Introduction
Welcome to the realm of the extraordinary. Survival situations can bring out greatness in some people, and they can also bring out foolishness or terror or spiritual renewal or changes in perspective or sometimes, just enormous gratitude for being alive. We, your friendly authors, have crawled like fleas in the face of enormous winds and waves, and we, too, have experienced these extraordinary states of mind — and many more.
But more often than not, survival situations aren’t so romantic: You’re on a day hike, 5 miles from a major city — hopelessly lost — and even though you can hear and see signs of civilization, you’re still in danger of dying from hypothermia in the next hour. Unfortunately, this situation can kill you just as fast as being lost on an expedition to the North Pole. Perhaps even worse, when you do finally make it out, you don’t get an ounce of respect for it from the folks back home! Well, we wrote this book with sympathy for both — those involved in exotic adventures and those who just got a little turned-around while taking pictures.
You may worry, understandably, that wilderness survival requires you to bite off the heads of snakes and eat them raw or perhaps leap from a cliff into a raging river. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many survival skills are much more mundane. For example, you can extend the life of your batteries by taking them out of your flashlight and putting them inside your shirt (or better yet, in a plastic bag taped to your armpit) — against your skin. Keeping batteries warm makes your flashlight run much, much longer during the cold and dark night. There. That wasn’t so bad, was it? You picked up a basic survival skill and you didn’t have to shiver or go hungry. You’re already rolling.
About This Book
This book is designed to thoroughly cover the basics of wilderness survival. To compile the information, we’ve used the most tried-and-true sources, such as The U.S. Army Survival Manual and Essentials of Sea Survival, by Frank Golden and Michael Tipton (Human Kinetics), but we’ve called upon our own practical experiences as well. We give you much of this information in a cheerful voice, but we also interject a more serious tone when we have to give you grim news. You can find both voices in these pages.
Conventions Used in This Book
Throughout this book, we use the word we when we, Cameron and John, both want to say something personal to you, our reader. This book comes from the combined experiences of two people who’ve been through a lot of misadventures and who are very close friends. We’ve been in enough trouble — and scared enough — that we think alike, basically, and therefore we speak with the same voice.
We define the wilderness as just about any place out-of-doors. We know from bitter experience that it’s easy to freeze to death in places that a geographer wouldn’t necessarily think of as “wilderness areas.” With that in mind, you should know that this isn’t a camping book; it’s a book for anyone at risk of perishing from exposure to the elements, whether camping or off on a harmless stroll.
We try not to use too much technical terminology in this book, but when we do offer new vocab, we italicize the term the first time we use it. Shortly after giving you the new term, we always define it.
Foolish Assumptions
Although we know that you don’t fit every description in this list of assumptions we make about you, our reader, we do assume that you have a least a few of the following characteristics:
You want a basic survival book that gives practical, tried-and-tested advice, whether you’re solo or with a group.
You’ve tried other manuals, but they seem just a little too, well, dry.
You want a comprehensive survival manual that you can throw in your car or backpack (or carry-on luggage), just in case.
You’re already in a wilderness survival situation and you have this handbook nearby.
You’ve seen a survival show on television and it has intrigued you.
You’re not someone who is into bushcraft (at least not yet), which is the art of being completely self-sufficient in the wilderness. You can find numerous, excellent books if you want to live off the land, long term. We simply want to help you survive so you can find your way back to civilization or signal a search and rescue team.
What You’re Not to Read
Although we hope you enjoy reading every word that we’ve written, we also realize that you’re a busy person, juggling a career, family, and friends and handling ten other responsibilities. If you just want the bare essentials of surviving in the wild, feel free to skip the sidebars that appear in the gray shaded boxes. The information in the sidebars is additional information, purely for the curious. You can also skip over any paragraphs marked with the Technical Stuff icon, which marks info that’s fun or useful but not essential. We hope you read them, but if you don’t, you won’t miss any vital information.
How This Book Is Organized
Though you can turn to any section in this book and start reading, we’ve organized the information so that we start with the most basic needs and then work up to the extremes. Whenever we talk about a basic idea that we think has an exception in an extreme situation, we tell you where to look for that exception. We also try to do the reverse: In extreme environments, we frequently send you back to the basics to help you review the foundations of survival. Here’s what you can find in the various parts of this book.
Part I: Stayin’ Alive: Basic Wilderness Survival Principles
In this part, we start with basic survival protocol — what you should do and in what order you should do it. We show you how to make improvised clothing, how to make fire, how to make shelters, and how to find water and food. We also spend some time showing you how to prepare for the wilderness — what to carry and what to keep an eye out for.
Part II: Eyeing Advanced Survival Techniques
This is the part that we hope gives you the upper hand over your surroundings. In this part, you discover how to navigate, trek through trails and the bush, make sure someone sees you so you can be rescued, handle a bleeding wound, and tie knots and make tools from wood and stone.
Part III: Surviving in Extreme Land Environments
In this part, we address all the special problems (and miseries, frankly) that jungle, desert, and polar environments can present to you, the survivor. We delve into topics such as tropical disease prevention, snake avoidance, cactus eating, and avalanche safety.
Part IV: Surviving on the Seas, Oceans, and Great Lakes
This part takes you from the moment your vessel begins to sink to the moment you make it back to shore and every place in between. It shows you how to abandon a ship safely, how to float for extended periods of time, how to inflate a life raft, and hopefully, how to catch a fish — without accidentally deflating the raft!
Part V: The Part of Tens
In this part, we give you ten fun exercises that you can do to improve your survival skills in the field. We also show you ten scenarios that aren’t so much about survival as escape.
Icons Used in This Book
In this book, we place icons, little pictures in the margins, next to some of the paragraphs that we feel need a little extra emphasis.
This symbol gives you a little added info that (hopefully) makes the survival skill we’ve just explained a little easier. Sometimes, a tip is also a small qualification — a little explanation that tells you when you should use another method.
This symbol is a reminder to do a particular action that makes a survival skill successful, or it makes you think about common sense before you rush out and try something!
This symbol means danger. When we use this symbol, we’re trying to emphasize some aspect of a survival situation that can really get you into trouble.
This symbol tells you that we’re giving you some background info on the topic, but you don’t necessarily need to know the info to be able to execute the actions outlined in the text.
This symbol marks true stories of survival and some of our own accounts of close calls, foolish mistakes, and improvised solutions.
Where to Go From Here
Feel free to start reading this book anywhere you like. The five parts are completely modular, so you don’t have to read them in order. However, Chapter 1 is certainly a good place to start because it tells you exactly what to do first if you find yourself lost in the woods.
Part I is a great place to start to get a good foundation for all things wilderness survival. If you’re planning on a trip to an extreme environment, you may want to start with Part III. On the other hand, if you’re looking for adventures on the sea, you can go straight to Part IV.
Of course, when you’re in a survival situation, you can check out the index or table of contents and simply flip to the information you need. If you’re bleeding, or if you’ve twisted your ankle, or if you’ve been bitten by a snake, check out Chapter 13. Or if your ship has gone under and you find yourself in a life raft, go to Chapter 19.
