How many consider swimming one of their survival skills ?

I spent a lot of weekends in the training tank at The Basic School. I didn't have to learn to swim so much as learning to float. Walking across the bottom of the pool was frowned upon. Once you feel confident swimming several lengths of the pool in full combat gear including boots, flak jacket, rifle, and helmet, there aren't too many situations you can't swim out of.

 

Those are all good things to know. Got any more if you find yourself in water info?

 

YUP! Lie on your back and point your toes up and just float using your arms to keep your head above water! If in running water, keep your feet pointed down stream and slowly paddle your arms to take you to shore! DON'T PANIC, ALL HUMANS FLOAT!

Pro Tip, Have a water immersion prep kit as part of your basic preps, this includes a pint of Pure Honey and a small sleeve of Peanuts. Once you're out of the water, your gonna swallow all that honey and eat all those nuts as you build a fire and get out of the wet you are wearing! This same "Kit" is also very handy for arctic conditions, but keep in mind, it's a ONE SHOT DEAL!

 

Don't consider it as "swimming" Consider it as another form of easily available and cheap life insurance. Put yourself in the frame of mind of a mother bear protecting her family. Once you and yours learn it then you can consider it again as just "swimming".

 

True story, not sure I've mentioned it here before. My earliest and most vivid childhood memory was of me looking up through the water as a hand reaches down and pulls me out of the water. I had fallen off a dock in the canyon at Alcova Resevoir outside Casper, WY. It was my uncle's hand that plucked me from the water. Would instinct have kicked in and made me swim? Dunno. Mom said it happened so fast nobody even had time to think. He heard me go in and reached in to grab me. I was about 18 months old. I had a fear of water for many years as a child following that incident. By junior high I was a fish and joined the swim team. I still have a very deep foreboding about water though. Knowing how to swim, or rather how to survive in water, is an extremely important survival skill for any animal to know.

 

I ws impressed with DARPA and their swimming device . I think it's called "power swim"
It's not practical for the small environment of a pool, but in a lake or ocean it is a whole new world, with range of speed and energy they boast. I want to build one for my self.

 

I also think everyone that is able to should learn to swim. We lived by lakes when I was growing up. My step dad threw me off the end of the pier when I was 6 and we lived at Pewauke Lake, WI. He said now swim. I learned in a hurry and got better and better as I grew older and could have lived int the water in the summer . It's just one gets all pruney.

 

Relax when you tence up you will sink if you have long pants on take them off tie the legs to gether put around your neck hold the waist at the water and churn water which will push air up and fill the legs like a life jacket you have to keep them wet

If you have a pack on and it's been water proofed you can put it on and start moving your legs like your riding a bike and you will go forward in a up right position

If you can touch the bottom but it's over your head bounce of the bottom.

 

A life guard once saw me bouncing off the bottom and came in after me, I was just figuring things out , I thanked him, we both laughed.
One reasons I use water poof bagging in my back pack is for floatation. though the weight might actually exceed the bag it is 1 still lighter I the water than it would be normally, and
2. If something leaks, sensitive things are not compromised .
Keeping heavy duty trash bags can offer floatation for your gear , even yourself .
If I had rivers to cross to get home or some bug out location during the winter time and usual routes are impassable, being able to float across means a lot I might even take my fins along .

 

knowing how to float and not panic is a huge benefit.
on the big lake (superior) sometimes when the wind is just right a rip current will set up just off the shore. If you fight it, you'll wear yourself down and drown. If you just stop and start floating and let it take you were it wants you might make it out. Granted you could be hundreds of yards down the shoreline or even out into the lake depending on the underwater structures.

But floating with the current is your best option.

 

Yeah, swimming in Superior is always better with others, that way they can drag your near hypothermic carcass out of the water and plop you by the fire or roll you in the warm sand on a sunny day.

 

Thanks every one for your input .

 

Yep, growing up out here when I did it was pretty much mandatory ( this has been a bit lost now) as Australia is a hot bastard of a place and there were always pools, dams, lakes, creeks/rivers and the ocean depending on where you grew up (I was a pool/creek kid). I learnt young and it has never left me, I am not a "fast" swimmer but strong (as in can keep it up). I can't imagine not being able to swim. One thing watching the news here, when you see mass drowning/rescue events covered on the news, the groups are most often (no not always) not born here in Aus and have not had the indoctrination we had growing up. Despite being a country kid (not a beach kid) we were all taught about surf and the dangers of rips and how to survive that, my first experience was in my late teens when I got taken out off a small and isolated beach....about an hour after (I had paddled out with the rip and followed it down the beach till it subsided and I could paddle back in) I walked back to all my friends and they had not even noticed my absence.

 

Don't you hate the when you've been through something harrowing and no one noticed you were gone ?

 

Yep !!!! Not a one thought it may have been an issue. Given the time it occurred it was right around shark feeding time as well

 

What time do you feed the sharks there?