How to find natural sulfur sources?
According to a google search sulfur is widely available in nature. Volcanic regions and hot springs are common sources of it in elemental state. Less obvious sources are iron pyrites (iron sulfide), galena (lead sulfide), gypsum (calcium sulfate), Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) and many other minerals. It has a low boiling point so can be distilled without much difficulty. Source
It creates poisonous fumes when burnt and is one of the three main components of black powder, making it an important element for the survivalist.
If I am in an unfamiliar area, how can I identify natural sources of sulfur?
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You can spot sulfur very easily. The rocks will have a yellow or white coating in the river or streams near deposits. These can be scraped off. Or it can be found in some caves. A volcanic mountain area helps. It's used often by natives in medical cures. I would suggest first you learn how to wet pan & dry pan for minerals, and how to follow those up to deposits. This is called creekology. It saves lots of time walking around looking. You can look at the layers of rock & soil. This is how you find minerals. The richer deposits but do not expect to find much. Metals become very valuable when you do not have them.
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If you are very lucky, there are rich natural sulfur deposits readily available nearby.
An example of such a place is Indonesia and Eastern Java, where blocks of Sulfur can basically be picked up like rocks from the ground.
--> Note that such locations are very rare and will generally be colocated with zones of strong geologic activity/volcanoes/hot springs.
Outside of such very lucky circumstances sulfur is generally mined using various techniques.
There exist also various chemical extractions and processes used to gain sulfur:
... but let's be honest, none of these ways are particularly suited for someone in 'survivalist' circumstances. At best you will still need a lot of digging equipment, tools and knowledge for chemical extraction an detailed geological/geographical knowledge to know where to search for raw materials.
See for example this group, which travelled to Iceland to try and purify sulfur from natural raw materials.
Frame Challenge
With respect to how hard sulfur is to acquire in the largest parts of the world I'd go as far as to say it is of negligible significance in a survivalist setting.
- Short term sulfur/blackpowder needs are covered by what the survivalist brought with them or can salvage from surrounding areas
- On the long run the survivalist might be better of using tools that can be created from easily gathered natural resources (e.g. bow & arrow).
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/15182. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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