The Wilderness Survival Skills You Should Know

A few hours watching the Discovery Channel can prompt extreme survival fantasies involving frog-licking and urine-drinking, but what about the basic skills you'd actually need to survive in the wilderness? Here's a look at the basics you need to become an adult Boy Scout straight from a cadre of survival experts.The key to surviving in the wilderness is preparation. But this post isn't about stockpiling food or preparing for disasters at home (although both are a good idea). This is about the skills and tricks you can learn and remember now that will help save your life if your car breaks down in the woods, you're lost while hiking, or a terrible disaster strands you in the wilderness. Before we go into detail on the technique, let's make a list of priorities to keep you alive.

Know Your Priorities


  • 3. Self protection: If you are at risk from predators, two-legged or four-legged, you must arm yourself. This might be a sharpened stick, a knife, machete, shotgun or banjo. Just have something to attack the zombies with.
  • 4. Physical needs (in order): shelter, fire, water, food and hygiene.



Learn To Perform Basic First Aid Techniques, Kit Or No Kit


Cut And Scrape First Aid

In most cases, you can ignore small cuts, but keep the wound clean and watch it for infection. If the injury is deep, and you can't stop the blood, your last resort is a tourniquet to stop the flow of blood. Tourniquets should be at least one-inch wide (a strip of shirt, belt, anything like that will work) and tightened around the limb above the injury. Tighten the tourniquet until the bright red bleeding stops and cover the injury with any clean material you have.

Mend Fractures And Dislocations

If you dislocate a bone, you need to get it back in place. For shoulders, you can roll on the ground or hit it against a hard surface to reset the bone. Kneecaps can be popped back in place by stretching your leg out and forcing it into the socket. For fractures, you need to find material to create a splint. In the woods, a couple of sticks will do the trick. Stabilise the fractured bone with the sticks and tie them together with shoelaces to hold the brace in place.

Treat Burns

To care for a first (reddening) or second degree (blistering) burn from fire, remove any clothing and find lukewarm water to run over the burn or coat it in honey if it's available. Wrap the burn loosely with a wet piece of clothing. If water is not available, clean out debris, dirt and any loose skin as best you can and find water as soon as possible. Keep the wound elevated whenever possible, and do not open any blisters that may have formed.

Self Defence Against Predatory Animals


The Boy Scouts recommend a simple approach for wolves, coyotes and cougars: face the animal and slowly back away from it. Don't play dead, run or approach the animal. If you're cornered, make yourself as big as possible. Spread out your arms and make a lot of noise. If this still doesn't work, throw anything you can find at the animal.


Photo by Dennis Matheson.

How to Stay Warm (And Cool) Anywhere


Build a Shelter to Protect You from the Elements

Even if you can start a fire with everything ranging from your glasses to a bottle of water, you're going to need a shelter at some point. Thankfully, the human body doesn't need the Hilton to survive, and your shelter only has to meet two requirements: it must block the elements and insulate for warmth.

The A-frame shelter in the video above is the simplest to build in a hurry, but anything that gets you out of the snow, rain or sun will work. Location and comfort are also two important details to consider, and Kevin Reeve has suggestions for both:



How To Start A Fire With Nearly Anything

Firefighters recommend keeping two things in mind when starting a fire: the wind direction and the surrounding area. A fire is an important part of your survival, but you don't want to set the entire forest on fire just to attract the attention of rescuers. The USDA Forest Service recommends building your campfire away from overhanging branches, rotten stumps, logs, dry grass and leaves. Fire might have been one of the first things we humans learned how to make, but that doesn't mean it's easy to start a fire. Let's look at a few tricks for using materials you might already have to start a fire.


Learn How To Find Water And Edible Plants


How To Find Water To Drink


  • Flies and mosquitoes tend to stay within around 120m of water.

    Learn The Big Four To Always Find Edible Plants


    • 2. Pine: The nuts and inner bark of the tree are edible. You can also make pine needle tea.

    Photos by Thomas Quine, Daniel Oines, Andy Arthur, anthony kelly.

    Learn The Universal Edibility Test




    Like the edibility test, the mnemonic isn't foolproof, but it's useful if you have no other options.

    The Basic Hygiene You Can Ignore (And What Not To)

    If you end up in a long-term survival situation you need to keep up with a few hygiene habits. For the most part, you can ignore a lot of it, but I spoke with Dr Dan Weiswasser, a primary care physician in Massachusetts about a few hygienic issues you shouldn't ignore:





    Navigation Methods to Help You Find Your Way Home


    How To Get Rescued


    If you have a signalling tool like a flare, torch or mirror, make use of them the second you see a rescue helicopter. Reflect the sun off the mirror in the direction of the helicopter to attract its attention.





    I don't remember the bush tucker man eating many acorns or drinking much pine needle tea...

      We do have plenty of pine and "Cat-tails" in the southern states, so that information is valuable.

      Some Australian native food advice: find wattle trees leaking sap (which is edible sugar) and with saw-dust around them. The saw dust is from grubs which are very high in fat and protein. You will need an axe, knife, rock or hardened wood implement to get at them.

