

Survival, Escape, Resistance, Evasion

Introduction
I'm not sure how much I will include on resistance and escape. Maybe I will save 
these subjects until someone elese offers to contribute the material. I will 
definitely cover the following subjects:


Survival Arctic Jungle Desert


Topics will include dealing with attitude, exposure, dehydration, rescue, food 
gathering.


Evasion
Celestial Navigation - Stars/Sun
Camouflage - Rural and populated areas


Survival
Attitude is everything. Some of you may read this and think "yeah, o.k., now get 
on to the good stuff". What you must realize is that without the proper mental 
attitude, the other topics will be of use for only a short period of time. 
Depression, loneliness, feelings of abandonment, despondency, and the feeling 
that nobody knows where you are or cares will conspire to kill you. If you have 
done your homework, practiced the techniques described, there is a very good 
chance you will survive if you have a positive mentaal attitude. Tell yourself 
that you WILL get out of this. You WILL persevere.

I have seen some survival books talk as though collecting water is easy, 
catching game with snares is simple, and survival is something that can be 
taught in books. When I was very young, I would leave for the country on friday 
afternoons. I would take water proof matches, a litre of water, my bow and some 
arrows, ground sheet/blanket , and spend the weekend making snares, fishing with 
equipment I made, and hunting with my bow. I used primitive fire making methods 
and only used matches when I had to. I can tell you that there is nothing easy 
about any of this. There was much I didn't know at the time, but I had read a 
lot of books. I probably knew more at 13 than most people ever do. I was 
preparing myself for a life in the wilderness as a 'mountain man'. Needless to 
say,  I had not yet discovered girls or beer. Cable TV was unheard of, and 
computers were  magical talking 'entities' as seen on Star Trek and 2001. For 
me, society was full of unnecessary trappings that only made men soft and weak.

By sunday I was ready to return home. My parents would usually drive out to the 
area I was staying in and give me a ride. It was about a 18 mile trek. 
Fortunately my mom made sure I took along 'emergency rations', just in case I 
had trouble finding game. Emergency rations were about the only things I ate all 
weekend. I shot a few birds and snakes with my bow. Caught a few fish too. But I 
learned something that many people do not realize. To survive you must battle 
three things in this order:


Exposure
Dehydration
Food Gathering


You can die in a few hours if you cannot retain body heat. You can die of 
exposure in 72 degree weather!
You will develop hypothermia when your body loses heat faster than you can 
produce it. You need calories to generate body heat. People die of hypothermia 
in warm water. The water is cooler than they are, subsequently the water 
absorbes body heat until their body can produce no more. It is a slow death.

When you breath your breathe causes water loss. Perspiration causes water loss. 
Evaporation from your eyes causes water loss. If you cannot replace these losses 
you will die. Drink water with little microbes, parasites, etc. and you will 
develop diaherra. This will increase your fluid loss and you will die even 
quicker.

Food is the last thing you will need. In moderate climates, you can survive 
without food for up to 30 days. You will die without water in one or two in the 
desert! Finding edible berries and plants are the last things you need to learn. 
Rescue and  conserving fluids and body heat are the primary survival skills. If 
you can survive long enough to get real hungry you are doing a good job. In 
extreme cold food is more important because your body converts food to heat.


Taking Inventory
First examine what you have to work with. Seat cushions from a vehicle are 
insulation. Shiny glass, mirrors, or polished metal can be used to signal search 
aircraft. Glass with imperfections, bifocals, binoculars, etc. can be used to 
focus the suns rays enough to start a fire. Thread stripped from a from seat 
cushion and wound together can be used to lash things together, make fishing 
nets, sutures fro stitching wounds,etc. Rememebr your priorities. Rescue, 
Shelter, Water, and food. You will have to balance these priorities and make 
decisions. Generally, you should stay in the area where you became stranded if 
there is any chance of a search for you. If you try to walk out, the search 
party will not find you. You will burn calories while walking, calories that 
will be hard to replace. You will also perspire, can you afford the water loss? 
If the enemy is searching for you, you will have to move to a safe location.

