Wilderness Survival
More Resources
Quick Links
First Aid and Natural Remedies
Recommended Books and DVDs.
Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild series with Bear Grylls. Three seasons available on DVD. (Some used copies at Half.com.)
History Channel's Apocalypse Man series and After Armageddon docudrama.
How to Stay Alive in the Woods: a complete guide to food, shelter, and self-preservation by Bradford Angier.
When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency by Matthew Stein
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It by James Wesley Rawles
When All Hell Breaks Loose by Cody Lundin
SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in Any Climate, on Land or at Sea by John Lofty Wiseman
US Army Survival Manual: FM 21-76 by Department of Defense
Primitive Wilderness Living & Survival Skills: Naked into the Wilderness by John and Geri McPherson.
The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer.
A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and Central North America by Lee Allen Peterson.
Stalking The Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons.
Websites
Schools
The Tracker School
Watertown, New Jersey.
Twin Eagles Wilderness School
Sandpoint, Idaho.
PracticalPrimitive.com
New Jersey school.
Alderleaf Wilderness College
Monroe, WA
Primitive Ways
Hayward, California
Survival Tips
Minimum requirements for survivalSurvivalIQ.com
How to start a fire
Simple Water Purification
WildwoodSurvival.com
Survival Video Tutorials
Backpacker.com
Best survival knife
Making a Bow and Arrow
SurvivalTopics.com
Building a shelter
Wilderness-Survival.net
Edible Wild Plants
Bradford Angier
Edibile Plants
SurvivalIQ.com
Directory of Edible and Medicinal Plants
USDA
How to spear fish
TheRangerDigest.com
Preparing fish and game for cooking
Survival IQ
If a mega-disaster strikes, rescue personnel may not be en route to your location anytime soon. Within a matter of days, you may experience food shortages, water contamination, and/or a breakdown of law and order. If weather permits, an alternative to staying put in your home would be to evacuate to a less populated area or wilderness setting where food, water and personal safety may be easier to come by.
Under this scenario, advance planning is essential. Rather than just reading a few books about how to survive in the outdoors, consider taking trips to the backcountry to learn the ropes for handling different climates, terrain and circumstances. This way, you'll be ready to meet the exigencies survival at a visceral level.
A second objective in exploring the hinterlands now instead of later will be weigh the pros and cons of alternative evacuation routes. State and federal forests are likely destinations in a national emergency, since public lands are the most easily accessible and you won't be shot for trespassing. Be sure to check with the National Park Service or other government agency about securing wilderness permits and abiding by park rules.
And don't restrict yourself to the woods and mountains. In an era fraught with mega-wildfires, extreme weather and the potential for nuclear war, you'll probably want to get cozy with desert bluffs, canyons, tropical islands, even snowbound places at high altitudes.
Below are some detailed notes gleaned from Bradford Angier's classic How to Stay Alive in the Woods, as well as Bear Grylls' survival program on the Discovery Channel and a few other sources on survival techniques.
Disclaimer: A wilderness expedition can be dangerous or life-threatening. Always consult a professional outdoors expert before undertaking one and avoid solo adventures. Discuss any first aid or medical issues beforehand with your health care provider. It's also important to corroborate any written information with variety of other sources.
Building a Shelter
The easiest approach to this task to use what's already provided by nature, such as a cave, a deadfall of branches, or rock overhang. Then you can enhance its features to achieve a dry, safe spot that's protected from wind gusts and small enough to heat with a campfire outside the entrance.
Other things to consider:
- Make sure the location isn't on a game trail, or you're likely to have unwanted visitors during the night. In a jungle or rainforest where snakes are common, you may need a place high off the ground, like a treehouse or hammock built with vines or ropes.
- The door to your shelter should generally be placed away from the wind. It's usually more pleasant to have the door to your dwelling face the south, so you can get the morning sunlight. In the case of snowfall or changing winds, position your door at a right angle to the prevailing wind direction.
- If rain is an issue, ditch the shelter (i.e. dig a moat) so that the water flows around it. The ditch should also lie directly below your roof to catch run-off. To avoid a twisted ankle, fill the ditch with rocks at the doorway or wherever foot traffic is likely to pass.
