Cuts and Scrapes
It doesn’t take much to just ignore a small scrape on your leg when you are in a survival situation, but that small, insignificant wound can get infected quite easily if you are in the wrong conditions. If you are not careful about your wounds, even the smallest scrape or nick can lead to gangrene and other infections.
That small scrape that your chose to ignore can eventually lead to your death if you continue to ignore it for much longer. So read this because it might just prevent an emergency amputation.
Small wounds that don’t require stitches can easily heal up on their own and with time will barely be noticeable. The best way to treat small wounds is just clean them, then apply a simple dressing and bandage. Cleaning small wounds is best done with hydrogen Peroxide (H202), alcohol (40% +) or iodine. If you do not have access to any of those wound cleaning liquids, you can easily use water to wash away any contaminates that are present in your little boo boo.
Applying bandages is the best way to keep a small wound from getting infected by your local environment. Any survivalist, prepper, or outdoor enthusiast that knows anything will have access to some emergency medical supplies. If, for whatever reason, you find yourself in a situation that has left you without any bandages, dressings or other medical supplies, the best thing to make a wound dressing out of is clean cloth. I can not emphasize enough that the cloth has to be absolutely clean. Tossing a dirty rag onto a wound is guaranteed to lead to infection.
Once your clean cloth is placed on top of the wound you are going to want to secure it with anything that you can find. The best option is more cloth, but anything will do as long as you remember to secure it so that it does not interfere with the blood flow of the body.
I know that there are times when finding a clean cloth is too much to ask because you have been surviving too long to keep yourself clean or your woke up naked in the desert after a wild peyote trip. If you have found yourself in a situation like this, it is a good option to know something about your local plants. People have been using the leaves and bark from various plants for thousands of years to heal their wounds and with a little knowledge of your local flora, you can do this too. I would happily tell you exactly what to use, but every region has different plants and I don’t want to confuse anyone into accidentally using a poisonous plant that might resemble a harmless one where I live.
So if you take at least one thought with you from this article, let it be the knowledge that untreated cuts get infected and that you should treat every scrape with the same care that you would with a major wound.
