50 Survival Tips - Food | Fire | Shelter | Water - Wilderness knowledge you should know

Survival, or the act of surviving, is achieving the natural desire to continue existing, typically in spite of adverse conditions that threaten one's life or livelihood. The concept applies to both nature, for example, a storm-damaged tree managing to heal itself and flourish, and humans like Robinson Crusoe, who famously not only managed to survive the harsh environments of a tropical island, but thrived, thanks to his relentless desire to survive using whatever resources were at his disposal to do so. With that being said, let's get into the video and discuss numerous wilderness and survival tips that could save your life, covering essential food, fire, shelter and water skills, as well as various other useful woodland skills that you should know. Let's start with something we're all familiar with, pine trees. Pine is a coniferous tree which can be found in a variety of locations all over the northern hemisphere. It's one of the most popular woods used in manufacturing and carpentry, commonly found in homes around the world in the form of flooring, windows, furniture and so on. But let's talk about its remarkable uses in terms of bushcraft and survival. Cordage can be made from pine roots and makes a great alternative to artificial twine, string or rope. Simply use a stick to reveal the long thin roots just below the surface and pull one up. The trick now is to split the root into two by pulling the ends away from each other. If one side begins to taper off, then apply more pressure to the opposite side to balance it out. This pine root cordage can be used to make traps, to bind branches for shelter building or for primitive cooking. For example, here you can see myself and Mike from TA Outdoors smoke a whole salmon by clamping it between a length of split hazel and securing it with pine root cordage. Or in this clip, I'm using it to build a natural shelter and then using it once again to secure some chicken to a stick for some primitive campfire cooking. A huge benefit of using pine is that it can withstand extremely high temperatures without burning, unlike modern man-made synthetic cordage. Individual lengths can be braided together to make longer pieces depending on what you might need it for. You can even use pine root cordage to make fire by friction. Speaking of fire, fatwood is the resinous remains of a pine tree that has died. When a pine tree dies, the sticky sap settles into the heartwood of the branches and trunk, hardening and solidifying into fatwood. It can be found in small branches, the main trunk, or the decomposed stump of a pine tree that has been felled. I tend to find the best fatwood in dead, decomposed pine trees. Simply look for the junction where the branch leaves the main trunk and either break it or saw it off. You want to look for a hard, golden coloured core. It should have a strong resinous aroma. If you're wondering where I'm going with this, the answer is fire. Simply scrape the fatwood to produce a pile of fine dust or shavings and scrape a fire steel or ferrotium rod to produce sparks. These hot sparks should cause the pile of shavings to combust into a long-lasting flame. Great for helping you get that fire going on a damp day in the woods. You can also split the fatwood into kindling to give that fire a real boost. I usually keep a chunk of this stuff at my bushcraft camp, attached to a piece of cordage. Pine needle tea can be made by collecting pine needles and infusing them into a cup of freshly boiled water. Not only does it taste great, it's also packed with vitamins like vitamin C which is great for the immune system and vitamin A which is good for your eyesight, hair, skin and blood cells. Each needle contains antioxidants for an extra dose of love for our bodies. A word of caution, make sure you are able to distinguish true pine needles from potentially harmful lookalikes such as you and various others. A good rule of thumb is to avoid flat needles. Finally, avoid drinking pine needle tea if you are pregnant. Pine cones contain nuts, extracting them is the challenge. When I was a child, I would collect the cones and place them somewhere warm, near a fireplace or onto a heater. As the pine cones dry out, the cones open up and seeds begin to fall out. These seeds are highly nutritious, full of fats, vitamins and minerals resulting in them being a superb survival food. We will explore wild survival food later on in this video. Pine pitch is a great project and has been used for thousands of years, dating all the way back to caveman times. It's what I call caveman adhesive. To use this, you need to heat the black ball over a flame which causes it to melt into a sticky adhesive, then apply it to your craft project or prehistoric tools and weapons. There are several ways of making pine pitch, but my recipe is as follows. Fill a container with approximately 50% pitch. This is the yellow white solidified sap that you often see seeping from the tree. Now, add 25% dried and crumbled rabbit droppings and 25% powdered charcoal. Gently heat the mixture over a fire and stir for a minute or two. Then take the mixture off the heat and use a stick to scoop up the black mixture. It will have the consistency of tar. As it cools, it will set hard, but not too hard. You should be able to dent it with your fingernail. If it's too hard, then melt it again and add a small amount of beeswax to reduce its brittleness. This is especially important when, for example, you are trying to bind an arrowhead to a shaft or when you're making a primitive knife or even if you're feeling adventurous and you need to seal that bark on the birch bark canoe you're about to build. Going back to pine needles, pine needles can be used to repel irritating insects such as mosquitoes. Simply crush some pine needles in your hands and rub them over your clothing. You can also burn some pine needles in your fire to help keep the pesky mosquitoes at bay. Place a smoldering log upwind of your camp and sprinkle with pine needles. The