Our Number 1 Intensive Survival Skills Guide

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Last Updated on September 28, 2024 by Paul Clayton

Our Number 1 Intensive Survival Skills Guide

Survival skills are essential knowledge for anyone who spends time in the great outdoors or faces emergencies. Whether you’re a seasoned adventurer or simply someone who enjoys spending time in nature, it’s essential to be prepared for unexpected situations. From building a shelter to starting a fire, finding water and food, navigating, and treating injuries, survival skills can make all the difference in a crisis.

Key Takeaways:

1. 1. Survival Skills are Essential: Being prepared with survival skills such as orienteering, shelter building, and water navigation can be life-saving outdoors or in emergencies.
   2. Orienteering: It is crucial to learn to use a map and compass. Orient the map to the North and use landmarks to navigate correctly.
   3. Shelter Building: Various methods include using sticks and leaves, snow, or elevated platforms tailored to the environment.
   4. Risk Management: Balancing risks and rewards is critical. Stay positive, mitigate risks when possible, and accept necessary risks to survive.
   5. Crossing Water: Understand the dangers of still and moving water. Building rafts can help, but constantly evaluate the safety of the crossing.
   6. Camouflage: Improvising camouflage helps in hiding from potential dangers or when hunting.
   7. Rope Making: Knowing how to create rope from natural fibers is valuable for various survival tasks.
   8. Acorn Whistles: Improvised whistles from acorn caps can be used to signal for help effectively.

In this guide, I will provide an intensive list of survival skills to help you survive in various scenarios, along with tips and techniques to help you become a more self-reliant and prepared adventurer.

Survival Skills: Orienteering

In a world of fancy GPS units, the map and compass seem to be going the way of the dinosaur. Still, in a pinch, a compass and a topography map cost almost nothing and can save your life just as well. Save over a hundred dollars on a handheld GPS and pick up this antique but valuable skill.

Orient the map

The first thing you must do with a map is lay it out in the “correct” direction. That is, North on the map should be North on the compass. Watching rookie navigators moving steadfastly in the wrong direction is comical because they didn’t realize that the map turned when they turned.

The most crucial step is ensuring the map has a single orientation. With a topography map of your area, look for a spot that points North. You may need to adjust for the difference between magnetic North and actual North, which will be noted on the map.

With your compass, determine which direction is magnetic North and align the map’s magnetic North with the direction your compass says it should be.

Orient Yourself

Figure out where you are on the map. Hopefully, the topography features on the map will help you do so fairly accurately. My favorite trick is to get on top of a hill since the tops of hills are easiest to see on topography maps.

Otherwise, use landmarks. Some estimation will be a given, but it shouldn’t matter if you use your compass well enough.

With your oriented map, determine which direction you want to travel in. Use your compass to determine how many degrees off North you must travel to get there. Then, fold your map up and follow the compass direction. The best way to do that is to pick an intermediate point you can see in line with your compass direction.

Walk to it, then repeat the process of figuring out your direction.

Repeat Often

It is surprisingly easy to get turned around. Repeat the process as often as possible to ensure you are headed in the right direction. This becomes extra difficult at night, so amateurs should probably bed down and travel again in the morning.

Blazing your trail isn’t recommended, but it could be the difference between being stuck in the wilderness and getting home in a pinch. Practice your skills at home in a park before you take them out into the field. Topography maps are readily available online, in libraries, or from the government, so getting one for your area should be reasonably simple.

Have fun with your new skills, and enjoy your time in the wilderness.

Survival Skills: Build a Shelter

Shelter is one of our primitive needs. No matter where you are, having a place to get out of the sun, rain, snow, or wind will be necessary. Building a shelter in most areas is as simple as being observant and using everything you have to work with.

Sticks and Leaves

The most common shelter I’ve built is a sticks-and-leaves shelter. This shelter goes up pretty quickly, and anyone can do it. Find a large tree, rock, or log, and begin to lean sticks across it. Your first sticks will form a rough lean-to structure.

Then, add a layer of leaves and another layer of sticks. Repeat the process, using anything you can, including mosses and mud, to make a sturdy rain-resistant shelter. This shelter takes only an hour to prepare, even for a novice.

When building this shelter, common mistakes are picking a bad site and making one you can’t fit in. All the rules for pitching tents apply here! You want to sleep on smooth, dry ground.

Snow Shelters

These are a bit trickier but are surprisingly warm inside. Building a shelter out of snow can be as simple as making an enormous pile of snow and hollowing it out. Not all snow will work, as it must be reasonably compacted, but a snow shelter is an excellent insulator.

Other snow shelters I’ve seen involve digging a trench in the snow and building a roof over it. This also provides great protection from the wind, and you could build it pretty quickly if you needed to.

Elevated Shelters

Getting a bit off the ground may be best in swamps and areas with awful bugs. With your shoelaces or any cord you can find, you can usually string up cross members into a pair of trees to build a makeshift platform. Waste nothing, and remember that clothing can act as a fine makeshift rope.

Try to pick a sheltered spot and work with everything you have.

Final Tips

Human beings are notable animals when it comes to adaptation. They have adapted to survive in nearly every environment, from rainforests to deserts. Chances are, native peoples built shelters in places like yours and had hundreds of years of practice.

If you know how natives lived in your area, follow their designs. Otherwise, think on your feet and get building since you will almost always require shelter to survive.

Survival Skills: Balancing Risk vs. Rewards

Risk and reward are constant facts of life. Daily, we balance the risks and rewards of daily tasks and gamble on little things. Wilderness survival is no different, but compared to other “risky things” like penny stocks or speeding on the highway, the risks are much higher, and the reward might only be living to see tomorrow.

When out in the woods, balancing these equations is never simple, and even an expert sometimes comes out on the bottom of what seemed like a good bet.

Keep a Positive Attitude

Staying positive in dire situations can be challenging, but it is necessary. For example, you may find yourself in a situation where staying inside a cozy shelter buried in snow will probably mean asphyxiation. Going outside to keep digging might help, but it is cold and awful.

You probably wish you could stay put.

Let’s look at it one way. Staying inside your warm shelter gives you a 99% chance of death. Going outside and fighting for a safer shelter might give you a 90% chance of death. Not so great.

On the positive side, going outside to work on your shelter has ten times the survival rate. If you want to live, it is a no-brainer. The odds are against you, but you can at least get the best odds you can. If you focus on how unlikely your survival is, you will miss opportunities to increase your odds.

Mitigate Risks

As we saw above, you should mitigate risks. Suppose you come upon a pool of stagnant water. Drinking it is a risk. Can you mitigate it? Boiling it will probably help. Great! Now, you are a bit closer to clean water. It might not be perfect, but it is a start.

Should you drink it, though? Are you a little thirsty or massively dehydrated? Will this water be the difference between life and death?

