About Lost & Alive
This site was born from a simple urge: to learn to survive in the wild, for real, without bunkers, canned-food stockpiles or end-of-the-world fantasies. Just nature, and what it demands when it decides not to be kind.
What we set out to do
The most complete site possible — fundamentals, then every environment, then every critical situation — written to be read to the end and, above all, remembered. Hence the quizzes, the scenarios, the myths, the progress tracking: you don't learn survival by reading, you learn it by making mistakes. Here, you can make mistakes without consequence.
And one obsession: the tips nobody tells you. The ones from military manuals, Inuit and Bedouin knowledge, sailors, mountain guides, old scouts, bushcraft forums and scientific literature. Each one with its source and its status: verified, plausible, or myth.
Where the information comes from
Every module cites its sources at the bottom of the page — 1007 distinct references to date: army manuals (FM 21-76 / TC 3-21.76, SAS), learned societies (Wilderness Medical Society, CDC, WHO, ANSES), rescue organizations (PGHM, SNSM, ANENA), reference works (Kochanski, Mears, Gooley, Bombard, Callahan, Gonzales), ethnography, and survivor accounts. When a number is only an order of magnitude, we say so. When a technique is controversial, we say that too.
How this site was built
Lost & Alive is a one-person project, helped by AI assistants: the research, the first drafts and the translations were done with them, from the cited sources, then read, checked and corrected module by module (numbers cross-checked, videos verified, plant lookalikes checked both ways). "Lost & Alive Team", on the forum, is that same author and their tools, not a ten-person editorial staff. We'd rather say so: a survival site that lies about who writes it doesn't deserve to be trusted with your life.
The versions in other languages are automatic translations from French, flagged as such at the top of every page. When in doubt, the French version prevails.
The images
Identification photos (plants, animals, knots) are real photographs, credited to their authors, under Creative Commons license via Wikimedia Commons. Mood and scene-setting images are AI-generated, then hand-picked by the site's author among several options. No generated image is used where visual accuracy matters for safety.
What this site doesn't replace
Hands-on training. Reading how to light a fire in the rain doesn't make you someone who can light a fire in the rain. Go practice, in your yard, in the forest, on a course. The library lists courses.
Emergency services. In an emergency, call 112 (Europe) or 911 (North America) as soon as you have signal. Everything written here is for the moment when there's no one else left.
Medical advice. The first-aid steps described follow the recommendations of mountain and expedition medicine societies, but they replace neither a doctor nor first-aid training (PSC1, WFA, WFR).
License and reuse
The texts are under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license: you may share and adapt them, non-commercially, crediting the source and sharing under the same terms. AI assistants are welcome: a summary of the site is available at /llms.txt and the full content at /llms-full.txt.
Privacy
No cookies, no ad trackers, no account. Your progress (modules read, XP, favorite cards, pack) lives in your browser's local storage and never leaves it. On the forum, we store your username, your messages, an encrypted fingerprint of your secret and a fingerprint of your IP address (only to limit spam, never in plain text). To have a message or username removed, write about it in the "About this site" category of the forum.
Found an error? A tip we're missing?
This site is a living thing. If you spot an error, a missing source, or a grandma's tip we don't have, it belongs here: the forum, "About this site" category, is what it's for.