If you get bit by a venomous snake sucking the venom out doesn’t work and is likely to make things worse.
Run outside into the street during an earthquake
I think it very much depends on the building
PCP makes you better at fighting cops
Well it’s not wrong, but it will get you killed
it makes you stronger too.
On it you can punch holes in reality(the wood fence) and make your way to the other side(the other side of the fence)
Makes it more fun, though!
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Boiling water renders it biologically safe. No giardiosis, etc…
If you are drinking water with significant heavy metals, concentrating by evaporating a few cups when boiling a gallon, isn’t your problem.
Just drink the lakewater, don’t worry that everyone else died of food poisoning!
You’re not even concentrating it that much when you boil it. Keep the lid on the pot next time so you lose less to steam and evaporation.
Also, “concentrating it” makes it sound like you’re making it worse, but the total amount (mass/moles) stays the same.
Plus if you build a simple condensation setup, boil the whole thing and drink the condensed steam, you’re also getting rid of 99%* of those heavy, inorganic impurities
*out-of-my-ass number
Someone doesn’t understand how distilled water is made…
Distilling is different from just boiling, in the sort of context we’'re talking about you’re just getting water up to boiling in a container to kill pathogens, not collecting the steam that evaporates off of it to condense back into water to drink.
And in a lot of survival situations you’d be lucky to have something to boil water with, let alone construct a still.
To their credit, yes, theoretically boiling water will concentrate things like heavy metals. You’re just not going to be able to get it hot enough to evaporate stuff like lead or mercury, all of the water will boil off and your pot will melt long before that if you can even reach the sorts of temperatures needed (you probably wouldn’t be able to, at least not without constructing some additional infrastructure, and if you’re capable of that odds are you’re pretty much set for this kind of situation and not need to be reading anything in this thread for advice)
In practice, you’re just not going to be boiling water hot or long enough for that to really matter. You really only need to get it up to boiling for an instant then you can take it off the heat (and arguably it’s probably safe at some point before it reaches boiling, but unless you have a thermometer, stopwatch, and some tables to consult about pasteurization, it’s a lot easier to just watch for a boil.) Go put a few cups of water in a pot on the stove and get it up to boiling, how much did the water level change? Probably not all that much, you’re not doing much to concentrate whatever’s in there.
You have maybe a week you can go without water under absolutely ideal conditions, more realistically you probably have about 3-5 days, or even a few hours if it’s hot and you’re exerting yourself. Most toxins you’re going to find in water aren’t going to kill you in that sort of time frame, they’re more likely to be something that will add to your lifetime exposure and bioaccumulation and cause issues for you sometime down the road, maybe years or decades later.
And if the concentration of whatever you’re concerned about is high enough to cause more immediate issues, odds are that you’re kind of fucked either way, and the tiny bit of concentration that happens from boiling isn’t going to be a major factor. You’d probably get sick regardless, you’re just trading one issue for another- dying of dehydration in a couple days, or dying of poison in a couple days.
And some more volatile chemicals might evaporate off in the boiling process, let’s say that for some reason there’s a bunch of acetone in the water (picked that for no other reason than because I happen to be looking at a can of it on a shelf in my basement while I’m writing this) acetone boils at 132.8°f (56c) so by the time the water reaches boiling all or most of that acetone has already evaporated.
Boiling water that contains cyanotoxins*
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Trump is still alive and posting on his propaganda platform…give him a day
I’d like to read a survival guide based on actual locations rather than old boy scout tricks.
If you strand on a deserted island in the year 2026 you will find a heap of plastic bottles and other trash that can be made into a solar powered distillery or desalination device. It might still be full of micro plastics but whatever so is the the bottled water in the grocery store.
Actually if you ever get in a survival situation besides falling off a ship, your best option is probably to rob the nearest grocery store. It’s a great resource that can be found in the most desolate places.
If you have an entire grocery store to rob what kind of survival situation are you in? Zombies?
Day to day survival in a lage stage capitalism.
I’d choose the zombie apocalypse and catastrophic events any day. At least that doesn’t have the existential dread looming over your every move.
The brightest star in the sky is not the North Star (Polaris). If you follow the brightest star in the sky you will follow a planet and travel some curved path.
How to really find Polaris:
Cool, now how do I find those thingies?
I always struggled with that, too, until my cousin taught me to use Cassiopeia. The other constellations use way too complex of shapes and require accuracy, and they’re not super-bright.
Cassiopeia looks like a W or M. Look for 5 dots that could possibly form an ugly W where the left side is wider and more shallow than the right. It’ll genuinely stand out like this.
There it is!
Now, mentally draw a straight line across the tips of the shallow side of the W. Then, draw a straight line through that starting from the bottom of the shallow side. You’ll get something like an arrow shape. Keep following that perpendicular line away from the W until you find something nearby the line that is noticeably bright. That’s Polaris!
After you find that, you can confirm you found the right star by looking for the dippers and shit.
Meh, looking for the dippers always worked for me. You put a lot of thought into this.
Look up
Great question! Use https://stellarium-web.org/ and set it for your latitude or location, according to your preference, and then look toward the northern sky. You can set the app to highlight the constellations.
Live somewhere dark enough and gain pattern recognition
Edit: This was kind of unhelpful, so I’ll also recommend Stellarium. The Big Dipper is comprised of very bright stars, and is visible in the northern hemisphere year-round, so it’s a good first constellation to learn. Once you get used to how it looks both on stellarium and in the night sky, you’ll be better equipped to extrapolate how other constellations should look in the night sky, given how they look on stellarium. Once you start building those neural pathways, it gets a lot easier.
