Thursday, April 29, 2010

Wonderous Bags of Holding!


Ahh... the magnificent plastic bag! What a marvelous wonder of modern technology. I am only half-kidding here, plastic bags really are very useful. Now, despite what well-meaning but misfocused environmentalists will tell you about the evils of plastic bags, I can think of few more useful and versatile configurations of .5 oz pieces of petroleum molecules than a plastic bag. Sincerely. When scavenging, salvaging, or taking stock of ones assets during a disaster or a survival situation, I feel fortunate indeed to find at least a few plastic bags. You probably think I am joking now, but in the following essay I plan to make you a true believer.


Applying MacGyver-like thinking to any decent sized plastic bag... say a 1 gallon Zip-loc, what you have is a strong, transparent, lightweight, airtight, watertight, impermeable membrane with a useful tensile strength and a sealable container that has the special property of being able to change in size (volume) and shape. When not in use, it can compact down to an inch square. It was well-designed for storing, carrying, and organizing, which is mainly why you should have lots of them in your kit (separating food from dirty laundry, organizing loose gear into logical categories, keeping socks clean and dry). I tend to re-use them over and over, gradually down-grading their status, until they get one final use for waste and rubbish recepticle. I almost always have at least one plastic ziploc in one of my pockets.

In the case of a shopping bag or a garbage bag, it can be "butterflied" open to form a large, smooth, waterproof panel (for collecting water, making solar stills, shelters, ponchos). Or, cut into thinner lengthwise strips, it can be braided into dynamic rope. With some plastic bags and some duct tape, I have fabricated a complete set of clothing (hat, shirt, poncho, pants, even shoes!). Solar distilleries are an important method for obtaining one of the key survival priorities, water.

A plastic bag is a handy multi-purpose carrying container able to hold solids, liquids, even gases). Lot of loose items can be collected in a bag, even messy (bloody/greasy) things like meat. Only ones imagination is the limit as far as what liquids can be held in a plastic bag (gasoline, alcohol, dyes, sun tea, blood, urine). A simple Ziploc bag makes a decent water bladder, and interestingly, plastic bags can be used as a "sandbag" that is, filled with water, sand, rocks or dirt, to provide cover. Filled with air, sealed plastic bags form "balloons" which are in fact insulative. Lighter than air gases will make plastic bags float, useful for signalling or perhaps carrying something aloft. Depending on what gases plastic bags are filled with, they can serve a variety of useful functions, including explosive/flammable booby traps. With a little practice, a small zip-loc can be used to hold a "breath" of air so that an extended underwater swim can be made. A larger, transparent plastic bag filled with air, sufficiently weighted to negate it's buoyancy should in theory be usable as a "diving bell".

A plastic bag can be a useful aid in medical emergencies and I keep many on-hand in my kit. Besides being a good containers and organizers, plastic bags make good ice bags. They can contain amputated parts. They can be occlusive dressings for pneumothorax and penetrative wounds to the pleural sac. They can be a receptacle for vomitus or other excreta. They can be filled with sand or water for c-spine immobilization. Combined with other elements (tubing, duct tape, valves, funnels, filters) other useful devices can be fabricated with a little imagination.

I've occasionally found plastic bags useful in field cooking. Primarily of course for storage, but also for coating breading/flour onto meat and fish, for steeping herbs, teas, and foraged vegetable matter in the sun or hot water (trapping all the nutrients in the resultant broth). Plastic bags can serve as a protective barrier when storing food in special conditions, like caches, burying perishable food in the cold ground or permafrost, or for submerging food in cold streams.

Plastic bags can be useful impromptu floatation devices, both for personal survival and for floating equipment and gear across water.

Finally, I shall just mention that as with most other things in the world, a plastic bag can be a deadly weapon or a component in weapons. Again, all it takes is a bit of imagination. A simple rock in a plastic shopping bag swung at high speed can indent a human cranium, but a plastic bag is inherently hazardous because of suffocation. And, as mentioned, it can hold solids, liquids and gases, sometimes poisonous, which can cause death or serious bodily injury if accelerated, ignited, inhaled, or exploded.

The simple plastic bag can contribute to saving your life in a survival situation. Despite the consternation that it causes people involved in environmental causes, I find it rather an ironic advantage that plastic bags are so frequently found among the detritus, flotsam and jetsam of human society. So don't discount it when foraging for assets.

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