Blacklights are devices that emit ultraviolet light, which can be extremely beneficial in survival situations. This type of light is beyond the spectrum of visible light that humans can see.
However, it is a form of electromagnetic radiation that can be absorbed by some materials that then convert the energy to visible light.
This process is called fluorescence, which is great for blacklight parties and detective shows, but there are also practical and potentially lifesaving uses for blacklights in survival situations.
Here are nine survival uses for a blacklight.
Water Purification
Certain blacklights can be very effective at purifying water. When used in conjunction with effective filtering, UV-C blacklights are extremely capable of neutralizing a wide range of microorganisms by causing severe damage to their DNA and making them incapable of replication.
Weaker UV-A blacklights are also capable of this but require the water to be in a clear plastic bottle and it takes significantly longer. To put the differences in perspective, UV-A (longwave) is used in tanning beds, while UV-C (shortwave) is used to purify water and air in healthcare settings.
In a survival situation, however, if you don’t have a blacklight, you can use this method to extract clean, drinkable water out of thin air. Water is one of the most vital resources for survival, and this technique might even save your life when SHTF.
Scorpion Detection
Scorpions are found in much of the southern and western reaches of the US and can be potentially dangerous.
They love to crawl inside boots and packs at night, but luckily, their exoskeletons contain materials that fluoresce under blacklight, giving a blue-green glow that is easily spotted.
This can also be useful when traveling on foot or setting up camp at night if you want to check the area first.
Inspecting Gear for Fungal Growth
Fungal growth can be good or bad, depending on your situation. If you are foraging for food and need to continue your search into the night, chanterelles, honey, sweet tooth, and other species of edible mushrooms fluoresce under UV light.
Many toxic species also fluoresce, so you will need to know your mushroom identification beforehand. Many species of mold will fluoresce, so you can use a blacklight to check your gear or any potential sleeping area for growth before it gets out of hand or you unintentionally immerse yourself within their spores.
Prolonged exposure to certain fungi can lead to infections in the body, particularly respiratory or skin infections. If you inhale fungal spores or come into contact with contaminated surfaces, you may develop an infection that could require antibiotics.
Antibiotics will be very hard to come by in a crisis, when medical supplies are scarce and access to professional healthcare may be limited. You can’t generally buy antibiotics over the counter, so here is how to stockpile antibiotics without a prescription.
Wildlife Tracking
Blacklights are useful for wildlife tracking by making animal urine visible.
This can be used to track prey animals like deer, avoid predator animals like coyotes, or notice pest animals like mice.
Importantly, you can get a better picture of animal patterns by finding locations with an increased abundance of urine markers, giving you greater confidence to trap and hunt in those locations.
Catfish and certain carp will also fluoresce, making fishing easier. In coastal areas, clams and oysters often fluoresce, though the intensity may be very weak.
Checking for Cleanliness
Good hygiene is always important, but even more so in survival situations where one infection could spell your demise. Blacklights can be used to check for multi-faceted cleanliness. Older food can be checked for mold or bacterial growth. Water bottles can be checked for suspended debris and organic compounds and then potentially purified, as discussed earlier.
Sleeping areas, especially in urban survival situations, can be checked for urine, blood, saliva, and other bodily fluids. If you or someone in your party is injured and medical treatment is required, a blacklight can be used to check the treatment area and any medical tools being used for the presence of potentially infectious contamination.
Insect Luring
Much like regular light, blacklights attract insects’ attention. This can be useful if you want the insects to leave you alone by placing the light somewhat distant from your sleeping area to draw insects away. In more extreme survival situations, you may want to draw insects in for the purpose of consuming them. A blacklight can be very useful for either scenario.
OpSec
Not all survival scenarios are limited to trekking through the wilds in search of civilization. When humans themselves threaten your survival, operational security becomes an important factor to consider. We only have so much mental capacity, and some important information may need to be written down.
