Bear Grylls’ prime-time TV adventure series are some of the most watched shows on the planet, reaching an estimated 1.2 billion viewers in over 200 countries. Bear is the host of ITV’s Mission Survive and Channel 4’s BAFTA-winning The Island with Bear Grylls. He is the author of twenty books, including the international number one bestseller Mud, Sweat and Tears.
He originally served as a Trooper with 21 SAS, and subsequently led many record-breaking expeditions to the world’s extremes, raising millions of pounds for children’s charities. In recognition of this Bear was made an honorary Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy as well as an honorary Colonel in the elite Royal Marines Commandos. He is also currently the youngest ever Chief Scout and an inspirational figure to the 40-million-strong youth movement.
For more information on Bear Grylls and his books, see his website at www.beargrylls.com
Nobody knows survival like Bear Grylls. There is barely a terrain he hasn’t conquered or an extreme environment he hasn’t experienced. Over the years – from his time in 21 SAS, through to his extraordinary expeditions climbing (and paragliding over) Everest, travelling through the Arctic’s treacherous Northwest Passage, crossing the world’s oceans and taking part in adventures to the toughest corners of each of the seven continents – Bear has accumulated an astonishing wealth of survival knowledge.
Now, for the first time, he is putting all his expertise into one book. How To Stay Alive will teach you:
• How to survive a bear attack
• How to fly a plane in an emergency
• How to make fire from virtually nothing
• How to drive off road
• How to navigate using the stars
• How to administer emergency first aid
• How to escape a burning building
• How to survive a terrorist attack
And dozens of other essential skills to survive the modern world.
Thank you to the BG team of survival and safety experts I have worked with on so many adventures, especially to Scott, Stani, Meg and Dave for all your input to the practical, resourceful and innovative details that have helped me compile this book. I dedicate it to this team, who have lived and breathed all this stuff alongside me for so many years and in so many hellholes!
Facing Up
Facing the Frozen Ocean
Born Survivor
Great Outdoor Adventures
Living Wild
With Love, Papa
Mud, Sweat and Tears
A Survival Guide For Life
True Grit
Your Life – Train For It
Extreme Food
Fuel For Life
Mission Survival
Gold of the Gods
Way of the Wolf
Sands of the Scorpion
Tracks of the Tiger
Claws of the Crocodile
Strike of the Shark
Rage of the Rhino
Lair of the Leopard
IN THE MILITARY, you get used to carrying heavy backpacks filled with over 100lb of gear. It gets you fit and it gets you strong. But in a survival situation, lugging too much stuff around with you could be a killer. It slows you down and it drains you of energy.
So now, whenever I go out on an expedition, I take the very minimum I can get away with. With a light pack on your back, you can move with speed and agility over rugged terrain. You can beat the weather if a storm’s coming in. You can make sure that your energy is directed towards the important business of getting yourself out alive, rather than being sapped by useless pounds of excess weight you really don’t need.
Before thinking about what we need to put in our backpack, we need to make sure it’s waterproof. I don’t care if a rucksack manufacturer claims that their rucksack is 100 per cent waterproof: they never are. Not in the kind of conditions you might encounter. No rucksack will withstand wading across a lagoon or fording an underground river.
So you always need a liner of some sort. If it’s a proper rucksack liner, great. If not, a plastic bag will do.
Inside that liner, you need … another liner! One bag is never enough in water. Soldiers regularly put dry clothes in double bags. If it’s something really important like a radio then it’s even more crucial to double-line it. (I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met who have bought a ‘waterproof bag’ in which to stow their phones, only to find that it’s not waterproof at all. Two bags is always the way to go.)
Once you’ve waterproofed your rucksack, you can think about what to stow in it.
Carry a knife, save a life. See here for what you need to know.
