‘Don’t Die Out There!’ wilderness survival playing cards

These playing cards with wilderness survival information on them can be a useful and valuable emergency preparedness tool.

A deck of playing cards can be a great way to deal with down time and can provide entertainment in camp. These cards, with survival information on them, may also fill a survival need.
by Leon Pantenburg
People try to send me junk. Often, manufacturers want me to do a free, favorable review in return for some piece of merchandise they want promoted. Generally, I don't waste my time. I have all the free stuff I'll ever need, with the exception of custom Mora-style rigid bladed knives.

Check out this knife!

So when my hiking partner of over 40 years, John Nerness, of Los Gatos, CA, sent me a deck of wilderness survival playing cards, I figured it to be a joke.
John and I, by way of introduction, started hiking and canoeing together as teenagers. Our latest trip was a dayhike to the Cascades' Green Lakes area in 2011. On excursions as varied at hiking Death Valley, CA, to a canoe voyage through the Okeefenokee Swamp in Georgia, we refined our outdoor gear. A deck of cards always went along, and we have a decades-old Four Point Pitch game ongoing.
This game has been played under a tarp in the rain, while we waited for a mountain pass to clear; inside a tent while it snowed outside; around a campfire; in a Death Valley ghost town; on a sleety, windy day with a canoe providing a windbreak, and on numerous campground picnic tables and flat rocks.
And until I chatted with John recently, I hadn't though about the fact that some entertainment items could be considered survival items. Here are some thoughts:

• Because we didn't get bored, we didn't attempt to push up over that mountain pass in hazardous weather. We could sit out long periods of in climate weather.
• Nobody got cabin fever sitting in the tent in the rain.
• There is inevitable down time in the wilderness sometimes, and a fun game can make the experience better.

The first thing I did was spread out the cards and check out the information. Produced by the Mountaineers Books in Seattle, I was favorably impressed by several categories. Diamonds are survival essentials; Spades are assessing your situation, water, fire and food; Hearts are basic first aid and Clubs are CPR, head and spine injuries and evacuating the injured.
The first aid was excellent, and there were several fine diagrams on splinting limbs. Firemaking was good, and the rest of the deck is composed of sound information. The cards would make good reading if you didn't want to play them.
The only complaint I had was about the two cards dedicated to building a solar still.
Solar stills don't work. Don't waste time with them. I am incredulous that the Mountaineers let that one slip by. I drew a large "X" across the face of the solar still cards, which doesn't affect their playability.
So do you need a wilderness survival card deck in your preparedness gear? Maybe.

• If you're lost, staying put is the first order of business. Take care of whatever survival chores need to be done. Then just wait. If you're alone, play solitaire. If you're with others, get some game going that will keep them from being bored and take their minds off the situation. You may have to wait a long time to be rescued, and anything that can make that wait easier is a good thing.

• The cards are a valuable source of information: Know what you're doing before heading off-pavement, and don't plan on using a manual for on-the-job training. But what if you are the person injured, and you only have newcomers to assist you? It would be easy to pull out the signalling card, and direct them to make some aircraft attractors in the nearby clearing. Likewise, you probably don't want to walk someone through all the steps of splinting your broken ankle!
• Morale is an important part of any activity. If you have a deck of cards, a tournament can be organized among a group of disaster survivors that will encourage bonding and interaction.

Since John and I usually have cards along, we'll probably include a deck of Wilderness Survival cards next outing. The cards would make a great gift for the outdoorsman. (To order your deck, contact the Mountaineers Books.)

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