The Essential Skills of Wilderness Survival: A Guide to Shelter, Water, Fire, Food, Navigation, and Survival Kits

Clear, accessible, enticing and trustworthy: a brilliant overview of the essentials of survival. Jason Knight, a prominent wilderness skills, bushcraft and survival skills teacher and mentor, has distilled his decades of teaching experience into an exciting and pithy guide. The book is well structured and outstanding in its awareness of survival priorities and its precision of information.It is also eminently readable. Each section starts with a story that fires up the imagination and helps highlight the importance of the information to follow. There are useful boxes highlighting and summarizing key information, and clear illustrative photos. And in demonstration of Jason Knight's depth of experience, the shelter and fire chapters, for example, include “troubleshooting” sections, generally not present in other survival books, providing tips on how to overcome common problems and increase your chances of success.As a wilderness guide in Africa, I have had many an occasion to reflect on the importance of the skills explained so clearly in this book, which is a fine resource for anyone preparing for an outdoor camping trip, wanting to understand how to survive, or simply wanting a deeper way to engage with the wild outdoors....while also being fun to read. Highly recommended!

I’ve studied many articles, pamphlets, books, and videos about outdoor survival. Most of the information I’ve come across is the same: hand-drawn illustrations of various types of shelters, fire starting methods, and lists of items to carry for survival-preparedness. To be fair, all of these resources are valuable and at least of some limited worth in a true survival situation. In truth though, much of the mainstream survival information presented and promoted falls victim to one of the classic blunders (cue Vizzini from the Princess Bride), namely that it is 1) an expansion of knowledge and creativity on a certain subject or technique, but the information and techniques presented are often not reasonably practical in a true survival situation; (e.g. they require special gear that a person is not likely to have access to, they are overly complicated techniques or require too much time to construct/use to be practical), or 2) the information is vague and the instruction lacks details on how to accurately and effectively implement what is being taught. I feel it’s safe to say that the reason for these so-called “blunders” is correlated to the teacher’s experience in implementing their own methods (aka “practicing what they preach”). Many authors of survival resources are acclaimed, respectable outdoorsmen/outdoorswomen to be sure; people who love the backcountry and spend a great deal of time in it, but who do so clad in gore-tex rain gear, packing a down sleeping bag and a jetboil with freeze dried dinners (I myself fall into this category most of the time). There is nothing wrong with this, but it begs the question: How many times have they built and used the shelters they speak of? How many times have they chosen to forego modern technology in favor of starting a fire with a bow drill or hand drill? I say this not to attack or put these people down, and I reiterate that their teachings have some value. But the best knowledge on a subject comes from people who apply their own advice and use it/live by it on a daily basis. After reading this book, it is clear to me that Jason has put together a basic, yet thorough resource on practical survival skills based on decades of real-world experience (basically synonymous with “suffering” in the survival world until you figure out the best way to do something lol). What stands out to me the most is where this book came from. Alderleaf has been around for many years and is a respected vault of information for survival skills, and based on my own personal experience stands out as having explained old techniques in a new way that I understood better, and also gave me new techniques I’d never read or heard about before. This book seems to be a rich yet concise decoction of the expansive core techniques and knowledge Alderleaf has compiled. It really is a great resource to have on hand and will make an excellent arrow to add to your quiver of wilderness-preparedness resource guides. To make one small complaint, I would have liked to see more information on “song-lining” under trailblazing methods… The short paragraph discussing it left me with a few gaps in understanding it fully; I’ll have to research that in greater depth!