aroma will divert their attention away from you. Let's get back to talking about fire. Creating fire can be done using a number of techniques ranging from hitting rocks together, rubbing sticks together, or even creating a magnifying lens from frozen water. But knowing precisely what rocks and sticks to use is something that merits its own video. Let me know in the comments section below if you want to see a video dedicated to fire lighting tips. Simply comment down below. When gathering firewood, look up not down. Wood that is dead but standing will often be dry whereas wood lying on the ground will often contain moisture causing it to not burn well and for it to produce lots of smoke. Sticking with the look up theme, gather dead branches that have fallen from the upper part of the tree and have become suspended in the lower branches. These dead branches will quite often be wind dried producing an excellent kindling source for those early stages of fire lighting. A great example would be dead suspended pine branches as these contain resin that will add that fury to your kindling fire. Using an axe can be extremely dangerous whether you're in the woods for an afternoon excursion or away on a two week wild camp. But knowing how to use it safely is the key to avoiding any sort of injury. Accidents happen when we aren't paying full attention. So full focus is essential especially at the end of a long day when we are tired, wet and hungry. Here you can see me using an axe to split some logs which I've sworn from a dead standing tree. In order to create some smaller pieces of wood known as kindling, I'm using a stick to hold the wood in place while swinging the axe with my dominant arm. This could save you from losing a finger or three. Learn how to identify types of fire lighting fungus. Fungi such as horse's hoof fungus or a king alfred's cake also known as a daldinia concentrica can smolder for a lengthy period of time and produce plenty of heat to help get that fire going on a wet and windy day. The trick here is to know what species of tree the fungus grows on. For example, look around beech trees for horse's hoof fungus which contain a layer of amadou, a fire lighting material that has been used for thousands of years and something that Utzi the Iceman had in his possession when he died. Another tree that often indicates the presence of an extremely useful fungus is the ash tree. These are called daldinia concentrica. This is the latin name but they're also known as cramp balls or king alfred cakes and can often be found on dead or struggling limbs on ash trees. Simply break the fungus open and use it as a coal extender or land a spark onto it and watch it turn into a hot smoldering ember which can then be placed into a tinder bundle and blown into a flame. Another useful tree for the early stages of fire lighting is the balsam fir which produces sap filled blisters. Pop these blisters with a stick or a knife and once again land a spark onto it for an instant flame. This sap can also be applied to cuts thanks to its antiseptic properties and can also be used to treat minor burns. Shelters can be made using whatever materials you can find and tools you have access to. A simple debris shelter like this basic forest tent like structure can be enough to shelter you from the worst of the weather. It's important to remember to add a thick layer of debris to the roof which will allow the rain to run off the shelter rather than seep through as it would with a thin layer of debris. A thick layer of debris on the roof will also help to insulate the inside of the shelter and keep the warmth in. A more advanced shelter which again can be constructed without the use of tools would be this moss roof debris shelter. This shelter would easily fit 4-6 people and can be constructed in a single day. Again by using wood found on the woodland floor you can construct this and then add several layers of debris before adding a layer of moss for installation. These examples of basic shelter are designed for short term use, anything up to several months. Another good example of a shelter which can be built without the use of modern tools is this cedar bark shelter. The frame itself was constructed using young hazel sticks but you don't have to use hazel, you can use any young trees that can be bent into shape and secured with natural cordage whether it's pine root cordage, nettle cordage or in this case the inner strands of cedar bark which also makes for a great cordage. Here's another example of cedar cordage which has been twisted together. The several layers of cedar bark on this shelter will once again ensure rain runs off the surface rather than seeping through the shelter. For long term shelters you can build something like this roundhouse but having access to tools will make the build much more manageable. Remember bushcraft and survival isn't always about having nothing, it's about using what you have to its full potential. In this case a modern folding saw did most of the hard work but you could also achieve this by using a sharp stone tool such as a caveman style axe. By burning the base of these posts you can reduce the rate at which they decompose which essentially will prolong the shelters life and making it less prone to becoming waterlogged and crumbling under its own weight. The use of grass or reeds can provide the shelter with a thick roof layer which as previously mentioned would prevent rain water from penetrating the shelter. As with all of these shelters you want them to have a fairly steep pitched roof. Any shelter built with a flat roof will not be able to disperse water and would therefore result in the inside of the shelter getting wet, deeming it useless for its purpose. When it comes to bedtime nobody wants to sleep on the cold wet ground and having a layer of protection from the floor will make your sleep that little bit more comfortable. A bed made up of soft branches such as these cedar boughs can easily be collected from living or freshly fallen storm damaged trees. Adding a base layer of these soft