At the bottom of your bag, you should always carry some emergency rations. A good stash would be a bag of nuts, energy bars and flapjacks. Put them in a small bag and wrap it all up tightly with masking tape so it’s like a solid brick. Stow it away at the bottom of your pack and forget about it, safe in the knowledge that if a day-long expedition turns into an overnighter, you’ve got a solid lump of a thousand or so calories sitting there ready for use.
These straws are plastic tubes with built-in filters. You simply put one end of the straw into contaminated water – be it in a bottle, a river, or even a puddle – and suck clean water through the top of the straw. The filter does all the hard work for you. I often carry one of these: they’re cheap, light and effective. Good bits of kit.
Clothing can be heavy and bulky. You don’t want to be carrying too much. The really essential piece of gear is a warm, waterproof jacket to give you that extra layer of protection against the elements. Try to choose one with waterproof zips, Velcro cuffs and an elasticated hem. Above all, it needs to be lightweight.
If you venture out into unfamiliar terrain without a map, you’re asking for trouble.
Here you’ll find lots of tips about how to find your way when you’re lost using the sun, the stars and other forms of natural navigation. In terms of equipment, however, your best friend is always going to be a compass. It doesn’t need to be big, expensive or fancy – in fact, you want it to be small and light.
This has so many uses. For example:
• building shelters (see here)
• fishing (see here)
• trapping (see here)
• kit repair
• as a boot lace
• as an emergency tourniquet (see here)
Even better than a head torch? Two head torches. And a couple of spare batteries. Loads of people get themselves into dangerous situations because they slightly misjudge their timings and end up in unfamiliar terrain with no light source. A head torch shows you the way and keeps your hands free.
You only need a small one. It’s antiseptic as well as being able to seal small cuts or grazes.
See the next section for what these need to contain.
And that’s it. Lightweight, but containing all the items you really need.
Keep it waterproof. You need two waterproof liners.
Keep it light. Heavy backpacks slow you down and drain your energy.
Emergency rations will last for years.
Waterproof jacket. Map. Compass. Cordage. Head torch. Job done.
MY SURVIVAL KIT and my first aid kit go together. I have a little waterproof bag to carry both inside my backpack. For both kits, I prioritize portability. There’s no room for any luxuries – I only want to be carrying stuff around that I absolutely might need in a survival situation.
Don’t get me wrong: when you’re out with the family, a little first aid kit containing a few plasters and some creams for bites and the like is fine.
I take the view that I can probably make do with a few cuts and grazes (unless I’m in the jungle, when I take them super-seriously: don’t underestimate the importance of regularly cleaning small cuts in such an environment to avoid infection). In most situations I want stuff that’s going to save my life or someone else’s, and which doesn’t weigh a ton. So this is what I take.
You know the stuff – thick, black, sticks to anything. It has loads of uses. You can use it to strap people’s feet together if they have a broken bone (see here). You can use it to close a wound that requires stitches (see here). You can stick it over sucking chest wounds to aid breathing and stem bleeding (see here). You can use it in place of an eye patch over a damaged eye. In Afghanistan, soldiers would stick it over bullet wounds. Gaffer tape is a million times more useful than plasters. If you fall over on to a stick and puncture your lung, a plaster’s a waste of time. A bit of gaffer tape might just give you a chance.
Quikclot is a product used in hospitals by first responders and in the military to deal with catastrophic bleeding injuries. Originally it was a powder that you poured into a wound to promote blood clotting. The version I carry is a gauze, which weighs nothing but punches way above that. You stuff the gauze into the wound – be it an animal bite, a severed arm or a bullet wound – to stem the bleeding and clot the blood quickly.
To stem bleeding from traumatic wounds.
This is a plastic tube which you place in a patient’s mouth to help keep their airway open. It does this by stopping the tongue from covering the epiglottis, which often happens when somebody becomes unconscious. (They’re not used when patients are conscious because they can stimulate the gag reflex.)
You could also take a nasal airway. These fulfil a similar function, but are inserted into the nostril rather than the mouth.
