We’ve gone over all sorts of different techniques and basics for staying alive in a survival situation. Everything from getting a fire going in the cold, to finding food in the wild, to purifying water in a pinch, to making a makeshift shelter to get you through the night. But what if you’ve already been practicing these things? What if you’ve got the basics covered and you’ve spent the time in the dirt? Well I’ve got some hacks for you that will make you’re life much better out in the woods, whether it’s in a survival scenario or just out…
Author: Russell Wallace
In the modern world of toilet paper shortages, grocery store shelves being empty, and ships being kept offshore unable to deliver goods, we can no longer count on food being something you’ll always have access to. With this in mind, it’s a good idea to have food stored in a shelf-stable manner for times that the supply chain goes down, natural disasters strike, or civil unrest erupts anew. The easiest and best way to do this is with beans and rice. While this may seem like nothing but carbs, beans and rice together form a complex protein that will nourish…
One of the skills that’s never going to go out of fashion in the woods is being able to look around and use your surroundings to gather food, even during the harshest and most unforgiving times of year. While it’s foundational to survival to be able to utilize many different methods and eat things that you may not have ever considered food before, trapping is still essential. One of the most ancient forms of trapping is called a deadfall trap. It uses stored energy in the form of a large rock or a log and a mechanism to drop that…
The best plan in any survival situation is to have a lighter and some matches and a lens and whatever other fire making tools and supplies you can have. While that’s the best-case scenario it’s always wise to try and practice with less immediate and effective methods. Some methods are thousands if not millions of years old, and the one we’re talking about today is the age-old method of starting a fire with flint and steel. STEP 1 Since this method is much harder and much older than other methods you want to make sure that you have the best…
It’s one thing to get a fire going at a designated camp spot with kiln-dried firewood that you picked up at a gas station and light with a bunch of newspaper and a long grill lighter. It’s quite another thing to have a few select tools and have to get a fire going in soaked conditions as it’s actively raining and has been for a couple of days. Unfortunately survival situations are usually like that. Murphy’s Law abounds whenever you’re up against mother nature, and it’s up to you to have the skills to stay alive. Know Your Trees The…
If you’ve been reading our past pieces you’ll know that it’s pretty important when you’re out in the woods in a survival situation to be able to have an ongoing source of wood. Whether that’s tiny sticks for kindling, medium sized branches for burning, turning into a makeshift shelter, or making traps, or big logs to keep you warm all night or cook your dinner, you need to be able to get wood processed quickly and efficiently. Today I’ll lay out the three most popular choices for wood processing out in the bush and tell you which of these I…
You may have heard of a bug-out bag from a television show, from a book about preparedness, or from chatting with someone at your local gun range or outdoor store. But what’s a situation you’d ever need one anyway? Well, I’m here to answer those questions and point you in the right direction. Put simply, a bug out bag is a backpack filled with supplies that can get you through 72 hours in order to get to a safer location. It needs to have everything that you’ll need to move and stay healthy along the way and should be ready…
We’ve already covered in a previous article how to build a debris shelter. This is an excellent thing to know how to do in a survival situation and you don’t have any tools or other shelter options on you. However, who wants to survive with what you have to do instead of surviving with just a little bit of forethought and preparation. It’s amazing how much comfort and morale you can get from just a little bit of planning. With that in mind here’s four different shelters that pack down very small that can make your life much easier. TARP…
Without the bag you can’t carry any of the important items you need and with the wrong bag you could be painting a giant target on your back. Consider this, if you were one of the people waiting for help to arrive in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina among all the looters and criminals roving around would you want to be carrying a big bag decked out with all the tactical molle pouches and zip-on accessories that make you look like you’re about to land in Ramadi? Of course not, because that lets everyone around you know that you’ve got…
Sure we’ve taught you how to make a fire. We’ve shown you how to make sure your fire pit is safe and even how to make a Dakota Fire Pit to cut down on fuel consumption and make your fires more efficient. We’ve shown you how to start a fire with an empty lighter, but what about what to carry on you so you don’t have to make a fire with a busted old empty Bic? Well here we are. Bic Lighter This one shouldn’t surprise anyone. As we covered in the empty lighter article these are excellent because you…