branches will keep you dry and will provide nice and warm insulation for your shelter's floor. Dried grass or reeds will also work. When it comes to a more permanent bed something a little more conventional would need the aid of a cutting tool. In this clip I am building a raised bed with dead dry wood found in the woodland. To begin with I have used 3 fairly thick diameters of wood approximately 2 feet or 60cm in length which have been stacked into a pyramid formation and then secured with several stakes. Several lengths of wood trimmed from knobbly branches are then laid on top and are once again secured from rolling off with a few more stakes. I am a huge fan of traditional skills and as you can see here I have insulated my bed with something that would have usually been a waste product, that being a deer hide. Deer hides were traditionally tanned using the brains of the animal itself but there are now more modern methods that can be used to tan a hide. Check out one of my previous videos to see how I tan deer hides. If you don't have animal hides then dried leaves and grass will easily help to keep you warm ensuring a good night's sleep. Food and water are not only essential for survival but how we manage our approach to them can be the difference between surviving and thriving in a comfortable manner. Let's start with water. Water can be collected and filtered whether it's collected from a stream, purified from a puddle or extracted from a living tree with the aid of a plastic bag. Again this subject would need a whole new video to fully understand and appreciate the methods that can be used. Primitive methods of filtering water from harmful parasites and bacteria would consist of having several layers of material for the water to filter through. Modern methods will use a water purifier like this pump I'm using here to filter water from this stream. It features a built-in ceramic filter that will remove 99% of harmful bacteria. Another method would be to use several layers of fabric such as a folded t-shirt placed into an upside down plastic bottle with the base cut off and then layered with a combination of materials such as charcoal, gravel and sand. A word of caution, no matter how well you have filtered your water it's always advisable to then boil your filtered water for several minutes before using it as drinking water. Now let's talk about food and in particular wild food. Finding food in the wild will depend on your geographical location and the method you use, whether it's hunting, trapping or foraging. Here in northern Europe there's a vast selection of wild food that can be easily foraged ranging from nuts and berries to other plants and mushrooms. But be careful, make sure you know exactly what you are picking. I highly recommend becoming familiar with wild food in your area by studying what you can and especially can't eat. Many wild foods will have similar looking species that are toxic so it's of utmost importance to know your edibles from your non-edibles. Some of my favourite wild greens are the incredibly tasty wild garlic otherwise known as ramsons or these crow garlic shoots. Wood sorrel packs a citrusy punch and winter chanterelles have a delicious earthy flavour. Some species such as burdock have edible roots and some plants such as primrose have a lovely floral flavour to their delicate petals. Nettles are another plant we often come across with the younger leaves being that little bit more tender than the older leaves. Goose grass is the grass that many of you will remember sticking to your clothing from your childhood days. It's a great source of wild food, again pick the younger shoots. The same goes for bramble shoots, pick the young green shoots. Many of these plants should be cooked before eating but some can be eaten raw. Again I have to stress the importance of knowing what wild plants you can and can't eat, whether that's cooked or uncooked. As for coastal plants, wild spinach or sea beet is one of my favourites as is wild cabbage especially when combined or steamed with other plants like the carrot flavoured rock samphire. If you find yourself in a coastal environment then I believe you'll have a much larger supply of food providing you can forage for or catch it. Mollusks such as mussels can be foraged at low tide but avoid collecting mussels during the warmer months as they can quite often contain the remnants of toxic plankton blooms. Mussels are filter feeders and can contain harmful toxins that are sometimes present in the water whereas limpets are grazers and thus are generally safer to eat. My advice for cooking limpets is to steam them for only a few minutes in order to retain that nice tenderness and avoid eating something as tough as your leather boots. Tenderising them by bashing with a rock is also a great technique, just remember to remove their black gut sack before cooking. I would usually keep the black gut sack to use as bait either on a hook or back into the pot or trap to attract more crabs and prawns or fish. When it comes to crabs, crabs can be found under rocks at low tide or can be caught with the aid of a trap. In this clip I'm using a lightweight collapsible trap to catch crabs and prawns, two of my favourite coastal foods. It's important to mention that all leftovers can be reused as bait. Don't underestimate what you can catch in a simple trap. I quite often catch lobsters and eels too. Something worth noting here, many of these species have a minimum landing size. For example, these velvet crabs must have a carapace diameter of 65mm or these spider crabs must have a carapace length of 130mm to be kept in the UK. Traps can also be made using washed up rubbish like this inverted plastic bottle trap made by Care from Care Bear Adventures or you can use nature's resources such as willow branches to make pots or traps. In conclusion, having some basic tools will improve your ability to survive. But even more important is knowledge and I'm a firm believer that knowledge along with determination and willpower are the key factors to ensuring one's survival.