Here are 11 Survival Uses For Charcoal! These 11 Uses Of Charcoal fall into the Category of Wilderness Survival. OK, let’s get started with Auschwitz Fire-Starting.
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WAIT! First let me give you the definition of charcoal. Charcoal is wood, bone or other organic material that is heated in the absence of air. This way, at a later time, it’s already ‘pre-cooked’ and can be fired-up when exposed to heat (match, lighter, sparks, concentrated rays from sun,…)
And those dead cold ashes you see in old firepits are already used-up – burned-up, but still have survival uses for emergency fire-starting. BONUS – Only from me – IRISAP (keep reading)
- Auschwitz Fire-Starting
- Guayaki Camouflage Paste
- Charcoal Sunscreen
- Mountain Man Charcoal Poultice
- Charcoal Snakebite Remedy
- Onada Field-Expedient Charcoal Gas Mask
- Onoda Charcoal Fire-Starting
- Otzi Cold Fire-Starting
- Pioneer Snow Blindness Remedies
- Civil War Black Escape
- Zuni Adobe Bricks
- BONUS Survival Application
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Auschwitz Fire-Starting: The winters were unmerciful even to the innocent prisoners at Auschwitz. One prisoner, Primo Levi, author of Survival In Auschwitz, relates how he started a warming fire. He took a piece of paper and sprinkled it with drops of alcohol. He then grabbed some charcoal dust off the floor and piled it on the paper. He took his flint and scraped it with his knife throwing sparks at the treated paper. The sparks ignited the alcohol fumes which ignited the paper which ignited the charcoal dust thus firing-up any debris, kindling they had to cook their potatoes.
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Guayaki Camouflage Paste: Here’s how the Guayaki Indians (Paraguay, South America) made a camouflage black paste that lasted for several days. They placed equal parts of powdered charcoal, beeswax and resin in an empty armadillo shell and mixed it thoroughly. A small amount was scooped up with a wooden blade and placed near a hot fire where it almost liquified. This heated concoction was then applied to the skin where it was smeared about to their liking and decoration and it lasted several days.
Note: When I was a Know-Nuthin’ Private with the 82nd Airvborne out of Fort Bragg, NC, when we prepped for a jump and spend days in the woods, we had to cammy-up. We used these small cylindrical containers that had OD Green (olive drab) on one side and a lighter green on the other side. We always re-cammied up (all exposed skin) in the woods. And to re-cammy-up when it’s really cold, the cammy stick is hard as a rock and you’re just scraping the heck out of your face, neck and hands.
So what we did, similar to the Guayaki Camouflage Paste, we just took some ashes and mixed it with a little oil like baby oil and made a paste and that cammy went on real easy & smooth and worked real good even in the cold winter months.
So for you soldiers and hunters out there, this is another option to camouflaging your exposed skin.
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Charcoal Sunscreen: Yep, those savvy Indians protected their children from sunburn and windburn by applying home-made paint on their faces. An easy black paint is made from a concoction of mixing fat and cold crushed charcoal from the firepit and this concoction was applied to the skin. Other paints were made using a wide variety of plant pollens, plant parts,…
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Mountain Man Charcoal Poultice: On 29 November 1830, fighting the superior numbers of the Tawakoni Indians; James (Jim) Bowie, others, and their animals were recuperating from the battle and their wounds. One man named Buchanan had a broken leg that was turning infectious and worse yet gangrene may have set in. They boiled bark from a tree (specific tree unknown), and added charcoal and ground meal to it. They secured this concoction – poultice with a section of buffalo hide. As it turns out, 05-days later they removed the poultice and Buchanan’s leg showed great improvement. As I told you earlier, charcoal sucks up toxins.
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Charcoal Snakebite Remedy: Here’s snakebite remedy worthy of your attention used by savvy Old West pioneers used on both man and animals. An incision was made to cut open the wound at the place of the snake bite. Three pinches of gunpowder was put in the open wound. Here’s a quote from that savvy pioneer: “I cut the bite open and flash powder in it three times, and it is all right. One of my men was once bitten on the hand by a big rattler. I cut it open, flash powder in it three times, and that afternoon he killed and scalped two Injuns.”
This concoction may be very worthy of your attention (I feel everything I annotate for you is worthy of your attention). Why? Cause gunpowder is composed of approximately 75% potassium nitrate (salt peter – rock salt?), 15% charcoal, and 10% sulfur. We already know that charcoal sucks-ups toxins and sulfur has its own healing ingredients.
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Onada Field-Expedient Charcoal Gas Mask: On 14 August 1945, Japan announced its surrender. The formal surrender took place on 02 September 1945 at Tokyo Bay aboard the battleship the USS Missouri.
But there were Japanese soldiers that had no knowledge of their country’s surrender and of course never surrendered themselves. And amazingly for up to 30-years after the end of WWII, one soldier carried-on as a proud Japanese Officer of the Japanese Empire and kept up the fight. This lone proud soldier is named 2nd Lt. Hiroo Onoda who survived in the isolated Philippine jungle of Lubang Island (75-miles southwest of Manilla).
You know what’s inside a lot of military & civilian gas mask filters? Charcoal! You know what’s inside a lot of water filters? Charcoal! You know what’s inside a lot of central air home filters? Charcoal! 2nd Lt. Onoda used wet cloth as a field-expedient gas mask. Yet there was a lot of charcoal in their firepits and firepits left behind by farmers. Here’s an idea to make a field-expedient charcoal gas mask.
