Many times, freshly blown-down trees can be made into a survival shelter by cutting away the limbs near the ground. If large pieces of bark are around, use them to improve the roof.
A natural shelter, such as this rock overhang, may be found in the survival area. Due to it being somewhat hidden from the air, ground-to-air signals should be set up.
Snow Shelters
In the winter there are several survival shelters that can be constructed. However, shelters such as the famous snow cave take a lot of energy and skill. The hole-in-the-snow shelter is one of the simpler shelters if the snow is at least 4 feet deep.
Hole-in-the-Snow Shelter — Find an evergreen tree that has limbs extending down to snow level, then dig out all the snow around its trunk right down to the ground. Next, trim all the inside branches and use them to line the bottom and finish the top. Since this shelter is hidden, be sure to keep your ground-to-air signals out and clean of snow.
Snow Cave — A snow cave is an excellent cold weather shelter, but it requires a lot of energy, a shovel or similar device, and some skill. Begin by finding a packed snowdrift that is about 7 feet high and 12 feet or more wide. Then start digging a low tunnel into the snowbank. After you dig the tunnel 2 feet into the snowbank, hollow out an opening large enough for you to lie down.
Next, push a stick through the roof at a 45-degree angle to make a vent hole. In the back of the cave, build the bed platform at least 18 inches high. To conserve heat, the cave should be built just large enough to sleep, dress and undress while lying in the sleeping bag. If desired, the sleeping shelf may be walled in to conserve heat. In addition to the ventilation hole through the roof, there should be another at the door if you push snow into the opening to block the outside elements.
A hole-in-the-snow shelter can be dug in snow-covered areas by digging a pit at the base of evergreen trees with low-hanging branches.
Since they cannot be heated many degrees above freezing, life in snow shelters is rugged. It takes several weeks to acclimate yourself to the effects of living in such a cold atmosphere. You will require more food and hot drinks.
Regardless of how cold it may get outside, the temperature inside a small, well-constructed snow cave probably will not be lower than -10ºF, and with a candle, it can be heated to 32°F. Snow caves are difficult for searchers to find. Good signals are a must.
There are many other crude shelters that can be made. The secret to shelter construction is simple—use what is available to protect yourself from the elements. Construct whatever shelter uses the least amount of energy to build and, if possible, set it up where it can be seen. In most cases, the tube tent you carry in your survival kit will be the best emergency shelter.
Constructed in a snowdrift or bank, a snow cave shelter makes effective use of the insulating qualities of snow. The wall should be at least 17 inches thick.
8. BUILD A FIRE
Build a Survival Fire
Fire serves many valuable purposes in the survival camp. Can you build fire on a cold, wet, windy day with just one match?
You realize you are lost or, perhaps, stranded. You have stopped and calmed down. You have wisely decided to wait for rescue. Finding a nearby opening in the woods where your signals can be seen from the air, you take out your survival kit and locate your waterproof match container and fire starter and build a fire. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But, what if you didn’t have matches? What if you didn’t know how to build a fire? The unknowing might say you can always start a fire with flint and steel or with a fire drill or with a lens from your glasses. The unknowing might also say anybody can build a fire. How wrong this kind of thinking can be.
First, let’s establish how valuable a fire can be to a lost or stranded person. Most people lost in the backcountry are scared, embarrassed, lonely, hungry, often cold or being attacked by flying pests, bored and usually in poor spirits. A fire can solve many of these problems. A survival fire serves as a signal, keeps the lost person busy, drives away pests, provides warmth, purifies water, dries clothing, lifts spirits, cooks food, gives light and may be used in crafting many useful items. Fire gives a sense of security and, in a way, provides company. Flame can harden a wooden spear point. The white ashes can be consumed to overcome constipation, the black ashes to stop diarrhea. In short, fire is one of the most valuable aids to your survival.
Use your knife to get into the dry wood found in the center of a damp log.
Except for a handful of experts, there are few among us who can start a fire without matches or a lighter. Flint and steel, fire drill, fire plow, etc., make interesting demonstrations but seldom work in a real survival camp. Also, they use a lot of energy. Despite what many survival books say, there are few substitutes for fresh, dry wooden strike-anywhere kitchen matches and prepackaged fire starters (such as Coghlan’s Emergency Tinder or Campmor’s Fire Lighters) in a real survival situation. Make it a practice to carry a waterproof match container supplied with a fresh supply of strike-anywhere matches and fire starters with you at all times in your survival kit. This combination helps make fire starting in cold, wet, dark conditions much quicker and easier. Make sure you replace the matches every six months or so as they deteriorate over several months and become useless.
