I'm not sure if anyone can answer this or not because I'm not really sure if I this forum is for my kind of question..but I'm gonna ask it anyway...

okay, in the survival guide thing, it said that when in the desert, for shelter you can take two trash bags, and make a sleeping bag type of thing, but my question is, what do you do if you don't have a trash bag, or any supplies at all for that matter.....again, not sure if I'm at the right place to ask this lol

Welcome! Your question is not off the mark at all! Stick around and I am sure that you will get some great answers to that question and the follow-up question that I suggest at the bottom of this post.

OK so you are caught out in the desert with nothing but what you are wearing - is this the scenario?

Well this is a matter of education. If you brain is adequately stocked you will be better off.

First, Don't move in the day time.

Second, Ten inches under the surface is much more comfortable than on the surface - both day and night.

Third, Don't discount what you are wearing.
do you have glasses? They can work as a mirror to signal planes (not well but better than nothing)
do you have a long-sleeve shirt? You might be more comfortable in the day using that as a sun shelter rather than wearing it.
do you have any water?
do you have any knives?

This forum has helped me to start thinking in terms of potential problems and prepare for them. I always carry some cord and a trash bag with me. I didn't do that before but I do now. so unless I was naked I would have those items with me. If I were dropped out of a commercial airline I wouldn't have any sharps but otherwise Iwould have my leatherman at-least. When traveling I always have a liter or more of water.

Rather than think about the above scenario (where you are probably not going to make it more than a few days at best) take stock of what you have and can carry and what you might be able to add to your pockets so that you won't find yourself in such a bad situation.

If you rephrase your question to:
What would you carry in you pockets as minimal items when traveling in a desert so that getting stranded wouldn't mean death?
I think that you will get much more informative answers. <img src="images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

What do the animals native to the desert do? Or, for that matter the indigenous people? If it is daylight you need to seek shelter from the heat and sun. This means locating a rockshelter or constructing a traditional wickiup from native shrubs. If it is near or after nightfall you face extreme cold. Again, seek shelter and if possible build a fire. Tinder includes any of the dried remains of plants, dried cattle dung, even a few threads of your precious clothing if of natural materials. You will have to create sparks using suitable stones.

The underlying point of this forum is that our chatter is designed to get us all to think and preplan for these "unforeseen" eventualities. If you ever are caught unawares in a desert, you take your training and whatever you have at hand, and survive.

Deserts show a huge amount of variability. Right now the Sonoran Desert is a beautiful place to survive and water will not be that hard to find in many localities. June is a different matter. Shelter is ridiculously easy to find in some spots, like the Four Corners region, with sumptuous rockshelters all over the place, and very hard in others, like the alkali flats of Utah and Southern Arizona.

Basically, if you can get to a water source, and you can create fire, you will survive.

Realistically, people don't just wake up and find themselves beamed down onto an arid plain. Plan for eventualities in advance and prepare for the worst case. I always carry lots of water in my car, even if I am just planning to scoot from LA to Phoenix along I 10.

A large part of the discussion here centers around making sure one has the trash bag. The point is plan for problems and have the tools and skills to deal with them.
Biscuits

The most important thing I've taken away from this group is to never be put in a position where you don't have the minimum kit needed to get out of a situation safely. So the moral of the story as I see it is to carry the bin bags, but to learn the skills needed to survive without them.

Johno

So trash bags (bin bags) are the new towels?

Justin
Hitch-hiiker reference

"Hence a phrase that has passed into survival slang, as in 'Hey you sass that hoopy Chris Kavanaugh? There's a frood who really knows where his trash bag is.'" <img src="images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

chesterdown,

Usually the deserts are hot during the day and cold during the night, so you will have to figure a way to stand against both situations.
I say one should rest during the day and move during the night, assuming you don't have problems orienting yourself.
This means that during the day the best is to dug some kind of trench and fashion a shelter out of it. It's cooler under the ground. There is lot of info in the www about desert survival shelters. Look around. In some situations it's possible to take advantage of natural shelters (e.g. caves).

Knowledge is a weightless gear.