      Australian fire advice: Don't even attempt to make friction fire from Australian native woods if you aren't familiar with the process.

      The exception is the "Black-Boy" grass tree, which has a woody spike growing out of it, this is soft straight grained wood that is perfect for friction fires. Aboriginal tribes traded for fire-sets made of this wood almost exclusively out of everything else available; and they had 50,000 years to try the alternatives.

      Basically, the food/water advice is moot: if you go into the bush, tell people where you are going (exactly where-routes, checkpoints, ETAs), for how long, and bring a spare set of clothes and some water. If you do this, if you get lost, chances are you will be searched for and found before you run out of water, let alone food.

      The most important thing is common sense: sensible people can get themselves out of trouble, and rarely find themselves in it anyway.

    Dislocations should NOT be put back into place. These require x-raying to determine if additional damage has been done (chipped bones, fractures etc). Incorrectly attempting to reseat a dislocation can cause more problems.

    A StJohn Ambulance first aid course would serve people better than a collection of well meaning but potentially dangerous advice.

      I believe that in the this scenario, you probably don't have ready access to an x-ray machine or real doctors. I've dislocated my knees a few times, and there is no way you could leave it out of place in any survival situation. The quicker you get it back into place, the less tissue damage and swelling there is, and the more likely it is you'll actually get to a hospital.

        This. Relocation is never ideal but if you are in the middle of no where with no equipment it may be essential in a life or death situation.

    Torniquets?? Honestly, where do you people get this advice?? Compression and elevation is the way to stop bleeding.

    Good lord.

      Maybe, maybe not. Has you eer seem an arterial bleed? Nothing but a tourniquet and a surgical team will stop that. And like dislocations, if you are lost in the wilderness you may not have the luxury of being able to sit and elavate a limb. Life over limb is important to remember, your precious first aid course would have mentioned that.

        A constrictive bandage (which is what Reused probably meant) for severe bleeding effectively acts as a tourniquet; you apply it until the pulse distal to the application site can no longer be palpated, and they're applied over major arteries (e.g. brachial for arm). Have a look at combat tourniquets, they're fairly wide, they're not like thin pieces of belt. But this article is in an absolute worst-case scenario environment, and life comes before limb in those cases.

        Maybe, maybe not exactly. I've had an arterial bleed (femoral) so yes I have seen one. The doomsday scenario of a major arterial bleed is the extreme case. Bleeding doesn’t have to be arterial to be life threatening, and in such cases a tourniquet will stop the bleeding, but will also probably result in loss of a limb. I don’t want some ill-informed do-gooder effectively amputating my arm/leg with a tourniquet, when some compression and elevation would have fixed it. My arms and legs are a precious to me as my first aid course is 

        It is listed as a last resort, and it is exactly that. The first resorts of compression and elevation should be mentioned first.

          Actually a tourniquet is now the preferred option for major bleeding. Thanks to the experience of a recent decade of war in two countries there is now a new protocol, which is put a TK on any extremity bleeding which is potentially life threatening. This recommendation has not been applied to civilian first aid for a number of reasons - poor effectiveness of improvised TKs, lack of knowledge of how to apply them correctly (Both of which may actually worsen bleeding) and the potential muscle and nerve damage to the limb not being worth the risk when medical assistance is readily available. However, when medial assistance is a considerable distance away (Like you are going to have to wait until morning for the RFDS) or the bleeding is severe it's a good option.

        Yeah I think mobility would be a big factor in a survival situation like this article is referring to.

        A tourniquet or relocation would be preferable to staying in an unsafe situation. Maybe not idea, but being stranded in the desert or rainforest isn't ideal either.

    I was just wondering, following on from pooping while stranded, what's the best way to wash say E. Coli and faeces off your hands without soap? I'd reckon that a bout of stomach illness (and the resulting dehydration from diahorrea) would be a pretty big concern.

      'Pooping while stranded' is a great name for a band.

      A handful of cold Charcoal and ashes with a splash of water to make a paste, rub your hands vigorously, and then rinse off with plenty of water (non sterile). If possible, then rinse your hands with some sterile (boiled, chemeically treated) water

      The idea is the charcoal and maybe even mild levels of lye in the ash combine to remove a lot of the oils and bacteria, which can then be washed away. The non-treated water can be used to start getting off the black mess, then the treated water to clean away any possible pathogens from the non-treated water.

      It isn't ideal, and not 100% effective, but it's better than nothing!

        I meant boiled OR Chemically treated, only needs to be one of those.

        The idea of using crappy water first is to not waste good water to wash the stubborn mess away; by the time it's gone, the good water should be able to wash away the vast majority of anything that could have been in the non-treated stuff.

        And by non-treated water, I mean water that is clear and from a running source; dodgy brackish crap filled puddles are obviously not worth the trouble.

        Might be worth bringing some hand sanitiser, when you think about it!

      Thank you for pitniong out such a crucial aspect of preparedness. Appropriate sanitation is a MUST post-disaster and is something people who don't have a clue about it will find out the hard way in the form of sickness and potential death from unsanitary practices.

    Good thing I have a mnemonic to help me if I'm ever stranded in the North American wilderness, by crikey.

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