
Survival , Escape, Resistance, Evasion
I'm not sure how much I will include on resistance and escape. Maybe 
I will save these subjects until someone elese offers to contribute 
the material. I will definitely cover the following subjects:


Survival
Arctic
Jungle
Desert


Topics will include dealing with attitude, exposure, dehydration, rescue, 
food gathering.


Evasion
Celestial Navigation - Stars/Sun
Camouflage - Rural and populated areas


Survival
Attitude is everything. Some of you may read this and think "yeah, o.k., 
now get on to the good stuff". What you must realize is that without the 
proper mental attitude, the other topics will be of use for only a short 
period of time. Depression, loneliness, feelings of abandonment, 
despondency, and the feeling that nobody knows where you are or cares 
will conspire to kill you. If you have done your homework, practiced 
the techniques described, there is a very good chance you will survive 
if you have a positive mentaal attitude. Tell yourself that you WILL 
get out of this. You WILL persevere.

I have seen some survival books talk as though collecting water is easy, 
catching game with snares is simple, and survival is something that can 
be taught in books. When I was very young, I would leave for the country 
on friday afternoons. I would take water proof matches, a litre of water, 
my bow and some arrows, ground sheet/blanket , and spend the weekend 
making snares, fishing with equipment I made, and hunting with my bow. 
I used primitive fire making methods and only used matches when I had 
to. I can tell you that there is nothing easy about any of this. There 
was much I didn't know at the time, but I had read a lot of books. I 
probably knew more at 13 than most people ever do. I was preparing 
myself for a life in the wilderness as a 'mountain man'. Needless to 
say,  I had not yet discovered girls or beer. Cable TV was unheard of, 
and computers were  magical talking 'entities' as seen on Star Trek 
and 2001. For me, society was full of unnecessary trappings that only 
made men soft and weak.

By sunday I was ready to return home. My parents would usually drive 
out to the area I was staying in and give me a ride. It was about a 
18 mile trek. Fortunately my mom made sure I took along 'emergency 
rations', just in case I had trouble finding game. Emergency rations 
were about the only things I ate all weekend. I shot a few birds and 
snakes with my bow. Caught a few fish too. But I learned something that 
many people do not realize. To survive you must battle three things in 
this order:



Exposure
Dehydration
Food Gathering


You can die in a few hours if you cannot retain body heat. You can die 
of exposure in 72 degree weather!
You will develop hypothermia when your body loses heat faster than you 
can produce it. You need calories to generate body heat. People die of 
hypothermia in warm water. The water is cooler than they are, 
subsequently the water absorbes body heat until their body can 
produce no more. It is a slow death.

When you breath your breathe causes water loss. Perspiration causes 
water loss. Evaporation from your eyes causes water loss. If you cannot 
replace these losses you will die. Drink water with little microbes, 
parasites, etc. and you will develop diaherra. This will increase 
your fluid loss and you will die even quicker.

Food is the last thing you will need. In moderate climates, you can 
survive without food for up to 30 days. You will die without water 
in one or two in the desert! Finding edible berries and plants are 
the last things you need to learn. Rescue and  conserving fluids and 
body heat are the primary survival skills. If you can survive long 
enough to get real hungry you are doing a good job. In extreme cold 
food is more important because your body converts food to heat.


Taking Inventory
First examine what you have to work with. Seat cushions from a 
vehicle are insulation. Shiny glass, mirrors, or polished metal 
can be used to signal search aircraft. Glass with imperfections, 
bifocals, binoculars, etc. can be used to focus the suns rays 
enough to start a fire. Thread stripped from a from seat cushion 
and wound together can be used to lash things together, make fishing 
nets, sutures fro stitching wounds,etc. Rememebr your priorities. 
Rescue, Shelter, Water, and food. You will have to balance these 
priorities and make decisions. Generally, you should stay in the 
area where you became stranded if there is any chance of a search 
for you. If you try to walk out, the search party will not find 
you. You will burn calories while walking, calories that will be 
hard to replace. You will also perspire, can you afford the water 
loss? If the enemy is searching for you, you will have to move to 
a safe location.

