The fundamentals
What keeps you alive anywhere: mindset, water, fire, shelter, and everything that comes after.
Fifteen modules, in the order life demands them. Start with mindset, finish with the kit.
1Mindset: the key to everything
Before fire, before water, before shelter: what happens in your head during the first ten minutes.
2Water: Finding, collecting, and making it drinkable
Three days without water is the popular myth. The real question is where it's hiding and what's inside it.
3Fire: light it anywhere, keep it always
In the rain, on the snow, without a lighter: the physics of fire, techniques that work, and those that only work in the movies.
4Shelter: sleeping warm when everything is against you
Three hours. That's all the time you have left in cold rain if you don't get out of the wind and off the ground.
5Wild plants: eat without dying
You can last three weeks without food, but a single autumn crocus leaf will kill you: here is what you need to know, in this exact order.
6Field proteins: fishing, traps, insects, cooking
Large game is the stuff of dreams, but it's crickets, set lines, and snails that actually feed a lost survivor.
7Orienting yourself: finding your way without GPS
The trail has disappeared, your phone is dead, night is falling: here is how to read the sky, the map, and the landscape.
8First aid far from help
When the ambulance is six hours away on foot, what you do in the first ten minutes decides everything.
9Getting found: signaling, calling, waiting in the right place
A well-aimed mirror carries further than a flare. Staying put gets you found faster than running. Here is what search and rescue teams wish you knew before they arrive.