Knowledge Is The Key to Survival

Fishing, hunting, permanent agriculture, and survival skills are no longer common knowledge in today’s modern world. Of course, most people do not require these skills on a daily basis, but just because these skills are not needed every day does not mean that they will never be needed, nor does it mean that these skills should be forgotten by “modern man”. 

Thousands of hunters, hikers, and campers get lost every year. Children wander away from their parents during a family outing and become lost in the woods. Vehicles break down or become stuck, stranding their occupants on a deserted road miles from the nearest town. ATV and snowmobile riders may find themselves stranded even further into the wilderness when their equipment breaks down miles from any road at all.  

Learning basic survival skills can keep the inconvenience of being lost in the woods from becoming the major problem of being dead in the woods. The best way to learn survival skills is to have someone who has mastered them teach them to you. However, not everyone has a friend who is a master of fieldcraft and survival, and attending a professional survival school can be expensive. However, you can almost certainly learn a few basic survival skills on your own.

Begin by reading some books about survival. There are many good survival manuals for sale at your local book store, or available for loan from your local library. You can also download survival manuals from the Internet. Here are three survival manuals that you can download for free:

• Wilderness Survival for Dummies - http://ow.ly/zyA730b07gj
• Survival, Evasion, and Recovery - http://ow.ly/JzpM30b07hR
• U.S. Army Survival Manual FM 21-76 - http://ow.ly/dC9230b07iZ

Additionally, there are a large number of videos posted on-line that demonstrate survival skills. My current favorite YouTube survival channel is “Survival Lilly” https://www.youtube.com/user/alonewolverine1984 with close seconds being “Survival Mike” https://www.youtube.com/user/survivalmike and “Survival Russia” https://www.youtube.com/user/Moscowprepper.  There are many other good survival channels on YouTube, and you will no doubt find one from which you can learn.

Knowledge is the key to survival. But, it is the ability to apply that knowledge as practical skills that will bring you home from a survival situation. Read books, watch videos, but most importantly get out and practice survival skills until you can do them yourself.  So, get up, get out, and get training.