The idea of trading the comfort and security of modern life for a chance to die from dehydration and hypothermia may sound bizarre to some people and strangely appealing to others. To tell the truth, survival is not all about dozens of different ways to die, quite on the contrary – it’s all about staying alive despite the challenges the majority of modern-day people ceased to experience. Once, survival skills were an indispensable part of human life that allowed our ancestors to stick around for a while. We are far ahead of the need to create fire from a spark and know whether the plant is edible or poisonous. However, wilderness is still out there, and we still have an opportunity to pass through this time-portal and plunge into the times of primal forests, where your life depends on your survival skills. Our predecessors knew how to survive, this knowledge remains somewhere deep within us. It might be excessive to say that surviving builds character, but you can benefit greatly from a successful experience of surviving in the wilderness. Proving to yourself you can make it on your own, without any side assistance, could make for a notable boost to your self-esteem. At the end of the day, nature is our cradle, and experiences like that can revive a once severed tie between us and the wildlife, even if for just a moment.
Now then, if the idea of spending a couple of days struggling with the wilderness and ripping your life out of the bony claws of death fascinates you, may this guide, prepared by one humble outdoor equipment and sporting store, be the first step towards your future successful surviving trips. Alright, we are exaggerating things, survival trips are rarely fraught with severe harm unless you are thrown out of the trunk in the middle of nowhere with nothing on your person. The most likely venue for your surviving trip is a local forest, so it will be hard to be too far from civilization. Besides, you are not going there unprepared and unequipped. We hope you don’t.
If you are a fan of “Alone” and “Man vs. Wild”, you’ve probably already seen everything mentioned in our guide on the TV screen dozens of times. However, to see and to do are two fundamentally different things. The difficulty of your trip also depends on the amount of equipment you bring. A hearty outing with loads of food, water supplies, tents, and sleeping bags will probably leave good memories, but such an event can hardly be called a survival trip. The key element is the lack of tools and supplies that could satisfy your needs. On the other hand, there is no need to walk into the forest with nothing but an animal hide and a stone-headed spear. Rather than taking means to satisfy your needs immediately, you can bring tools that will allow you to make use of something found in the forest. Those may include a sturdy sharp knife, fishing line, a metal container, a water-resistant jacket, cloth, and a fire-starter.
When out in the wild, you have four major matters of concern:
- Warmth
- Water
- Shelter
- Food
Though the priority order is debatable, these are the needs you must keep satisfied. Surviving trips have little in common with peaceful hermit life, colorfully depicted in movies and books. Even though you will have time to think about your unity with nature, such thoughts will hardly take the majority of your time. Here are some survival tips for you to follow when out in the wilderness.
Keeping Warm
It wasn’t occasional that we mentioned death from hypothermia at the beginning of the article. Even though staying hungry will deprive you of the energy required to perform a survival routine, you can get by without food for several weeks if a sufficient water supply is present. But in the case of low temperature, the number drops significantly to a few hours mark. We’ll tell you right away – your chances of dying from hypothermia in a forest are minimal. For that to happen, you need to fall into an icy lake, get out and freeze out in the open. The most likely scenario is a rainy night you need to live through.
Long story short, staying dry and warm is of utmost importance. You can achieve this by taking care of two things: building a shelter and making a fire.
Let’s begin with a shelter since it is reasonable to build a fire near the place you plan on spending your night at. Moreover, it is vital to have a place to sleep before nightfall. Since we want to take advantage of our surroundings, look for some natural backbone for your shelter. Fallen trees and rocky outcroppings make for great options to build refuge around. Of course, if you happen to have a plastic tarp, your options are more numerous than that. But in case you have nothing but the forest (which is A LOT), it’s way easier to build a shelter around a base than from scratch. Gather some long, big branches to act as shelter walls, and fill the gaps with smaller, bushier branches and moss. Moss will also help with insulation and wind issues.