- For waterproofing, use bark (esp. birch) for flooring and roofing. Low spruce and fir branches, interlocked like lattice-work, also serve this purpose. Thatch each higher layer of your walls so that it extends beyond the lower.
- Never burn gas in a tent or other shelter without adequate ventilation. For that matter, don't hunker down for the night inside a vehicle with the engine running and the windows shut. Carbon monoxide is odorless and its effects are usually undetectable until after you've passed out.
How to make a soft mattress: First scoop out curved holes in the ground to accommodate shoulder and hip bones, then lay out young, heavily-needled boughs of balsam, birch or pine - or use pine needles, moss, ferns, or marsh hay. (To rid the material of ticks or other insects, either set it near a hot fire or smoke the creatures out.) Lay the branches beginning from the head of your new mattress downward. Turning the branch bottoms up, which is the opposite of how they hang on a tree.
Snow Shelters: Always erect these with your entrance at a right angle to the wind, in case of avalanche or snow drifts. Here are three options:
- Build a snow roof over two rocks. Build the roof, then throw water over the snow to harden it. Wait a half hour before occupying it. Use evergreen boughs for flooring. Light a fire in front.
- Dig a shelter in a snow bank. Create a sleeping ledge close to the roof, with a cold well alongside to catch the colder air. This dwelling should be about three times your size. Smooth the roof above the ledge to keep it from dripping later on. Sleep on a tarp, pine boughs or other material.
- Build a snow house by piling up huge mound of snow. Then cut out the interior. Use a pole to poke chimney down through the top, then burn a small fire inside to solidify the walls before occupying.
Finding Water
The trick to finding water in the wilderness or is to remember that it flows downhill, cuts grooves in the land and produces green growth wherever it's holed up underground. Water is often found at the base of a hill or beneath the lowest point of a dry riverbed. Another approach is to follow heavily trafficked game trails downhill, since these typically lead to watering holes.
Although drinking seawater is unhealthy and can cause your kidneys to fail, some anecdotes suggest limited quantities are OK. Sip the very top layer of the ocean, which contains less salt. You can consumer greater quantities if you mix the sea water with regular water (using a 50-50 proportion at most). Also, water from ice bergs contains much less salt (if any) than seawater. Grab it from the side that gets the most sunlight.
On land, when you do find a source of water, boil it for a few minutes if possible to kill bacteria and pathogens, which are found even in otherwise pristine streams. Some animals may defecate in waterways, while the dead bodies of others sometimes fall in during a storm.
Remember that boiling doesn't remove chemical contaminants like arsenic, so if you're near a farming area, power plant or city, you may have to devise a charcoal filter. (More on this below.)
Other ways to find and collect water:
- Look around tangles of alder or willow, reeds or palm trees, since this is the vegetation that grows alongside a waterway. In the tropics, you can retrieve rainwater from leaves and natural basins.
- Chop a bamboo pole in half and lay the two sides beneath your shelter roof to catch the run-off.
- Catch the morning dew by tying a cotton shirt around your lower leg and walk through the high grass. When it's saturated, squeeze the water out of the shirt into a cup.
- If no actual water is available, you can suck on berries or open up plant stalks and cactus that contain liquid.
- Fish, camels and other animals contain water, so be sure you have a basin or bowl ready to collect it as you gut them.
- Bird and turtle blood can provide liquid sustenance in a pinch.
- Vehicle radiators contain water that you can extract by loosening the bottom bolt with a wrench or pliers, and then place a pan underneath to catch the outflow.
Disinfecting, Filtering or Avoiding
Iodine Method – 1 tsp disinfects 1 quart of water. Or use 1 iodide tablet and wait for 3 minutes, then shake container and let water leak out to disinfect screw thread and drinking surface. Wait 10 minutes, or 20 if water is cold. Use 2 tablets for murkier water.
Beware of Arsenic and other Contaminants - In urban and farming areas, arsenic an other toxic chemicals may have contaminated the well water. (A nearby nuclear or coal-fired power plant is usually problematic for underground water supplies.) If you don't see many green plants thriving in the area of your water source, or there are dead animals near a watering hole, avoid the source or take extra precautions in filtering the water you extract.