The manual entitled The Essential Skills of Wilderness Survival: A Guide to Shelter, Water, Fire, Food, Navigation, and Survival Kits by Jason Knight is an excellent introduction into the basic wilderness survival concepts/principles, determining what your priorities should be and lays out easy to learn techniques that will greatly improve anyone success in surviving an unplanned potentially life-threatening event. The manual is written in a clear, concise, logical and practical manner so readers are able to easily follow along and gain a basic understanding of how to cope with the basic needs of survival whether it happens in the backcountry or as a catastrophic event in your backyard. Jason uses photos well and uses step by step directions to clearly articulate how to perform various tasks identified in the manual. I am particularly glad to see in the front of the manual that he covers off psychological aspects of being lost and how this can greatly reduce your chances of survival if not controlled. I can speak to this personally over the past 40 years when I have been disorientated several times in non-descript terrain during cloudy or low visibility conditions. The worst thing you can do is to start doubting yourself and let panic set in. The acronym SPEAR is an excellent term to remember. Once you sit down, take a breath and evaluate your situation you can usually reorientate yourself and find your way out or take the appropriate actions to keep yourself safe. I know of several people that became lost where panic and fear have taken over and all common sense went out the door. Luckily for them they were found by others in not so good of shape, however it could have turned out a lot worse. I think anyone going out into the back country even on short hikes (hour or two) should have basic knowledge of how to survive if need be. No one plans on getting lost, getting caught in inclement weather or being disabled while on a hike, however there is always a chance this could happen. Being unprepared could result in various types of issues: the unnecessary stress on your loved ones and friends, the activation of search and rescue operations which may involve significant logistical efforts and costs or even your life.A few things I would recommend for consideration include:• Reference to related articles, information and other options be included at the end of each module or chapter instead of at the end of the manual.• In some of the modules/chapters several examples of techniques or tactics were provided in detail while other modules/chapters they only provided one example or only briefly identified other options. It would help if each module/chapter include at least three practical tactics/techniques with detailed photos, descriptions and directions of how to complete.I would highly recommend to anyone from the novice individual to the experienced outdoors person to obtain a copy of The Essential Skills of Wilderness Survival: A Guide to Shelter, Water, Fire, Food, Navigation, and Survival Kits Manual by Jason Knight. It is an excellent compilation of practical and useful wilderness survival information, practices, techniques and strategies that may be applied by anyone.Glen Longpre

I was a student in Jason Knight’s wildlife tracking intensive many years ago and found him to be an excellent instructor. He has a knack for breaking complicated topics into a logical and efficient format and this has translated well into his wilderness survival guide.I own a couple other wilderness survival handbooks, such as the SAS Survival Handbook and Les Stroud's Survive! I think both are excellent books but they almost had too much information that made it difficult to know where to start. Jason Knight’s wilderness survival guide is a perfect blend of the right amount of useful information, easy to follow instructions and helpful photos. It has a clear chapter layout that follows the survival priorities it lays out at the beginning, which is very helpful for figuring out where to start. One thing that I particularly appreciate is the logical layout, which makes it easy to follow and helps with retaining information. It starts by discussing the psychology and physiology of survival, lays out the survival priorities, then goes into detail for each one. It has a handy guide for creating a survival kit.I highly recommend this book and think it will be useful to anyone interested in wilderness survival skills, whether a beginner or seasoned veteran.

If you are a human being, this book is for you! When I got into Wilderness Survival several years ago, I had this epiphany that in our society people just do not know how to meet their basic needs without relying on our complex society and all of the technology at our fingertips. But what happens in an emergency situation, in a natural disaster, or on a camping trip when your car breaks down and you are out of cell reception range and too far to walk, or you're injured out on a hike, etc? It just felt very disconcerting at that time to not know how to meet my most very basic human needs for survival, the very things needed in order to live this life. I felt so vulnerable and uneducated. Why don't they teach us these skills as children, in 13 years of grade school? So I went on a quest, which led me to a 9 month wilderness immersion course, where several weeks of that course were dedicated to wilderness survival and learning to procure my basic survival necessities. Having this information is so empowering, knowing that whatever situation you get into, out on a wilderness adventure, or during an unexpected natural disaster or emergency, that you know what to do and how to do it. And knowing that you'll be the one who has the knowledge to help those around you. If you want to know how to take care of your bare necessities as a human being, once and for all, get this wilderness survival book! This concise guide does an outstanding job outlining all of the most essentials of survival, and exactly how to meet your needs, through overviews, different methods, and finally step by step instructions. One of my favorite things about Jason Knight's survival guide is that he lays out the things necessary for survival in order of highest to lowest priority, so that when you find yourself in a real survival situation, you know exactly which thing to start working on first and don't waste any valuable time that could be critical to your or your loved ones' survival. My favorite section of the book is about survival shelters, because shelter is the absolute number one priority in a survival situation, before all else. Even with my education in wilderness survival, and as an outdoor educator myself, I still found this book a helpful guide, with little bits of valuable information I hadn't heard before, and as a great refresher for things I'd forgotten. So I would say this book is great for all skill levels and levels of knowledge in wilderness survival. Finally, I really loved how Jason shared personal accounts from his own experiences that highlight how some of the dangers of the wilderness have affected and influenced him personally, and how he has narrowly escaped some potentially serious situations. Rather than just being an expert in the field, he shows that he started out just like anybody else, without this vital information, has made mistakes at times, or experienced accidents or just was unaware of the real dangers he might encounter, and through those experiences has learned crucial lessons of survival, and it makes this book more relatable to the average person who isn't necessarily a gung-ho survivalist.

Short & sweet. Does the job and great starting point for the complete noob, like me who still can't manage to start a fire without chemical fire starters, not even a metal rod, but that's my failing.