How To Survive

So, I'm going to talk about how to survive in the wild. There are four broad areas that wilderness survival falls into and they come normally in this order: Shelter, Water, Fire, and Food. If you think about it in some situations, such as when it's very cold, very windy, very wet, without shelter, you could succumb to hypothermia or even die in a very short space of time.

So, shelter is, generally, very important. It could be as simple as finding a cave, or even getting in a lee of a tree out of the wind. You can obviously go into more complicated shelter types, you know, using tarpaulins, tents, even natural built shelters.

But the main thing is you need to keep yourself out of the wind and you need to keep yourself out of the rain and warm as well. So, you need something insulating, something wind-proof and something waterproof. From shelter, next thing you need is water.

Obviously, a lot of water in the wild can be contaminated so you may need fire to purify the water, but first of all, you need to know where that water source is so that definitely comes next in the order. You need to know where you're going to get it. It may be from a stream, it may be from a river, from a small lake, you may even have to dig a well, sort of an Indian well they call it, where you find some low-lying ground, where the ground is quite damp, you find yourself a digging stick and you dig down to get the water from the water table.

Next step is fire. You need fire for cooking food, to give you light at night, you even use it for craft purposes making glues, boiling up plant fibres to make cordage, and of course, purifying the water. Last of all is food.

You can actually survive for quite a long time without food. Your body will go to a state called ketosis after a while where it starts to metabolise itself, but initially, you'll use your blood sugars, and the energy stored within your muscles before your body starts to converts its own fat and its own muscle into energy, but you can survive quite a long time. There have been accounts of people surviving up to 40 days without eating.

But, of course, it all depends on your level of activity, the climate you're in and the colder the climate, you're going to consume calories far, far quicker. You can obtain food by trapping wild edible plants, and the main thing is that you'll need to work out somewhere of storing these foods as well. It depends on where you are on your survival situation and what time of year it is, because it varies from season to season, what's available, and you really do need to know your surroundings.

You also need to know the nature and habits of the animals that you're living around so that you'll be able to track them, lay traps for them. Also, there's fishing as well, so there's a whole skill base you need to be able to survive in the wild. .