10 Survival Tips That Kept Your Great-Grandparents Alive

Unless you are fairly young, chances are your great-grandparents already have passed on. But if they were around in today’s tenuous times, our great-grandparents might have a few words of advice for us.

Survival was something most of our ancestors did well, and a few tips from their success could make a real difference in our lives today.

Our great-grandparents probably survived hard times due to a combination of the right skills and knowledge, the right priorities, and the right attitudes. Here is what they might say to us if they could:

Skills and Knowledge

1. Be able to acquire food by multiple means. Learn to grow vegetables, tend fruit and berry orchards, milk dairy cattle and goats, keep laying hens, raise meat animals, and hunt for wild game.

2. Know how to preserve food for leaner seasons by way of canning, smoking, drying and root-cellaring.

3. Learn to make all of your food from scratch, from bread to butter to noodles to jerky to cheese. Even if you do not do all of it annually, develop and keep up the skills.

4. Be able to repair and maintain what you use. Furniture, buildings, engines, equipment, shoes, toys, kitchen utensils—you name it. It is important to take meticulous care of your belongings and fix whatever needs fixing until it is beyond repair. Buy less, fix more.

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5. Know how to treat minor injuries and illnesses at home. Sometimes seeking professional medical advice is the best course, but in a survival situation it is valuable to be able to assess and treat problems yourself if needed.

6. Learn to provide as many of your own basic needs as you can. Hiring a pro might be the most sensible way to go nowadays, but it does not need to be the only option. If tough times come along, knowing how to clothe yourself and your family, heat your home, care for sick animals, provide home defense, and use alternative means for transportation will be useful skills.

Priorities

7. On most days, put work before play. There is one caveat: It works well to combine work and socializing. In days of old, people worked together with their households and communities on projects like construction, food preservation, quilting and livestock management. Putting work first in a way that builds, creates and nurtures camaraderie is still a great idea.

8. Focus on goals that make a tangible difference in your life and in the lives of those around you. Remember that in a survival scenario it will be more useful to be able to feed, shelter and protect your loved ones than it will be to chase imaginary electronic characters.

Attitude

9. Develop mental toughness. Tell yourself you can do what you have to do to get by. Even when you want to curl up in a corner and let the world pass by without you, know that it is not an option.

10. Be independent. Do not rely upon the government or wait for some other entity to take care of you. Do not let others make decisions for you about whether or not a place or activity is safe — but do not assume that there will always be someone to rescue you if you make poor decisions. Be smart, and be in charge of yourself.

Whether or not your great-grandparents are still around to cheer you on, use these words of advice along with your own image of what they were like to live a life that would make your ancestors proud of you every day. And if you ever find yourself in a survival situation that may or may not be similar to what they went through, remember to heed their sage words to help you survive and pass along the wisdom to another generation.

What time-tested survival advice would you add to our list? Share it in the section below:   

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7 Modern Things Our Great-Grandparents Didn’t Have (That We Don’t Need, Either)

Technology is wonderful, isn’t it? I mean, every day, someone is coming out with something new that they claim everyone just has to have. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the latest app for our smartphones or the latest gadget for our kitchens, there’s always something new out there for those who are looking for something to buy.

But I’ll have to say, while some technology has made life better for us, much of it has stolen the essence of life. While it has given us new things we never had before, it has stolen so much more. In today’s fast-paced, technologically driven society, we’ve traded meaningful relationships for staring at a screen. We’ve traded creating things with our hands, for using our hands to control a joystick.

Have these things truly enriched us? I think not. Of course, some of these marvels have saved us time, freeing us up for things that are more important in life. But all too often, that extra time is merely wasted on something that doesn’t bring a true reward.

It’s clear that our grandparents and great-grandparents lived a simpler life. Many times, I think they lived a better one, too. Oh, they didn’t have the medical advances we have today, that’s true. But there is little else that modern technology has given us, which we can’t do without. Let’s examine a few items.

