Tricks and Tips: The Tampon Survival Tool

I saw this awhile ago and admit I’d never thought about using tampons as a survival tool before. It’s not something that most people would probably think to use one for, but, if you’re lost in the middle of nowhere, it might come in handy. Now, my characters won’t be using a tampon at all for survival, but I thought it was cool that anyone could use.

Uses:

1. Medical-Since tampons are designed to be ultra-absorbent, they can make a good bandage. All that you need to do is open the tampon up and tape it over the wound as dressing.

2. Filter Water- I’m not quite sure about this one but apparently, you can use a tampon as a crude water filter (although it won’t filter out biological, chemical or heavy metals). But, what you can do is shove the tampon into the neck of a bottle and filter water through and THEN boil the water. To see a set of picture instructions on how to do this, visit Art of Manliness.

3. Fire Starter- Now this is what I would expect more than the other uses. Cotton makes a great tinder and when you pull the cotton fibers of a tampon apart, you can easily start a fire with it. If you’re careful, you can use one tampon to create 3 or 4 fire-starting tinder bundles.

4. Make a Wick- Again, at the Art of Manliness (there’s great pictures!), use the string on a tampon as a wick. He used rendered animal fat in a mussel shell he found. It burns for about 20 mins. According to the author, pine sap can also work.

5. Something I really thought the author from the article mentioned that I wouldn’t have thought of, is using the applicator part of the tampon to create a container to retain water. He used a stump or piece of a log and then blew through the applicator to intensify the hot coals to burn a cavity. It took him about 30 minutes to create a cavity large enough to hold 2 cups of water.

6.Waterproof case- Tampons come in a waterproof package/sleeve. This makes a good resource for keeping items you want dry in (i.e. matches, tinder). Just make sure to tie the open end closed.

What other things can you create with a tampon? It’s an interesting article. The author talks about using the tampon as a straw, blow dart, cordage, and fishing bobber.