With luck, you'll never be caught without a can opener with which to open canned food you may have around the house, but if you're out camping or caught up on some situation where you have cans and nothing to open them with, this video shows you how to do open a can pretty cleanly with no tools at all.


The video is in Russian, but you don't really need to understand his instructions to follow along. Essentially, you put the can between your hands and press both ends on the edge towards each other until you fold a large, pointed dent in one side of the can. Flip it over, and repeat the process until the can has a fairly hourglass shape, with sharp edges on the sides of the dent.


From the tone (and the setting) of the video, it's pretty clear this is a survival tip, not something you'd use the next time you want to grab a can of beans from the cupboard. If your situation is something dramatic—like being caught in a flood or some other natural disaster where help is a long time coming, it can help, especially if you're hungry, you find canned food, but you have nothing to open the cans with. It's nothing a little brute force can't handle.

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