If so, drink it. If not, consider whether another opportunity like this is likely. Maybe you should store the water and keep looking, only drinking it if you have no choice. Think carefully about whether what you are doing is going to help.

Accept “The Best “Risks

Maybe crossing a river is the only way out for you. It is a risk, but if it is the “best risk” for getting out, then take it. Sometimes, you will need to do things that you were told to “never do” to survive, but those “high-risk” strategies are the only strategies that carry a chance of survival.

One example of this is the tourniquet. This old trick is seldom recommended anymore since it almost always results in losing a limb. A loop of rope is loosely fastened around the bleeding appendage and then tightened by twisting a stick into it.

Tightened far enough, you will stop losing blood in that area. It is practically never recommended and only seldom taught because it carries such a massive cost. On the other hand, if you had (the classic example) a tree fall on your leg, and you have no method of getting help, and you know that no help is coming since nobody knows where you are, then a tourniquet may be the best way to stop the bleeding so you can get out alive.

Don’t Get into Bad Situations

Overall, it would be best to avoid risks. The most crucial step is to ensure that when you are in the wilderness, people know where you are going and when to expect you back out. Schedule a time and place to make contact as often as possible so that people can immediately rescue you if you fail to make it to that place.

Try to be as safe as possible, and remember that the most crucial part is surviving a wilderness emergency.

Survival Skills: Crossing Water

Sometimes, a body of water is between you and where you want to be. Crossing water is often the most dangerous part of crossing a landscape. You may have to cross if you are stuck, but knowing what to avoid is extremely important.

Still Water

Crossing a lake or still water is generally not that hard. In some cases, you may be able to wade across, but you should never assume that a lake is shallow enough unless you have an excellent reason to accept that. Something barely over your shoulders is enough to drown in if you panic or have an accident while crossing.

If you have the time or the inclination, it might be worth making a raft or other watercraft. Rafts are harder than they look, and it generally takes a much bigger raft than people would think to get them across, but if you have a rope, rafts are easily lashed together from deadwood. Rafts are an excellent way to cross still water.

If you are crossing and your raft falls apart, don’t panic. The wood itself will still act as a floatation device. Grab the largest log you can and let it help you swim. Relax and take your time. Panic in the water is your enemy.

Moving Water

Moving water is not your friend in a crossing situation. While it makes better drinking water, it also makes a terrible crossing. Currents can be unpredictable and dangerous, and it is easy to underestimate currents in shallow water.

Remember that the river may be moving faster at the center than the edges would have you believe.

Fast currents can overwhelm and pin you against invisible underwater debris. It is hard to drown in 3 feet of still water, but if the water is moving fast enough, 3 feet could easily be fatal. If you suspect the water is moving “fairly fast,” you may be better off looking for a way around.

If you can’t get across, look for the vast, deep parts where the water moves slowly. While you may need to work harder to get across it, you risk less from the current. Finally, as a safety margin, always assume the current is much faster than it appears.

Rafts may also be used to cross a river, but generally, they are less sturdy than you want them to be, and if the river is moving fast, they may break up beneath you. This is disastrous on a swift river.

As before, don’t panic if you are in the water, but remember that if you are in the water with debris, a tossed raft, or a capsized canoe, you want to be on the upstream side of the floating object. If you are downstream of the object, the object can pin you. Imagine an underwater rock that comes up to about 8 inches off the surface.

If you hit it and you are downstream, the canoe pushes on you, and the rock goes back, potentially crushing you or pinning you underwater.

Final Tips

If you don’t have to cross the river, don’t. Keep moving and looking for a more advantageous spot. Typically, you can follow a river downstream and eventually find a road, bridge, town, or lake that will be a better option for your survival.

Crossing flooded streams is also silly, and even mild streams can become deadly during spring floods in climates where snowmelt is a problem.

Keep dry if you can, and consider the risks carefully before crossing a body of water.

Survival Skills: Improvising Camouflage

Camouflage predates all of the fancy fabrics and patterns we see today. Based on the idea of hiding oneself from danger and hiding danger from one’s prey, this skill is as primitive as hunter-gatherer cultures and important enough to fuel a large hunting industry. If you are stuck in the wilderness, making your camouflage can help you hide effectively from whatever you want to hide from.

Blinds

To start with, you want to design one of two things. Decide if you want to make a blind or an outfit. A blind is a simple structure that hides you from view while providing adequate visibility.

While a blind takes some time to set up, once constructed, it can usually be reused with little effort.

To make a blind, make a small shelter out of sticks and brambles. Use materials that you find lying around. Sometimes, it helps to create a frame from larger timber or other supplies first, then weave and pile sticks, grasses, and other woodland debris around it.

Ideally, the blind should cover you almost entirely or entirely. It should have ports to see from, but depending on what you are hiding from, those may not be necessary. If you plan to hunt from the blind, ensure the ports look out onto the area you intend to be hunting.

From a distance, the blind should be more or less indistinguishable from the surrounding area. It should blend in well, so avoid all of the hallmarks of a human building. That is to say, organized shapes and right angles are to be avoided. It should look chaotic, not organized. Chaos is the more natural appearance in most areas.

Camouflage Outfits

To make a camouflage outfit, think about how the area you will be in looks. In general, the first thing you want to do is break up your silhouette. This means you want to eliminate your “human” shape and look more like a bush or a tree. For instance, weaving sticks and grasses into your hat will remove some of your shapes.

Sitting down will also help, but sitting down against something large will help the most. Think about making yourself the same color as your surroundings. Pin, tie, weave, or add local natural materials to your clothing.

This is the same principle as the ghillie suit used in the military. While bulky, they will make you look like a pile of debris instead of a human. You can move around expertly, adding to the suit as you do without being detected.

Final Tips

Always think of yourself as a human trying to act like a bush or tree. Make yourself look like a tree or bush using anything you can, from dust for color to sticks for the outline, and you will be fine. Also, remember that nothing is more telling than motion, so if you need to hide, be still.

Moving is complicated even for experts, and it takes practice without giving yourself away.

Survival Skills: Make Your Rope

If you are like me, the first things you look for in any outdoor situation are ropes and knives. To the skilled mind and hands, rope and knives represent the pinnacle of human achievements, and most other things can be engineered with just those items and a little bit of timber. From bridges for travel to snares for food, rope (and the knives you cut it with) can be the difference between life and death in a survival situation.

Of course, if you don’t have it, what do you do?

Spinning Method

Spinning is the ability to turn fibers into rope. Natural ropes (as opposed to synthetic ropes or metal cables) are made by twisting long fibers into one another. Materials like wool, which are already somewhat knotted together, spin easily and naturally with spinning wheels, or you can draw them out (slowly) with your hand and twist them as you go.

