 | The Bug Out BagWhat if you had only three minutes to grab whatever you could take from your home, and the... |
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| The Bug Out BagWhat if you had only three minutes to grab whatever you could take from your home, and the... |
 | Survivalist Wish ListA roundup of the best and most innovative survival gear ever introduced. |
 | Water Filtration TestAron Snyder hiked into the backcountry to test water filtration systems. |
 | Hypothermia WarningEven though the weather is warming up, most people forget just how cold the water can be.... |
 | Tornado Survival TipsTornado season is here and several cities around the country have already been... |
 | Flood SurvivalStatistically, floods are the most devastating natural disasters. |
Ever had a thermos, Nalgene, or your favorite canteen swell to its breaking point in winter’s cold temps? Whatever activity you were doing outdoors in sub-freezing temperatures, it’s likely that you didn’t need that extra hassle.
Staying warm can be a full time job, and keeping an ample supply of water in liquid form can also be a constant chore. So how do you keep your bottles from busting and your water filters from breaking? And what’s the best way to consume snow? [ Read Full Post ]
There are countless different survival kit iterations out there, both on store shelves and assembled at home. Many of these kits include a few multi-use items—like needles, duct tape, and dental floss—that can be used for gear repair.
Since your gear can literally save your life if you run into trouble, why not take gear repair a little more seriously by building a dedicate repair kit within your survival kit? [ Read Full Post ]
Cold weather can wreak havoc on your trapping activities, freezing triggers shut and imprisoning footholds in frozen dirt beds. But there are a few ways that the cold can help us, whether you are trapping as a pastime or trapping for food during a wilderness emergency.
Frozen Baits
Successfully baiting traps is an important part of the overall art of trapping. Unless you have a creative and effective motion-activated trap, the bait is the only reliable reason for an animal to visit your trap. In weather above freezing, your quarry and plenty of other critters can steal your bait. But a frozen block of bait will take some work for your target animal to chew up, and it will be a lot harder for little bait thieves (like mice and birds) to eat the bait out of the trigger or run off with it. [ Read Full Post ]
In case you don’t pay much attention to the goings-on of the nation’s urban areas, Brooklyn, NY, has become a fertile crescent of sorts for a now decade-long handcrafted/artisanal movement. These days, you can’t swing an ironically bearded and bespectacled inhabitant of the borough without hitting a beeswax candle maker or a chocolatier or a haberdasher of some stripe or another. And to be honest, a lot of the stuff these folks are making is of remarkable quality, if also remarkably expensive. And as a 10-year resident of Brooklyn, I take a certain amount of pride and satisfaction in being surrounded by such creative and hard-working types.
This movement has also spawned a cultural paradigm in which eating locally-sourced, organic, and/or wild food is de rigueur, and participating in activities like gardening and even hunting—activities that people who live in the country classify as “everyday life”—have become trendy and cool.
And then there are the nascent businesses that aim to supply these budding bumpkins with the wares they supposedly need to lead this sort of lifestyle. Take for example, Bush Smarts, a... [ Read Full Post ]
Some mammals, like mice, can produce their own vitamin C inside their bodies. Unfortunately, human beings are not on that list of critters. We need vitamin C, which we get from outside sources, because it performs such an important variety of functions in the body, including increasing immune system health, tissue repair, and iron absorption. Without enough vitamin C we can develop symptoms of scurvy, such as fatigue, weakness, capillary fragility, and gum disease.
Fortunately, if you ever get stuck somewhere away from your normal food supply, there are several great sources of vitamin C in winter edible plants. [ Read Full Post ]
One good thing about snowy survival scenarios is that ground-to-air rescue signals are easy to spot on the white background. One terrible thing about that same scenario is that a little more snow can hide your signal completely.
Any rescue signal needs to be huge if it is to catch the attention of aircraft, regardless of the situation. This will be true on a desert island or deep in the snow-covered backcountry. While the snow does create a blank canvas for you to build a high-contrast signal for aircraft to spot, the snow also has its share of problems. [ Read Full Post ]
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 ]
You don't need to be a crazed conspiracy theorist to have a bunker these days. If you have the real estate, the means, and the time, building a bunker is a worthwhile endeavor and could end up saving your bacon in a number of survival situations. Here's a fun clip that illustrates the basics of building and stocking your bunker once you decide to break out the shovel.
Find more great survival tips in our book: The Ultimate Survival Manual [ 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 ]
If you had to make a quick run through the local grocery store for some survival-friendly foods, what would you grab?
There are a number of options that are calorie-packed and shelf-stable. But I wanted to round up a food products that will keep for years, resist freezing, be ready to eat, and reside in containers that are bug and rodent proof. After a lot of taste testing (and no shortage of indigestion), here are six foods that I wouldn’t mind eating again, emergency or not. [ 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 ]
A few days ago I received a short email from a teenager who has done some survival training with me. The message was quick and simple, but the answer is another matter.
He wrote: “What's it like to teach a survival school, or, better yet, own one? I want to someday either teach at one or own one and teach. Does it pay good? Or, rather, is it enough to live off of? Stressfull or not? easy or difficult?” [ Read Full Post ]
Frostbite can be a common injury during the winter months, especially in northern regions, at high altitude, and under windy conditions. Frostbite occurs when ice crystals form in your skin and underlying tissues. The intense cold that causes this type of injury also masks the damage. Skin will often go numb before the frostbite damage occurs. It’s only when the tissue thaws out that you feel the intense burning pain resulting from the sharp ice crystals that damaged your cells. How do you detect frostbite? [ Read Full Post ]
The Gomadic SunVolt portable solar power station was designed to provide the electrical power to charge your devices as quickly as a wall charger does in your home. This can be ideal in the event of an emergency situation where you require a power source, or in “off-grid” living situations such as campgrounds, hunting camps, cabins, sailboats, and homesteads. [ Read Full Post ]
Fear is not always a bad thing. It is often a very valuable survival instinct. But when left unchecked, fear can lead to the irrational state of panic, which can manifest itself in diverse ways.
Depending on the severity of the emergency, you may experience everything from blind rage to a complete mental shut down (catatonia). So how do you accurately figure out if you are “losing it” in a real life emergency? Here are five signs that you are panicked, along with some tricks to get your mind back on course: [ Read Full Post ]
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