Survival Skills
Aluminum Foil Hacks | 7 Awesome Uses For The Outdoors
Take these aluminum foil hacks because you never know when they could be handy around your home or in a survival situation!
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Aluminum Foil Hacks Every Prepper Must Know
1. Shelter Insulator
To keep the heat in your survival shelter, you can use aluminum foil as an insulator. Put an aluminum foil lining inside your shelter to keep you warm when you're outdoors.
You can also do this in your sleeping bag and even in your pet's house. Good aluminum foil thickness will also protect your sleeping bag against moisture.
2. Electricity Conductor
When your flashlight goes off in the night and the spring in the battery container becomes loose, you can replace it with an aluminum foil. This aluminum foil battery trick is easy and straightforward.
Just make a substitute as wide and thick as the spring and the tin foil will act as the electrical conductor. These products have more uses other than a simple food wrap, indeed.
3. Lighting
At camp nights, sometimes your flashlight isn’t bright enough for you to see in the dark. To brighten up your lights, you can use aluminum foil packaging to intensify the light.
Try attaching the shiny side of the aluminum foil sheet to your source of light. This will improve the brightness of your surroundings.
4. Instant Plate
Aluminum foil is probably one of the most popular items used in the kitchen. This versatile product is also a good addition to your survival kit when you're outdoors.
When you’ve run out of paper plates while you're outdoors, aluminum foil can serve as your substitute plate. Just fold it into a form of a plate and voila, you're good to eat!
You can even cook in an aluminum foil. The aluminum plate can easily be disposed after usage or you can clean it up and reuse it for later.
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5. Keep Equipment Dry
When the rain starts to pour, you can use aluminum foil to wrap up your things to prevent them from getting wet. Prioritize the things you can't afford getting soaked, such as electrical gadgets and matches.
Remember though that aluminum sheet won't make your things waterproof, but it will definitely lessen the risk of getting wet.
6. Fishing Lure
Being a wilderness aficionado, you need to be resourceful and learn how to maximize the use of an item by repurposing it. There are several ways you can repurpose a simple household item such as an aluminum foil roll and use it for your survival when you're outdoors.
The reflective property of aluminum foil sheets can attract the fishes in the water. Use a little piece of aluminum foil as your fishing lure. Shape it like a small baitfish then attach it to your fishing hook.
7. Sharpen Blade
If you want to sharpen a dull pair of scissors, you can rub its blades in a thick piece of aluminum foil against both sides of the blade for about two to three minutes. After doing so, you can now use your scissors easily.
You can also do this trick with other blades like your survival knife, but you'll be needing a thicker aluminum foil. Make sure to be extra careful as you might cut yourself.
Watch this video from 2 Brother's Adventure for more aluminum foil hacks:
These are just some aluminum foil ideas that my friends and I tried while camping outdoors. Sure enough, there are a lot more uses to it than just food packaging.
If you're about to head out for an adventure, you might want to pack some aluminum foil sheets in your bug out bag. Who knows? You might be needing these hacks when you're out in the wild.
What other aluminum foil hacks do you know? Have you tried any of these tin foil hacks before? Share your Survival Life stories in the comments section below!
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The contents of this article are for informational purposes only. Please read our full disclaimer.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on April 2, 2018, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.
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Duane Sickmann
January 28, 2018 at 5:14 PM
Please don’t recommend aluminum foil for food or water use per the warnings in this article.
There are many more damming articles to be found on the web I chose this one.
Please read to the end.
My wife died of Alzheimer’s a truly debilitating diseas, and aluminum is linked as a cause of this disease.
Don’t take my word for it do some research and see the results, it will astound you.
I threw out all aluminum cooking pans ie: bread, pizza, fry and finally just normal cooking pans used for vegetables and switched entirely to Stainless steel, harder to find items like pizza pans bread pans, so I found them at Amazon.
JOEL W. SMIT
January 28, 2018 at 8:13 PM
Duane, I appreciate your concern, but two points. Ingested aluminum usually finds its way out of the body with minimal or no absorption. This debate continues and I wouldn’t argue if you preferred to err on the side of caution. Vaccines, on the other hand, are notorious for combining elemental aluminum (a preservative) with polysorbate 80 which opens up the protective blood/brain barrier. Together, massive overdoses of aluminum are mainlined directly into the brain causing destructive inflammation before being excreted. Unfortunately, some people are ‘poor excretors’ and cannot rid neurotoxic elements such as aluminum (said to be the worst known to man) from the brain well at all. Unavoidable damage is done regardless. Sometimes it’s immediate when a 10 pound infant is assaulted with a level hundreds of times more than the maximum exposure under the FDA for a full grown adult. Sometimes a lifetime of annual flu shots finally add up. I put the criminal blame at the feet of the vaccine industry where, in my educated opinion, it undoubtedly belongs.
My deepest, and sincere sympathies for your loss.
