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This instructable is designed to tell you how to stay warm, in varying degrees of cold.
There will be pics in a few days.
This article assumes you do not have a house or apartment.
Being homeless in a car is the luckier of the two situations in some ways, unluckier in others, and deserves an Ible of it's own.
This also assumes level of society is infrastructure-intact.
I believe infrastructure-hiccup homelessness, again, deserves an Ible of it's own.
Yes, those are challenges, smartypants!
Here's a couple more,btw....
Save Water, Make a Doctor Sink - a regular sink-to-footpedal sink mod...anyone?
Quiet Compressed Air Car Mod-Making your car run on compressed air. quietly.
How to get Friable/FoodGrowing Land to be Considered a positive factor in Property Equity in residential neighborhoods, so composting/working the soil would build property value by it's own real merit.
Starting a garden with your whole Apartment Building to Feed Yourselves from a secure Garden!Rooftop edition?
How to Save The World From Itself in Your Free Time
NewOrleans/Georgia Style Sweet Potato Pecan Pie Recipe
OK! BACK TO THE TASK AT HAND!
So, crap, guess what. You're homeless.
Things didn't work out for now, and now, well, ...now what?
Where do we go from here?
First things first.
What does a human need? (not Want, but Need.)
Quickly.....unfortunately, much of your Western civilization programming will be working against you in this process. We've been taught to gratify many of our less important whims.
Fundamentally, a Need is something required for pragmatic survival.
A Want is something that would be nice. Your priorities may vary, but what a human needs to survive
is pretty simple. Air, Water, Food, Shelter. Sometimes you may additionally need medicine,which can occasionally be improvised.more about that later.
If it's cold, you have to figure out the way to stay warm. If you're in a place where it gets much below the 40s(fahrenheit. About 4.4 Celsius), you'll need to do it fairly quickly. Before dark.
When the sun goes down the temperature drops quickly, and that's bad news for you.
Even if you're a husky fella,
your extremities will chill and cramp easier, and if you go to sleep, if you wake up, you may wake up with hypothermia. Not fun.
There's also frostbite.. Oh, buddy.
If you're caught homeless in the cold, don't panic. This is survivable, and a chance to prove you're resourceful enough to do it well enough to come out healthy.
There will be pics in a few days.
This article assumes you do not have a house or apartment.
Being homeless in a car is the luckier of the two situations in some ways, unluckier in others, and deserves an Ible of it's own.
This also assumes level of society is infrastructure-intact.
I believe infrastructure-hiccup homelessness, again, deserves an Ible of it's own.
Yes, those are challenges, smartypants!
Here's a couple more,btw....
Save Water, Make a Doctor Sink - a regular sink-to-footpedal sink mod...anyone?
Quiet Compressed Air Car Mod-Making your car run on compressed air. quietly.
How to get Friable/FoodGrowing Land to be Considered a positive factor in Property Equity in residential neighborhoods, so composting/working the soil would build property value by it's own real merit.
Starting a garden with your whole Apartment Building to Feed Yourselves from a secure Garden!Rooftop edition?
How to Save The World From Itself in Your Free Time
NewOrleans/Georgia Style Sweet Potato Pecan Pie Recipe
OK! BACK TO THE TASK AT HAND!
So, crap, guess what. You're homeless.
Things didn't work out for now, and now, well, ...now what?
Where do we go from here?
First things first.
What does a human need? (not Want, but Need.)
Quickly.....unfortunately, much of your Western civilization programming will be working against you in this process. We've been taught to gratify many of our less important whims.
Fundamentally, a Need is something required for pragmatic survival.
A Want is something that would be nice. Your priorities may vary, but what a human needs to survive
is pretty simple. Air, Water, Food, Shelter. Sometimes you may additionally need medicine,which can occasionally be improvised.more about that later.
If it's cold, you have to figure out the way to stay warm. If you're in a place where it gets much below the 40s(fahrenheit. About 4.4 Celsius), you'll need to do it fairly quickly. Before dark.
When the sun goes down the temperature drops quickly, and that's bad news for you.
Even if you're a husky fella,
your extremities will chill and cramp easier, and if you go to sleep, if you wake up, you may wake up with hypothermia. Not fun.
There's also frostbite.. Oh, buddy.
If you're caught homeless in the cold, don't panic. This is survivable, and a chance to prove you're resourceful enough to do it well enough to come out healthy.
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Signing UpStep 1Things To Remember
Stay Dry - This makes your chances for staying warm much better. Your core heat can be leached out of you by the cold, so the drier you are, the warmer.
Layer up- Start with absorbant or moisture wicking long underwear if you have it, if not, you can improvise with
various materials.
Here's the idea you're going for.
The homeless guy from The Day After Tomorrow-he's got the right idea BUT if there is danger of getting wet, paper will not be your buddy. It'll stick to you and your clothes and keep you wet.
Find clean packing materials (platic/styro/cello, etc.)instead if you can, try loading docks behind stationary stores or hardware stores.