Coordinates and routes to your bugout location, contact information, passwords, codes, cache locations, and observation logs can cause you great grief or loss if they fall into the wrong hands. Blacklights are fairly uncommon in regular life, so UV ink can be used to conceal this information in otherwise useless documents and remain visible to only you and your blacklight.
Emergency Light
Again, being fairly uncommon in regular life, a black light makes a good signal light that will attract attention if purposely used to do so. If you want to avoid attention, black lights can be used in a concealed fashion that is more difficult to detect than yellow or white light. This can be useful for stealthily searching an area or digging through your pack while in open areas.
If your survival involves an enemy with night vision capability, blacklights are safer to use as they are normally outside the visible spectrum of night vision devices. You can learn more here about how to avoid night and thermal vision when SHTF
Finding Minerals
Calcite is calcium carbonate. It is one of the most common minerals on Earth and is frequently found in limestone, marble, seashells, stalactites, and stalagmites.
Depending on the type of blacklight you have and the impurities of the mineral, calcite commonly fluoresces red, blue, orange, or yellow.
The raw mineral can be collected and then dropped as a bread trail to find your way back to camp after dark or as markers to designate areas of interest.
Stalactites and stalagmites are the conical structures protruding from the ceilings and floors of caves. By using a blacklight, you will be able to see these structures and not only avoid injuring yourself on them but can use them to increase your spatial awareness and navigational abilities while within caves. A white or yellow light will generally be better for this purpose, but a blacklight can add additional awareness and simultaneously show residue traces from animals and humans that may still be in the cave.
Calcite is quite common in mining operations, and finding piles of it could lead you to mineshafts that can be used for shelter or for scavenging. Lead, copper, and zinc are commonly associated with calcite and can all be easily melted and used in survival situations with limited resources. Concentrations of calcite within the mineshaft will help you pinpoint the best areas to collect.
Practical survival uses of blacklights are abundant, especially with practice and some complimentary training in mineralogy, biology, hunting, and foraging. It is important to know that there are longwave and shortwave blacklight spectrums, and you will need both to get the full benefits of blacklights in survival situations. Luckily, many consumer blacklights allow you to select between each spectrum. A simple blacklight keychain can be extremely useful for detection purposes, but you will want a dedicated device for water purification and more energy-intensive functions.
What are some other survival uses for blacklights? Let us know below!
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Much thanks for the thoughtful compilation – one more use, for those of us plagued by hornworms that go after tomato crops, is to prowl the farm at night inspecting the plants. Nearly invisible in daylight, Hornworms glow in the dark under UV too!
Maybe it will work on spotting non citizens walking across the open border.
Do people know all those 83 billions of US weapons left in Afghanistan are in south America and Mexico coming up to border state or town for the massing or staging military age foreigners at several places in America.
What could happen, will FEMA help us when we get attacked?
I remember the 1984 movie Red Dawn southern border invasion, it could happen with the knuckleheads in charge who give vital funds to illegals than Americans last.
Isn’t great Harris, Walz, Biden take care of illegals; while we still have Americans, Afghans who worked for the USA left behind either hiding, Tortured or dead.
Working DOGs were left behind the disastrously pullout withdrawal. The biggest airbase next to China was given over to China by Biden.
America better figure out which politician will lead our country, either to prosperity or doom and gloom, we have about 30 days left to decide who will be president.
Remember Harris, she said was the last person left in the room with Biden that made very bad decisions for America.
Frank
It is a shame the military private agency dogs were left behind with those terrorist who hate dogs hopefully many were saved or ran away from those throat cutters.
We now have those throat cutters here in America, time to clean house.
them pesky buggers, i swear if you’d plant a tomato plant on the moon’s surface pesky hornworm would be there. i capture them, then lay then when i know birds are around “and there’s your dinner!”
This is good stuff on a useful device as long as we have workable batteries and the bulb don’t burnout. Comes in handy to see if the hotel/motel room you stay at has changed the bed sheets and sanitized the room, especially if diseased illegals stayed there.