It might sound silly, but make sure you practice using them, too, and not just on nice days to be outside. Far too many people think that with matches or a cigarette lighter they can build a fire. I know a seasoned search and rescue official who tells me that each year he helps find many lost or stranded outdoorsmen who are cold and without a fire. They had matches or a lighter but exhausted them just trying to get a fire started. Seldom do we get lost or stranded in ideal weather. The survival situation is often, in part, caused by bad weather. That requires building a fire in wet, windy, cold conditions that make it difficult at best. Only people well trained in fire building can pull it off.
Leave primitive fire starting techniques to the experts. Use matches and a fire starter for survival purposes.
Take the time to learn an old Boy Scout skill—build a fire with one match in a rainstorm. It’s much tougher than many think.
In a tepee fire, the tinder and kindling is arranged in a conical shape for quick ignition.
A pyramid or log-cabin fire will burn downward requiring less attention at night.
Steps to Building a Fire
Understand that you don’t just start a fire, you build it. There are five things you need to build a fire successfully:
1. You must have oxygen, since burning is nothing more than rapid oxidation.
2. You must have a source of heat, your matches.
3. You must have tinder to catch the flame of the match and start the fire. Your prepackaged fire starter is a good start. Add to that natural tinder such as a bird’s nest, bark from a birch tree, cedar bark, down from thistle, pinesap splinters or dry grass. Even fine steel wool has been used as tinder when the strands are pulled apart loosely.
4. You will need small sticks and twigs to catch the fire from the tinder, thus making it hotter.
5. You will need dry, dead fuel wood and a lot more of it than you will think. Dry, dead wood can be hard to find in wet weather, but some can usually be found on the lower limbs of evergreen trees, standing dead timber or splitting wet logs or large limbs and getting to their dry wood interiors.
Building a fire in the first attempt requires practice and thought. Many try to add large pieces of wood too quickly. Others try to pile on so much wood that the flame gets too little oxygen to burn. Still others do not gather up the different sizes of wood necessary to build a fire in advance, and the fire goes out while they are running around trying to find the tinder, small sticks and fuel wood necessary.
Birch bark makes good tinder for getting a fire going.
If you expect search planes, or are in a position so that ground searchers might see your fire or smoke, keep plenty of kindling and fuel wood on hand to get a fire going again quickly for signaling.
Better yet, work at keeping your fire going at all times so you don’t have to start another one from scratch. Also, during the day, keep some green or wet leaves or conifer boughs on hand to create signal smoke quickly.
Can you really build a fire with one match when you are cold, shaking, wet, tired and scared? Again, practice at home! This is the time to master the art, not when it really counts.
Fire can be used for light, to harden a wooden spear, warmth, to keep away insects, as a signal, to boil drinking water and many other purposes.
9. SLEEPING
Sleeping Warm
The MPI Space bag you carry in your survival kit will help keep you warm on a cold night.
Sleeping warm and comfortably cannot be emphasized enough in a survival emergency. You need a lot of energy for the tasks at hand, and the mind needs to be sharper than during your normal day-to-day life as the decisions you make determine your well-being and the outcome of your situation.
The combination of a lean-to with a reflector fire to direct heat into the shelter makes a comfortable sleeping shelter.
If you have a tube tent and MPI Space bag in your survival kit, and get the tube tent up so that you can get into the bag before you get wet, then chances are good you will sleep warm. How well you clean the tube tent site will determine how comfortably you sleep. Taking a few minutes to remove stones, sticks, etc., and laying down a bed of dry leaves can make the difference between a long, miserable night and a comfortable, warm night of sleep.
But what about a night spent without the aid of a tube tent or Space bag? In this case there are several options, depending upon the terrain where you determine to camp. The first rule is to get into a shelter of some type that can give you protection from the rain, snow or wind. If this shelter makes it easier for you to get a fire going, so much the better. Your chances of actually getting some sleep improve when you can stay warm. Be sure to gather three times as much wood as you think you will need, as it will probably take that much to keep the fire going all night. It is difficult to keep the body warm or to get enough sleep when you must make two or three trips out into the cold darkness to gather wood.
The ideal sleeping shelter, aside from the tube tent/Space bag combination, is the lean-to with its back to the wind and a reflector fire directing heat into the shelter. Using a sheet of aluminum foil, a wall of green limbs, rocks, etc., as a reflector, the all-night fire can keep a lean-to reasonably warm as long as there is enough wood. As the fire begins to die, simply toss on enough wood to keep it going another few hours.
When rain or snow is not a threat, a reflector fire directing heat toward a large rock or dirt bank that is also blocking the wind can make for a nice place to sleep. The heat is reflected toward the rock or bank and back onto you while you sleep. You have heat from two sides.
The reflector fire is one of the best fires for keeping warm in very cold weather.