Exposure and Body Heat - Arctic
Time is running against you here. You must work quickly and conserve 
energy. After you have taken inventory, build a fire:

Hopefully you will have matches or a lighter. You must conserve 
these valuable items. Before you build your fire, pick a place 
for your shelter. (see below). Now gather combustible materials. 
Cones from pine trees don't burn. Bark doesn't either. DONT waste 
matches trying to ignite them. Gather material in this order:

Very small match stick thickness twigs. Have at least a good double 
handful. They must be dry. To find dry sticks in the rain, look under 
the overhang of an embankment, under-side of logs, dead dry roots 
pulled out of an embankment, the center of a stump or dead tree 
(dug out with a knife).

Small sticks a little bigger than the smallest. You will need more 
of these, at least a quart - half gallon. Some of these may be a 
little wet.

Bigger sticks - Twice the thickness of the ones before, even more 
of these.

Keep moving up in size untill you are collecting branches/small 
logs. If the wood is available you will need as much as you can 
gather in an hour. Drift wood will work if it's dry.
 
Now that you have your wood it's time to build your fire. Take your 
time and do this right. DONT throw the fire together haphazardly. 
This will only waste fuel and increase the risk of the fire not 
lighting. Every match you have is like gold. Do not waste them. 
If you do this right you will only need one.

Take a medium size branch and lay it down. Now build a tiny 
lean-to with the smallest sticks by leaning them up against 
the branch.  Take more and and lay them perpendicular to first 
layer, and parallel to the big branch. Use lots of very small 
sticks and leave enough gaps between them for the flames to rise 
up through and ignite the upper layers. If it's raining or windy 
cover yourself with something to protect your fire. Now add the 
bigger sticks to the top of the your neat little lean-to, using a 
teepee shape, and surrounding the little lean to on all sides. 
Leave a small gap up close to the big branch to get your match 
under the pile. If you have a small slip of paper or lint from 
pockets, put it under the lean-to and ignite it. As your fire 
grows, start adding more and more sticks to get the fire very 
hot. Now add the larger sticks, the heat will dry them if they 
are damp.(Not if they are green or soaked through.) Keep building 
your fire in stages. DON'T wait to long to add the next size larger 
sticks. The heat generated from the rapidly burning small ones is 
needed to dry and ignite the larger ones. As soon as you can, put 
some bigger stuff on by laying them across the big branch on the 
ground. Once your fire is going, DONT let it go out. If you need 
more fuel gather more, and start building your shelter.

This is the fastest shelter I know of:

Is there a snow bank nearby? Can you build a small one? You are 
going to dig a cave in the snow. You want the opening to be away 
from the wind. The cave has to be very small. For a snow shelter 
to be effective it must be below freezing. If not, melting snow 
will saturate your clothing and you will freeze.
Hollow out a place to lie in the snow. If you have something to 
line the floor with it will be much warmer. If you have nothing 
but plastic or something, try to find evergreen tree limbs to line 
it with. You want as much between you and the cold ground as you 
can. You will lose more heat by being in contact with the cold 
ground than you will from the air. The air in your cave will warm 
and retain heat. If you have a small heat source you can place a 
vent through the roof to allow gas to escape. You must ration your 
heat source. You will need it more at night when the temperature 
drops.  Luxuries to add will be more insulation, seat cushions, 
etc. and a door. 

 A Ranger Pile is a shelter used by small parties who lack bulky 
 camping equipment or who for tactical reasons, must not risk fire 
 or shelter construction. First layer of men, four or
five lays very close together on two ponchos snapped together. Next 
layer lay's on top of the others, cross ways. Another layer on top of 
them. Remaining ponchos are snapped together and
pulled over the top and tucked in around the sides. If a quantity of 
DRY pine needles, leaves, etc
can be quietly collected, this can be used for insulation stuffing. Just 
pile it on each layer before the next gets on. This is how small recon 
teams survive without carrying a lot of bullshit with
them. It only gets bad when one of the guys has gas!

A vehicle will block the wind but the compartment is too big to retain 
body heat. You will freeze if you stay in a car or aircraft. Strip 
cushions, carpet, floor mats, insulation, etc. from the vehicle to 
line your shelter with. If you have tools and can remove the hood 
or trunk lid you can use these for a reflector to direct heat in 
one direction from a fire.