This is a special dressing for traumatic chest wounds with a one-way valve that allows blood and air to escape, but doesn’t let either back into the chest cavity.
Standard first aid advice is to avoid the use of tourniquets. In extreme environments, however, and in situations where you have a catastrophic bleed that has to be stopped, tourniquets save hundreds of lives (see here for more on this). I carry a standard military tourniquet, but belts or boot laces will do the job too.
I’m highly allergic to bee stings, so I carry one of these. It gives me a shot of adrenalin to fight life-threatening anaphylactic shock. Know your weaknesses and you stay strong.
Once you’ve read the section on how to prevent blisters (see here) you’ll understand that this is the stuff you need.
Everything in my survival kit is stashed in a military tobacco tin, sealed with gaffer tape. The tin keeps everything dry, safe and ready for emergencies, but it’s also a useful item in its own right. For example, it can be used as a container to heat up water, or to make tinder for the following night’s fire. To do this, tear off a piece of cotton from your T-shirt. Place it in the empty tobacco tin and put the tin over the fire. You’ll find that the cloth goes black and rigid. It’s known as ‘char cloth’. Stash it away safely and when you go to light your fire the following night, the char cloth will be a life-saving piece of tinder and will light immediately.
Inside my tobacco tin, I keep the following items.
Lighters are unreliable in cold temperatures and in the wet. Waterproof matches are your best bet for fire-starting in difficult conditions.
A good back-up to waterproof matches. See here for the low-down on how to use these items to get a fire going.
These are tiny, cheap and weigh nothing. See here for more.
Here you’ll find some tips on collecting and purifying water, but tablets are the easiest and quickest way of making sure your life-saving water is safe to drink.
Caves, forests at night … there are many locations and times when you might need a bit of sustained light that doesn’t require a battery. Tea lights are cheap, weigh very little and fulfil this purpose. They are particularly useful in Arctic and Antarctic environments. If you’ve had to dig yourself into a snow hole (see here), a single candle reflecting off the walls of a white cave will provide a lot of light. Perhaps more importantly, you can use it as an indicator of the level of oxygen in the atmosphere. If it starts guttering, that’s a sign you need to make a hole in the roof to let some more air in.
If you can find candles made of tallow – which is animal fat – you can also eat them. Not the best meal you’ll ever have, but ready calories in a survival situation.
I take these mainly for carrying water. A condom takes up almost no space but is very elastic and can hold up to two litres of water. Since they’re waterproof, they’re also good for keeping tinder dry. And you can use them as an improvised rubber glove if you’re treating a wound and want to guard against infection from a dirty hand. Choose a non-lubricated version.
For firelighting: the absorbent material inside a tampon makes good tinder.
Your first aid kit and survival kit need to be small and light.
Focus on what you need in an emergency, not on what will make you more comfortable.
Gaffer tape is your friend.
A military tobacco tin is more than just a container.
WATER IS GOLD dust. You can survive for a couple of weeks without food, but only a couple of days without water – and even less than that in the desert. In a survival situation, pretty much nothing else in this book matters if you don’t have access to clean drinking water.
‘Clean’ is the operative word. Water-borne pathogens are some of the biggest killers in the world. That aside, the main problem with drinking dirty water in a survival situation is that it will likely make you vomit and/or give you diarrhoea. If this happens, you’ll lose more water than you take in. When Aron Ralston famously got trapped under a boulder in the Utah desert and ended up having to amputate his own arm, he also drank from a puddle of filthy, stagnant water (not to mention having previously had to make do with his own pee) when he was walking across the desert to safety. Within minutes his bowels expelled the fluid. Drinking that water hindered him by making him even more dehydrated through diarrhoea.
Your chances of staying alive are almost always improved if you know how to collect water and make it safe to drink. Here are the main methods of water collection in the wild, and some instructions on quickly getting it to a drinkable state.
