Chances are good that you currently have a newspaper within reach at your home or cabin. If you have a stove or fireplace, or just build a lot of campfires, chances are also good that you know how effective the black and white pages of newsprint can be at starting fires, both at home and in the field.

But what about the rest of the stuff at home? What other items that you’d be willing to burn could be useful in the task of fire building?

Here are a few you’ll know well, and a few you may want to try out. [ Read Full Post ]

A wintertime wilderness emergency can leave you with a lot to worry about. Fortunately, making a bed to get you up off the frozen ground is one of the easiest problems to fix—if you know how to make a bough bed.

I am sure that beds and mattresses like this go back to antiquity, but they became common in the later days of the fur trade era in the northern U.S. and Canada. To make a bough bed you don’t need much in the way of tools—just a pair of gloves should do it. [ Read Full Post ]

Perhaps it is the way that this survival kit hangs from your backpack, ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice. Or maybe it’s its size and shape. Either way, the Rocky S2V Survival Grenade is a novel approach to survival kits. It’s not just another sardine can full of matches and fish hooks. [ Read Full Post ]