Top 10 Most Overlooked Survival Items

Baking Soda

Baking soda is, without question, one of the most versatile cleaning agents known to man. And what’s better, is that it’s commonplace in virtually every home and is readily available in any grocery or convenience store.

In a survival situation, you’ll be able to reapply baking soda into the following uses:

Deodorant

Dishwashing Soap

Floor Cleaner

Hand Soap

Laundry Detergent

Shampoo

Toothpaste

Cotton Balls

If you need to get a fire going when it’s cold, windy, and raining outside, then cotton balls could just be what save your life (literally).

Take a cotton ball and then soak it in Vaseline, and it will light up the moment you bring a spark or flame to it regardless of the conditions.

As an alternative to Vaseline, you can also use something highly flammable such as Chap Stick or Hand Sanitizer, but Vaseline still works best. In addition, as an alternative to cotton balls, you can use Q-Tips as well.

Take note, cotton balls will be quite sticky and messy when soaked in Vaseline, so be sure to store them either in a Ziploc bag or in a container of some kind.

Dental Floss

Next, we come to dental floss, which has a myriad of different survival uses. Besides the obvious application of using dental floss to help improve your dental hygiene, you can use dental floss for the following purposes:

Tripwire

Fishing Line

Makeshift Clothesline (wrap multiple strands together)

Shelter Building

Wrap Around Matches To Make Them Burn Longer

Shoelaces Replacement

Setting Snares

Sewing

Duct Tape

Each of us probably has a roll of duct tape in our garage (or somewhere), and there’s good reason why: you can use duct tape to repair just about anything.

Despite this, duct tape is rarely mentioned among survival or prepping circles as being a necessary survival or disaster preparedness item. However, these reasons beg to differ:

Shelter Building

Clothing Repairs

Resealing Packages of Food

Wrapping a Sprained Ankle

Tying Medical Splints

Makeshift Bandage

Knife Spear (wrap the hilt of the knife to the pole)

Hand Sanitizer

Hand sanitizer is a very common item that if often marketed as being able to kill over 99.99% of harmful germs. For this reason alone, it will be a very useful item to have in a survival or disaster preparedness situation where personal hygiene is going to be a major concern.

Besides that, you can also use hand sanitizer for the following applications:

Fire Starter (the alcohol content of hand sanitizer is highly flammable)

Sanitize Literally Anything

Removing Stains

Treating Mosquito Bite (hand sanitizer helps the itchiness to go away)

Paper Clips

Paper clips are easily one of the most commonplace pieces of office supplies in the entire world. Just dig around among your desk drawers for a little bit, and you’ll probably find a forgotten paper clip or two.

While we normally use paper clips in our everyday lives to hold pieces of paper together, in a survival situation, you can reapply them into the following purposes:

Makeshift Fishing Hook

Replace Zipper Tabs (on a backpack or jacket)

Finger or Toe Splint

Fingernail Cleaner

Key Ring Replacement

Sewing Needle Replacement

Toilet Paper

Here’s something that everybody fully understands the value in. Toilet paper is going to be a luxury in any survival or disaster scenario, and it’s certainly preferable to using it over the variety of alternatives (be creative here).

At the very least, toilet paper will be a very valuable trading or commodity item in a survival scenario, and that should be good enough reason to stockpile it alone.

Trash Bags

There can be little doubt that ordinary trash bags are among the most multipurpose and versatile inventions of man on the planet. They are something that you will want to have plenty of in a disaster preparedness scenario, for the following reasons:

Garbage Disposal (obviously)

Signaling Device (if brightly colored such as orange)

Shelter Building

Emergency Poncho (cut a hole in the sides and on top)

Makeshift Mattress (simply stuff with leaves)

Clothes Washer (fill with warm water, soap, and clothes, and shake around)

Rain Catchment

Makeshift Camping Shower (simply fill up with water and puncture holes)

Zip Ties

Last but certainly not least, we come to zip ties. Zip ties are incredibly handy dandy items, and it’s surprising that they are not recommended as an important survival tool more often.

Here are just a handful of uses for zip ties in a survival or disaster scenario:

Backpack Handle Replacement

Lash Gear To Your Backpack

Shoelaces Replacement

Tie To Your Boots For Ice/Snow Traction

Trail Marker (brightly colored ones work best)

Restraining A Prisoner

Shelter Building (as an alternative to cord, vine, or rope)

Tying A Tying

A TourniquetSplint

Hopefully, these tips will help you on your next adventure in the wilderness. Have in mind that anything can be turned into a survival item. All you need to do is to be creative and resourceful.

We live in a beautiful world, get out there and enjoy it.

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