stranded somewhere where there are bodies of water such as a lake or river you may need to swim across. Or save someone who falls in and cannot swim or is knocked unconscious somehow. Not only is it a great way to stay in shape, but swimming truly is a useful skill to have and is easily a skill that can save your life.

3. Shelter Building

Shelter building is an incredibly useful survival skill that not many people know today. While it may seem pointless with our modern houses, you never know when you could be dropped into a survival situation. Knowing how and where to build a proper shelter could be the difference between life and death. This is definitely a hobby worth looking into.

4. Fire Building

There are no electrical fireplaces out in the wilderness and not everyone is lucky enough to have remembered to pack their flint and steel. Therefore, knowing how to build and maintain a fire is definitely a skill that can save your life. Fire keeps you warm, helps purify you water, cook your food, and ward off predators. It is a key component to your success in a survival situation.

5. Foraging

While this may seem like a tedious hobby it can prove to be very beneficial in a survival situation. You can survive three weeks without food, assuming all of your other needs are met, but eventually you will need to eat. It can be extremely beneficial to be able to recognize safe and edible plants in your area. Otherwise, you can suffer dire consequences.

6. Hunting and Fishing

Not only does it help control animal populations but this is one of those skills that can save your life one day too. If you are stuck in the wilderness and don't know which berries are safe what are you going to eat? Having hunting skills allows you to provide protein for yourself and those who are lost with you. Similarly, fishing skills can be beneficial in a survival situation as well. Some fishing gear can be very light weight and easy to pack as well. Both of these skills can provide you with food and much needed calories.

7. Water Purification

Did you know that boiling your water isn't enough. It also needs to be filtered. The Red Cross suggests that for any survival situation you should know "what water is safe to cook, how long, and how to make a pot if you don't have one." Because let's face it, most people are not carrying around iodine drops and a UV light purifier. So knowing how to work with what you've got is a critical survival skill.

8. Navigation

After a while stuck in the wilderness your phone will lose signal, and eventually die. If you don't know how to read a map or a compass, you will be lost and at the mercy of nature. Two things that can be extremely dangerous. Learning how to read a map and compass can be fun for recreational hiking and can also get you out of a tough survival situation.

9. Knot Tying

While this may seem like an oddly specific skill or hobby, it is one of those skills that might just save your life. The Red Cross shares all of the different ways that this skill can help you in a survival situation. From helping you build your shelter to setting snares and building tools, the benefits are truly endless.

10. Signaling

When you get lost what is the first thing you typically do? Call for help! Well apparently there is a right way to do it, and learning how can be the skill that saves your life. Learning things like how to use a mirror, or Morse code could mean the difference between rescue or staying lost. When in doubt a large SOS sign out of rocks and a large fire with smoke always do the trick.