By the Field Skills Team Fire is the great multiplier of survival. It gives you warmth against the exposure that kills faster than thirst, it purifies water, it cooks food, it wards off the dark and the fear that comes with it, and it signals for rescue. A person who can reliably make fire in … Read more
By the Foraging and Hunting Team In a genuine survival situation, trapping is one of the most efficient ways to obtain food, because unlike hunting, a trap works for you continuously without expending your energy. You set it and walk away, and it hunts around the clock while you tend to shelter, water, and fire. … Read more
By the Field Skills Team In a survival situation, fish are one of the most valuable food sources available, offering high-quality protein and fat for relatively little effort, especially compared to hunting. Water bodies concentrate life, and fish are often abundant where game is scarce. Survival fishing differs from recreational angling in a crucial way: … Read more
By the Foraging Team The natural world is full of food for those who know how to find it, and foraging for wild edible plants is a deeply satisfying skill that connects us to how humans fed themselves for most of history. Wild plants can supplement your diet, provide nutrition in a survival situation, and … Read more
By the Field Skills Team The difference between a shelter that keeps you alive through a cold night and one that lets you shiver until dawn comes down to a single factor: insulation. A shelter’s roof and walls block wind and rain, but it is insulation that actually keeps your body heat from escaping into … Read more
By the Field Skills Team An emergency shelter is built to get you through a night or two. A long-term survival shelter is a different undertaking entirely, a structure meant to protect you comfortably for weeks or longer, whether in an extended wilderness situation or as part of a self-reliant retreat. Where the emergency shelter … Read more
By the Field Skills Team Sometimes you do not have hours to build the perfect debris hut. A storm is rolling in, the temperature is dropping, someone is hurt, or darkness is close, and you need to be out of the weather now. The quick emergency shelter is a different discipline from careful shelter building. … Read more
By the Field Skills Team In a survival situation, shelter is not about comfort. It is about heat. The Rule of Threes puts exposure right near the top of what kills people, above thirst and far above hunger, because losing core body temperature is quiet, fast, and it makes you too confused to fix the … Read more
By the Field Skills Team Survival skills can feel like an endless, intimidating list, which is exactly why so many beginners freeze and never start. The truth is that all of it organizes neatly into a handful of categories, and those categories line up almost perfectly with the order your body needs them. Learn to … Read more
By the Budget Prep Team Preparedness has an expensive reputation, and the gear industry is happy to keep it that way. But a huge share of a solid kit can be assembled secondhand, at thrift stores, garage sales, estate sales, and online marketplaces, for pennies on the dollar. The catch is knowing what to buy … Read more