Amazing how FEMA had a hard time getting the flood area in two places. For red tape an paperwork and built showers for the FEMA workers.
The real America saved themselves through no real help from Biden, Harris, Walz current people in charge to fix the problems. But give illegals some $1000.00 a night hotel rooms, so American homeless and homeless veterans can freeze outside an styarve. Is this the Marxist many of you sheeple will vvote for?
People and private organizations like Glenn Beck Mercury One helped get supplies in. Elon Musk asked by Trump got Starlink into areas to get communications up.
The elitist of the Biden-Harris administration puppets by Obama, Soros who hate America and unexpected bureaucrats that are running the current presidential decisions of the front man shown in public.
FEMA funds are gone, used for illegals, what?
Illegals are getting hard earned social security and medicare, medicaid, they didn’t pay into the funds, Biden-Harris-Walz will bankrupt all then if any jobs are left seniors will have to work or die, loose their homes to illegals.
$1.4 billion dollars plane flights into the night of illegals to a house near you.
$750.00 one time funds giving to the hurricane victims and Maui fire victims got a one time $700.00 payment. Both hard working areas of people lost everything got nothing compared to illegals expensive hotel rooms, free food, clothing and free schooling.
While Ukraine has gotten about $200 billion taxpayer funds, that war is the EU, the European countries war, why aren’t the Europeans funding Ukraine?
Defund FEMA, useless like the Home Land Security umbrella agency blanket, the agencies need a better network. Home land secretary is useless taking care of illegals than Americans first.
Illegals are the American legal voter replacements taking over our America, you think the Washington DC Deep State cares about us legal Americans?
Who will you be voting for and will those in the hurricane areas be able to vote in November 5th as they have no permanent structures for voting?
But rest assured your illegals have access to voting and mail in ballots like in California and New York from their warm cozy hotel high dollar rooms.
The blacklight is great maybe it will help in locating buried victims of the NC hurricane, as Biden, Harris, FEMA, are useless no funds for real Americans. Only local people are helping themselves and private organizations. Not the govt owned NGO’s who cater to the illegals using poor income American taxpayers money stupidly.
No thanks Biden, Harris for open borders and selling the unused border fence materials then continuing to build the border wall.
If fences don’t work then why is it the first thing liberals build around their property. Or live in gated communities with armed guards 24/7 duty, we can’t secure our American borders, North and South?
Will the IRS demand taxes from those hurricane victims and not from the illegals?
Right with you, we are on the Border of the worst affected areas in the Appalachians. People will not believe what Fema is doing here now, and the signs point to BlackRock. Watch for future stories about lithium mines. Property is being confiscated.
Good idea for those traveling by gas powered vehicles to hotel rest stops. That want to know if the beds have clean sheets or break out your sleeping bags instead.
There are a lot of gross people whose bathroom habits are questionable.
Checking for garden bugs might work. Thanks.
I have in my vehicles, a queen sized sheet, a blanket, sleeping bag and a sleeping bag insert. I NEVER sleep in motel beds anymore! Recently, I had my tranny go out unexpectedly while driving…had to stay overnight in a motel 6. Used the items and slept fine, knowing I wouldn’t get any unwanted critters or nasties there.
I also put a clean sheet on top of the bed, so my other items don’t come in contact with anything. The sheet is easy to toss in the washer when home again.
Get a few pairs of quality tight-fitting long johns, they keep the bed bugs out, but you do need to do something about your hands, feet & head-face.
Can not help you there.
Wow! Those were a lot of other suggestions for using a black light!! Thanks for all those other ideas guys!
Does that blacklight work on bird flu surfaces, people and animals?
In Vietnam several tigers died from bird flu, guess what the keeper fed the tigers was raw chicken, dumb!
The election is coming soon will there be another liberal October surprise close to November 5th, Covid like flu of the current bird flu popping up in various locations like Covid was?
Many liberals are already their virtue signaling mask wearing BS right now.