That twisting tightens the tangles into a thread. Try it with a big cotton ball or a bag of polyfill (pillow stuffing). Tease out a bit and twist as you tease.

As you tighten the material further, it will wind into a thread. Depending on your purposes, a thread or a string of yarn may be ideal.

Braiding Method

You can also make a string by braiding if your fibers are long. Weaving takes far longer but can be a superior string for long fibers. You can practice this trick by pulling a few long palm fronds into individual fibers.

The fibers should be pretty long; if they are more significant than 18 inches, you can try to weave them together. This is long work, but it is simple and takes little energy—experiment with how tight you want to make the braids.

If you make it too tight, the rope might be stiff, and too loose might cause it to lose its strength. Try to stagger the fibers so that you are always weaving a new one in and an old one out. For this reason, I like to braid with five fibers, with two in transition at any time.

Once you have assembled a string, you make a more substantial rope by twisting or braiding multiple strings together again. As the rope thickens, it pays to have a more even twist if you are twisting it together. You can practice this skill with yarn.

Yarn is typically weak enough to break with just one person’s force pulling on it, but if you twist three cords of yarn into a single yarn rope, it is much stronger. Twist three of them together and it is pretty sturdy, even with a weak starting rope.

Getting the Fibers

Knowing where to get fibers can be challenging. Linden trees are known for having pliable fibers just beneath the bark. Soaking these for a day in water yields excellent fibers.

Hemp and jute are other famous fibers for this purpose. Thin leather strips have been used historically, and long animal hairs will work in a pinch. Animal sinew, high on the gross factor, is also an effective string.

For the most part, though, you will probably use trial and error. Find a sapling, strip the bark, and see if you can pull fibers off of it. A surprising number of trees and plants, including bamboo, will work.

Survival Skills: Acorn Whistles

Creating a shrill, piercing, and unmistakably human noise is a great start if you want to be found. Whistles are a typical kit for campers because of their signaling capacities, but if you don’t have a whistle, it isn’t hard to make one if you know what to look for.

Improvising a Whistle

A whistle typically comprises a sharp lip (to cut your air and create the vibration) and a small resonator chamber. While you probably can’t machine plastic while lost in the woods, an acorn cap will do nicely for both tasks. This trick was once common among boys who played outdoors, but video games and the internet have also reduced our outdoor skills.

If you don’t have an acorn cap, you can use a hollowed-out acorn or even a soda bottle cap. Anything with that tiny cup shape will work, though it may not be as piercing.

Making the Whistle Sound

Once you have your “whistle,” you must hold it carefully. Start by curling both hands’ non-thumb fingers and bringing the sides of your thumbs together. Grasp the acorn cap in both hands between your thumbs and the sides of your pointer fingers.

It should rest below the first knuckle on your thumbs. Now, curl your thumb tips outward to reveal a wedge of the cap. It should face the cup upwards so you can see the edge.

Rest your lower lip on your thumbs, just below where they make a ‘Y’, and then blow down the ‘Y’ and onto the lip of your acorn. It may take some experimentation with varying angles and airspeed, but you will eventually hear a whistle.

Signaling Help

Emergency whistles, like signal fires, are in groups of three. To signal that you need assistance, whistle three strong notes before resting. This can easily be heard outside of visual distance and is unencumbered by fog or other distractions.

Emergency whistles aren’t inexpensive, and I recommend you carry one in the woods anyway. Knowing how to make a whistle out of natural materials in a pinch never hurts. Try this out ahead of time just to be prepared.

I do it with soda bottle caps to get people’s attention, and it keeps me in practice—just in case.

Survival Skills: Moving when Lost

If you are lost in the wilderness, you should stay put. Someone should know where you are, and search parties will be on the way. Unfortunately, there may come a circumstance where moving is your only option, and if that happens, you should know how to move with maximum safety.

Getting More Lost

Especially in woodland environments, it is easy to go from “lost” to “very lost” and, eventually, “un-findable.” What does that mean? Suppose you wandered off a path to track an animal and then found yourself disoriented and unable to get back to the path. Chances are, you aren’t too far away from the path already, and provided that you told someone where you were going, searchers fanning out from that path will find you sooner.

If you wander more, you may get out sooner but also go in the wrong direction, making it harder for searchers to find you. The key to getting out when lost is to make yourself findable.

In general, don’t move unless you have to. There are reasons you might have to, such as no available water supply, a gravely injured companion, or, in the worst case, nobody knows where you are and how long you plan to be there.

Orient Yourself Easily

If you have a compass, it is your friend. Perhaps you know that the path you left is to the south of you. Let the compass guide you back by walking due south. One thing to remember with this strategy is to check the compass often.

It is easy to get turned around outside, and then you will waste time and valuable energy walking in circles. A common strategy is to line the compass up with a landmark in your direction, walk to the landmark, and then take another reading and pick a new landmark. This is slow, but it tends to avoid beginner mistakes in orienteering.

Follow A Landmark

When lost, streams and paths can help you traverse the terrain. If you reach a flowing stream, follow it downstream (unless you know there is something upstream). Typically, you will eventually come to a place where the stream crosses a real road.

At least by following the stream, you will be headed in one direction the entire time. The same goes for lakes. Follow the lakeshore until you hit a stream.

Some caution is recommended when using roads. In Canada, where I often go fishing, you could easily stumble upon a logging road and follow it for days without seeing anything. Worse yet, if you are headed up the road toward a disused lumber site, you will likely reach the end and then realize you have to turn around.

Use your area knowledge to decide if following the road is good. In most of the United States, this isn’t a big problem, and most roads will lead you to something you can use (like a shelter) or some civilization.

Things Not to Do

Using the sun or a significant landmark in the distance as a navigation aid is a bad idea. Walking straight toward the landmark may be okay, but if you try to keep it to one side of you, you will walk in a giant circle. Similarly, the sun is a moving target, and people following it easily get lost.

If the sun is your only navigational aid, you should remain still and wait for rescue.

Final Tips

Use everything you know about an area to get out alive. A compass in your pocket might save your life, so don’t neglect the low-tech standby of generations of outdoorsmen. Finally, and above all else, make sure someone knows where you are and how long you are supposed to be there so that they can recognize that you are lost immediately.

This simple advice is the most important thing you can do when headed out into the woods.

Survival Skills: Netting Fish

Freshwater is one of your friends when surviving in the wilderness. It is a source of water, bathing, recreation, and almost all of your needs. In addition, it is probably a decent source of protein. While you probably won’t gain weight trying to net fish, netting fish is more manageable than building a spear and spearing them for most people, and a nibble of fish might keep your spirits up.

Survival Supplies

I’m assuming that you have little to no supplies. This means you don’t even have an emergency survival kit with a needle and thread. However, assuming you are wearing a shirt, you have almost everything you need to start.

