Use Your Smartphone to Stay Alive. Literally.

Since it’s the future now, everybody carries around a tiny little computing device with them in their pocket. Well, nearly everyone does. The fact of the matter is, the smartphone has become one of the most ubiquitous objects around, something without which the modern human being rarely leaves home. And it’s a good thing, too, because it turns out that the smartphone has a great many components inside its convenient little shell that can help you stay alive in an emergency.

A Signal Mirror

Every smartphone comes with a touch screen, most of which are capacitive in nature. This means that the screen uses a conductive material to interact with and respond to your body’s naturally conductive tendencies. When you press the screen, you distort its electrostatic field ever so slightly, which results in the command being sent to your phone and it doing whatever it was you wanted it to do.

Resistive touch screens are less common (they’re more prevalent in older touch-screen technology, like the touch screen consoles at a restaurant), and use two layers of electrically-resistive material that have a little bit of space in between them. Touching them together results in the command being sent through to the computer or phone.

In either case, there’s a conductive material behind the screen — a metallic, mirrored layer that lies just behind the screen. You’re going to use this as a signaling mirror.

The best way to do this is to hold up your forefinger and middle finger in the classic peace sign. Reflect the sun onto your hand and pass it between the gap at the bottom of the “V” — this will focus a bright flash of light at your target, which you can use to communicate important via heliograph, using Morse Code.

Compass

The field compass is no surprise to anyone who’s ever been in an outdoor scouting program or ever saw The Edge. All you need is some wire, and a nice silk sweater, and to be Anthony Hopkins. If you have a smartphone on hand, you can do just fine on two of those three issues.

Inside your smartphone are plenty of wire pieces that you’ll be able to use for making a field compass. You want these to be ferrous metals, meaning iron or iron alloy; copper will not work.

Pull apart the speaker of your phone, and you’ll find small magnets, which you can use to magnetize your pieces of wire. Do this by brushing the magnet against the wire repeatedly. Make sure you do this in only one direction, and in the same direction about 10 times. Remember which way you’re sweeping that piece of wire — that’s which end will point north.

Float the magnetized wire on a wood shaving or small leaf, and it will align itself along the North-South line.

Spear Points and Cutting Tools

Your smartphone’s circuit board is a nice, sturdy piece of equipment that you can sharpen into tools that are as lethal as they are helpful. Grab the circuit board and file the edges against a smooth rock — before long you’ll be able to narrow it down to a fine point, and use that to cut bark cordage, shave tinder, and a variety of other cutting activities.

Other portions of the circuit board — along with other metal components inside your smartphone — can be sharpened using similar methods and then bound to sticks (using the cordage you just made — nice!) to form a pretty effective spear with a nice broadhead arrow at the end of it.

Make Fire

In terms of survival value, the battery is quite possibly the most valuable aspect of your phone. Once you’ve used the modified circuit board to shave yourself some nice tinder, you’ll be ready to get yourself a nice fire going.

Be careful with this, as it’s a one-shot process. Peel off the battery’s coating, and grab some wire from another part of the phone. Touch each end of the wire to the positive and negative terminals of the battery. It won’t last long, but that wire will quickly get red hot. Touch it to your tinder or something else that’s quickly flammable and you should be able to start yourself a nice fire.

Fishing Lures

Breaking apart your phone, as you will quickly see should you find yourself needing to do so, immediately yields plenty of dangerously-shaped and colorful little bits of shrapnel that are perfect for making into fishing hooks and lures. Once you’ve used the filed-down circuit board to make yourself a bunch of bark cording, you’ll have fishing line for days.

When you’re making your lures, the gorge lure is the best — tie a longer, sharp piece of shrapnel perpendicular to the line. Bait it, and when the fish bites down and the line goes taut, the hook will “gorge” itself in the fish’s throat, giving you a nice and secure catch.

Obviously, you want to avoid busting up your phone as much as is possible. Even if you’re out in the middle of nowhere, your smartphone is a powerful and capable little machine that might very well be able to pick up some kind of signal and offer you a little bit of communication to the outside world. In working order, a smartphone is perhaps the device most likely to wind up saving your life. If it’s already broken, though, you can at least use it to help you survive in as many ways as possible.

Source: How to Use a [BUSTED] Cell Phone to Meet 5 Basic Survival Needs | The Art of Manliness