These are your most obvious sources of water, provided you clean and purify anything you collect. Two rules for collecting water from rivers and streams:
1. If you are going to risk drinking direct from the water source, the safest water is that which is moving fast over rocks. Try to avoid collecting water from slow-moving pools.
2. If you’re collecting river or stream water in a bottle, don’t let the opening face upstream – this will funnel in all the small debris, twigs and the like. Turn it the other way round.
If you come across a bog of dodgy, stagnant, very dirty water, you can dig a hole next to it, about a foot away and a foot deep. This is known as a gypsy well. The dirty water will seep into the hole through the adjoining earth, which will filter it to a certain extent.
You’ll still need to filter and purify this water to make it completely safe to drink (see here), but the gypsy well will do a lot of the work for you and make your purifying methods more efficient.
If you can’t purify your water, this is a way of reducing the potential hazards of drinking very stagnant water.
You can also dig a well like this in a dry river bed. If there’s any sub-surface water, it should seep into the hole.
When green leaves photosynthesize, they give off oxygen and water vapour. You can collect this water by wrapping a plastic bag around a branch of green, non-poisonous vegetation. Tie the mouth of the bag tightly and leave it for several hours. You can get a good inch of water in your bag if you do this right. The more bags you have, the more water you can collect.
These are especially good in the desert, where you’ll have few other ways of collecting water. Dig a hole about 60cm deep and maybe a metre across. Put a container in the bottom, then lay a piece of plastic sheeting over the hole. Put rocks all around it to hold it in place, then put a stone in the middle, right above the container, so the plastic sheet forms a cone shape pointing downward. Leave for several hours: moisture from the ground will condense on the underside of the sheet and drip into the container.
If you urinate in the hole before setting up the still, the moisture in your urine will condense into clean drinking water.
Where morning dew has collected on grass or other vegetation, you’ve lucked out because it’s easy to collect. Wrap towels, rags or any absorbent clothing round your feet, then walk through the vegetation. When the fabric has become saturated, you can wring it into a container and repeat the process until you’ve collected as much water as you can.
This acts like a sponge. And like a sponge, you can squeeze damp moss to produce small quantities of water.
A Millbank bag is a constituent part of many military belt kits. It’s a fabric bag into which you pour your unfiltered water. Any debris gets caught inside, while cleaner water drips through the fabric. Worth having, but you can improvise a similar process.
Take off your sock. Better still, take off your underpants. Even better, use a pair of tights. Pour your unfiltered water through the fabric so that the worst of any debris is filtered out.
This is the quickest, easiest way to filter water in a survival situation. You can make a better job of it by filling your sock or whatever you’re using with sand and rocks, layering it with the least coarse material at the bottom and the more coarse material at the top. But if you need to get water into your body fast, a rough filter will probably suffice.
Alternatively, carry a water filtration survival straw (see here).
I always carry purifying tablets in my survival kit. If my water is not too dirty I’ll chuck one in. If it’s honking, I’ll chuck in two or three. It won’t taste great, but it’ll do the job.
Alternatively you can boil your water. People will tell you that you need to boil it for ten minutes. If you’ve got an unlimited water source, that’s fine. If you’ve collected only a limited amount of water, the more you boil it, the more you lose in evaporation. So once it’s come to the boil, drink it: 99.9 per cent of the pathogens will have been killed.
You can reduce the amount of water you need to take in by reducing the amount of water you excrete. So:
1. As far as possible, stay out of the sun and in the shade.
2. Keep out of the wind: it evaporates moisture from your skin and causes you to sweat more.
3. Eat less. Your body uses water to help digest food.
4. Keep your mouth shut and breathe through your nose – you lose much more water vapour through your mouth.
5. Move less and more efficiently – see the section on conserving energy (here).
6. If you come across undrinkable water, use it to dampen your skin and clothes and so cool your body down, which will mean less sweating.