Thread branches into the shirt, through the sleeves, out the bottom, and possibly between sleeves to make a cheap net.

Catch Something

Chances are, this net will only barely drain water, so you can’t net the big fish by dragging it over them. This net is for flipping out baitfish. Set the net in a shallow area, to the bottom.

Keep a hand on the net and stand very still. Eventually, the baitfish you scared off when you waded into the water will emerge. They are usually relatively tiny, at most 2 inches long, but they are relatively simple to pull your net around.

Getting the speed right will take practice. Too fast will flip them out, and too slow will disturb them and cause them to swim off.

Ideally, you can net 5-6 little guys and set them aside in an hour. They are almost too small to cook but can usually be eaten raw or whole. Remember, this is survival, not fine dining.

They probably will have less energy than it takes to catch them, but the point is to get protein, not energy. If you need energy, work on nuts, acorns, or berries (provided you know they are not poisonous and how to clear the toxins if they are).

Getting More

Practice will significantly help, but having an emergency survival kit with a fishing line and hooks will help more. If you had one of these, you would have used those baitfish as bait, not food. Remember that worms and grubs can also be decent food, so you may have to eat gross insects to stay alive. Staying alive is worth it, though, and the gross things you ate will more than makeup for their disgusting value in the stories you can tell in the future.

Survival Skills: Beat the Heat

Surviving in the warmer months can be significant or deadly. If you have a limited supply of water for drinking and cooling yourself, it is vital that you conserve your water and do not waste it in the heat of the day.

Avoiding the Heat

If you are trying to survive, there is always plenty of work. Whether repairing a shelter or finding food, you probably have better things to do than taking a nap. On the other hand, the rules change in hot climates.

You must consider your water situation once the weather is above 85 degrees Fahrenheit. If you have an abundance of fresh water, then do as you please as long as you don’t get too far from it. If traveling, never travel away from your freshwater if dehydration is a serious risk.

You can dry out in only a few hours, so be prepared to sit out the day’s heat.

Finding a shady spot and sticking to it can avoid the heat altogether. In the worst situations, you may be stuck beneath a tree for four or five hours, awaiting cooler temperatures. Take a nap or otherwise relax. You do yourself no favors if you use up your water due to impatience.

Use the nap to stay up into the evening working, or wake up earlier and take advantage of pre-dawn light.

Moderating the Heat

If you must work in the heat of the day, you can take steps to moderate your temperature. The first is to be wet. If you are near a water supply (even if it isn’t drinkable), you can douse yourself and your clothing in water, repeating as needed.

A swim usually keeps you cool for up to half an hour due to evaporative heat losses. Humid days seem to lessen this effect.

Another tactic, taken from native peoples around the world, is to wear more oversized clothing. Lightweight, open fabrics that don’t sit heavily upon you are surprisingly cooling. As long as the wind can get through, they provide shade for your body.

While you probably won’t make your textiles when lost in the wilderness, it is something to consider when heading out.

Hats are also a lifesaver. Something with a brim large enough to shade your eyes and the back of your neck will reduce your internal temperature and make the midday sunless oppressive.

Final Tips

Heat is a fact of life. We survived millennia without air conditioning and climate control, and you can make it through the hottest days as long as you take it easy. If you have abundant water, the heat might only slow you down, but if water isn’t plentiful, consider your options and take the safest route when dealing with the midday sun.

Survival Skills: Lashing

While it may not be the first thing you think of when you imagine wilderness survival, you are probably more dependent than you think on constructed objects. From shelter frames and bridges to simple rafts, your ability to thrive in the wilderness depends on your ability to build things. Now, assuming you didn’t go out into the wilds with a bag of nails and a hammer, how will you accomplish all the construction you need?

For generations, people have relied on lashing to build the necessities of life. Once you have some decent string or rope, lashing is simple, elegant, and not challenging.

Getting Rope

If you have a string(or something made of sturdy fabric that you are willing to sacrifice), you are all set. If your original cord isn’t strong enough, you can braid it to strengthen it. Unfortunately, you might not have the necessary cord when entering the woods.

There are a few solutions to this problem. The first is to sacrifice clothing. Carefully cut your clothing into long strips and braid them together for strength.

Tying them together will work in a pinch, but all those knots will make working with them hard. I’ve found it best to braid a few strips at long staggered intervals and to braid a new one in as an old one ends. As long as your fabric isn’t slippery or stretchy, the braid will bind everything together well enough.

Another option is to harvest natural fibers. Long strands of plant fibers from trees will generally work as long as they can be bent and braided without breaking. You can always twist a few together at first to make the cord you intend to braid with. This is a time-consuming process, but it can be an excellent way to kill time if you have a surplus and want to keep your mind on progress.

Wrapping and Frapping

Lashing itself is a process of wrapping and then tightening those wraps. Lashings exist for almost any intersection of poles (or in your case, trees or branches) that you can imagine. Western lashings start by tying a hitch (such as a clove hitch) around your first stick and then wrapping the sticks as tightly as possible in specific patterns, depending on the joint required.

Once the wrapping is done, the frapping begins. Frapping is done by tightly wrapping the rope between the joints. This compounds the pressure and secures the lashing. This must be extremely tight to secure the entire object.

Finishing Up

If this process sounds complex, relax. It is much easier with illustrations. If you want a field guide, the most compact reference I can recommend is the Pioneering Merit Badge from the Boy Scouts of America.

It illustrates common lashings, rope-making methods, and basic knot knowledge. If you are ready to start lashing, try it out at home. You will be surprised by some of the valuable things you can do.

I’ve seen entire beds made from lashed-together small tree trunks, and they were both artistic and excellent. If they matched my decor, I might do the same.

Regardless, this is an excellent skill to have. It teaches you to look at objects in terms of basic engineering instead of lumber and firewood. I highly recommend you try lashing out.

Survival Skills: Finding Protein

The importance of protein in the modern diet is quite a controversial issue. Some low-carb dieters and bodybuilders believe it is everything, and vegans are proving that it isn’t so hard to come by. However, when wilderness survival is the goal, having a source of protein, even occasionally, is extremely important. From preserving muscle mass to regenerating damaged tissues, it is indisputable that your body needs protein to survive, and it is well-accepted that animal protein is the source we are best adapted to handle.

Another matter is getting that protein when you can’t hit the grocery store aisles.

Get Creative with What You Consider “Food”

When trying to survive, you should get over all your food phobias. If bugs, pigeons, fish, or snakes are edible, you will probably have to knuckle under and eat them. Be ready to eat parts of animals that aren’t meat and like them.