The best way to take care of water needs is through forethought and preparation. Since the amount of time you can survive in any situation without water is only 3 days, this is an important thing to have redundancies with. I personally don’t just prepare to be in a situation out in the field where clean water might not be available, but also for if the water at my house is no longer coming out of the faucet. Level 1 I consider the first level to be like a pocketknife or a tourniquet. Something you can throw in your jeans…
In much the same way that knowing how to construct a debris shelter with no tools can save your life in a survival situation, so can knowing how to get to fresh clean water without a camping water filter. While a water filter should be one of the items that’s non-negotiable in your survival kit (at least a LifeStraw) we all know that you don’t get to choose when or how well equipped you’ll be whenever disaster strikes. First we’d like to note that the fastest and easiest way to “purify” water is to bring it up to a rolling…
It’s one thing to go out into the woods with a full woodsman axe, a saw, hundreds of feet of bank line or 550 cord, and plenty of warm clothing to set out and build yourself a survival shelter. It’s a whole other story to be cold with a storm coming in as it’s getting dark with no tools and a desperate need to stay dry. That’s what a survival situation is, and with that in mind today we’re going to cover how to build a simple survival shelter with no tools called a debris shelter. The first thing to…
A lot of people only think about the short term when it comes to wilderness survival, and it’s easy to figure out why. If you’ve got a bad bleed you need to know how to stop it NOW. If you fall through some ice you need to know how to get warm ASAP. Getting a roaring fire going or applying a tourniquet are priceless knowledge that will save your life in a survival scenario, but what if you aren’t bleeding or freezing? What if you’ve got those bases covered and you’ve got a fire going and fuel collected and a…
We’ve covered the basics of making a fire and we’ve covered how to create a safe fire pit, both for survival and camping situations. Today it’s time to step your skills up another level and learn about the Dakota Fire Pit, a way of making a fire to supercharge the heat, make it much more concealable, and much more efficient burn. This bushcraft fire trick is used by cultures all of the world, though no one is exactly sure of its origin. The construction of the fire pit is simple enough. You dig a hole between a foot and a…
We already covered the basics of how to build a fire in a previous article, but how do you build and maintain a safe fire pit? After all, you can’t just build a fire in a giant field of dead grass and expect everything to go well. And with some areas having droughts and being vulnerable to forest fires, it’s important to know how to safely make a fire pit so the fire you build doesn’t end up being the fire that gets you in a hot spot. There’s three important things to keep in mind when constructing your fire…
There’s tons of articles out there that will tell you giant lists of new toys and cool gizmos that you can put on Amazon wish-lists till your hearts content. Will you ever actually buy most of these? Probably not. Will half of them even work the way that they’re advertised, your guess is as good as mine. Rather than just list a whole bunch of “2021’s top 100 ultimate sweet survival items that you never knew you never needed” I’ll just keep this one to the must-haves. After all, maybe you’re just getting into this stuff. Maybe COVID-19 finally made…
It’s a tale as old as time and one of the biggest disagreements people in the Survival world have all the time. Which knife is the best survival knife? This can depend on lots of different things like the intended tasks. And even then there’s a whole myriad of shapes, sizes, grinds, tangs, handles, and features. However, when it comes down to it factors like sharpness, toughness, and cost are usually the deciding factor for what ends up in your pocket or in your backpack. Some will say that what you’re looking for is a giant chopper. Some hulking bowie…
When you’re camping like so many people do nowadays you simply drive your truck up to the campsite and pitch a tent in a designated spot next to the fire pit and picnic tables. Or if you go backpacking many people will select a spot that is very well worn and obvious that many people have slept there before. However, in a survival scenario there’s a few things to take into consideration when selecting a shelter site that could just save your life. First things first, you’re in a situation and you realize that shelter is your next top priority.…
One set of skills that often gets overlooked in outdoor and survival situations is knot tying. While it doesn’t have the same flare as starting a bow-drill friction fire, and may not be as barstool-quotable as some more extreme water purification methods, it’s definitely a useful way to spend your time mastering. When you’re out camping, trying to get a tarp set up, hanging a clothesline, or in a survival situation trying to get something secured to a tree or a truck knot-tying is an absolute must-have in your skillset. Today I’ll tell you about my favorite knot and show…