Keep your sense of humor and your temper- irrational thinking will waste your time and energy. Keep calm and be resigned to the idea that there is a solution to your problem, and you will find it if you focus.
Alcohol- a little might be okay, but a drunk homeless dude in the snow/rain is a bumsicle. not really a Need.
also, makes you give a lot of warmth away with excessive peeing.
Pee as soon as you need to.- your body puts the kettle on to heat up urine. It can use up body heat
you'll need to stay focused on surviving.
Layer up- Start with absorbant or moisture wicking long underwear if you have it, if not, you can improvise with
various materials.
Here's the idea you're going for.
The homeless guy from The Day After Tomorrow-he's got the right idea BUT if there is danger of getting wet, paper will not be your buddy. It'll stick to you and your clothes and keep you wet.
Find clean packing materials (platic/styro/cello, etc.)instead if you can, try loading docks behind stationary stores or hardware stores.
Keep your sense of humor and your temper- irrational thinking will waste your time and energy. Keep calm and be resigned to the idea that there is a solution to your problem, and you will find it if you focus.
Alcohol- a little might be okay, but a drunk homeless dude in the snow/rain is a bumsicle. not really a Need.
also, makes you give a lot of warmth away with excessive peeing.
Pee as soon as you need to.- your body puts the kettle on to heat up urine. It can use up body heat
you'll need to stay focused on surviving.
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http://divethefilm.com/default.aspx
this is a documentary about the "diving" culture and politics of waste.
EXCELLENT
thank you or your many good ideas - I pray my family or I never have to use them but even i not homeless - these are good ideas of items to give to someone who is... I stocked up on emergency blankets in my care and give them to the guys by the freeways rather than money...
I would also like to take this time to recommend
The Story of Stuff:(http://www.storyofstuff.com/) as further background,
and as well, I used to wait until Horrible Fright(harbor freight) had sales on tarps and furniture pads, and then buy and distribute.
My wife and myself used them as bedspreads for a few years, the blue ones are better than the black, but still, they keep you warm.
For any homeless person with internet access reading this:
Look for if Food Not Bombs feeds in your area.
link here:(http://www.foodnotbombs.net/)
It could mean another regular nutritious meal, and nutrition is your priority, because it means your life.
You could get pretty sick living on Dollar Burger and Value Meal.
So seek out all the nutrition you can!
Thanks for reading!
If your homeless it's vital to stay clean and neat, then you won't be run out of restaurants, etc. If you can get a buck or two for a cup of coffee, you can usually spend an hour or so in a restaurant late at night, especially if you order coffee and say your waiting for someone to join you. Don't overlook fast food joints that stay open late. One near a movie or other entertainment venue that gets a late crowd if good. You won't be noticed by the staff, and you can usually find a newspaper to read. If you can grab someone else's empty food container and sit it on your table, they won't ask you to leave, assuming you are a paying customer. Food courts at the mall work the same way. You can sit for an hour or longer, undisturbed.
In the winter, staying dry becomes more of a challenge, so it is important to use any available resources, including :
laundromats (dual purpose)
covered bus stops
libraries
supermarkets
large chain bookstores
multilayered parking lots.
pay toilets(especially with hand dryers.)
I spent a few nights in this apartment building's laundry room and used the dryer, it was a huge apartment complex and late at night. my story was to be i was new in the building.(not recommended)
i found the door sensor and jammed it in and dropped in a quarter.
beware of sleeping in trees. yes, you will escape park sprinklers.
BUT you may roll off and get seriously injured(don't ask)
99 cent stores have gloves and socks intermittently as well.
Thanks for reading!
The main concept behind preserving heat is that to keep your heat you need a thick layer of dry air to stay put all around you...
So, when you wear a thick pullover, it is not the wool but the space between the wool that retains that amount of air unmoved what keeps you warm.
Then, if those 'gaps' between the wool could be overlaped by a layer of another pullover's wool the air would be kept better than if the gaps of both layers coincide it their possition... You won't retain that air as easy!
Then comes the interaction fact between the material and our body-skin. Our skin needs to breath. So, synthetic materials would choke our cells and make them sweat. If they breath ok, we won't get wet.
Thanks again for your job!
If you want to print it, you'll need to add all the interesting stuff that you mention inside the pictures...
alberto
The bubble wrap is nice if you can find it but what about if you cant? Besides you missed the best insulater, dry newspaper. Take it sheet by sheet scrunch it up and shove it in between some of your layers.
Bubble wrap and foams are waterproof, that's why they were preferred, paper when wet,well, is wet paper.
..I suppose if you made a suit of it thick enough and wet it down it would do a wetsuit like heat retention, but it 'd be messy and rot quick!
If you can put in into shopping bags or wrap it in dry plastic if you are lucky enough to have more than one shirt to tuck in. also works well with bagged packing peanuts, or just supermarket bags themselves are an excellent a
and also, if you buy bulk peanuts you can use those shells.
the newsprint will come off a bit, so don't put it in between your skin and clothes.
Thanks for your comment!
Stay warm out there!