The only exception I would make is for something that I knew I had an allergy to or any food that I knew was highly toxic in my area. Examples of this could be filter-feeding or scavenging shellfish downriver from industrial sites. I would need to be on the verge of absolute starvation before I considered eating the crabs from New Jersey’s Arthur Kill since decades of industrial work have made them all but a guarantee of cancer.

That said, if I were left with no choice at all, I would even eat them because cancer can be treated later, while starvation has to be treated now.

Tap into your Skills and Materials

Catching animals to eat isn’t always easy. Most things don’t want to be eaten. Digging for insects is usually fairly simple in many areas, but it is a lot of work for only small payoffs.

Remember, you will often burn more energy than you get from food, so protein should be a secondary concern to having a generally available food source like acorns (once leeched of tannins) or berries.

On the other hand, setting traps and snares for rabbits and small game is often simple enough and takes minor effort. While the payoff is sporadic, a squirrel or rabbit constitutes a feast in the wild. Rabbits are practically made for snaring. A good example of a snare can be found on this website.

Figure 4 traps, also listed on that website, are versatile small game traps that often win you a meal. Remember that you are playing the odds, so you should set up as many traps in multiple places as possible. Some will get sprung with nothing, but eventually, one will give you a nice, protein-rich meal.

Remember that fish are great, too. If you are creative, you can catch fish netted, traditionally on lines, or even trapped. If you are desperate, just about anything is worth eating.

Just remember to avoid brightly colored insects, caterpillars (unless you can identify them expertly enough to know that they are safe), and the livers of arctic animals (which, for reasons of survival, are so extremely rich in vitamins that they flood your body, giving you hypervitaminosis).

Final Tips

Remember that all your “city ideas” must go out the window in a survival situation. In general, I would never want to eat kidneys but put me in the forest for four days with no meat, and you can be sure I’ll eat kidneys. Meat, be it muscle or organ, can’t be wasted.

If you aren’t sure if something is edible, eat only highly tiny amounts of it until you can document no reaction. Also, remember to cook everything to “well done” to avoid potentially dangerous parasites.

The last note I will leave you with is on risk balancing. Remember that you are always risking against the odds in the wilderness. Survival is a matter of making the safest bets you can.

If you have to choose between long-term and short-term consequences, take the long-term consequences since that requires you to live long enough to experience that problem.

Survival Skills: Testing Foods for Poisons

If you are stranded in the wilderness, you have to eat. Of course, knowing what to eat is challenging. Sometimes, you have to take the plunge and eat something that may or may not kill you.

Knowing when and how to do this is important. It can be a scary thought, but learning how to eat potentially poisonous things might save your life someday.

When to Eat an Unknown

Eating anything that didn’t come from a supermarket is risky, but many things, like apples and raspberries, are unmistakable. Other things, like mushrooms, can be a ticket to doom, even for people who know what they are doing. Like all things in survival, eating an unknown is a balance of risk vs. reward.

To begin with, remember that you should never take an unnecessary risk. That means, if you aren’t stranded and dying, why would you eat an unsafe mushroom? If you are curious, bag it and bring it out of the woods, where you can identify it in a book.

Don’t get killed because you were too impatient to look it up.

Second, remember that some things are riskier than others. Freshwater fish and mammals are generally safe when cooked, insects are “usually safe,” and mushrooms and berries are dangerous. Eat the least risky things you can.

Eating an Unknown

Before you consider eating an “unknown,” try a skin test. This is usually relatively safe. Mash some of it and hold it on your skin for 15 minutes. Then, wait a few hours to see if there is a bad reaction.

This will rule out anything with a topical poison. If you think poison ivy on your skin is bad, imagine how bad it would be in your mouth and throat.

Start eating unknown foods carefully. To begin with, take a tiny sliver of your food and chew it. If it tastes okay, that is a good sign, but don’t swallow yet.

Spit out the sliver and wait at least 8 but up to 24 hours before trying again. Some sources ask for less than an hour, but the longer you wait, the better. If your mouth goes numb or you get any other side effects, that is a good indication to stay away from that plant.

The next step is the small swallow test. In this step, you swallow a small mouthful of the substance. Again, wait for hours before continuing.

This could make you violently ill, though, so be ready.

The last step is the meal step. You eat a small meal of the substance. If that goes down alright and you don’t have side effects for a day or two, you still might be eating poison, but at least you know it isn’t an immediate killer.

Humans have survived in many areas by eating weakly poisonous foods during famines, and this practice is still common in developing countries.

Survival Tips to Remember

The steps above are not guaranteed. At any point in the process above, a poison could have killed you. Only a few seeds from a yew (whose berries are edible if you remove the seeds) would kill you.

Harmless-looking Death Cap Mushrooms are almost always fatal. Just a few castor beans would poison you fatally. Essentially, you should remember that ingesting unknown food is an inviting disaster and only do so when you have no choice.

If your choice is between certain death by starvation and possible death by poison, choose the possibility of life, but if the choice is between sleeping hungry and eating an unknown mushroom, sleep hungry.

Survival Skills: How to Dry Food

Dehydration is a time-honored tradition in food preservation. Dry things are generally free from decomposition. Of course, when you have a food product in abundance, it is a race to preserve it before decomposition takes hold.

A few traditional methods will generally do the trick for almost any circumstance.

Sun Drying

The sun is your friend when drying things. Solar drying has been used for everything from raisins to meat, so don’t convince yourself that it is too slow or impractical.

First, you must ensure sundry foods are placed in a dry, sunny spot. Rain can be catastrophic in this process, but laying food onto stones in a sunny spot is typically sufficient.

If it is a fruit, it will probably dry faster if it is mashed and laid in a thin layer, drying it into fruit leather. If it is a meat product, it may be better to hang it in the sun over a branch since this will let the air get under it and across it. With meats especially, you want it to be a dry day, as humidity slows the drying process.

Smoke Drying

Smoking is another method of reducing moisture. The smoke imparts flavor and preserves the foods. This is typically a meat process and is the preferred method for preserving fish if you can’t salt them.

The dryer you get, the longer it will last, but you can also go overboard and turn your meat into rocks. If you do this, grind it between two stones, and you can eat the chew that is left over. Meat chew is an acquired taste, but it beats wasting the meat.

To smoke your meat, you can construct a hut made of natural materials that take a small, smoldering fire and hold the smoke in the room. Alternatively, hold your meat high above a small cooking fire until it dries. The first method is more complicated but easier to control.

Final Notes

Food is typically hard to come by in a survival situation. Many native peoples had boom and bust cycles and had to learn to preserve food from the booms in preparation for the busts. Never waste an opportunity to gather copious amounts of food, but as you do, remember the need to preserve it and be ready to work to keep your food for longer than a few weeks.

Survival Skills: Avoid Rabbit Starvation

Rabbits are amazing prey animals when trying to live in the wilderness. They breed quickly, fall prey to traps easily, and make a great meal once caught. Catching them with snares and traps is generally pretty simple if you know where the rabbits are in the area, and you can harvest them aggressively throughout the year.