The sheeple are running wild in the streets believing the old Marxist playbook of fearmongering again with Covid or bird flu, come on get a grip people.
This November 5, 2024 is a vote to save America from being ruled by either the United Nations or China if you stay home and don’t vote but let the illegals vote their way.
It is your America, what will you do?
God bless America.
Viruses and diseases do not exist
They were both created by the pharmaceutical industry who uses the flawed ‘Germ Theory’ to sell medicines and vaccines to the populace for monetary gain and population control.
If the ‘germ theory’ was correct there wouldn’t be a single human being alive today to tell the story.
Germs, bacteria, fungus, pathogens and even viruses (which are not viruses but protein based exosomes within our RNA) are everywhere.
Life is made up of these things, our bodies are made up of these things.
So called ‘diseases’ are purely symptoms of an underlying build up of toxicity within the cells.
So called ’viruses’ are manufactured within our own bodies as a protection mechanism against over toxicity.
When we are overly toxic our bodies create a natural detoxification process called a flu, a cold or pneumonia to rid the body of these deadly toxins.
Viruses are not contagious in any way or form.
The only way to catch a ‘virus’ is to be injected with one via a vaccine.
Dr Fauci, CDC, politicians, NGO’s and other cohorts after this election whoever is in office must punish these people by monetary and prison time. Like those politicians who put active Covid cases into retired senior facilities causing many deaths and harm to the public in America.
Covid vaccine was not tested before injected into the public by the panicked Biden, Harris and Obama healthcare system.
Politicians like Newscum kept their children in private school while Americans were kept home. He also kept his businesses running while mom and pop businesses shutdown some closed for good. He went to the French Laundry restaurant not masked.
Like other politicians and bureaucrats did when the public was confined to their homes as prisoners, basically soft martial law.
The well publicized salon owner made to open up for Pelosi to get her hair fixed while no one could go to closed salons.
I know the public has short term memories when it comes to which people they will vote for in this 2024 presidential election, our maybe last open election.
The November vote will depend on the next day after weather we live free or live like we did in Biden – Harris Covid world of deception.
Some eastern liberal state once conservative, their license plate once read “Live free or die” was their motto of America not of the woke we have today.
“Biden-Kamala Regime Burns $1 BILLION in FEMA Funds to Resettle Illegal Immigrants — FEMA Now Lacks Resources for Disaster Response!
As Hurricane Helene tears through the eastern seaboard, leaving devastation in its wake, the mismanagement of FEMA under the Biden-Harris regime is hitting home with deadly consequences.” – Michael Savage website
Borders, Language, Culture – American culture, freeloader illegals go home.
God wants you replacements of Americans to go home, NOW!
I’m in COMPLETE and TOTAL AGREEMENT with the majority here about getting Trump back in! And the illegals OUT!
But getting back to the topic initiated here about black lights, I have a question that’s Chinavirus related.
A buddy gave my wife one of those UV emitting devices, supposedly to “disinfect” our phones. It doesn’t say what type of UV it is. Does anyone here know if those could be used to sterilize water? That would be the best reason for me to pack it into my traveling preps, or go bag.
I also understand that leaving water in a CLEAR container to sit in the sun for several hours also uses UV rays from the sun to make water safe for consumption, presumably water that has been filtered to remove silt or other solids and such (another good reason for bandanas and such, even a t-shirt).
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Out of respect for those reading who might not care for the language most accurate regarding the political trash some are contemplating keeping in office, I will keep a civil finger on my keyboard, and just say “Let’s Go Brandon!!!” and “SEND THEM BACK!!!”
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I hope someone has a answer to the question of whether these UV units used to “clean” our phones is the same kind used for killing “bugs” in our water.
Generally UV-C is used for sanitation. Most of your sanitizing gadgets are UV-C. Often Ozone Generators use UV-C. The UV Ozone Generators (come in all kinds of sizes and powers) almost always are UV-C. Ozone (UV) Generators do kill many insects.
