Terrain Training Tuesday: Shipwrecked! Part 2

Isn’t it great that you have found dry land and have a kick arse shelter. Now before all the others (if there are any) turn this into just another episode of Survivor (why don’t any of them do any survival training or reading beforehand?! This used to always puzzle me until I realised they were all fools.), your own survival training should kick in. Being a good minion of HiiRagi you should have learnt over the past couple of months all the basic skills you will need for a variety of terrains. Because of this, we’re looking at another facet of being ship wrecked: Smoke signals!

First used by Native Indians and the Chinese, who used them along the Great Wall (makes me think of the beacons being lit in LOTR but I am a complete geek), they are an incredibly useful communication technique within their range (meaning as long as you can see them). Once you have a fire started, you simply cover it with a blanket or the similar and then uncover it. Wha La! Signals! Best to put lots of greenery and grass onto the fire to increase the amount of smoke your fire produces. Now, people train to be able to change the style of signals that you can send so they control the size, shapes and time between puffs.

Apparently there is a secret smoke signal code...but what’s the point?! The only universal code I could find (and probably the one that will get you rescued) is:

One Puff: Attention
Two Puffs: All’s well
Three Puffs: Danger or Trouble

I suspect though that if you are in the middle of nowhere and someone sees smoke, they are probably going to check it out, however to pass the time I’m sure it will be hilarious to make up a code all of your own.

The other thing to remember is to build your fire somewhere up high so that it will be visible (once again think the beacons are lit from LOTR as seen in the image above, once again, I’m a geek). If your there for a while it would be super cool to build a raft and then go from island to island and build up fires on all the highest points and recreate that epic scene. I will leave it up the individual minion to figure out how to convince others that that would be a good idea but I know you are a resourceful bunch. And one last thing, try to build your fire so that it won’t get away and burn down the whole island, the local inhabitants will be most appreciative.

Next week, hunting for treasure. I was going to look at that today but it’s a subject close to my heart and I have A LOT to say on the subject. Something to look forward to, I’m sure...

I'm sorry, i just found this image randomly and thought it was hilarious....Take that Robin!