Their abundance, however, does not make them the perfect survival meal!

Rabbit Starvation

Survivalists are keen to note that protein is of utmost importance and that having an occasional source of protein in your diet prevents significant malnutrition and loss of strength. Of all the macronutrients, protein is the one that your body will use for energy and to rebuild itself physically, making it require nutrition.

Rabbit meat is nearly pure protein, making it seem ideal. What is unrecognized, though, is that the meat has almost no fat content. The lack of fat content means that people who attempt to exist on rabbits will often find themselves in a situation of rabbit starvation.

Rabbit starvation is code for acute protein poisoning. Without vitamins, minerals, and other energy sources, your body will have trouble running on pure protein. Without fat to help absorb minerals and carbohydrates for energy, the rabbit will provide too little nutrition to your body, and you will begin to need other food sources.

Rabbit Starvation Symptoms

Rabbit starvation symptoms set in when under significant stress from survival already and can be deadly if you can’t adjust or be rescued in time. First, a feeling of insatiable hunger sets in. This is your body craving non-protein and attempting to tell you as much. Diarrhea, fatigue, and headache are also common problems.

Eventually, it could kill you.

Avoiding Rabbit Starvation

Fortunately, rabbit starvation is an extreme problem brought on by extreme conditions. All it takes to avoid it is a diverse diet. In warmer months, diversity of diet is relatively easy, and this is almost unheard of.

In winter or extreme climates, the survival of rabbits can be a serious problem, though.

Some experts recommend that if you are given no other option, broaden your definition of food. Eat everything on the rabbit (except for the fur). Brains, eyes, liver, and intestines are all sources of essential nutrition you may miss out on if you don’t eat them.

For instance, brains and bone marrow contain significant amounts of fat.

As always, incorporating sufficient amounts of vegetables is incredibly important. Getting vitamins from animal organs is often sub-optimal, and relying upon them is a shaky way to survive. Knowing local edible plants will also go a long way in helping you fight off malnutrition.

Final Tips

Please don’t turn your nose to food where you can get it. Animals, rabbits included, are still critical when trying to survive. The main lesson is to never rely solely on a single food source.

Rabbits dramatically highlight the problems with reliance upon single sources of food. Also, remember that you still need protein, fat, and carbohydrates to survive in the long run. Some may be more readily available on a seasonal basis, but you must do what you must to obtain all three.

My father tells a story about hunting caribou with the Inuit people in Canada. When they felled a caribou, they promptly cut the fat from its back, treating it as a valuable commodity. They then sliced the liver (still raw) and used it to shovel the insides of the last stomach pouches into their mouths.

They explained that vegetation was rare in the area and that the lichens the deer ate would be digested far enough for humans to eat in the last stomach compartments. Thus, this fat, liver, and pre-digested lichen meal was a powerful survival meal for them. It is that kind of thinking that allows them to survive in the wilderness, and that is what you must emulate to survive as well.

Survival Skills: Avoiding Wound Infections

Survival is about keeping the odds in your favor or as close to your favor as possible. Many things that are “no big deal” within the limits of society become life-threatening in a survival situation. For instance, a simple wound infection can turn deadly quite quickly without access to antibiotics.

Gangrene, wound botulism, and other infections are all quite deadly, and without modern hygiene, they aren’t as uncommon as you would think.

Avoid Getting Wounded

his should go without saying. Please don’t get hurt, and avoid it as hard as possible. Being hurt, even in a minor way, dramatically hurts your odds of survival.

A paper cut could be the infection that kills you, so where possible, avoid taking risks where being hurt is a concern.

Of course, that is impossible for a human being. You are going to cut yourself, tear your skin, and be generally exposed to pathogens, so don’t be paranoid. I’m trying to convey that you should not be careless.

For instance, pay attention to fish’s spiny fins. If you get caught with one, it’s typically a short route to an infected puncture wound, and by being mindful, it’s typically easy to avoid.

Keep Wounds Maintained

When you do get hurt, and you will probably get hurt, keep your wounds clean and dry. Wash them in the cleanest water you can and remove any foreign debris. Let wounds clot, and don’t pick at the clot once it is formed.

If available, apply a clean, dry compress after washing the wound. Change the compress every 24 hours.

Don’t let wounds sit in moisture. It may mean taking off your shoes every 2 hours to dry your feet or taking frequent breaks to let the sweat dry from your groin, but if you let it remain wet and humid, you create ideal conditions for infection.

The environment also plays a huge role in this. Humid, moist areas are notorious for breeding infections. Swampy water is filled with bacteria; if you are never dry, it can live on your skin and wounds.

This is a ticket to disaster. If you have the luxury of waiting and resting, do so. Give yourself time, and remember you must heal before returning to full steam.

You should especially take time to keep your wound clean and dry.

Natural Disinfectants

Plants are also prone to infection, and many have evolved disinfectant properties. Many plant oils have topical disinfectant properties, but knowing which ones isn’t always easy. This is largely a question of where you are and understanding the environment.

Consulting a field guide to your area and asking a native guide may yield helpful tips.

Urine is also a mild topical disinfectant, provided you don’t have an infection that has already started. Some folks recommend using urine to clean a wound, but if given enough time to collect germs, urine can become a host for them. I’m undecided about this method and hope I never have to try it.

Surviving a wound is usually not a big deal, but be constantly aware of the risks of infection and be ready to take steps to prevent an infection. In the long run, this could save your limbs or life, and keeping dry and clean is a big step in that battle.

Survival Skills: Eating Acorns

Acorns make excellent survival food. Native Americans would cultivate oak forests because of their abundance. You can typically find acorns throughout the winter when other food sources are all but gone.

That said, acorns are poisonous if untreated and require some work. If you anticipate needing food for some time, acorns are a dense energy source almost anyone can obtain.

Preparing Acorns

Acorns, like most poisonous foods, require preparation. In this case, the primary preparation is leeching, where you pull the toxins. In this case, the primary toxins are tannins.

Tannins are okay in small doses but can be very harmful in large doses. In a survival situation, the last thing you need is bowel irritation or kidney disease.

Fortunately, tannins are highly soluble in water. All it takes to remove them is time and water. This process has a few options, but they all employ the same techniques.

You must remove the hull and peel the acorn to expose the flesh. Some people boil them to soften the hull, and others crush it between rocks.

Leech the Tannins Out

If you took a nibble, you would be struck by the high concentration of tannins in the flesh. You must put your acorn meat into the water and wait to get them out. Some people employ multiple water changes in a pot over a few days.

This will most probably work, though some people employ methods to speed the process up. One method is to boil them, changing the water when it becomes brown. When it stops turning brown, the acorns will be ready to eat.

