True explorers never take their lives lightly. The essence of outdoor adventure is not to gamble with life; on the contrary, every effort should be made to reduce or avoid potential dangers.Wanjingjiayuan has invited wilderness first aid experts with the hope that everyone participating in outdoor activities, in addition to thorough material and physical preparation, will also possess certain self-rescue and mutual rescue knowledge and technical skills to fully enjoy the exciting outdoor experience.
Emergency Essentials in Your Backpack: Newspaper, Potassium Permanganate, Emergency Blanket
When heading out for outdoor activities, it’s essential to bring the necessary items for survival and personal safety. In addition to these, it’s recommended to carry along a newspaper, some potassium permanganate, and an emergency blanket. Don’t underestimate these three items—they are extraordinarily useful. Lightweight, compact, and easy to carry, they are indispensable for self-rescue and mutual aid in your backpack.
Newspaper
The importance of newspapers during outdoor activities is widely known—never casually discard them. Look at all the functions: warmth, entertainment, splint, fire starter, insect repellent. They’re incredibly versatile, making them a convenient tool for self-rescue and mutual aid when you’re on the go.
Warmth: Physical activity leads to sweating, especially during high-intensity outdoor workouts. Sweat can make clothes damp, and when you rest, the wind can carry away body heat, not only increasing the feeling of cold but also making it difficult to move due to wet clothing clinging to your body. This is one of the most common and unavoidable headaches for travelers. Outdoor activities are physically demanding and inherently consume a lot of energy, so adventurers usually travel light and can’t carry multiple sets of clothes for frequent changes. Although many outdoor gear manufacturers have developed moisture-proof, ventilated, and insulated fabrics to address sweat-related issues, these solutions are expensive. Newspapers, then, are the simplest, most economical, and most immediate solution to this dilemma.
Using newspapers for warmth is highly reliable, and the method is simple: just flatten them against your body, front and back. Newspapers are dense and block the wind effectively, equivalent to wearing an extra layer of thermal underwear. After sweating, newspapers absorb moisture without wetting your clothes. Simply remove the damp newspaper, shake it dry in the air, and reuse it.
Heatstroke Prevention: On summer trips, under the blazing sun, exposure can lead to heatstroke. Newspapers can be used as a hat to shield you from direct sunlight.
Entertainment: Getting lost is a common occurrence during outings. When you’re alone in the mountains, waiting for rescue after getting lost, newspapers become your best companion. Reading them helps pass the time, reading aloud can help overcome fear, and you might even find a humorous article to make you laugh. In the dark, burning newspaper can serve as a visible signal to help rescuers locate you.
Fire Starting: According to reports, pouring a small spoonful of potassium permanganate on a newspaper, adding a few drops of car antifreeze, and then crumpling the newspaper into a ball will cause it to ignite within 30 seconds.
Insect Repellent: The wilderness is home to various flying insects and animals, especially mosquitoes that disturb you while camping. Lighting a slightly damp newspaper produces smoke that can drive away mosquitoes, flies, and even reptiles; the flames can also scare off larger animals.
Splint: Falls and injuries are common during hikes. When it’s unclear whether the injury is a sprain, dislocation, or even a fracture, the first-aid principle is to treat it as a fracture. That means immobilizing the injured area (keeping it still) to prevent further damage from movement. Immobilization requires a splint, which can often be found in the wild—like branches or tree trunks—but the safest and most convenient splint is a newspaper. Newspapers are soft and won’t harm the skin, eliminating the need for bulky padding like tree trunks; they’re lightweight, adding no extra burden and reducing carrying load; and they’re highly malleable, making them easy to shape and use.
Correcting Respiratory Alkalosis: At high altitudes, the thin air causes people to breathe faster to compensate for oxygen deficiency. Over-breathing expels more carbon dioxide, leading to respiratory alkalosis, which can be life-threatening. Rolling a newspaper into a funnel shape, leaving a 1 cm diameter hole at the top, and wrapping the bottom around your mouth and nose allows some exhaled carbon dioxide to be re-inhaled, helping to prevent and correct respiratory alkalosis.