You can build a fire on the spot you plan to sleep on and let it warm the earth for a few hours, then rack the fire away to a new spot and sleep on the warm earth. If you have a means of digging, you can also dig a shallow hole where you plan to lie, shovel in a bed of hot ashes and cover them up with a layer of soil. Make sure to cover all of the ashes and check to ensure you have enough soil over them before simply lying down. You don’t want to have a too-hot or too-cold bed. Using coals and ashes is an energy-consuming means of having a warm bed.
Some experienced backwoodsmen heat a number of flat rocks and place them on the ground. Next they place a thick layer of precut evergreen boughs over the rocks and sleep on them. Again, this type of warm sleeping requires a lot of energy and experience.
If you don’t have a Space bag, sleeping bag or blanket, you can use dry dead grass, leaves or evergreen boughs to provide some protection from the cold. Remember that insulation is dead air space and anything that will create dead air space will help keep you warm. The rain suit can offer a lot of warmth when sleeping due to its ability to stop the wind from hitting your skin. Also, stuffing dead, dry grass or leaves inside the rain suit can make it into a makeshift sleeping bag. Be resourceful.
Here are some other tips to getting a good night’s sleep:
1. Take the time to make the bed site as level and soft as possible.
2. Be sure to use every windbreak available.
3. Gather three times as much wood as you think you need.
4. Eat sweets, if you have them, just before bedtime to boost your metabolism.
5. Do not lie awake the first night expecting searchers every minute; you will hear them if they get close and you will need to be rested the next day.
6. At night, due to your situation, your senses will be acutely aware and you will hear every noise. Remember, there is nothing out there that will hurt you. If something awakens you, make sure it is not searchers; if so, have your whistle available, and then go back to sleep.
7. When sleeping with your clothes on, keep everything loose, including boots. The better circulation you have, the warmer you will sleep. Also, this permits moisture to evaporate.
You can bet that even in the best of circumstances you are not going to sleep in the survival camp as well as you do at home, but with a little care you can get some sleep and that rest is most important to your getting found.
10. INSECTS
Dealing with Insects
Mosquitoes are encountered throughout a wide range of North American habitats.
Few things can ruin an outdoor adventure faster than hordes of mosquitoes and/or black flies. In large numbers, they have been known to bring armies to a halt, stampede animals and turn countless camping, fishing and hunting trips into horror stories. In a stranded or lost emergency they can become very dangerous. Even in cold areas, a sudden warm snap can bring the pests out in numbers.
Mosquitoes
Of the more than 1,600 varieties of mosquitoes, 120 are found in North America. Many of these are known to transmit such diseases as West Nile virus, encephalitis and dengue fever. Their bites alone, in high numbers, are very dangerous.
To deal with these flying pests, we need to know more about them. Mosquitoes mature in standing water. It is the female mosquito that causes us grief, as she needs a high-protein meal before she is able to lay her eggs. Physiological restrictions make it impossible for her to eat anything that is not in liquid form, and the handiest liquid, high-protein meal available to her is blood. The male mosquito is a vegetarian and feeds on plant and fruit nectar.
Sensors, which are attracted to warm, moist animals, help the female mosquito locate a meal. The generally accepted theory in the scientific community is that the mosquito finds its victim by identifying and following carbon dioxide and lactic acid in the air. Lactic acid is produced by muscle movement, and carbon dioxide is given off when we breathe.
Once she finds a victim, a female mosquito penetrates the victim’s skin with a hollow, flexible snout, called a proboscis, and feeds. The itch and local swelling around the “bite” is an allergic reaction to the mosquito’s saliva, which contains an anticoagulant to facilitate the flow of blood.
Black Flies
For those who have been bitten by black flies, the bite is a form of torture. These small, humpbacked flies certainly have few equals when it comes to inflicting pain. Of the more than 300 varieties of black flies in the world, North America has been cursed with at least 50.
Some species of adult black flies are fierce biters while others cause a nuisance by swarming around exposed skin areas.
Unlike the mosquito, the black fly thrives in running water. Rapidly flowing streams are preferred breeding places. Once able to fly, the female, which feeds by day, is ready for a meal in order to carry out her task of reproduction.
Like the mosquito, the black fly is found over much of North America, but its largest concentrations are in the woodlands of Canada and in the northern part of the United States. This insect is abundant throughout late spring and summer, with May and June being t
he worst months in many areas.
The vicious bite of the black fly is caused by broad blades found in the mouth parts of the fly. These blades make relatively large wounds, which continue to bleed after the fly has fed and gone. Often the bite goes unnoticed until a trickle of blood is felt or seen. Black fly saliva may be toxic, causing pain and itching and sometimes nervous and intestinal disorders.
The Pocket Outdoor Survival Guide: The Ultimate Guide for Short-Term Survival Page 4