Another method is to grind the acorns into a meal first, then put the acorn meal into a basket with a cloth lining and dip it into a lake multiple times. The ground meal leeches far faster in a river or a lake. This method will lose some oils, leaving you with wholly processed flour on the plus side.

The flour is still used today in a few traditional foods.

Finally, the last method I have heard of is to expose the flesh and then put it in a basket or an improvised cloth sack in a stream. The moving water will change, so you don’t have to work as hard. You can leave them overnight or longer, and they are ready to eat when they can be munched on without bitterness.

Eating Acorns for Fun

You can serve acorns to children and people interested in Native American food as an educational activity. Almost every culture in acorn-rich areas ate them at one point, but the abundance of grain with the dawn of agriculture removed most interest in them as a portion of food. Once properly prepared, acorns are a tasty nut; you can get them for free worldwide with just a little searching.

Survival Skills: Find Water Safely

Water is one of the first things to consider when trying to survive. Even in cool weather, you can’t live for long without water. If you dry up, you won’t be able to worry about other considerations like shelter, fire, or food.

Unless you are injured or the weather threatens to harm you, think about water first and foremost.

On Risk Balancing

No matter your conditions, you will be taking risks for water. When lost in the wilderness, everything you do is a calculated risk. You will never know if the water you are about to drink might kill you, so you should avoid drinking water without taking precautions.

At the same time, you know that dehydration will kill you, so you are going to have to take that risk.

For example, I was on a long cycling trip in early spring. The weather became unbearably hot one day, and I ran out of water. Stuck out in the sun in 95-degree weather would have been fatal without water, but my choices were limited.

The canal next to me was stagnant and likely filled with agricultural runoff (very bad). I grabbed a cupful of it, boiled it for a long spell, and tucked it away in case I found nothing else, but I would not drink that unless my life depended on it. Fortunately, I found a cliff face with an abundant spring coming out of it about halfway down.

I did the math and decided that actively flowing water from a rock face was probably the closest to filtered water I would find. It was above the farmland, so I wasn’t at risk of drinking runoff, and there were no mines in the area. A small taste was fresh, so I filled my canteens and took the risk, knowing I could make it to a hospital if the water bought me more than 2 hours of riding.

It was risky, but a groundwater spring would be my best bet for surviving the day, so I took it.

Surface Water

In many cases, surface water isn’t hard to find. It may, however, be poisonous. No matter your circumstances, you should boil it if you have the time and opportunity. Boiling kills most parasites, so boil it for 10 minutes and then let that cool before you drink it.

Whether you boil it or not, there are a few things to consider. Stagnant water is a no-no. If it is sitting still, it is probably gathering contamination.

Stagnant water, like puddles, takes runoff and concentrates it, so avoid puddles unless there is no other choice. Very large lakes are a different story, but ideally, flowing water is your best bet.

Even if it is flowing, avoid agricultural runoff. The more animal manure and fertilizer in the water, the more likely you will become dreadfully ill. Chances are good that if you are already struggling to find water, something as lame as diarrhea will be a fatal illness.

Avoid anything at a lower elevation than farmland or from water that has farmland upstream.

Ground Water

Sometimes, you can dig for water. Digging down in a low-lying area, even a foot or so, will often find your mud, and after a few hours of waiting, the mud will usually fill into a puddle. Dry creek beds are another good place to try this technique.

This will not save you much water but keep you going. Again, this assumes that everything obvious has already failed. In some sandy areas, groundwater is only a few inches below the surface, and the sand acts as a particle filter.

Rain Water

This is the holy grail of survival water. If you can collect it, it is almost always safe to drink. Collect it any way you can.

Make funnels out of broad leaves for your canteen, or collect them in garbage bags in your emergency survival kit. Raingear also makes a good rain collector.

Found Water

Advanced techniques like making a solar still, distilling salt water, or even drinking urine can work in a pinch. However, I recommend you look at these only in desperation. If you know you are in an arid area, you should know how to get water beforehand, or you should probably not be heading out into the wilds.

There are plenty of techniques for cheating water from plants, debris, or puddles, but none are easy to explain or foolproof, and it is usually best to be able to take surface water if possible.

Final Tips

Remember, survival is a game against the odds. It would be best to consider each action you take to survive. Each action you take may make survival easier or more complicated; in the worst-case scenario, it might kill you.

Being ready to acknowledge and lessen that risk is critical to staying alive. Remember to tell people where you are going and how long you will be there. With that in place, you are far more likely to be rescued.

Have fun on your camping trip, but always be prepared for the worst.

Survival Skills: How to Make an Emergency Solar Water Still

In any emergency, having clean water can mean the difference between life and death. A solar still can produce clean, distilled water for survival if you ever need it. You can still make your solar water if you have suitable materials and a little knowledge of how solar works, so you can adapt the still for your situation.

To make an essential solar still, you will need a few items. The essential items are a large piece of clear plastic, a container to hold clean water, a source of water or moisture, and the sun.

Here is the basic idea of how a solar still works: dig a hole in the ground and place a cup in the bottom of the hole. Put the plastic somewhat loosely over the hole, and set some rocks or dirt around the edges to hold it down. Put a rock on the plastic directly over the cup.

When the sun hits the plastic, it begins to heat the air in the hole. Droplets of water begin to condense on the underside of the plastic sheet. These water droplets are pure water you can drink.

Because you put something heavy in the middle of the plastic (the rock), the droplets will drip downwards into your cup. Just reach under the plastic, grab your cup, and drink the pure water.

That is how to make a basic solar still. There are many variations for different situations and climates. This method works fine in a dry climate if the soil is moist.

A good size to dig your hole is three to four feet square and two feet deep. You don’t want it too much bigger than that, or the air might take too long to heat up to condense the moisture. Dirt is better than rocks or other objects to hold down the sides of the plastic because you want to prevent any hot air from escaping the hole.

Place any plant materials into the hole around your cup to extract moisture from the vegetation.

If you have a large shallow basin of any type, you can use it instead of digging a hole in the ground. Fill the basin with water—even sea water will work. Cover the basin with plastic and secure it as much as possible.

Set it up like you would with the hole. Just ensure the water level is lower than the top of your cup.

You will need several hours to get drinkable water, so start early in the morning and let the sun condense the water all day. As long as you have plenty of sun and a sheet of plastic, you should still be able to get some fresh water from your solar panels. Everything else you can adapt to your situation.

If you don’t have a cup, you can tie down the plastic with rope or string or use a large curved leaf to collect the fresh water.

Survival Skills: Making an Inexpensive Solar Oven

If you ever find yourself in a survival situation, you will want a way to cook your food, even if you don’t have any fuel or fire. With a few everyday household items, you can build an easy solar oven almost free of cost. To make your solar oven, you will need two cardboard boxes, a roll of aluminum foil, and a roll of plastic wrap.