See? Newspapers have so many uses—they’re cheap and readily available, so don’t forget to pack one in your bag.
Potassium Permanganate
Potassium permanganate is one of the most common chemical substances, and it’s also essential for outdoor activities. It’s truly amazing—small doses solve big problems. Purify water, mark trails, clean wounds, and fight inflammation and toxins. Rub it to start a fire in thirty seconds—you’ll never feel stranded in the deep mountains.
Fire Starting: Based on the principle that potassium permanganate reacts with organic matter through contact, friction, or collision, generating heat and releasing oxygen to cause combustion, mix one part sugar with two parts potassium permanganate and grind them between dry wood chips. In dry weather, the wood chips will ignite quickly, with short time and excellent results.
Water Purification: Potassium permanganate is a conventional additive used by water treatment plants to purify water. When sourcing water in the wild, add three to four grains of potassium permanganate per liter of water, and it will be drinkable in 30 minutes.
Anti-inflammatory: Potassium permanganate is a strong oxidizer that releases nascent oxygen upon contact with organic matter, killing bacteria. Its antibacterial power is strong, and clinically, solutions with concentrations of 1:2000–1:5000 are commonly used to rinse skin wounds, ulcers, thrush, abscesses, etc. The solution can also be used as a mouthwash to eliminate bad breath and disinfect the oral cavity. Note that the concentration must be accurately controlled—a concentration that’s too high can cause localized corrosion and ulceration. When preparing the solution, consider the time required: potassium permanganate releases oxygen slowly, so the soaking time must be at least 5 minutes to kill bacteria. Use cool boiled water for preparation, as hot water will render it ineffective.
Gastric Lavage: In cases of accidental plant poisoning in the wild, it’s crucial to perform gastric lavage as soon as possible to reduce the absorption of toxic substances. A simple method is to use a potassium permanganate solution with a concentration of 1:1000–1:4000. A quick way to check this concentration is to ensure the solution appears light purple or pale red. If the solution appears purple or dark purple, its concentration has reached 1:100–1:200, and such a highly concentrated potassium permanganate solution can cause gastric mucosal ulceration and must never be used for gastric lavage. Accidentally ingesting highly concentrated potassium permanganate solution can be poisonous, so safety is paramount.
Marking: If you’re lost in snowy terrain, scattering potassium permanganate granules on the snow creates a purple trail that can guide rescuers. However, the color typically lasts only about two hours.
It’s worth noting that potassium permanganate is a strong corrosive agent. Avoid direct skin contact to prevent burns. Direct contact is only safe when it’s diluted to the appropriate concentration.
Emergency Blanket
The role of emergency blankets in self-rescue and mutual aid is increasingly recognized worldwide. The internationally used emergency blanket is actually made of aluminum foil, typically measuring 2 meters long and 1.8 meters wide. Folded, it’s about the size of a cigarette box and even lighter than a pack of cigarettes. Don’t underestimate this blanket—it’s incredibly useful.
Warmth: As the name suggests, an emergency blanket provides warmth. In cold conditions, wrapping it around your body or vulnerable areas reflects the body’s radiated heat, helping to retain warmth.
First Aid: A drop in body temperature can worsen an injured person’s condition. Wrapping them in an emergency blanket offers protection. Additionally, seeing someone wrapped in an emergency blanket signals to medical personnel that the person is injured and has received initial first aid, prompting them to prioritize further examination and treatment. This increases the injured person’s chances of survival—time is life.
Reflectivity: When stranded in the wilderness, wrapping yourself in an emergency blanket leverages its reflective properties to help rescuers locate you.
When used as a stretcher: Emergency blankets are tough, lightweight, soft, and highly malleable, making them suitable for use as makeshift stretchers. We once had a person weighing 200 jin lie flat on an unfolded emergency blanket, with six people simultaneously lifting the four corners and the middle of the edges — and the blanket didn’t tear at all. Of course, such a stretcher is only a temporary measure for short-distance use. Be sure to coordinate lifting movements when using it; otherwise, it can easily tear and cause injury to the patient.
Who would’ve thought? These seemingly insignificant little items actually have so many uses. What are you waiting for? Pack them in your bag now!