If you are fortunate enough to have the materials to construct a 
lean-to, build one similar to the way you built your fire. Keep 
the openings away from the wind, and towards your fire. Use a 
reflector to direct the heat into your lean-to.

Clothing What do you have to work with? Thin material should be 
put closest to your body, as should wool. If you have extra foam 
from seat cushions, stuff your shirts and pants with it. It will 
work as insulation. Extra clothing can be stripped in to pieces 
of about 5" x 4' and used as wrapping for extra socks. The russian 
army has always used wool strips for field socks. You want to have 
the material that best holds in heat  closest to your skin. This 
same concept can be used when you have the luxury of a sleeping 
bag. Sleeping bags are designed to hold in heat much better than 
clothes. When you get into a bag, remove all of your clothes and 
lay on them. Naked, your body heat will be trapped between your 
skin and the bag. Otherwise your heat escapes through the thin 
material of your clothing, and stays between your clothes and the 
bag, until it dissipates.

If you have no clothes for the environment you find yourself in, 
you will have to use the shelter for clothing. Keep your shelter 
VERY small and use insulation. This is your only chance to survive.

If there is plenty of snow/ice  you will have agood water supply 
if you have a fire and a container to melt it in. DO NOT EAT SNOW. 
It will lower your body temperature and bring on hypothermia. Always 
melt it and get it warm first.

Do not drink alcohol of any kind. It will thin your blood and  
increase your urine output. If it's strong enough, you can use 
it as a disinfectant, or to help start your signal fires if an 
aircraft approaches.

Now that you have your fire and a shelter it is time to improve 
the odds of rescue. The international distress signal is three(3) 
of anything or the letters SOS. Don't build three fires because 
it wastes fuel.   Scrape out three large circles in the snow by 
dragging something around. If it snows these will fill in. If you 
have access to lots of branches or something that provides a good 
contrast to the white snow, lay them out to form 3 large X's. 
What looks big to you on the ground looks very small from an 
aircraft at 10,000 feet. Your X's should be 100 - 150 feet across 
and 75 feet apart. If you have the wood build three fires in the 
middle of each but don't light them. Keep your main fire going so 
that you'll be able to take a torch to the other fires in a hurry. 

Smoke will be quite visible from the air also. Large piles of 
pine needles smoke well, as does rubber, plastic, or oil. Be 
careful about burning critical supplies however! I would not 
throw a poncho, sheet of plastic, or rubber boots on the fire 
in a vain attempt to signal a distant plane. You will have to 
use common sense. If the plane cannot land near you, and has to 
radio for help, you could be there a while longer anyway. With bad 
weather it might take a rescue party several days to get  you. If 
the pilot is an idiot, or lacks a GPS or LORAN, he might report 
your location as being 20 miles away from where you actually are.

You may want to find a book named "White Dawn". It chronicles the lives 
of three men who were lost in their small whaling boat in the arctic 
back in the 1800's. It is an excellent work of fiction and provides 
many accurate details of how northern aboriginal peoples survive in 
their climate. If you are inland you will not have much opportunity 
to hunt for seals. In some areas of the north, the only thing you will 
find are lemings, lichens, and maybe a fox or two. (if there are 
enough rats to feed them). Near the sea you will be able to hunt 
seal. That far north and you won't find much snow, it is too arid 
and cold. On the Ice pack you will have to build your shelter with 
ice, and heat it with animal fat. If you wind up on the ice pack, 
with no supplies, there is little I can tell you here that will 
save your life. You will have to stay warm long enough to get rescued, 
which had better be pretty quick.
 

Exposure - Desert
Since there is nothing in the desert to hold in the heat, it 
dissipates quickly after the sun goes down. Deserts can drop 
to near freezing over night. During the day the temperature 
will soar and fry your brain, dry you out, and kill you. For 
this reason any movement should only be at night. For shelter 
you must  get out of the sun. If you can, dig a hole to get in 
and cover it. Do not strip off your clothes. Have you ever wondered 
why arabic people wear those long, heavy, hot looking clothing on 
their heads and bodies? It is because moisture evaporation is your 
worst enemy in the desert. Clothing helps keep in this moisture and 
slows evaporation. It must be loose enough to allow heat loss. You 
will need to stay warm at night, refer to the arctic topic above.