You will also need plenty of sun if you want your solar oven to work so that this oven won’t be helpful on a cloudy day.

To make your solar oven, you will need two cardboard boxes. One box needs to be slightly larger than the other. The boxes you use for your solar oven should be wide and shallow.

When set inside the bigger box, the smaller box should leave at least a half-inch gap between the two boxes on all sides. The gaps can be wider than that, and they don’t have to be the same all the way around. The air gap creates insulation that retains heat.

Cut off all four closing flaps from the inside box and all the closing flaps from the outside box except for one. This closing flap on the outside box will be used as your reflector.

Now, line the insides of both boxes with the foil, with the shinier side facing outwards. The bottom of the inside box and the inward-facing side of the reflector flap should also be lined.

You can glue or tape the foil on if you like, but it isn’t an absolute necessity, as you can wrap it around the sides if you need to. The plastic wrap goes over the top of the inner box to hold in the heat and steam from the sun reflecting

inside the box. You might want to use a few layers of plastic wrap to hold the heat in better. To cook your food, you can wrap it in foil and place it in the box if you have no other means.

However, you can use any pot or pan in the box. One of the best ways to cook food in a solar oven is in glass jars. You can make soups or stews, other liquids, or use them to heat drinks.

Ensure you poke holes in the jar’s lid to let the steam escape. You can even put in several jars of food at once. Use jars with wide openings to quickly get your food in and out.

Solar ovens work best if there are several hours of sun. They can even be used in cold weather, as long as the sun shines and reflects into the box. Face the box towards the sun, and angle the reflector into the sun so the light goes directly into the inner box.

You can prop the reflector up with sticks or narrow sections of cardboard stuck between the two boxes. Some foods take a few hours to cook, so you must turn the box occasionally to keep it aligned with the sun.

Foods cooked in your solar oven can get very hot! Use care when handling your pots and pans, especially if you are using glass jars. You can get burned more quickly than you might think. Be sure to watch out for hot steam as well.

Survival Skills: Urban Survival

When I say urban survival, I am referring to cases like Hurricane Katrina or situations we have seen recently, like earthquakes or other major floods. In the case of New Orleans, one of the things that amazes me is the number of people suffering from dehydration. Please do not take this the wrong way because I am not trying to armchair quarterback at people’s misfortune, but there was water all over the place.

This is why it is so important to have urban survival skills; finding water in an urban survival situation is not difficult if you know where to look or how to treat the water flowing around you. In this article, we will discuss where to locate water and how to treat it so it is safe to drink.

The Water Heater

Yep, the water heater. In an urban survival situation, your home water heater will hold fresh drinking water. Most home water heaters hold at least 35 gallons. Fresh water will be gold; you only need to hook a hose up to it and drain the water out. Another thought is that if homes in your area are abandoned due to the situation that puts you in urban survival mode, they will also have water heaters.

Boiling Water

Water may surround you during a flood, but that doesn’t mean drinking is safe. In an urban survival situation, treating the water, whether in a flood or not, is smart. To treat water by boiling, fill a clean pot with water and bring it to a rolling boil for at least ten minutes.

Your Water Pipes

If you have used the water in your water heater, you can crawl under your house and get the water out of your water pipes. Even if you do not have running water it does not mean that you do not have water in your pipes, you have to have pressure to get the water out of the faucet. Now, if there is a flood, this option may not be available to you unless you hold your breath well, but then, if there is a flood, it should not be difficult to locate water.

As you can see, if you find yourself in a position where you have to practice your urban survival skills, you can find water. The most important thing to remember in any survival situation is to keep your head and do what needs to be done to keep yourself and your loved ones alive.

Bonus Survival Skills: Surviving a Dog Attack

Most dogs, even seemingly aggressive ones, do not desire to hurt humans. Even a snarling maniac would much rather walk away from a fight than risk his or her safety by charging at someone. But some dogs, as a result of abuse, poor socialization, training to be aggressive, and other factors, may attack a human.

If you find yourself in a position where an unfamiliar dog is snarling at you, here’s what to do to stay safe:

Don’t Try to Be Friends

When dogs bark, snarl, growl, or show their feathers, they communicate that they want you to disappear. Some dog lovers believe that being friendly will calm the dog, but this is, in fact, one of the very best things you can do to get bitten. To a fearful or aggressive dog, a smile can look like a growl, and making eye contact is a threatening gesture.

If you reach to pet the dog, the dog may fear that you will hit her. Similarly, approaching the dog and bending down tells the dog you’re not listening to her warnings to back up. She may feel that she has no choice but to bite.

No matter how much you love dogs, if a dog is growling at you, now is not the time to make friends. The consequences can be catastrophic to both you and the dog.

Don’t Run

If a dog behaves aggressively, your first instinct may be to run, which can activate a dog’s prey drive. Instead, calmly and slowly walk away.

Don’t Fight the Dog

When dogs bite people on their hands or legs, many panic and hit or kick the dog, trying to fight it off. This often makes the dog feel more threatened and increases the likelihood of a further attack. If a dog has nipped at you, walk away; do not make any sudden movements that indicate to the dog that you might be a threat.

Throw Something

If you have something you can throw behind the dog’s head, throw it. Dogs love to chase things, and the opportunity to chase after something interesting may make the dog stop thinking about you because dogs have notoriously short attention spans.

Channel the Dog’s Inner Pet

Most dogs, even aggressive ones, are trained to listen to people. If a dog starts attacking you, say firmly, “NO!” or “Down.” The dog may pause long enough for you to escape.

Use a Fake Appendage

Dogs tend to believe that anything attached to a human is part of that human. Therefore, if a dog is determined to attack you, giving her something that looks like—but is not—you may give her a few seconds to escape. Take off a shirt and throw it to the dog, giving her more and more things to chew on until you can escape.

Grab a Shield

A nearby garbage can, umbrella, or any large stick can be used to shield yourself from individual bites. If you can find a large stick, sticking it in the dog’s mouth may stop the attack long enough for you to either get away or find cover.

Don’t Pull Away

Some of the most severe injuries during dog attacks happen when humans try to pull an arm or leg out of a dog’s jaws, resulting in torn skin and damage to blood vessels. Hard as it may be, don’t suddenly pull away, or you risk further injury. Instead, focus on covering your throat, head, and chest.

Dog attacks are unpredictable, and there’s no guarantee that any behavior will stop or prevent an attack. The best way to avoid bad interactions with dogs is to plan. Carry pepper spray and a phone with you, and avoid areas where unfamiliar or aggressive dogs run loose. Talk to the dog’s owner if you’re concerned about a particular dog.

You might also like How To Use Wild Lettuce For Survival

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