Whether facing an inhospitable wilderness environment, natural disaster, or being forced to defend yourself from an attacker, your body is the most important piece of equipment you have, everything else is either meant to augment it, or protect it. A healthy body can better deal with the physical stresses of any survival situation. Inversely, an unhealthy body will require more supplementation compensate for its shortcomings. This doesn’t mean that we need to all be professional athletes to be able to survive, but it does mean that we need to consider our individual body’s abilities, weaknesses, and potential when planning and preparing for survival, here are some examples.
- Increasing your level of nutrition now, which does not just mean lowering your calorie intake, will increase your body’s natural ability to fight off a variety of sicknesses that you not only face to some degree now, but will face on a larger level after a disaster or in another survival scenario. Likewise, when storing food for disasters don’t forget to store nutritional supplements which can help prevent the need for medical treatment which could be unavailable.
- Working to increase your level of mobility, no matter what it currently is, could literally save your life. In many survival scenarios your life will depend on your ability to get to safety with nothing but your feet to carry you.
- Your survival plan should reflect your physical abilities. If you have chronic illness or insurmountable mobility issues you need to plan accordingly. Have a plan in place for family or friends to help you that can be implemented even when communications are down, store all necessary medications, and realize that you are in a vulnerable population set for violent attack and arm yourself.
Eating a balanced diet and getting regular exercise are the most commonly disregarded aspects of survival. Don’t focus on gear that can be replaced while ignoring the one piece of equipment that cannot, you have one body and it has to last you for the rest of your life, take care of it if you want to survive.
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