Bandanas

Obviously these are great survival items, I mean, boy scouts and cowboys don’t just wear them to look cool!

The first and most obvious use is that they can be used as a scarf to keep in body heat and keep the wind out.

You can also wrap them around your neck or head to keep sun off of you and prevent sunburn. Or if you wet them and wrap them around your head they will not only keep the sun off your skin but also evaporate heat away from your head keeping you cool. Short on water? Remember, you can always use urine if you need to!

In wet weather conditions you can wrap one around your forehead to help keep the rain out of your eyes.

In a pinch they can even be used to make a tourniquet by tying them round your arm or leg and then using something like a branch to twist and apply pressure.

Although fairly short they are quite long if you use them diagonally from corner to corner meaning you can use them as an improvised strap to tie items to your pack or belt.

Similarly they can be tied at all four corners and used as a pouch for carrying things. Very useful for when you are foraging for food like berries and mushrooms.

They can also be put over your mouth and nose to help prevent the inhalation of dust or smoke. Or tie them round your face, this will also camouflage you better or even conceal your identity if needs be.

They could even be used as a makeshift flannel for cleaning yourself. This is great if its cold out and you don’t want to go jumping into a river to get clean. Instead you can heat up some water over the fire and wash yourself off with the bandana.

If you needed to you could cut your bandana into strips and tie the strips to trees or landmarks help to mark a trail either for others to follow or for you to follow back the way you came. This obviously works best with a colored bandana and is a bit of a waste if you ask me! But the option is there.

Now, in a pinch, I’m talking a real pinch. A bandana can come in handy as some back up toilet roll. Now this really is a waste of a good bandana as I’m assuming you’re not going to want to wash that off and use it again, but it can be done. Moving on…

They can also be used to cover a wound, as long as you haven’t previously used it as toilet roll. It’s not recommended that you use a bandana as a dressing however as they’re not sterile, but if you have no other way of stopping the bleeding then they are much better than nothing.

If you have a brightly colored bandana they can also be used for signaling.