Filtering Methods – 1) Red sphagnum moss in bogs and marshes is a natural water filter with iodine. You can squeeze water out of it and into a container ready to drink. 2) Fashion a funnel out of an ice-cream cone shaped strip of birch bark. Alternate layers of grass, sand and charcoal. 3) Pour contaminated water through a sock or other thick-woven cotton garment (preferably white or light-colored) to remove any live organisms, mud or other solid material, like radiator rust.
If a pond or spring looks murky, dig into the sand or gravel a foot or two away from it. The water that fills the hole from below is naturally filtered of any microbes, even if it still looks murky. If there's any question, always boil water for a couple minutes, then slosh it around to oxygenate it dispel any flatness.
More Ways to Find Water
Converting Snow - Dig up the oldest snowfall you can uncover for water. Powder has very little water content. Ice holds even more water than old snow. To melt, put a little in the pot first and heat lightly so as not to burn the bottom. Keep adding snow as it melts down in the pot. Frozen water still has germs, so check it out carefully. Don’t use a surface layer of snow for drinking, especially if it's colored or dirty. If you can't light a fire, fill your canteen or water bottle with snow, then stick between layers of clothes and allow body heat to melt it. At camp, place a snowball on a stick near the fire and let it drip into a cup.
Collecting seawater - Near ocean water, wait for the low tide, then dig a hole below the high water mark. Stop digging as soon as you see water starts seeping in. Fresh water rises to top of salt water, so that first seepage should be good to drink.
Sea Glaciers - Frozen salt water (e.g. a glacier) turns to fresh water after one summer. Check it's melted hollows. Alternatively, you can catch small amounts of brine and let ice form on it. Discard liquid and slush, save ice for emergency.
Other Water at Sea - Extract condensation water from sails (leave a little slack) and tarps. Near the mouth of a river, start testing seawater to see if it’s fresh. In hot weather, add 1/5 to 2/5 salt water to fresh to replace salt you sweat out. Drinking salt water straight will destroy your kidneys and make you delirious.
Dirty or Undrinkable Liquids - Bear Grylls demonstrates a worst-case scenario on one of his programs. He puts fetid water with bird droppings in his canteen and gives himself an enema using a scavenged plastic hose. This puts liquid in the body when drinking it would make you throw up. It doesn't work with any liquid, however, and you should always try to somehow disinfect it first if possible. Don't do an enema with seawater or liquid contaminated by toxic chemicals. Again, this is a worst-case solution.
Creating Water through Condensation
The basic idea here is to use a combination of heat and glass or plastic (and occasionally metal) to convert water (as a vapor or undrinkable liquid) into a clean liquid. You can catch dew or extract water from green leaves this way. The source of heat is typically the Sun, but you can also light a little fire beneath a metal can or near your plastic to stimulate the condensation. Here are a few methods:
Transpiration - Find a sunny spot and wrap a plastic bag around a big leafy branch. Make sure the plant isn't poisonous first. Willow or oak work well for this. Tie the open end to the branch. After three hours you may be able to catch up to a half cup of water.
Solar Still - Dig a 3 by 3 foot hole in a place where it looks like water might have been pooled underground in the recent past. (See suggestions above for finding water.)You'll lay in a sheet of 6 by 6 foot clear plastic over the hole, with a rock in the middle of the plastic to create a cone shape.
Just beneath the plastic, where the rock is placed, you'll secure a container about the size of a large coffee cup. The container will catch the condensation rolling down the plastic from all sides, hence its cone shape. To hold the plastic sheet in place, cover it around its border with dirt.
Makedistilledwater.com
On the ground around the cup, place cacti, grass or green leaves (non-poisonous) that will contribute their own condensation.
Run an intake hose from above ground to the bottom of the hole. Use this to transfer urine, seawater or other undrinkable liquid into your still. This method works at night as well as in the daytime, but produces 25 percent less water than transpiration. For converting lots of seawater, use the method below.