7. Urinate less – the longer your body can hold on to that water, the better.
I know, I know … but urine is a life-saver if you have no other source of water. It’s almost sterile when fresh, but you don’t want to drink it if it’s very dark: it’ll poison you rather than hydrate you.
Don’t go there. See here for water collection tips at sea.
In a survival situation, water = life.
Prioritize it above everything else.
Contaminated water can make you excrete more than you drink: weigh up the risks and benefits before drinking it.
Collect. Filter. Purify.
Preserve the water in your body: take steps to sweat and urinate less, and keep your mouth shut.
FIRE KEEPS US alive. We can use it to boil water and make it safe to drink. To cook food. To keep warm. To ward off dangerous animals. To send emergency signals. To make tools. In a survival situation, fire is your friend.
Many people, however, find it difficult to light a fire in a grate at home, let alone when their life depends on it. That’s because they don’t understand fire: what it is, what it needs and how to make it.
Fire is what we see and feel when a particular type of chemical reaction, called combustion, occurs. Let’s not get too sciencey, but combustion happens when oxygen reacts with some sort of fuel, which must be a gas. In order for this to happen, solid fuel must be heated up to the point where it becomes gaseous. This is its ‘ignition temperature’. Once that happens, the reaction will continue to provide more heat, but if the temperature drops, the reaction will stop.
So the three things a fire needs to burn are the three elements of the combustion reaction: oxygen, fuel and heat. We call this the fire triangle. It is easy to remember as humans require the same three elements to survive.
If you remove any of these three elements, the fire will go out. The more oxygen there is, the faster and hotter a fire will burn.
The secret of making a good fire lies in remembering the fire triangle, and understanding that combustion won’t occur until you’ve raised your fuel to the correct temperature. Imagine trying to ignite a log using only a match. It won’t burn, because the match doesn’t supply enough heat to get the log up to temperature. If you use the same match to light a piece of dry grass, however, the grass will burn.
So, in order to start a fire, we need material that will combust with a tiny flame or even a spark. This is called tinder. Good materials for tinder include:
• dry grass
• pine cones
• birch bark
• cotton wool
• the insides of tampons
• empty birds’ nests
• char cloth (see here)
If you see good tinder, grab it, stash it, and keep it dry. You don’t want to be hunting around for the stuff when your life depends on it.
Ideally you’ll have waterproof matches in your survival pack. Use these to light your tinder, or use one of the alternative methods here.
Once your tinder is ignited, you still need to keep things small because there won’t be enough heat to ignite large pieces of fuel. This is the kindling stage. Think dry leaves and small twigs – as dry as possible (twigs should snap easily). Add them gradually to the flame, making sure you don’t smother it by starving it of oxygen.
Only when you have a decent blaze should you start adding larger pieces of fuel. But do it gradually; never rush things. Remember the old adage: look after a fire when it’s small, and it will look after you when it’s big.
Having said that, keep it small. In general, small fires are best because:
• they’re easy to manage
• they use less fuel
• they’re less likely to get out of control
• in most situations, a small fire will perform all the life-saving functions as successfully as a big one
… and preparation prevent poor performance, as the old army saying goes. In most survival situations, you’re living on your wits, reacting fast. But with fire-making you have to think ahead and gather all your materials before you try to start one. Otherwise your fire will go out while you’re hunting for the right fuel, and it can’t perform its life-saving function.
So: preparation, preparation, preparation. Make several piles of different-size fuel before you start.
I always think that the appropriate type of wood for a fire when snapped should sound like the crackle of a fire. This is a good indicator that the wood is dry and dead rather than green, wet and living. Living wood won’t crackle when snapped.
First, build a raft of wood as a platform to keep your fuel off damp ground.
You can start a fire with wet wood, but it’s obviously more difficult. Your initial heat needs to be greater, which means that in this instance a larger fire is better. As the ground is likely to be wet, make a bed for your fire out of fallen logs first. Using your knife, you can also shave wet, dead wood down to get to the dry inner layers of the log.