Uptopswag84 sTAy BRazy
January 29, 2018 at 6:45 AM
Not to mention isnt their aluminum in most deodorants sticks ? But i have heard what the gentleman said about his wife getting Alzheimer’s from the foil ( and first i want to say im so sorry for your loss sir and i mean no disrespect in my reply) i know as a kid we were told not to make smoking bowls out of aluminum foils for the exact reason he stated about his wife i also think alot of things we use cause many of our diseases especially cancer. God bless to you and your late wife Duane sickman just know she is in a way better place than we are our world has become torture to live in!!
Ken Colditz
January 29, 2018 at 9:50 AM
Aluminum foil isn’t as poisonous as most of you folks make it out to be. I worked in the aviation industry, which uses lots of aluminum. I worked with as many others have and I am fine and so are many others.
Water softeners causes more alzheimer’s in people than the use of aluminum foil, the salt used with do more damage to the brain in the long run.
Randy
February 11, 2018 at 4:21 AM
Is there a different between aluminum foil and tin?
Rob Bell
August 12, 2018 at 11:19 PM
Educated? Where? Without vaccines our lifespan would be shortened tremendously and disabilities due to polio would greatly increase. Thank goodness we have vaccines.
Anonymous
September 20, 2018 at 10:07 AM
In some instances vaccines ARE a good things. In other instances, like most medicines these days, they are overused and can cause issues.
E roc
January 28, 2018 at 11:00 PM
Aluminum is the second most poisonous metal to humans. The first being mercury
Ken Colditz
January 29, 2018 at 10:02 AM
You do not know what you are talking about and are talking out of your behind.
Only at excessive concentrations of aluminium are toxic manifestations seen and, hence aluminium is considered to possess a “low” potential for producing adverse effects.
Yvonne Sullivan
January 28, 2018 at 5:30 PM
In severe cold weather I put on a pair of socks, then wrap each foot with aluminum foil, then put on another pair of socks. This keeps my feet from every having numbness from the cold. As you walk the foil breaks up, but it still reflects your body heat back to you to keep your feet warm.
Anonymous
January 28, 2018 at 6:05 PM
Plastic grocery sacks works.
Randy
February 11, 2018 at 4:23 AM
But they make your feet sweet badly
JerryShaw
January 28, 2018 at 7:36 PM
Flu shots contain mercury and mercury causes aluminum to accumulate in the brain. This is probably what causes Alzheimer’s although aluminum pans may contribute just as does aluminum in deodorants.
Try boiling water in a paper cup. The water absorbs the heat and evaporates at 221 degres and takes the heat away from the cup so the paper doesnt get hot enough to burn. Paper burns at 471 degree so the water keeps it from getting hot enough to burn.
Vernon Weiss
January 29, 2018 at 7:45 PM
Can’t believe nobody went here already…..Tin Foil hats to protect us from the government reading our brain waves! Please don’t start a big discussion on this one! LOL!
neil
February 5, 2018 at 12:14 PM
When your brain frys you will wish you had used the foil!!
Dustin
March 6, 2018 at 4:34 PM
I was just about to. LOL
Anonymous
January 30, 2018 at 6:30 PM
You can’t control the temperature of,an open fire. The simple exposure of flame to a paper product…it WILL burn. It is part of the triad of fire. You need heat,fuel and oxygen. If you remove just one of these three components,there is NO fire. A paper cup,even filled with water,is just adding fuel,to the fire and the water may actually dowse the flame,by removing the oxygen from steam or stopping the heat,created from the fuel and making your “fuel”too wet to use.
Anonymous
February 4, 2018 at 12:56 PM
Why can I boil water in a good paper cup? I’m no one special, only patient, and I place the cup NEXT to the fire not over it……
Randy
February 11, 2018 at 4:25 AM
This is true you can make a plan from bark that will boil water and more
joetalkscoffee
January 31, 2018 at 3:00 PM
WOW……
Nunya
February 5, 2018 at 2:27 PM
It’s amazing the lack of clear thinking coupled with too much of the wrong kind of paranoia expressed here.
If you’re talking “survival” aluminum doesn’t sound like a bad option for boiling water or cooking/serving food and can be reusable. Normally I use regular plates and glass/ceramic mugs for eating and drinking; and paper ware. But if it’s “survival” well you use what you got.
If you have a paper bag or paper cup, (people really don’t know this?!) yes you can boil water and even cook food. But if you need a professor to verify: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9gKzea3Cno
You can also boil water in a plastic bottle if necessary, but you will cook up PBA’s. If it’s for a short term and survival…but I don’t do that a home or would I for a planned camping adventure.
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Wally
February 17, 2019 at 7:53 AM
My advise is this: Do NOT cook food in aluminum foil OVER HOT COALS or OVER DIRECT FLAME(S). Aluminum foil easily “off gasses” into the food you are cooking when exposed to direct flames. Try to acquire some 304 stainless steel “foil” about .010″ thickness. It is difficult to work with, can cut you, but it is reusable without off gassing into your food.
Rob
February 17, 2019 at 3:46 PM
Good to know…at Boy Scout camp we all make meals in foil and put them in the fire, time and time again.
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