Solar Distiller - You build a water box that you can divide into two separate sides. One end of the box is higher than the other. You cover the box with a sheet of clear Plexiglass or plastic, so that it slants downward, enabling the condensed droplets that form on it to roll from the bad water-side and drop into the good-water side.
Into the bad-water side you put in seawater, urine or other undrinkable liquid, preferably through a hose, so you don't have to take the lid off the box and disrupt the condensation. The other side will catch the clean water when it drops off the plastic after rolling over. You should try to run a hose from this side as well to extract the liquid without disrupting the process.
Fire in metal container - Stick a lantern at the bottom of a larger container, then light it and cover the container, except for an air hole. Set the container in the contaminated or undrinkable liquid. Condensation will transfer the good water into the can as it heats up.
Other Water Tips
Before starting a hike into area with no water, drink as much as possible. Drink more water in cold weather. Don’t drink alcohol, medicine or urine. (Bear Grylls does drink his urine.)
Ration water by taking a swallow’s worth, sloshing it around mouth and wetting lips. Don’t start drinking more on the assumption that more water will soon be available. Wait till you’re sure your anticipated source is both accessible and drinkable. Keep a pebble or button in your mouth for moisture. Once you reach new water, drinking too much at once will cause nausea and sluice through your system and out.
Cooking
Wear gloves or clean hands thoroughly after handling the animals. Cook meat well enough to avoid germs, parasites or disease. Use moss as oven mitts.
Used a forked green stick for a skewer to roast meat or fish. Thrust meat briefly in the fire to seal in juices, then cook away from the flames. You can use bark to twist around the meat, and/or split the stick and reinforce it on both ends with a tie. You can also lay the spit between 2 crotched uprights.
For fresh meat, cook only as long as necessary in order to reap the most nutrition. Best to start by sticking it into the flames and letting the outside turn black. This will lack on the juices.
Make a grill - Fashion a slab from green hardwood. Peg fish to the slab, then lean towards the coals. Remove the backbone if the skin doesn’t lean flat. Turn the fish 1-2 times. Birch burns easily but imparts a nice aroma. A flat rock can also work as a slab, but don’t use rocks close to a stream, since they crack in the heat. One other option is to dig a trench into a fallen log and light your fire inside it.
Oven and Steaming - Dig a hole to use for steaming or oven cooking. Line with hot rocks, then insert food on a bed of green leaves. Cover hole to seal in heat, but allow some means to add boiling water onto rocks so they’ll reheat. You can also burn a fire in a small hole to eat it, then scoop out ash and insert food. Food requires several hours to cook.
Soup Hole - Line a dugout hole with animal hide. Add water, food and steaming hot rocks.
Clay cooking – Seal a fish or animal in clay and set on coals beneath a fir to cook a ½ hour or more. Or build an oven into a clay hole. Use a pole to dig a chimney for it. You can also daub a green-stick cage with clay to make an oven. Let each layer of clay dry before adding the next. To expedite this, light temporary fires within the cage. To cook food, pre-heat oven by building a fire in it, scoop out ashes and insert food atop stones or leaves. Shut chimney flute and door, then leave to bake.
Barbeque: Let the fire burn down to hot coals, then lay green sticks across and slow cook as shiska bobs. Juices stay in better if no cutting or piercing.
Tripod: Lay two or three branches with forked tops against each other teepee style and steady them so they'll hold a load. Tie shoelaces or paracord to the top so that they'll dangle a pot or bottle over a fire.
To boil water without a container: Light a fire in a rock cavity to preheat it. Or build a fire around the rock cavity if it’s small enough. Or make a container from birch bark.
Dressing Animals: For birds, remove feathers while still warm. Remove pouch below neck, then rip open body with your hands above and below ribs. Remove viscera. Save heart and liver. Gizzard OK to eat once cleaned out. It may be easier to first hang an animal in the air by its hind legs. Cut around each ankle. Slit up inside of legs to a join long cut between the vent and throat. Then pull down and remove the hide as in tact as possible. Open the animal from vent to ribs and remove its innards. Save heart, kidneys and liver, which are edible. If it’s a muskrat species, cut off its white stringy scent glands from inside its forelegs and thighs.
