I need some sanitary napkins

Yes, I am a guy. And no, don't get any ideas. But I do really need some sanitary napkins. Something I picked up from a very close friend the other evening. He got me thinking (yeah, he is a guy too) and now I cannot do without a packet of sanitary napkins in my pack.

Before you start getting any ideas, let me put your mind at rest before it goes into overdrive thinking of a million perverted reasons why I would want to keep sanitary napkins and what's my sudden obsession with them.

Well, as you probably know I run a wilderness survival school. Also urban survival training and first aid training. And that is where I learned of this wonderful new usage for sanitary napkins. I wonder why I did not think of it before. In fact, I was speaking to my daughter the other day and telling her to try and open her mind to look at things differently, to find new ways to use existing things. For all my talk, I failed to see the obvious use of sanitary napkins.

IT IS A WONDERFUL PIECE OF FIRST AID EQUIPMENT TO STOP BLEEDING.

An arterial wound can kill you. The blood will spurt out thick and fast and you lose a lot of blood very very quickly. A loss of one liter can put the body in shock, a loss of two liters and you are in extreme danger. Three liters of blood less in your body and you are dead. So the bleeding has to be stopped with whatever means possible.

One way to stop bleeding and that is what we have been doing for so long is to use cotton or gauze. But an arterial wound requires a lot of rolls of cotton to stem the bleeding. Soon the cotton will be wet and soggy, requiring more and more cotton.

A sanitary napkin is designed to absorb blood. And if the advertisements are to be believed, they can absorb blood indefinitely and copious amounts of it. The blood will not seep, I think it gels inside the napkin. And when we are talking of arterial bleeding we are talking of a lot of blood. Apart from what the manufacturers and inventors designed it for, how best can we use a sanitary napkin for? So the bleeding is not from the area that it was made for. So what. A sanitary napkin in my first aid will do the job of maybe half a dozen cotton rolls.

Survival is about improvisation. It is about being open to ideas. It is a taking decisions probably not listed in any book. One needs to survive and one needs to do the best possible, with the given resources. A sanitary napkin in my first aid kit is a boon. Another lesson learned.

This example just goes to show that there is no end to learning. The definite book on survival is yet to be written. Every log, every branch, every brook, pond and river, every grain of sand in the harsh desert landscape can and will continue to teach us newer and better ways to survive. The effort and the learnings continue.

So, till such time as someone does not invent a better blood absorbent, dump a pack of sanitary napkins into your first aid kit. I hope you never ever have to put it to the test in a real life emergency situation though. Have a safe life in the wilderness.