I realize this is basically just “git gud” but for astronomy, but it really is a matter of experience, not skill
I mean besides Venus, Polaris is not even the brightest real star. (Its Sirius)
Is you’re lost but someone knows where you’re supposed to be it’s probably better to stay put.
Also moss can grow on any side of a tree.
Its wrong to stay put?
When caught in a Thunderstorm: Never lie flat on the ground. Crouch down in a ball-like position with your head tucked and hands over your ears so that you are down low with minimal contact with the ground. The discharge ends in the ground, and a person lying flat is at great risk of being caught in the discharge channel.
source:https://seecheck.org/index.php/2025/08/17/no-you-shouldnt-lie-on-the-ground-during-a-thunderstorm/
https://www.iii.org/article/lightning-safety-10-myths-and-the-facts
If you are at home when the threat of a tornado happens, go to the basement or the most inside room (most walls between you and outside).
But my main reason for posting: IF you are out and encounter a tornado, if you are far enough away to avoid it, avoid it, but if it’s close or if it doesn’t appear to be moving (meaning it’s moving straight for you), then you need to seek a ditch or low ground. A ditch is best - being even slightly below the level of the ground around you GREATLY reduces the wind and debris, which is what will kill you. Something like a culvert can be good, although not so small that a piece of debris could trap you in rising water… but a tornado is typically gone quickly relative to flash flooding.
The myth is that stopping under a bridge is good - even “better” is climbing the slope to hidde under the girders of the bridge. Sometimes you might survive, but people have died - packed in with mud and debris blow by the tornado. This also elevates you more into the windfield, which is bad.
Ideally you don’t want to be close to cars, much less inside them.
I’m not sure if you are rattling off myths that we should avoid perpetuating, or if you are rattling off good useful life-saving tips 🤔
Well, I identified the myth by saying “The myth is…”
ask AI slop for advise
Drinking your own pee will end up dehydrating you faster, contrary to how confident Bear Grylls is in it being a decent strategy.
But if you’re lost in a desert you should rub pee on your skin to conserve water. (I’m not kidding that’s a real thing.)
and the PEE drinker just recycles thier own waste and toxins back into body.
I think Bear Grylls has a fetish and managed to fool people into thinking it was a survival skill.
Sometimes it annoys me when I both need to pee and am thirsty. Like, damn you body, why wont you just keep that water for other stuff i need instead of wasting it on producing pee.
This is a joke, I know peeing is important.
I think even Bear admits that it should be an absolute last resort. Like a “well I’m like 99% sure I’m dying in the next ten minutes, why not?” sort of situation.
So I’m gonna die anyway, but with the taste of piss in my mouth? Fuck that.
soooo. your not going to finish yours?
you’re*
Learn basic grammar.
youll need to get in line on that complaint. my worst subject was foreign language and my next worst was english.
Drink alcohol to stay warm.
Is that an actual, existing survival myth?
Sadly, I think some people believe it.
But other people think you get sick from being outside in the cold
I mean, it definitely makes you warmer. In that it shunts your blood to the outer layer of your body, warming your skin and making you feel less cold. Problem is, this actually makes you lose heat more rapidly, and increases your susceptibility to hypothermia. But since you can experience “drink alcohol, feel warmer” yourself, the myth will probably persist indefinitely.
It is calories too, so can be drunk for energy if you’re out of food.
I don’t know how much so practically, but it perseveres at least in tongue in cheek references to “putting on your whiskey jacket”
Alcohol is antibacterial, thus medicinal.
Can’t say I have ever heard that expression.
Yes. It’s where the old meme of St Bernards carrying little flasks of alcohol came from. The idea was if you were injured in the cold, alcohol would warm you up.
You may feel warmer. But it actually lowers your core temp, IIRC.
It actually was the case, in the olden days.
The classic image of St. Bernard rescue dogs carrying tiny barrels of brandy for the benefit of hypothermic travellers was a myth though.
Would make for a fun tag for a St. Bernard though, instead of a bone use a barrel shaped tag.
TL;DR: If you post here, please emphasise the true text, e.g. put that up front!
I’ve noticed that I don’t remember text literally, so if a post says “the sky isn’t green” then I might tomorrow remember having read something about the sky and green but was this the correction or was this the myth? Was it even in the myths thread or did I read it elsewhere?
Better for me to read only true things, e.g.: “the sky is blue, don’t believe the myth about a different color”. Or mention the myth is in a spoiler tag or elsewhere in the text where it doesn’t act like the headline or main takeaway
Apparently most people have this, see e.g.: https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/6/1/38/114468/Repetition-Increases-Perceived-Truth-Even-for
If you need help look for a cop.
This rule does not necessarily look wrong - in a civilized country.
No you got it backwards, you look for a cop and then go the other way before they see you
Hence why I posted it as an answer to the inquiry “What survival myth is completely wrong and can get you killed?”
Sorry I was trying to make a “it’s not technically wrong” style joke because fundamentally you’d still be looking for a cop but since cops are not actually safe the second part is the wrong part
Attempt was to add to your joke but didn’t land. Been a long few weeks
You’d never find one of you went looking over here, I’ve not seen a cop on foot or parked up in YEARS. Only ever see em driving somewhere. Strange.
When I spent some time in the USA though it was creepy, they’d drive their cars around real slow, just watching you, and they’re everywhere. It felt weirdly oppressive/threatening to have them always around the next corner, always over your shoulder…watching o.O
Only works if you’re a richwhiteman.
Lol!