Preserving meat: Keep in a dark, cold place and hang at least 4 yards off ground, well clear of any foliage. Before this, you can suspend chunks of meat briefly in smoke to create an odorless casing. For long-term storage, cut in long strips, trimming off fat (save this) and hang in sun and wind until hard and black. (Fat makes meat rancid.) You can soak first in brine or seawater. (One method is to boil seas water into concentrated mixture then while simmering dip in meat slices before drying them out. Light a smoky fire next to drying area to keep bugs away.
Jerky: When eating jerky, which is lean, don't forget to include other fatty foods in your daily menu. Making Pemmican is a way around this problem. Cook down fat chunks to grease (don’t boil), then mix the grease in equal parts with jerky to create a kind of sausage. Store the Pemmican in watertight container. It provides complete nutrition except for Vitamin C. Always supplement a Pemmican diet with fresh food.
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Copyright 2009-2010 TheCityEdition.com
Food
(See also Farming, Foraging, Hunting and Fishing.)
In a survival situation, start searching for food while you’re still operating at full strength. However, remember that you can go without food for 2-3 weeks, so don't rush to make yourself sick with unappetizing mouthfuls until you're really hungry. Before consuming, boil or heat all food sources whose safety you're not sure about.
Avoid a strictly lean meat diet (e.g. rabbit meat), as it will give you diarrhea. Fat is a critical component of a wilderness diet.
Always remove the entrails of fish and animals before cooking.
Whenever possible, evaluate the condition of an animal before killing it. Active, lively animals have less chance of being rabid or sick, and therefore can be safely eaten (in most cases) after light cooking.
Slow-moving Animals, Snakes, Lizards, Frogs, Birds, etc.
Whittle a spear from a branch, or use stones to kill. Game birds can be easily pursued, since they don’t fly far. Rabbits use camouflage to hide, so pretend you don’t notice one in order to approach it.
Porcupines: Contain nourishing, fatty meat. Kill swiftly with a blow to the head. Avoid contact with the quills and keep pet dogs leashed and away from them. To remove the quills, skin the animal starting from the underbelly. Burning quills off before cooking is not 100 percent effective.
Snakes and Scorpions: Cut off the heads of venomous snakes and stingers of scorpions and dispose of carefully (i.e. bury them). That way other people and animals won’t come in contact with the poison. Scorpions can be eaten raw or cooked. For most snakes, skin and remove entrails before cooking. The skin can be used as a bladder to hold liquid.
Turtles: Another good source of fatty meat. Be careful of turtle jaws and claws, even after killing the creature. Then boil it to soften the back shell. Remove and discard it, then quarter the undershell and simmer all of it. Detach the shell before eating the meat.
It's not always easy (or legal) to find and shoot deer and moose, so consider the many other alternatives available. Keep in mind that animals that have been harassed or chased prior to the kill release lactic acid into their muscles. That makes the meat more perishable, so plan to eat it the same day. Alternatively, give the animal time to recover by simply securing it with rope and killing it later.
To make a snare, hang a large loop of rope or twine across a path an animal is likely to travel. You can lead the animal in that direction by setting up obstacles and/or branches that appear to expedite the journey. Animals always take the easiest path before them.
Rabbits: A source of lean meat only, so eat sparingly or combine with fattier foods.
Beaver, bear and mutton: Good sources of fatty meat.
Quail: Easy to pursue since they don't travel far. You can set up a trench and corral them in so they can't easily fly out.
Eggs: You know you're near a nest when a bird dive-bombs you as you pass by the location. When retrieving, try to leave some of the eggs to insure the next generation of available prey.
Although they provide balanced nutrition, trout and many other types of pan fish provide few calories. A fat salmon, however, can provide a substantial meal of 900 calories.
Makeshift Hook - Carve a sharp edge into both sides of a two-inch pencil-sized stick and hide it in bait. When a fish swallows it, pull the line, which turns the stick perpendicular and lodges.