The second element of this equation is making fire, one of the basic survival techniques. A bonfire, in addition to providing warmth, will prove invaluable for making any water you find potable. Despite the popular opinion that rubbing two sticks is enough to make a fire, the process involved is much more complex. Matches, a lighter, or even a fire-starter don’t take much space and will spare you the headache. But if you’ve decided to choose a hardcore level, there are several ways to make fire through unconventional means.
With most of them, you’ll still be able to get a tiny spark that will fade away too soon to give life to a bonfire. To succeed, you need a good tinder that will hold an ember. Char cloth is a good choice, but if you are looking for something forest born, shredded dry tree bark, cattail, and amadou fungi, found on trees are all valid options.
There are two major ‘schools’ of fire-making: friction and solar. The first one relies on the energy produced by friction. In movies, it is often enough to bang two rocks together to get a spark, but everyone who’s ever tried doing that knows it’s all nothing but a sham.
To start a full-scale fire, you’ll need more profound means. One of such means is using a bow-string – a device quite simple to build but highly efficient at what it does. The only two things you won’t find in the forest are an ax and a piece of string. You can replace an ax with a knife (which you had hopefully taken) since you won’t need to cut down whole trees for these and use a shoelace as a string. You’ll need to carve a drill and a fireboard out of two pieces of wood.
A fireboard looks similar to a regular floorboard – it should be flat and square. A drill needs to be as straight and smooth as possible. One end will be in contact with the fireboard, the other one – with the bearing block. The top of the drill should have a small contact area to reduce the friction, whereas the bottom should have as much contact with the board as possible, for maximized friction.
Two other components are a bow, with which you’ll rotate the drill, and a bearing block, with which you’ll impart downward pressure. The bearing block shouldn’t be big – making it as wide as your hand is enough. Carve a round notch that will be in contact with the top of the trill – and the component is complete. A bow is, well, a bow, like with arrows only without arrows. A curved branch with a natural fork on one end will make for an excellent material for the bow base. Carve a notch on the other end and tie a string to both ends. The string should be a bit slack since you’ll need to wrap it around the drill.
Now you’re almost ready to make things hot. Carve out a notch at the edge of the fireboard and place the bottom of the drill there. Then wrap the string around the drill, place the bearing block on the top and start turning the drill shaft. The heat generated from the friction will eventually produce charcoal. The final step is to place the charcoal into the tinder and blow on it. Voila – the fire is there.
These are a lot of words, but making a bow-string in practice is easier than it looks. If you want to utilize the energy of the biggest star in our solar system instead, the power of optics is at your service. You can utilize glasses to focus sunbeams and ignite the tinder. In case you don’t wear any, a plastic pocket filled with water and gathered in a sphere can do the trick. This method, however, makes you very dependable on the Sun. You can avoid these ritual dances by simply taking a tinderbox or a flint. This will somewhat decrease the difficulty level while giving you more time to do other survival thingies.
Keeping Hydrated
An equally important task, finding water is another challenge no survivalist can escape. Our body is more dependent on water than on food, so you’ll feel the lack of hydration sooner than the lack of nutrition. Dehydration causes headaches, overall tiredness, confusion, and general discomfort – nothing from this list will help you with surviving. It might be reasonable to have a “break in case of emergency” bottle of water (not to break but to drink) should nothing from our tips work out.
The first water source and the only one that calls for no treatment is rain. Rainwater is safe to drink unless there is a toxic waste processing plant neighboring your improvised refuge. It may seem like the easiest way to stay hydrated – the only thing you need to do is put your water container out in the rain, right? Not really. That is indeed one way to do this, a very ineffective one, however. When collecting rainwater, the surface area is the determining factor: the larger the area, the more water you will collect. That is another situation when a plastic tarp can shine. A tarp, acting as a roof for your shelter, can also funnel the rainwater down to a gathering container. Such a method will provide you with more water to drink. If you don’t have any tarp, then, hopefully, you have taken a waterproof jacket. It has a smaller surface area than a tarp, but it is still better than simply waiting for your bottle to fill up.