Wood isn’t always available. I’m not saying the following options are going to give you the most pleasant fire you’ve ever built, but when your life depends on heat and warmth, you might need to improvise. Try:
• dried animal droppings – these can be mixed with dry grass to make a good fire
• engine oil or petrol/diesel scavenged from a vehicle (see here)
• spare car tyres, or upholstery scavenged from a vehicle (see here)
• dry grass, bundled together to make logs
• dead animals – if you’ve eaten the meat and the animal fat is going to go rancid, you can make a raised bed of animal bones, and place the fat on top and some tinder underneath to make a fire
Sounds tough, but it doesn’t have to be. Waterproof matches are always in my survival kit (see here), but if you find yourself without them, here are a few ideas for improvising.
1. Use a 9-volt battery and some steel wool. I always carry this in my survival kit as a back-up for my waterproof matches. Touch the steel wool to the contacts of the battery. The electric charge will cause the steel wool to burn.
2. Use your mobile phone. This is potentially very dangerous, but most modern phones have a lithium battery. If your mobile is dead or broken, you can break into it and remove that battery. If the lithium inside is exposed to air or water, it will burn – or even explode, so this should only be attempted as a last resort. Use a knife to hack into the side of the battery and have some tinder ready to burn as the lithium ignites.
3. Use a lens. As every schoolkid knows, a magnifying glass will concentrate the sun’s rays, and this will be enough to light dry tinder. You can also use the bottom of a glass bottle, or a piece of ice carved into a convex shape and polished.
4. Use a liquid lens. A clear sandwich bag, a balloon or even a condom, filled with water until they’re spherical, will focus sunlight as well. You’ll need to hold them just a couple of inches from your tinder. Of course, try not to drip water on to it.
5. Use the jump leads from a car, and a pencil. Carefully connect the leads to your car battery, then clip them to either end of the pencil. It should catch fire.
6. Use a flint and steel. You can buy special fire strikers that will give a spark no matter what the weather, but a piece of flint struck against the blade of a steel knife will do the job as well.
Remember the fire triangle: oxygen, fuel, heat. Lose any of these, you lose the fire.
Tinder. Kindling. Fuel. In that order.
Start slow and stay patient: time spent building a fire is never wasted.
Small is better.
YOU’RE NEVER GOING to extinguish a blazing forest fire (see here on how to escape one), and escaping a burning building is one of the toughest survival situations there is (see here). But these are by no means the most common causes of death and personal injury from fire. The most recent statistics available report that in one year, in the UK alone, there were 263 fire-related deaths and 7,569 fire-related casualties. Half of accidental fires are domestic, caused by cooking appliances in the home.
So, out-of-control fires are a very real danger, indoors and outdoors. If you’re in the presence of one, and it truly is out of control, you need to get out of there. Don’t be a hero. Fires kill quickly. Your only real chance of survival in a fire situation is to get yourself away from the heat and – crucially – the smoke.
Sometimes, though, we have a split second in which to make a potentially life-saving call, and we can kill a fire before it kills us.
Fortunately, it’s easy to put out a campfire, and most public buildings and some homes have fire extinguishers – though not every extinguisher is the same. Certain extinguishers make certain fires worse. Here’s how to deal with them.
Fires are divided into six categories. A fire extinguisher will tell you on its side which type of fire it is suitable for. The six main types of fire extinguisher are water, dry powder, foam, CO2, metal fire and wet chemical. Extinguishers are normally red, but each has an identifying block of colour on its body. The colours are:
• Water: red
• Dry powder and metal: blue
• Foam: cream
• CO2: black
• Wet chemical: yellow
The most common type. These occur when ordinary combustible materials – paper, wood, textiles, rubber, plastics – catch light and burn.
Class A fires can be extinguished with water, foam, dry powder or wet chemical extinguishers.