Water is the most important thing to consider in the desert, it must 
be conserved. Long term drinking of urine can make you sick, but if 
it's all you have you will have to drink it. Succulent plants like 
cactus also contain water, as do the bodies of snakes, lizards, and 
other animals. Suck every drop you can from them, but avoid the 
poison glands in snakes (they are right behind the head in the neck). 
The only two parts of animals in North America that cannot be eaten 
are the livers of the polar bear and bearded seal. They contain toxic 
amounts of Vitamin A.

If you have plastic or a poncho you can collect water at night in 
the desert. dig a hole (or use support sticks) as wide as the 
plastic. Make a hole in the plastic at the center. Stretch the 
plastic over the hole and weight down the edges with rocks. Press 
down the center of the sheet or tie it to a tock to pull it down. 
Place a container under the hole. When dew forms on the plastic it 
will roll down hill through the hole and it into your container. 
Use your poncho during the day as shade.

Do not drink alcohol, it will increase your urine output and aid 
in dehydration.


Exposure - Jungle
Here, heat and sunlight are your worst enemies. Insects and water 
contamination are also major problems. The heat and humidity of 
the jungle makes for rapid bacteria growth. Any untreated wound 
will fester within a few hours. In a day or two a cut can become 
bad enough to cause gangrene. You must protect yourself by turning 
down sleeves, blousing your pants to keep insects out, and wearing 
gloves and a hat. 

Water must be boiled well to kill parasites. Safe water can be 
found in<EM> water vines</EM>. These are very thick vines that 
hang down from large trees. You know, the ones that Tarzan swings 
from? Cut one at a 45 degree angle, move up the vine and cut it 
off about three feet up or sever it  to release the suction. Hold 
your mouth under the vine and the water will flow out. This water 
is safe to drink without boiling. Try not ot let it run along the 
exposed outside of the vine though, that area will have tiny creepy 
crawlies.

Jungle streams are usually as deep as they are wide. Diffenbachia 
(or 'dumb cane') can be crushed and  added to water to stun fish.

Chinese Star Apples, Mangoes, bananas, coconuts, and other fruits are 
safe to eat if you wash them with sterile water first. The seeds of 
the Star apple are poisenous. Many species of tree frogs in the 
rainforests are highley toxic. They are recognized by there bright 
vivid colors. If you are very careful not to touch them, you can use 
their skin secretions for poisenous blow gun darts.

Blow guns are difficult to make, but I'll tell you how for the hell of 
it. Take a limb and split it length-wise.
scrape the bore of the weapon into both halfs. It must be perfect. 
Allow it to dry and polish the bore halfs smooth. The two sides must 
fit perfectly. (This is harder than it sounds). Bind the two back 
together with bark or vine strips.

Darts are made from any  wood that can be sharpened. To launch the 
dart a small tuft of fiber (like cotton) from the stem of a (????) 
tree branch is balled around the base of the dart.

During the rainy season, grubs can be found in the center of (????) 
trees. I can't remember their names but I know what they look like.

Build a platform or hammock to get off of the ground when you sleep. 
Insects will eat you alive if you don't.
Mud can be used to keep mosquitos off.

The jungle is a garden of eden compared to the desert or the arctic. 
With a little common sense anyone should be able to survive. 

I don't know of any poisenous plants that don't tast extremely bitter 
and nasty. If the leaf tastes mild it is probably OK to eat. When in 
doubt, try a little piece first and wait a couple of hours. If nothing 
bad happens try twice as much and wait again. Keep doing this until 
youve tried enough to have made you sick. If you are still O.K. then 
it's probably safe to eat. There are exceptions to this rule, most 
notably among berries. Some berries don't taste too bad but are poisenous.

You should educate yourself before going to a new area Pictures in 
books never look like the actual plant. Generally, if it crawls, 
walks, or slithers on it's belly it is safe to eat.