Such a method is the easiest one, but it is also somewhat unreliable. You might have checked out the weather in advance to make sure it will be sunny when you arrive – spending several days in a wet and chilly forest may not seem appealing to some people. In that case, you’ll need other means to collect water. Finding a water body is one way to do so. A stream or a creek are valid options, and if you come across something bigger – better for you. We strongly encourage you to treat such water through boiling, for there are many bacterias and other unpleasant things that may leave you less healthy. Of course, a water filter can do the trick, but we assume you’ve decided to go the “least equipped path.” That is another reason to master a bow-string technique – it will allow you to get a reliable source of fire to boil water. Twenty minutes of fire treatment should suffice.
If there is no water body near you, stay strong. The forest still has water – you only need to find it. Morning dew can become your lifeline – it is plenty and easy to collect. Licking water drops from every grass blade is a tiresome activity – that’s why you need cloth. Press a separate piece of cloth or a shirt onto the ground and wring the dew into the container or straight in the mouth. You can also wrap the cloth around your legs and walk through the plants. This method won’t provide you with loads of water but will keep you from dehydrating.
Keeping Fed
If you’ve managed to secure yourself a shelter and a potable water source – congratulations, you have nailed the survival test! Almost. Finding food is the last thing on the list because of the time you can spend without it. It is still a matter worth taking care of since food gives you the energy to do things, keeps you warm and, well, focused. Even though the omnipresent thought of finding food might seem like an indispensable part of a surviving trip, hunger is a very distracting feeling.
If you’ve already envisioned pictures of yourself chasing a rabbit with a spear in your hand, you might want to lower your expectations. Unless you have a bow or a rifle, killing an animal is a challenge more daunting than making a fire. Woodland beasts have keen senses and won’t let you close enough to give you a chance of hitting the target. Fishing is a more realistic way to get something not planty. But for that, you’ll need hooks, lines, and some bait, of course. In case you’ve left your tackle box at home, plants and insects are your primary menu for your runaway trip.
The issue with plants is that not all of them are safe to consume. It would be very frustrating to build a shelter and secure a water supply only to get poisoned after a handful of deadly nightshade berries. Enlisting edible plants requires an article of its own, so we’ll give you a very general idea.
Nuts are safe to eat unless you have an innate allergy. In case you don’t know if you have one, under no circumstances try nuts in the wild. Such allergies are pretty severe and may lead to death if left untreated, and, as you can imagine, there is nobody to help you in the forest.
Tree cambium is an almost infinite source of nutrition in the forest. Cambium is the next layer after the bark that allows the trunk, branches, and roots to grow thicker. Many trees have edible cambium, including the majority of pines, birches, and spruces. It is still better to check this information before you set off on your survival journey, out of harm’s way. You won’t call it a tasty meal, but it is a reliable source of food.
Gather only those berries you are sure about – forests are abundant in all kinds of wild varieties of garden berries since, well, this is where they came from. Raspberries, cranberries, blackberries, blueberries – you know the list.
Insects. You’ve probably seen people on Fear Factor eating these for money, so why would you do that for free? To survive, obviously. The tastes differ, we know that, but even if insects look much less delicious than berries, you can find these little creatures in excess, and that’s what determines your diet during forest days. Grasshoppers, ants, grubs, and maggots are edible when cooked on fire (this is the third time we mention the need for fire). Fry grasshoppers after you remove the head, wings, and legs. Boil ants for six minutes to neutralize the acid. Skewer grubs and grill them over the open fire. Long story short, give them a thermal treatment, don’t eat poor creatures raw and alive. Some of them can bite while on their way to your stomach.
An alluring perspective of trying a fried grub concludes our guide on surviving. That is probably not the most appetizing end, but nobody said survival is about comfortable and tasty things. Even though there is beauty to be found in every corner of the forest, a survival trip is a test of your skills, knowledge, and resolve. It is also a great way to start appreciating the blessing of civilization a little bit more. Or fall in love with the primal way of life and stay in the forest forever. No bills, no traffic, no Twitter fights. Sounds appealing? Then try it out and see how it goes.