Think petrol. Flammable liquids only need a spark to ignite and are very difficult to firefight. You can’t add water to these fires because it will make the liquids splash and spread.
Class B fires should be tackled with a foam or a dry powder extinguisher.
Such as propane, butane and methane. Perhaps the most dangerous fire to try to extinguish because there’s often a source that’s expelling the gas constantly. So the most important thing to do – if it’s possible without putting yourself in more danger – is to switch off the gas supply.
The only fire extinguisher suitable for Class C fires is a dry powder one.
It takes a lot to ignite metal, but powdered metal and shavings are easier to set fire to. Some alkali metals react with air and water. Put them in contact with water or foam and they’ll burn hotter or even explode.
There are special Class D fire extinguishers available. These are the only ones you should use.
This is actually not an official UK fire class, but fires can easily be started by dodgy wiring, short circuits and faulty equipment. Electricity is not a fuel: it’s an ignition source. It needs to be switched off, if at all possible, before you tackle the fire. Water and foam conduct electricity, so they shouldn’t go anywhere near an electrical fire.
Electrical fires can be put out using a CO2 or a dry powder fire extinguisher.
Incredibly common. Think chip pans. Many injuries are caused by people who think they can put out a chip pan fire with water. You can’t. Adding water will make the fire spread very quickly, and probably harm you.
Cooking oil fires can only be tackled using a wet chemical fire extinguisher.
Remember, fire needs three things to burn: fuel, heat and oxygen. If you remove any of these three, you’ll kill the fire.
Here are some tips:
• Water will remove heat from the fire triangle if it’s a simple combustible fire. But you must never use it on flammable liquids, electrical fires or cooking oil fires.
• Smothering a fire is normally your best call. Chip fat fires should be extinguished by placing a lid or a damp cloth over the pan. Fire blankets are good to have around.
• Always kill the power if you have an electrical fire, or the gas if you have a gas fire.
When this happens, you have to move fast. You won’t have time to fetch water, so you need to smother the flames. Your aim is to get rid of the oxygen supply. Do this by:
• rolling them around on the ground
• covering them in sand or mud
• smothering them with a blanket or towel (a wet one is best, but a dry one will do)
If it’s you that’s on fire, you need to follow the instructions given to schoolchildren in the US: Stop, Drop and Roll. Stop where you are; drop on to the ground and cover your face with your hands; and roll until the flames are out.
If someone’s clothes have caught fire, they might be badly burned (see here for how to treat burns). Don’t try to remove clothing that is stuck to the skin.
Even a small fire can be a big hazard if it’s not properly extinguished. It’s no good simply chucking water or sand over it, dabbing it with your hand and checking it’s cool. I guarantee that if that’s all you do, I could come along the next day, dig down a little, find a glowing ember and turn it into fire with my breath. And if my breath can do it, so can the wind.
So: once you’ve put the fire out, you need to break it apart. Get your foot in there, kick it around a bit like you see cowboys doing in the movies. Now add more water and sand. Make sure your ash has no hidden, burning depths. If water is limited, pee on it.
If a fire is truly out of hand, get away from it.
Check the side of a fire extinguisher to ensure it’s suitable for the fire in question.
Never add water to flammable liquids, electrical fires or cooking oil fires.
Person on fire: roll and smother. Self on fire: stop, drop and roll.
I’M GOING TO show you how to make two very simple ‘stay-alive’ temporary shelters. Before I do that, let’s make one thing clear: there are loads of elaborate shelters you can learn how to make. But a shelter doesn’t need to be elaborate to keep you alive.
In a survival situation, it just needs to work.
In practice, this means making a shelter out of anything you can get your hands on. An old tarp. A bit of sheet metal. The only real requirements are that your shelter should keep you protected from the elements and animals. If it keeps you out of harm’s way and protects you from the wind, rain, sun or snow, then it’s doing its job.