Take a sock and fill it half-full with crushed wood charcoal. Tie it off at the very top. Place it in another sock. The outside sock acts as a filter for charcoal particles. Anyway, secure it to your belt. Once you need to use it – HOLD YOUR BREATH! Wet the field-expedient charcoal gas mask with water so both socks and the crushed charcoal is slightly wet – NOT saturated. Secure it tightly over your mouth and nose and start breathing.
Look for the direction of wind and source of contamination and use the quickest and safest route to leave the contaminated area – DO NOT GO STRAIGHT DOWNWIND.
Once out of the contaminated area, vigorously wash clothes, equipment, and body. If need be, bury contaminated clothing, equipment, any deceased personnel. Record EXACT location using coordinates, terrain feature, and polar plot (distance & direction from known permanent point) for future retrieval and investigation.
Note: If water is not instantly available, place the field-expedient charcoal gas mask to your mouth and nose immediately and start breathing and leave the contaminated area as fast as possible.
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Onoda Charcoal Fire-Starting: 2nd Lt. Onoda and his fellow evaders used charcoal for fire-starting. Charcoal was ignited using a magnifying glass and a bright sun. The concentrated beam of light fired-up the charcoal where it would glow to a glowing burn where dry tinder was added for sure-fire ignition.
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Otzi Cold Fire-Starting: On 18 September 1991, Helmut and Erika Simon began their early hike in the Tryolean Alps near the village of Vernagt, Italy (Italian – Austrian border). The Simons cautiously hiked their way through and around the glacier traps that were visible and some that were unnoticeable. Then the Simons came upon the find of the century. In the melting ice, they found a mummy-like corpse that would eventually be one of the most internationally studied corpses’ in history. The preserved and intensely studied corpse would be named Otzi (found in the Austrian Otztal Valley). Otzi in German sounds like “tootsie” in English.
Otzi was studied so intensely, that his own cold weather survival tricks are very worthy of your attention. It turns out, Otzi was estimated to be 5,300-years old! A great read of a book – “Iceman” by Brenda Fowler, reveals several survival tricks used by Otzi and here’s one of them.
Otzi used the charcoal for cold fire-starting. In other words, the charcoal was used like char cloth. A spark using flint was thrown on the powdered charcoal which gave birth to a burning ember. Dry tinder was applied to the burning ember, add a few forceful breaths and you got a fire.
MOST IMPORTANT NOTE: Charcoal powder WON’T WORK. I tried it. It has to be charcoal dust which is a super fine pulverized powder charcoal so it can be readily ignited by some sparks.
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Pioneer Snow Blindness Remedies: Here are some snow blindness remedies used by them savvy pioneers. Let me remind you that snow blindness is a deterioration of vision caused when the eyes are overwhelmed with sun’s light and its reflection off the white snow. Here are some snow blindness remedies:
a) Charcoal: Cold crushed black charcoal from the cold firepit was rubbed under both eyes. The black charcoal under both eyes countered the brilliance and reflection from both the sun and snow.
b) Colored Glasses: Colored glasses with blue or green lenses were used to counter bright reflections.
c) Snow Goggles: Snow goggles that looked like horse blinders with thin horizontal slits on both the left and right goggles blocked most of the bright reflection from the eyes.
d) Veils: Women folk wore dark see-through veils over their entire face. The veils restricted most of the bright reflected light to both eyes.
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Civil War Black Escape: Union POWs located at Richmond, Virginia and St. Louis, Missouri escaped by smearing black ashes and charcoal all over their faces and exposed portions of their body. The “darkened” POWs then intermingled with black men on work details and made their escape. This escape technique was so successful and used so many times, that black prison laborers were eventually banned at Richmond, St. Louis, and other Confederate prisons.
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Zuni Adobe Bricks: In June of 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado arrived at a Zuni pueblo (village). Zuni warriors fought the invading Spaniards but their stones, arrows were no match for the Spaniard that wore arrow-proof armor. Plus, the Spaniards were highly mobile on their horses and their weapons – “canes that spit fire and made thunder” (as the Zuni recorded) were very effective.
One Spaniard recorded that the Zuni’s super strong cement-like bricks were made from charcoal, ash, and dirt (mixed with water). Now you know another way to make adobe bricks besides using clay, straw, mud,… Once the adobe bricks were made, they were laid in the sun to dry.
Thank you for reading this entire segment. To reward you, I want to tell you about one of my many Emergency Fire-Starting Applications that uses ashes from a cold firepit to get an emergency fire going so You’re Ready Anytime Anywhere.
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Emergency Fire-Starting Using Gum: If you got just a single match, don’t gamble and use it to start a fire if you don’t have a bunch of dry grass tinder.
If you got some gum in your mouth, you can use it to start an emergency fire. If you’re trekking outdoors, odds are there are old firepits. Take a pinch of dry cold ashes and add it to the chewing gum. Mix the gum and cold ashes together. Add another pinch of cold dead ashes till the gum is black in color.
Now flatten it out and lay it somewhere to let it air dry to evaporate the saliva. Once it’s dry, it’s ready to light-up with your only match. But first, insure you have plenty of the smallest sliver-like kindling ready to-go with a tee-pee firepit of sliver-like kindling.
Once you put the lit match to the gum mixed with cold dead ashes, it should fire-up. Why does it work?
The ashes help retain the heat of the burning gum, thus adding more heat to the burning gum which helps it burn even better. Immediately place the burning gum to the sliver-like kindling at the base of the tee-pee firepit so the new fire climbs which accelerates the burning process.
I conducted my own R & D on 22 different bubblegums and gums. Only 01 gum failed to fire-up. All my R & D is in my 630-page book – “Basic, Advanced And Ultra-Advanced Emergency Fire-Starting.” See
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