1. Television

I’ve long said that television is the biggest time-waster there is. When I was a child, I’d run home from school and plop down in front of the TV, just like everyone else. We had a whole program of cartoons and comedies we’d watch for several hours, literally throwing our time away.

Then, one day, I realized how much time television was stealing from my life. So, I quit — just like that. It was amazing. I suddenly found that I had time — time to do all the things I had wanted to do.

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That’s not to say that everything that’s on TV is a waste of time. Some of it is actually quite valuable. But the valuable stuff is far outnumbered by the things that merely waste your time.

2. Social media

If there is anything that has replaced the television as the great time-waster, it’s social media. We no longer talk to people; now we just look to see what they posted. Personal relationships have been replaced by a quasi-relationship with a “friend” on social media.

Once again, social media is not without redemption. There are things that it’s useful for. But most of the time, it’s about people telling you trivial things about their trivial life. I mean, whatever gave people the idea that everyone needed to see pictures of their lunch or of their cat batting at a piece of string? We’ve all seen it before.

3. Computer games

If social media is addicting, computer games are even more so. There’s always one more level you’ve got to get through and one more enemy you’ve got to beat. And what do you get when you finally beat them? The opportunity to do it again with the next level and the next enemy.

Granted, computer games are a lot of fun. I like them, too. But what do they help you accomplish? How do they enrich your life? What skills do they help you hone, which will serve you well? Truthfully, none. Plus, they’re addicting.

4. Many kitchen appliances

Like most people, I like food. I even like to cook. Once upon a time, I thought I might become a chef. But I went another direction before I could get serious about that. Still, I can remember kneading bread on the kitchen counter and cutting onions fine with a chef’s knife.

But in today’s kitchen, you don’t need to know how to knead bread or mince onions — you’ve got a machine to do it for you. Want fresh bread? Simply pay $59.95 and this machine will make you fresh bread every morning. Those onions? Don’t cry about it; buy a food processor and let it chop them for you.

Honestly, I think that most kitchen appliances were invented not to make life easier, but to make some company money. Oh, some are useful; I wouldn’t want to whip cream without a mixer. But who really needs a popcorn popper to pop their corn? Can’t they do it in a pan, like people have done for years? Or has everyone forgotten how to cook?

5. Fast food

Now here’s one that’s literally killing us… fast food. While I’m sure that there is some sort of fast food out there that’s actually healthy, most of it is high fat, high salt, high cholesterol and high calorie.

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America has a national obesity problem, and a lot of that is because of fast food and its brother, junk food. Yeah, we all love a greasy hamburger and pile of golden brown French fries, but that’s not the best thing for us to be eating. At least, it’s not the best thing for us to be eating if we want to have anything left of our health.

6. Diet & exercise systems

Once upon a time, people worked with their hands, even working up a good sweat in their day. They didn’t need to go on a diet or go to the gym, because their daily workload kept them in shape. They didn’t need the latest fad diet and they didn’t need to spend a fortune on exercise equipment.

Modern work and life in general are very sedentary. Most of us don’t get enough activity in our normal work or family activities to burn the calories we need to burn. So, what do we do instead? We go on diets and go to the gym. Since we don’t do either regularly enough, our weight goes up and down, like a yo-yo.

7. Smartphones

Now, I will have to say that smartphones are very useful. I use one, just like everyone else. But as I look around at the world around me, I’m finding that I’m having to identify people by looking at the tops of their heads. No longer do people interact or even acknowledge each other’s presence; all our attention is focused on our smartphone.

How can anyone say that that’s a good way to live? Wouldn’t we be better off with a simpler phone and maybe actually talking to the people around us? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to look at something besides a screen? How many selfies do we need, anyway?

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I foresee a day when the zombie apocalypse will come. It won’t be like most people think, though. These zombies will be people who are wandering around lost, because they don’t have their television sets, their smartphones or their social media. They actually will have to talk to people and do real work with their hands — and they won’t know how.

There are too many things going on in the world today, to even think that life will continue as it is right now. When that time comes, what are we going to do?

What would you add to our list? Share your tips in the section below: