Save Your Vision - Learn to Prevent Snow Blindness with Duct Tape!

How to Treat and Prevent Snow Blindness

It's Easy to Forget this When the World’s in Free Fall!

Duct tape has endless uses, one of which is the prevention of a particular type of blindness… snow blindness.  It’s much like a sunburn of the eye.  Usually not noticed until several hours afterword, it occurs from exposure to sunlight that’s been reflected off ice, snow, or less commonly sand and sea.  Fresh snow reflects about 80% of the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

Symptoms include increased tears and scratchy pain; it feels like having sand in your eyes.  It’s a condition particularly dangerous for the prepper. Pain and tears will make you functionally blind and unable to navigate over land.  It can be prevented two ways:  By wearing eye protection that blocks most of the ultraviolet radiation.  Or by making and wearing slit goggles.

Sunglasses with UV filters are not always available.  Lacking this modern convenience, Inuit peoples were able to solve the problem by carving goggles with a thin horizontal slit.  You can emulate this design by making a similar pair out of duct tape.

Treat snow blindness by removing the person from sunlight and covering their eyes with patches.  Administer pain relief while the patient rests.  Cool wet compresses can help, but dropping lidocaine or another anesthetic into your eyes inhibits healing.  Just as it did with the corneal abrasions we discussed in an earlier post (Click Here to Read).  

The pain, copious tearing, and visual disturbances typically resolve within 24–72 hours.  Further injury can be avoided by making duct tape glasses and wearing them whenever you are in high exposure environments.

-ThePrepperPages.com

Preppers! Learn How To Treat Foot Blisters And Stay Mobile

In Just 90 Seconds Learn to Treat Foot Blisters With Duct Tape So You Don't Fall Behind

Antelope everywhere agree - you never want to be the slowest animal in the herd! It never ends well. Never. Foot blisters can quickly turn a prepper into a pokey antelope. And none of us want that!

Blisters are a very common when people are forced to travel long distances on foot. This is a situation preppers are likely familiar with. The problem with foot blisters is acute pain. It can slow you down to a crawl when you need to be moving like a jackrabbit!

Blisters can occur anywhere, but typically develop on the feet and sometimes on the hands.  Both are caused by forceful rubbing or friction. Most fill with clear fluid, but some fill with blood. Both types can become infected, but are easy to treat.

When they occur on locations other than the feet, the recommendation is to leave them intact until they burst on their own. The overlying skin protects the underlying tissue from becoming infected. But on the foot this recommendation becomes impractical. Here you'll want to take a sterile needle and puncture the blister in a direction parallel to the skin. Make the hole as small as possible, but evacuate the fluid. After draining, place triple antibiotic ointment on the area, then cover it with a dressing.

Since the blister formed from abnormal friction, you will want to reduce the rubbing as best possible. Place a non-adhering dressing over the area and cover it with duct tape. Usually duct tape is much too hard on the skin, but on the foot the skin is thicker and can handle the adhesive. Duct tape can be made into a nearly frictionless surface with petroleum jelly. Simply cover the outer layer of the duct tape with Vaseline or ointment, and put your shoe or boot back on. This should remedy the situation until you get to your destination and have time to heal.

-ThePrepperPages.com

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