No-Hook Fishing - 1) Make a basket by rounding a green branch into a frame and attach a lattice of leaves or porous cloth. 2) Drive fish from a stream into a pool with no escape, then close up the entry with rocks or wood. 3) At night, lower a spear in pools or eddies close to a fish you’ve spied. Aim towards his backside, where he can’t see, then when close enough strike with the spear. Or pin him to the bottom, then grab with your hand. 4) In side pools off the current, lower your hands cupped and face-up into nooks and rock hideouts. As soon as you feel a fish, grab it. 5) Tie a button or bright cloth to a line as bait, and then fling the fish onto shore as soon as it bites.
To prepare fish, slit with your knife on the belly side from the anal vent to the head. Then remove the guts. Hold by the tail and scrape off scales, blood vessels and kidneys. For pan fish, leave head, tail and fins attached so the bones hold together. Eat around them and later make a chowder.
To preserve fish for future consumption, cut the flesh into thin strips and hang to dry. For long-term storage, dehydrate the fillets by heating them wrapped in green leaves and set atop a grate on a low fire.
Seaweed: All types are edible and high in vitamins and minerals, with algae providing one of the earth’s most protein-rich foods. It can be eaten raw or cooked in soups. You can also dehydrate and store it. Many children find the dried stuff a tasty snack.
Crabs: All are edible, but like other shell-fish, you should keep them alive until cooking time to avoid potential toxins in their systems. Kill them humanely before depositing into boiling water. Salt-water varieties (i.e. caught in the ocean) can be eaten raw or cooked, but land crabs may contain parasites so must be cooked.
Sea cucumbers: These are animals that grow near the shore and taste like clams. Natives dry and smoke the five white long muscles. Scrape off the skin and throw the rest away.
Abalone: A large rock-clinging mollusk. Pry it off the rock by slipping a long knife under it and snapping it upwards. Be careful to keep the shell intact and use it as a bowl.
Clams: Along the Pacific shore below the Aleutian Islands, The dark meat of salt-water varieties SHOULD NOT be eaten between April and October. During these months clams consume poisonous sea organisms that can’t be destroyed by heat. The white meat is OK to cook at all times.
Sea urchins: Related to starfish and have eggs that can be eaten raw or cooked. (Never eat starfish.)
Mussels: Should be checked to make sure the shell closes tightly if touched. If it doesn't close tightly, avoid it. Bluish-black mussels that are attached to seashell rocks shouldn’t be eaten from April to October for same reason as clams (see above).
Eating Animal Blood
Provides complete nutrition and liquid in the absence of a water source. Blood is also rich in vitamins, iron and other minerals. Four tablespoons can be as nutritious as 10 eggs. And it doesn't taste as bad as it may look. In a survival situation, when slaughtering or dressing animals, always drain the blood into some form of container. If necessary, you can use part of the entrails as a storage pouch.
To cook the blood, make a broth with it. Add wild vegetables if you have any.
Skin and Bones
Animal skin can be as nutritious as lean meat. Depending on the situation, rawhide may be better utilized as shoemaking material or for warmth.
Bones are rich in minerals and can be salvaged if found with the carcass of an animal killed by another predator (i.e. wolf or bear). Extract the marrow from large bones and cook. The less cooked, the more nutritious it will be. Smaller bones can be used for broth.
Vitamin C
Often neglected in survival situations, Vitamin C is essential to health and a lack of it results in scurvy. Food loses its Vitamin C through over-cooking, salting, age and oxidation.
Eat the starchy green tips of spruce needles raw for a strong dose of C. Drink spruce or pine needle tea to get nearly eight times the amount of C as a glass of orange juice.
Insects
When all else fails, bugs provide an excellent nutrition source in small quantities. The most important component of a survival diet is fat, and bugs are generally 100 percent fat. You can catch them using a light or torch fire at night. During the day, turn over a dead log or excavate them from a live tree. Extract termites from tree holes using a stick. (Be careful, because they bite.) You can spot larvae inside trees because the wood is swollen at their location.
Except for hard portions, wings, and any areas of poisonous secretions, all parts of insects are generally edible. Remove a grasshopper’s legs, wings and head before eating raw or cooking.
Larvae and worms are edible, as are termites, ants (bitter taste), spiders and moths. For red ants, hold them by the head and bite off the back side to eat. Other ants that bite will have formic acid that can irritate your digest tract, so heat or cook them first whenever possible.
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