Heat Wave Survival Gear

Originally posted 2019-07-24 04:54:11.

Hard to believe it’s almost August! The summer is rolling right along – with all the fun that comes with it – bbq, the swimming pool, festivals and concerts – and unfortunately often times sweltering heat. Freak heat waves are becoming more common each year, and they can have deadly results. Earlier this July, a heat wave sweeping through the southeast United States claimed at least 6 lives. Other countries, such as India, have also lost dozens of lives due to extreme heat. While this isn’t meant to scare you inside all summer, you should definitely think about some heat wave survival gear and best practices to prevent yourself from heatstroke, dehydration and other complications from intense summer sun.

Heat Wave Survival Gear – keep your cool!

An intense heat wave is dangerous not just to you as an individual – they can be responsible for crop failures, power outages from overuse of the electric grid, and other major issues. Some common sense measures are in order to be able to keep you and your home safe from intense heat.

Personal Gear

If you’re going to travel outside in the heat, it’s actually better to wear loose but layered and long sleeved clothing. Look at Arabian caravans walking through the scorched deserts of the mid east and Africa – they aren’t out there in tank tops and cargo shorts! They wear long clothes, often lighter in color and lighter in weight! The dead air space created in the layers helps keep them cool in the infernos of the Sahara and other deserts. In Cody Ludin’s book When All Hell Breaks Loose, he states quite plainly that most people die in weather situations due to exposure (either hypothermia or hyperthermia) so choose your clothing wisely.

Keeping cool

An interesting piece of heat wave survival gear is the evaporation cooling towel. Simply dip one under cool water, wring it and place on the back of your neck. These can last several hours from one dip in the water, and will cool you quite well as the water slowly evaporates. These are a great item for not only heat waves, but also for helping to break fevers and reduce the severity of hot flashes and night sweats.

Hydration heat wave survival gear

As you’re probably well aware, the human body consists mostly of water. Dehydration is a killer in a heat wave, so you need to be able to provide yourself with ample fluids to keep your muscles, brain and other vital organs working properly. There’s plenty of ways to carry water – but I think my favorite will always be the Camelbak style hydration backpacks. These ingenious little hydration packs became very popular among the US military during the first Gulf War and subsequent conflicts in dry, arid regions. The hydration pack not only provides you with vital drinking water, but while it sits on your back it provides cooling abilities. There are hundreds of varieties to pick from, but they all are similar in design.

When you’re outside exercising or working in hot weather, you can easily lose several liters of water via perspiration in a few hours. Thus, it’s vital to have some ability to keep yourself ‘topped off’ with water.

Preserving food and beverages

In a heat wave, one of the major dangers is a loss of power – that means your electricity, which runs everything from the air conditioner to the fridge, might be gone in a hurry. It’s important to have alternate methods of cooling food in case the outage lasts for more than a day or two. One of the best brands for food coolers is the Yeti cooler, which comes in multiple sizes. A trick I’ve used is to freeze 1 liter to 1 gallon plastic jars of water. Once fully frozen, these can be inserted into a cooler as a substitute for store bought ice, and will keep the contents cold for up to three days. This trick can also be emulated in your conventional refrigerator. The ability to keep your perishable food from spoiling will be invaluable in a summer heat wave emergency.