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Bamboo is cheap, awesome, and invasive. And… it could save your life in an emergency situation. I would consider planting some before it’s too late! And while you’re waiting for it to grow, let’s look at ways to use bamboo for survival.
Bamboo 101
Bamboo is one of the greatest finds in a survival situation. It has been used by people for thousands of years to do many useful things. That’s why it’s important that you understand a little more about it and learn some of the things it can do.
Bamboo is a species of grass. It grows no different than your grass on your lawn and is very easy to grow in a container or in the ground. Whether you buy them in a clump from the garden center or grow them from root or seed they are so simple to grow and to take care of.
If you buy bamboo from a garden center in a clump, all you need to do is take the clump out of the container and just like with grass, divide a piece out and either plant the divided bamboo out into another container or just plant directly into your yard.
Bamboo is an invasive plant. So, if you plant it in your yard, you have to be careful to contain it. Otherwise, it will spread like wildfire.
Bamboo prefers all day, full hot sun… but just like your grass in your garden, they can handle some shade too.
Bamboo likes good soil, but if you have clay soil, just add compost to the top and then plant your bamboo and they will do just fine!
When you plant bamboo make sure you dig about 3 inches. If it’s a root, make sure the soil covers it, but the sprout is out of the ground.
Types of Bamboo
There are 2 types of bamboo:
Running Bamboo
This is very invasive and if left unchecked it will take over your yard pretty quickly.
Clumping Bamboo
They stay together in a clump, hence the name. Basically, they look like a tree coming up and don’t take over your yard.
As a side note … If you plant the running species you will have to make sure not to plant it to near a park, a neighbors backyard, or a waterway. If left unchecked the seeds can end up anywhere. In the city, this may not be a great thing!
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Ways to Use Bamboo for Survival Situations
If you have a fair amount of land, either at home or at your bug out location, I would highly recommend planting bamboo…
I will let you decide which type (running or clumping), but it has so many uses, it’s just pure madness not to utilize it.
If SHTF and you had a fair amount of bamboo planted, you will have an advantage over other preppers that do not grow bamboo. Here’s why!
1. Fire
Bamboo is awesome to use if you want to make a fire. You can make a bamboo fire saw in just a few minutes.
How to Make a Bamboo Fire Saw
To make an effective Bamboo fire saw, split the largest standing dead piece of Bamboo in half and start to scrape off the powdery dead coating.
Once the majority of the powder has been removed, increase the pressure on the Bamboo. You will notice shavings will start to build up on either side of your knife. Keep these shavings and make sure you have 2 bundles about the size of an egg.
Now it is time to prepare the “fireboard” .. Start drilling a hole with your knife on the inside of the bamboo piece to the outside. When you can start to feel your knife on the outside you have gone far enough. Now carefully bore out the hole on the inside and be careful not to go through the other side. Then turn the bamboo over and score a groove or notch over where you drilled the hole.
Place your 2 tinder bundles directly either side of the hole you created. Hold them in place with a bent piece of ripped bamboo skin. Now take the other piece of bamboo and put an edge on one side of it. We are not looking for a razor-sharp edge: just think of a butter knife edge. This is how the magic happens! You’ll want to align the notch you made on the other piece of bamboo with the edge you made and run the bamboo up and down over the edge, this creates friction.
How to Use the Bamboo Fire Saw
For best results lodge the end in the ground and the top of the bamboo to your belly/belt area.
Make sure your movements are long sweeping motions going the whole length as the bamboo. When you have created the right amount of heat, you should have a lot of dust that will ignite and become your ember.
Once you see smoke, go for the gold and increase pressure and speed up a little reducing your stroke. Once the bamboo with the tinder bundle is smoking on its own, aerate it into flame.
2. Water and Food
Bamboo is a great tool to have when you need to boil, carry, or store water. Since bamboo grows in sections, if you cut above these sections, you will have a portion of bamboo that you can either make a hole in the top or side and store your water.
Likewise, in a survival situation, you can make a bamboo cup so you can boil water straight in the fire.
How to Make a Bamboo Cup
To make a bamboo cup, find live bamboo (make sure it’s green) and cut above one notch. This will be the bottom of the cup. Go ahead and chop or saw below the other notch, and you’ll have your bamboo cup.
Place water from wherever you can procure it and place it in the bamboo cup. Note that when the water boils it may boil and spill into your fire and put it out. As a result, don’t place too much water in the cup or try and make the biggest cups you can.