Moreover, in a survival situation you certainly don’t want to spend too much energy or too many hours building an unnecessarily fancy shelter. An hour, tops. You’re probably only going to be there for a night. Long enough to rest, keep sheltered while you attend to your other survival priorities, and then get going again.
Unless you are making a camp for the long haul, in the hope of some form of rescue finding you (or if you have injured members with you who are unable to move), your main focus will be getting out to safety and civilization. So don’t waste precious energy building what will only be a temporary structure. This is real survival, not the Swiss Family Robinson.
Whether you’re making a wigwam or just using a piece of tarp, remember these two rules:
1. Your entrance should face away from the wind. That is, you want your back to the wind. This means you can have a fire without the smoke blowing back into your shelter. And, of course, you won’t have horrendous weather conditions breaching the shelter.
2. If you build a fire – and chances are you’ll want to – situate it about a metre from the opening of the shelter and build a horseshoe shape around the back of it from rocks or whatever material comes to hand. This will make it more efficient by deflecting the heat back towards the shelter.
Easiest and quickest first.
You can make a lean-to out of pretty much anything. A tarp tied between two trees and pegged into the ground will do the job. You can make something sturdier out of branches and vine (or string, cord or rope if you have it).
Lash a long horizontal branch between two upright trunks.
Gather more branches to lean against the horizontal one.
Cover the lean-to with leaves, earth or moss to waterproof it. Laying more branches or twigs over the leaves will stop them blowing away.
An A-frame shelter takes a little longer but can provide better shelter because both sides are enclosed. This is the quickest and easiest type, but you can do something similar by making an A shape at both ends.
Rest a long pole up against two vertical support branches as shown. Use more branches to create the sides, then cover with leaves and moss as with the lean-to shelter.
To make a shelter in the snow, you have to think a little smarter. Building a snow hole – or snow cave – is a great way of keeping your ambient temperature above zero. And again, it need not be a lot of work: keep it simple. If you’re stranded in the snow it will save your life.
Dig into a bank of deep drift snow (these gather mainly on windward slopes where the snow gets piled up). Use a shovel if you have one, or improvise using anything that will scoop snow efficiently. Use your hands if you have nothing else. Remember also to take off some layers of clothing as you will begin to sweat, which in turn will make you colder once you stop working.
Remove the scooped-out snow to one side. Tunnel in and slightly up. (Cold air will sink in your shelter so you want to be above that.) Make the entrance the lowest point.
Clear enough headroom to either sit reclined upright or lie down. Remember to insulate where you sit or lie using your backpack or some fir branches if there are any nearby. Inside the snow cave, smooth the ceiling off to stop it forming drips.
Use the snow that you have removed to make a windbreak outside your entrance. Close your entrance up as much as you can but ensure you have some ventilation coming through from somewhere, otherwise you will suffocate. An air hole in the ceiling, made with a ski pole or long stick, will do the job. Regularly check that this remains clear, as in a heavy snowstorm it can get covered very fast.
Don’t underestimate what an amazing life-saving tool the snow hole is. A friend of mine was caught alone on the mighty Mount Elbrus in Russia. He had zero visibility and couldn’t even tell which way was down. It was –30°C. He had no sleeping bag. He dug himself into a snow cave and survived in there for thirty-six hours with just a small window looking out into the storm. Only when there was a fifteen-minute break in the clouds, at four a.m., did he get a visual on the lights of base camp. He whipped out his compass, and nineteen hours later made it down. But without the snow cave, he’d have been dead.
Shelters don’t need to be fancy. They just need to work.
Use anything you have to hand to keep the elements off.
Entrance away from the wind.
A lean-to and an A-frame are the simplest shelters in forested areas.
Snow caves save lives.
YOUR BODY IS like a machine. If you fuel it, it’ll keep on working. If you don’t, it’ll break down. In a survival situation, the fuel your body needs can be in short supply. The more energy you expend, the more fuel you use. So the conservation of energy is a critical factor in keeping you alive.