Life-saving Skills That Everyone Must Know
Some serious skills that can save your precious ass
Author : Steve Hanafi (Silat Sharaf Practitioner, Malaysia)
Survival is the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, despite whatever life throws at you or whatever tries to kill you. In other words, trying to live long enough to see another day. You never know when you can find yourself in a situation that can be life threatening for you or your loved ones. Regardless of the circumstance, the ability to think, and act fast is an invaluable skill that one must have.
No, this is not your “how-to” rescue someone else, although we will speak on those, but this is general, mostly common sense that everyone must know to save their ass in day to day situations. Avoiding shit from going rough. These will be the early interventions that can make a crucial difference between life and death or save you from a lifetime of misery.
Before you save anyone else, save yourself first. You’ll be saving no one if you’re dead
Life Saving Skills
Medical Skills
When we talk about medical skills, the it’s a wide range from basics to expert. But you don’t necessarily have to be an expert surgeon to apply basic ointment or help clean a wound. Here are some of the medical skills we believe would really help to keep someone long enough before emergency responders arrive.
Help can be from minutes to hours away, and being able to give first aid can tremendously help in saving one’s life
Basic first aid
They are cleaning and closing minor wounds, Heimlich maneuver, treating shock, preventing someone from getting hypothermia, and knowing the signs of stroke. Having a good, solid first aid kit will tremendously help in dealing with situations mentioned. (Read our article on Individual First Aid Kit)
Dealing with loss of blood
If a person is bleeding heavily, the bleeding need to be stopped by applying firm, direct pressure on the wound using a clean cloth or sterile dressing (if available). If it is a large wound to a leg or arm, and pressure does not seem to do the job well, a bandage or better, a tourniquet should be used to stop the bleeding. A makeshift tourniquet can be made using a piece of clothing and a stick. The wounded area should then be elevated above heart level and wait until help arrives.
CPR
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation is used for people whose heart has stopped beating or those who are not breathing. It has been shown that people who experience cardiac arrest are two to three times more likely to survive if CPR is given to them before help arrives.
4. Fire Extinguishing.
Firefighters looking at a wildfire from afar, unable to get close to take it out
A small fire, if not extinguished fast enough, will spread into a bigger one, and can cause wildfires or huge explosions. Say your car engine catches fire, or your shirt caught fire, or you’re camping and kicked firewood and the fire starts to spread.
Knowing how to extinguish a fire can help prevent a catastrophe from happening. The basic method is to “suffocate the fire” removing access to oxygen, or remove the heat such as using water, or other dry chemical, or if it’s on your clothing and you can’t remove it, use the Stop, Drop and Roll technique.
5. Knowing when to get the hell out
Knowing when to back off, step back and get the fuck out of a tense situation or an argument can really save your life and your precious time. The jackass you’re arguing with, you might think in your head that you can beat him with your newly acquired Aikido-Fu-Jitsu technique, but little do you know he has 7 more friends with him, and they are all armed. Save it, a trip to the hospital is not worth over some alpha male shit argument. Remember, fights are an investment. Don’t take risks over some petty shit and go broke afterwards.
You might think you look cool like this…
But nah,… you don’t
6. Self - defense
Even when you try to avoid meaningless arguments, there are times when you’ll need to protect yourself from physical harm. From break ins to open shooter scenario, when void of other rational options, to Fight is the one that you have left. Picking up a firearm or a martial art, and learning and practicing it will definitely help you when in a pinch.
7. Survival Skills
It’s not just in the movies that people go for a short hike and go missing, it happens a lot in real life too. Whether your car fell into a cliff and you’re lucky enough to survive it, you’re going to need some wilderness survival skill to walk out alive. For me, my top 5 priorities are filtering water, making fire, finding food, building shelter and navigation. Getting a good hang of these 5 skills will help you survive even in the harshest conditions.
8. Prepping skills
Prepping or preparing for times when shit gets rough. We know prepping heavily relies on sourcing food, equipment and raw material, but it is a crucial skill. In a world where riots, war and civil unrest can happen anytime, having enough resource without having to go out can save you and your loved ones from the danger of going out amidst chaos.
These skills are widely available online as you can search for them anytime you want. There are classes and courses open for civilians too, who want to learn the proper techniques and have live experience. You can never trade experience with reading it online. Take the opportunity to learn and practice as much as possible while you can. You never know when you need them.