I wish there were some instructions on what to do with all those items... I would love to know why a bandana, aluminium foil and a bleach are used for in an emergency.
Bandanna - you need something to blow your nose on, do you think you can still buy Kleenex afterwards; also makes decent bandage - I have had to wrap injuries with them occasionally when camping or working at landscaping.
Aluminum foil - you can cook in it; you can wrap stuff in it, but you can do that with plastic; save the foil for stuff where other things won't work.
Chlorine bleach can disinfect first aid stuff that gets dirty, but more importantly it can disinfect water supplies - it isn't as good as iodine, but it is good enough, cheaper, and if you buy much iodine suitable for disinfecting water, nowadays you are liable to have a midnight interview with some vicious twits looking for your meth lab.
With regard to the bandanna, one of the things I learned repeatedly through hard experience at Burning Man is that you never leave your dust mask behind. In the last few years, I've had a number of times when I wished I'd not forgotten that lesson: when I was in Riobamba when Tungurahua erupted, when the irritating smoke from the burning fields enveloped Buenos Aires, and an occasion while traveling in December when I was subjected to an involuntary mosquito-fogging. I imagine the protestors and bystanders in Cairo wished they had dust masks, too.
Obviously in most of these cases there are still particles too small to be stopped by a dust mask (or, especially, a bandanna), and of course many fires produce gaseous poisons much worse than mere particulates, but it still makes a real difference.
Thanks, that's exactly what I meant. The problem is that if you lack experience (most of people in the west have little experience taking care for themselves on their own) it's easy to forget such things.
Btw, you can also sterilize a needle using a lighter.
FWIW, you'd probably want to sterilize the thread as well. That's the part that's staying in the wound, and it's a bit easier to sterilize a thread with bleach than with fire.
And about "hand sanitizer". Its alcohol. Protocol for sterilizing in alcohol requires minutes of submersion. So don't think those little squirt bottles are going to be helpful.
Chewing gum stimulates the production of saliva which temporarily eases your thirst. This can buy you time to find drinkable water, and to help you to wait for water to be treated - you DO NOT want to risk diarrhea in a survival situation.
