About
by Leon Pantenburg
I don’t claim to be a survival expert – only a wilderness enthusiast with a desire to research and share knowledge about preparing for emergencies and life threatening situations. So, this website provides articles and links to great resources for anyone interested in learning how to survive an emergency situation.
Survival Common Sense website/blog was started in the mid-2000s because I was in the newspaper business and saw some tragic events that happened to very good people. Sometimes those disasters could have been avoided by using plain common sense and preparedness skills – and I wanted to share tips that might save a life.
I have a lifetime of experience living in rural areas and traveling in the wilderness, and understand the need for preparedness. I get it that many people don’t have those survival/preparedness skills and haven’t had a chance to learn them. Also, I’ve had the fortune to work alongside search and rescue personnel and enjoy a group of Scouting friends who taught me even more about surviving an emergency.
Take this test to see if you’re completely prepared:
- What would you do if you sprained or broke your ankle at dusk on a routine evening jog on a wooded trail close to your home…. but you happened to be alone, in November, and the temperatures are hovering above freezing, and darkness is falling? Are you dependent on your cell phone? Are you getting cold? Is hypothermia setting in?
- What would you do if your car slid off a rural and lonely, icy road after dark and you found yourself in the ditch in two feet of snow during a raging blizzard where temperatures were already at 10 degrees? Are you reliant on your cell phone?
- What if you and your kids took a rural road as a shortcut to grandma’s for the holiday and your vehicle got stuck in the muck or your engine cut out. You’re 60 miles from any major freeway on a rural road after dark. Most folks are home in front of the fire smelling the turkey. There’s no cell coverage. What will you do?
- What if you woke up to a fire alarm and the smell of rancid, toxic smoke in your completely dark, fourth-floor hotel room? What do you grab to crawl out into the smoky hall?
- What if you received a call from an automated County Disaster Center requiring you to evacuate your home immediately for a major gas leak? How fast can you leave and what do you take with you?
- A hurricane/flood/tornado warning has been issued for your neighborhood. Level 3 go now! What’s the first thing you do? The second? The third?
- You have $100 to ensure your family is safe and prepared to shelter-in-place during a pending natural disaster. What should you purchase?
Let’s have fun together – check out my blog posts about General Survival Skills
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Read Leon’s Journal “Downriver” and his source-to-sea adventure canoeing the Mississippi River from Minnesota to Louisiana