As stated in the article, most UV Flashlights are UV-A and have a hard time sanitizing anything.
Covid was a bioweapon created by the US defense agencies with the full participation of the CCP. Does anyone with a functioning brain believe that a US/China bioweapons lab in Wuhan, China was not monitored and run by the CCP?
Fauci knew precisely what he, Ralph Baric and the military-intelligence industrial complex had created and believed it was far more lethal than it turned out. They believed it was going to cause worldwide death at a scale far exceeding the 1918 flu pandemic. That’s why the NSC took over the response from the CDC and turned a public health response into a CBRN (chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear) response run by the military beginning in the period March 9-17, 2020. By creating a fear campaign, and the ensuing mass hysteria. this allowed these enemies of the US and free world to institute Step 2 of the human population reduction plan and destruction of the sovereignty of the US.
The jab was Step 2 and was also a biological attack intended to compromise the human immune and cardiovascular systems as well. It also started the ball rolling to converting medicine to DNA gene editing technology using the entire human race as it’s experimental control group. It was and still is an economic and moral win/win for the groups who invested in mRNA medical technology and who believe the solution to environmental degradation by humans is severe and immediate population reduction.
This was all disguised by everyone in government INCLUDING Trump. Operation Warp Speed was a military term, not a Trump term. Trump was simply the front man for the whole ruse. The only question remains is how complicit was Trump in this scheme? If you believe Trump plays 3D chess while the rest of us are playing checkers, he was in on it. If he’s not as bright as all that, he was duped or coerced to be their front man. Either way, without Trump’s aid to repress the proven immune system building blocks and therapeutics such as Ivermectin, HCQ, Zinc, Vitamin D, the entire debacle of Covid would have been no more than a manageable threat that occurs every flu season. Trump’s erratic bleatings of chlorine, Uv lighting, passing mention of Ivermectin and monoclonal steroids I believe created plausible deniability for him when accused of repressing those medical interventions. It’s hard to tell where the real truth is when someone has such a proven record of marketing and promoting self interest that Trump does.
Both Covid and the jab were intended to reduce human population on a large scale to move forward Agenda 2030’s stated goal of population reduction to save the planet earth from the overconsumption of 8 billion people.
This is real, folks, be the 20% who act and not the 80% who react when it’s too late. It’s been almost 100 years since Black Friday 1929 followed by 16 years of worldwide depression, war and the death of 100 million people. Those who fail to apply the lessons of history proactively are going to have to play catch up with their lives and their loved ones. We are all at great risk and the threat is almost at the preplanned tipping point. The Communist China model of governance has been chosen as the method to enact Agenda 2030.
Go to Substack.com and The Brownstone Institute and do your own research. Start with Debbie Lerman and Dr. Toby Rogers on Substack and the free library at Brownstone.org
The more informed we all are at what the real threat is, the more we can mobilize as an army and recover our Federal government from these Globalist monsters who would inject their woke mind virus on the entire world.
Here is the shortened link to Christine Massey’s substack FOIA posts. Excellent researcher, truth teller, patriot.
https://tinyurl.com/ycx3d84s
No tracking either.
Generally UV-C is used for sanitation. Most of your sanitizing gadgets are UV-C. Often Ozone Generators use UV-C. The UV Ozone Generators (come in all kinds of sizes and powers) almost always are UV-C. Ozone (UV) Generators do kill many insects.
As stated in the article, most UV Flashlights are UV-A and have a hard time sanitizing anything.
I teach a class on Covert Communications. There are many ways to covertly communicate and one of the easy ways I mention in my class is by the use of “Invisible Ink” utilizing a UV Ink Pen. (as mentioned in the article under, “OpSec.”) The Ink is invisible to the naked eye. However, anyone with a UV Flashlight can read what has been written.
UV Ink Pens and handheld UV Flashlights for viewing the ink are very inexpensive and many varieties can be found on Amzn.