Bandannas are very useful for a variety of outdoor activities. They are inexpensive, light weight, and versatile. Bandanas can be useful for camping, hiking, boating fishing, hunting, horseback riding and riding OHVs, bicycles, and jet skis. You can get them in almost any color to match or complement your wardrobe or riding gear. There are special printed versions, shown a few paragraphs below, with first aid and survival instructions on them. Here is a web page dedicated to Uses for Bandanas. Be sure to scroll down far enough to see entire the list of more than 50 uses for bandanas. Most common uses include tying them around your neck to protect your neck from sunburn and, when saturated with water, to aid in cooling your body and tying them around your head as a "do rag" to control your hair and keep sweat from dripping into your eyes. They are also really handy for bandages and slings.
A typical bandana is about 18" square. In use it is usually folded diagonally to make a triangle. The triangle can be tied around your head as a head scarf or around your face bandit style to protect your nose and mouth from cold, snow, or dust. These days it can even be used as a required COVID-19 facial covering. You can tie the ends of the triangle together behind a victim's neck to make a sling. You can wrap the bandana around body parts to hold a dressing in place over a wound. You can roll the bandanna into a loose roll about 1 1/2" in diameter, wet it, and tie it around your neck in hot weather to protect your neck from sunburn and to cool you. One of the reasons this works is it helps cool the blood as it passes close to the skin in the neck. Most traditional bandanas have a kind of paisley pattern against the main background color but you can also find them in various camouflage colors and solid colors or with logos and other designs. Another use for a rolled bandana is as a bandage to hold a dressing in place. Remember, a dressing is the pad that covers a wound, a bandage is what holds it in place. Band-aids are dressing and bandage all in one.
Bandannas are not expensive. They are typically around $1.00 each. I've sometimes found them on sale 2 for $1.00. This is one of the items I like to stock up on when I get the chance. Even if you have enough for your own use, having some extras to loan to friends is kind of nice. I like to have a choice of colors so I can coordinate my bandana with my riding gear or whatever casual clothes I happen to be wearing. It can also be handy to color-coordinate different uses. In proper use they can get dirty quite quickly, so having several to use during any given outing is a good idea. They are light weight and don't take up a lot of room so they have little impact on space in your camping bins or your RV. I like to keep a clean blue one for use with drinking water and other colors for headbands and other sweaty jobs.
Specialized bandanas, such a survival bandanas, first aid bananas, and knots bandanas are printed with pertinent information and will be more expensive than their generic counterparts. They can act as a kind of manual to help you remember important skills and take up very little room in your pocket or pack. They can, of course, be used for slings and bandages or signaling just as any other bandana.
Bandannas were adopted as gang colors by some urban gangs. They wore them around their heads, tied around am arm or leg, or just hanging out of a pocket. Wearing the wrong color in a neighborhood controlled by a rival gang could invite serious consequences. Colors are usually not an issue in camping situations, but you might not want to wear red or blue, the colors of the "Bloods" and "Crips" gangs into a major city! Wearing an opposing gang's colors when in the territory of a rival gang can trigger a violent and sometimes deadly reaction.
Some other uses of bandannas in a survival situation include water purification. Hold a clean bandanna over a steaming pot of water until it is saturated, then wring it out to get safe drinking water. It is a good idea to carry a specific bandanna for this purpose, one a different color than the one you wear. Brightly colored bandannas can be used as a signal device to help rescuers locate lost parties.
Use a wet bandanna tied around your neck during hot weather to help keep you cool and to protect your neck from sunburn. If you get lost or stranded in hot weather you might tie one or more to trees or bushes to give you a tiny little bit of shade.. One time you do not want to use a wet bandanna is if you are escaping from a fire! The hot, moist air will sear your lungs.
A clean bandanna can be used directly as a dressing on a wound or used as a bandage to secure a dressing or a splint or used as a sling to stabilize an injured arm.
When tying a bandanna as a head band, neck band. or sling you want to make sure the knot is secure but also want to be able to untie it when you need to remove it. I usually use a square knot but don't pull it too tight.
Of course a bandanna can be used as a handkerchief to tame a runny nose or limit the spray from coughs an sneezes. But you won't want to use it to dress a wound or filter your water after using it thusly without giving it a thorough washing first. Another good reason to have -- and carry with you -- more than one. Having several different colors makes it easy to keep track of which ones you are using for what purposes.
These days you can even use a bandanna as a face mask to meet government requirements for face coverings during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the ''old days" bandits wore bandannas to hide their faces but during this COVID-19 situation they are acceptable, even required, for use by honest folks.
You might want to carry several bandannas of different colors. They are inexpensive, light weight, take up little room, and are very versatile. One source I read carries an orange one to use as an emergency signal and a blue one he uses only for filtering water. Any other color might be used for a handkerchief, neck band, or head band. Using this kind of logical color coding makes sense. You might dedicate other colors for other uses so you don't end up filtering your water through one that has been used as a handkerchief or a sweat rag!
Tie one on!
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