Salt is a necessary nutrient for survival. Salt is an electrolyte. Hyponatremia occurs when the concentration of salt in your blood is low. Hyponatremia can occur in multiple situations including drinking too much water when sweating and during endurance activities and diarrhea. When the body is low on salt, the water levels rise in the cells. This causes the cells to swell. The swelling can be life threatening. Symptoms of hyponatremia are nausea, vomiting, headache, confusion, fatigue, irritability, weakness, cramps, seizures, and coma.
Normally salt needs can be met by eating food. However, if society were to break down salt would be very valuable not just for making food taste delicious but also preservation of food. It’s important to remember that if you cannot find salt in your foods it will be necessary to find elsewhere. There are several sources of salt, however.
One of the lesser-known ways to extract salt is from Hickory. In order to extract salt from Hickory you would need to gather up a lot of Hickory roots. The more Hickory roots you can find, the more salt you’ll be able to remove. After gathering as many Hickory roots as possible you will want to cut up the roots into very small pieces. The pieces should not be so small that you can’t strain them out later. Once you have the pieces cut down as small as you can while being able to strain them out, you will place them in a pot with some water and boil them. Once the water begins to boil rapidly, wait 15 minutes, then strain out all of the Hickory pieces. After that, boil it down until all the water is gone. You will only be left with a black substance, and this is your Hickory salt. This is not the most productive way to make salt. It is one way though, in an emergency situation to get the necessary electrolyte in order to survive.
The most productive way to get salt is from seawater. Everyone knows that the oceans are full of salt water. If you happen to be near a body of saltwater, it would be very wise to collect up as much salt as possible and bring it in land where saltwater is hard to find. It would be a great barter item and wonderful for food preservation. First, you’re going to want to collect a lot of sea water and filter it so that there is no seaweed, shells, or sand if at all possible. If you can’t filter it, collecting a very large amount and siphoning off the water on top is the best that you can do in that situation. In a situation where you will be creating a lot of salt, it is best to have a pot that holds more than 5 gallons and that can be boiled over an opened fire.
Once you have your filtered water in your large pot, place it over a large fire and boil off all of the water. It’s important that there is nothing in the water or the salt except for salt water. Filtering through a fine sieve or even muslin cloth before boiling is the best way to make sure of this. Once you are 2/3 of the way done boiling off the water reduce the heat so that the salt does not stick to the bottom of the pan. Once you have boiled the water off completely, there should be crystals of salt on the bottom. These crystals of salt will have trace minerals in them. Many companies sell these crystals of salt just this way without any further purification necessary.
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