Mike the Marine shows us how to use pants as a flotation device to avoid drowning.
https://youtu.be/1vxHJWyYnQM
Even though I know how to swim, I still have a very real fear of drowning. I mean, let’s say you’re in some type of boating accident and you end up in the water without a life jacket… what do you do? You try to survive by treading water and you also try to help others, but the reality is that we only have so much energy. So our best bet is to find something that will help keep you afloat. But what if there’s no such thing around? Well, that’s where Mike the Marine comes in. Mike is going to show you a lost skill that will help you survive a drowning scenario. Seriously… I had no idea what the heck he was doing, but the end result is truly incredible. They totally need to teach this in swimming lessons!
Morse code is a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment. The International Morse Code encodes the ISO basic Latin alphabet, some extra Latin letters, the Arabic numerals and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals as standardized sequences of short and long signals called “dots” and “dashes”, or “dits” and “dahs”. Because many non-English natural languages use more than the 26 Roman letters, extensions to the Morse alphabet exist for those languages.
Each character (letter or numeral) is represented by a unique sequence of dots and dashes. The duration of a dash is three times the duration of a dot. Each dot or dash is followed by a short silence, equal to the dot duration. The letters of a word are separated by a space equal to three dots (one dash), and the words are separated by a space equal to seven dots. The dot duration is the basic unit of time measurement in code transmission. To increase the speed of the communication, the code was designed so that the length of each character in Morse varies approximately inversely to its frequency of occurrence in English. Thus the most common letter in English, the letter “E”, has the shortest code, a single dot.
Morse code is most popular among amateur radio operators, although knowledge of and proficiency with it is no longer required for licensing in most countries. Pilots and air traffic controllers usually need only a cursory understanding. Aeronautical navigational aids, such as VORs and NDBs, constantly identify in Morse code. Compared to voice, Morse code is less sensitive to poor signal conditions, yet still comprehensible to humans without a decoding device. Morse is therefore a useful alternative to synthesized speech for sending automated data to skilled listeners on voice channels. Many amateur radio repeaters, for example, identify with Morse, even though they are used for voice communications.
SOS, the standard emergency signal, is a Morse code prosign.
In an emergency, Morse code can be sent by improvised methods that can be easily “keyed” on and off, making it one of the simplest and most versatile methods of telecommunication. The most common distress signal is SOS or three dots, three dashes and three dots, internationally recognized by treaty.
Last summer my husband took me camping for the first time. At every opportunity, he passed along outdoor-survival lore.
One day we got lost hiking in the deep woods. He tried the usual tactics to determine direction – moss on the trees (there was no moss), direction of the sun (it was an overcast day). Just as I was beginning to panic, he spotted a small cabin off in the distance. He pulled out his binoculars, studied the cabin, turned and led us right back to our camp.
“That was terrific,” I said. “How did you do it?”
“Simple,” he replied. “In this part of the country all TV satellite dishes point south.”
