The wilderness survival merit badge has us preparing ourselves to survive if something does go wrong. Listed in order of importance are the Seven Priorities for Survival.

1. S.T.O.P.

2. PROVIDE FIRST AID

3. SEEK SHELTER

4. BUILD A FIRE

5. SIGNAL FOR HELP

6. DRINK WATER

7. DON’T WORRY ABOUT FOOD.

S.T.O.P. - After the emergency has happened and you are now are safe for the most part. Stop and calm down a bit. drink some water or have some of the trail food that should be in your 10 essentials pack. Now is the time to asses your situation and the resources that you have. Along with using your resources, you now need to use your head and not lose your head. In the words of Biff Tannen, “Think McFly!” There is no rush to go anywhere, stay calm and stop, and think. Also, Observe your surroundings. Where is a good place to make a shelter, do you have dry wood, what do you have to keep warm and dry? Now that you have stopped, used your head, and figured out what resources are around you, now it’s time to Plan.

As you are putting together your plan, take care of any first aid that needs attending to. Take care of life-threatening injuries immediately.

Seek shelter. Your body temperature is key in your survival. Depending on the weather and area, you may need to figure out shelter from rain, snow, cold, or heat. Stay dry. This will assist with keeping your core body temp where it should be. Especially during cold, wet weather. There are multiple methods of shelter building. From tarps being used as lean-to’s, small rock caves, a fallen tree with branch lean-to’s. The key is to keep yourself protected from the elements.

Eventually, if you are in cooler areas of the world, you may need to start a fire. Your fire could be the one thing that saves your life in the long run. Your fire could keep you warm, melt snow for water, purify water, signal for help, and even emotionally help you.

Other ways to signal for help other than using the smoke from the fire, is to make noise. the universal signal for needing help is three blasts on a whistle, three shouts, three shots from your gun. Three of anything every minute will work as a distress call. “S.O.S.”

We can never say it enough, DRINK WATER! You can survive days without food. But in hot weather with no water, your looking at only hours. If your urine is too dark, drink more water. You want to drink enough that your urine is clear. Sometime you will need to find water, make sure to purify your water from your 10 essentials kit you should be carrying on your adventure. According to the MB pamphlet, “Treat any water you collect before drinking it, but if that isn’t possible, drink it anyway. In survival situations, the danger of becoming dehydrated outweighs the possibility of becoming ill.” Even when collecting water for filtration, i will look for a source that has some type of running water rather than the stagnate puddle full of mud.

The last item on the list is food. As stated above, you can go a long time without food. Yes, it can become very uncomfortable, but the other six points are far more important than food. Ration the food that you may have in your pack. Make it last longer than normal. The amount of energy you burn looking for food could be used on the other six priorities in order to stay alive.