Place the bamboo cup of water directly into the fire. Boil for 5 minutes so you know that if there are any bacteria and nasty parasites they are dead. Now you have clean water to drink.
You can also use this method to cook food. Get a live bamboo, split it in half and use the one half as a cooking vessel.
It can be used to make razor-sharp cutting utensils and spears to hunt too. Bamboo is great to make fall traps, where you dig a hole and have sharp bamboo at the bottom of the hole and you wait for game to walk over and impale themselves on the bamboo.
Be aware that this would only be a great idea in a real survival situation. Knowing your luck, a human will wonder and fall in and die!
3. Construction
This is one of the main reasons why I want to grow bamboo for survival on my bug out location… Bamboo is strong and lasts for years and years, thanks to its cylindrical and reinforced, notched makeup.
I won’t bore you and do another step by step tutorial on how to build a bamboo shelter as there are far better ones out there than I could ever write or make a video on.
The same rules apply to make a shelter with bamboo or sticks. It’s not rocket science but if you are looking for strength and rigidity, bamboo far surpasses sticks.
You can use bamboo to construct a semi-permanent or even a permanent shelter relatively easy. Another great thing about bamboo is that it normally grows pretty tall and thick, and it is far easier to cut down a 9 ft bamboo stalk than a tall tree!
This saves a lot of calories if you were in a survival situation, making you less fatigued. You can save those much-needed calories finding food and or starting a fire or searching for a way out.
More Bamboo Uses That Will Come In Handy
Here are a few more ideas for using bamboo.
You may find that signaling for rescue has fallen pretty low on your list of survival needs. When you hit the camping trail or you take that weekend to relax in the mountains there could be many more priorities.
The funny thing about signaling for survival is that you are going to spend about $10 total on a top-notch signaling setup. Most of these will include something like a cheap whistle, a mirror, a lighter to create a white smoke fire. These items will all be highly effective. You could also invest in a flare gun to really take your efforts above and beyond.
Still, many people enter the woods with no way of signaling for help. This little build of a bamboo survive whistle is a very cool project. These are also great little things to create for your kids so they can stay in contact at all times as well.
Manipulating nature and the raw materials around you is one of the most effective ways to survive. These raw materials could be trees and things in nature or we could be talking about raw metal and scrap that is all
around us.
How much of the world around you are you going to be able to manipulate? Do you know about trees and metals? Do you know which can help you? These are very important skills that you will need to survive in a collapsed world.
This article features a great raw material. Bamboo is prolific and tremendously strong. When you read this article you will see that there are many ways that you can transform nature into the things you need. You will see how this man creates a quick bamboo platform. Just because we see a platform being utilized in this article it doesn’t mean you are limited to just this build.
The longbow! One of the earliest weapons made by man. You can make your own from Bamboo for around 3 bucks! This is pretty powerful and will be plenty adequate to hunt small game and maybe even mid-size animals.
I found a great tutorial that shows you how to make a bamboo longbow so theoretically this whole bow could be made from your back yard if you grew bamboo, if not pretty much all hardware stores sell it.
Obviously this bow wouldn’t be your first choice if you needed a secondary or backup weapon for protection or hunting but it packs some punch and because it doesn’t look like a $1000 bow you could leave this out without worrying about people stealing it in a SHTF situation. Check the tutorial out in the link below.
If you live in an area near water that is overrun by the invasive bamboo plant, you would be a fool not to give it its due. If you aren’t learning how to turn this humble plant into something that will work for you then you are missing out on something great.
You can build structures for your garden with bamboo, you can build basic shelters with bamboo and you can even build a decent gig or spear with bamboo. This is a resource and survival is all about taming the resources.
This article is about using bamboo to make fencing and an outdoor handwashing station.
How you protect what’s inside your fences could become how you eat. You may, one day, be protecting and corralling livestock within a fence. It will be much easier and faster to build a fence of bamboo then it will be to cut a tree and turn it into planks.
Bamboo is just one of those things, like rope or duct tape, that can be adapted to create an infinite number of material items. From survival gear to homesteader equipment, bamboo’s uses seem to only be limited by the imagination of the user. So what are the 10 best ways to use bamboo for survival?
Why Bamboo Could Save Your Life – SHTF Preparedness | Finishing & Flooring
Wednesday 26th of February 2014
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