Exposure and Body Heat - Arctic
Time is running against you here. You must work quickly and conserve energy. 
After you have taken inventory, build a fire:

Hopefully you will have matches or a lighter. You must conserve these valuable 
items. Before you build your fire, pick a place for your shelter. (see below). 
Now gather combustible materials. Cones from pine trees don't burn. Bark doesn't 
either. DONT waste matches trying to ignite them. Gather material in this order:

Very small match stick thickness twigs. Have at least a good double handful. 
They must be dry. To find dry sticks in the rain, look under the overhang of an 
embankment, under-side of logs, dead dry roots pulled out of an embankment, the 
center of a stump or dead tree (dug out with a knife).

Small sticks a little bigger than the smallest. You will need more of these, at 
least a quart - half gallon. Some of these may be a little wet.

Bigger sticks - Twice the thickness of the ones before, even more of these.

Keep moving up in size untill you are collecting branches/small logs. If the 
wood is available you will need as much as you can gather in an hour. Drift wood 
will work if it's dry.
 
Now that you have your wood it's time to build your fire. Take your time and do 
this right. DONT throw the fire together haphazardly. This will only waste fuel 
and increase the risk of the fire not lighting. Every match you have is like 
gold. Do not waste them. If you do this right you will only need one.

Take a medium size branch and lay it down. Now build a tiny lean-to with the 
smallest sticks by leaning them up against the branch.  Take more and and lay 
them perpendicular to first layer, and parallel to the big branch. Use lots of 
very small sticks and leave enough gaps between them for the flames to rise up 
through and ignite the upper layers. If it's raining or windy cover yourself 
with something to protect your fire. Now add the bigger sticks to the top of the 
your neat little lean-to, using a teepee shape, and surrounding the little lean 
to on all sides. Leave a small gap up close to the big branch to get your match 
under the pile. If you have a small slip of paper or lint from pockets, put it 
under the lean-to and ignite it. As your fire grows, start adding more and more 
sticks to get the fire very hot. Now add the larger sticks, the heat will dry 
them if they are damp.(Not if they are green or soaked through.) Keep building 
your fire in stages. DON'T wait to long to add the next size larger sticks. The 
heat generated from the rapidly burning small ones is needed to dry and ignite 
the larger ones. As soon as you can, put some bigger stuff on by laying them 
across the big branch on the ground. Once your fire is going, DONT let it go 
out. If you need more fuel gather more, and start building your shelter.

This is the fastest shelter I know of:

Is there a snow bank nearby? Can you build a small one? You are going to dig a 
cave in the snow. You want the opening to be away from the wind. The cave has to 
be very small. For a snow shelter to be effective it must be below freezing. If 
not, melting snow will saturate your clothing and you will freeze.
Hollow out a place to lie in the snow. If you have something to line the floor 
with it will be much warmer. If you have nothing but plastic or something, try 
to find evergreen tree limbs to line it with. You want as much between you and 
the cold ground as you can. You will lose more heat by being in contact with the 
cold ground than you will from the air. The air in your cave will warm and 
retain heat. If you have a small heat source you can place a vent through the 
roof to allow gas to escape. You must ration your heat source. You will need it 
more at night when the temperature drops.  Luxuries to add will be more 
insulation, seat cushions, etc. and a door. 
 A Ranger Pile is a shelter used by small parties who lack bulky camping 
equipment
or who for tactical reasons, must not risk fire or shelter construction. First 
layer of men, four or
five lays very close together on two ponchos snapped together. Next layer lay's 
on top of the
others, cross ways. Another layer on top of them. Remaining ponchos are snapped 
together and
pulled over the top and tucked in around the sides. If a quantity of DRY pine 
needles, leaves, etc
can be quietly collected, this can be used for insulation stuffing. Just pile it 
on each layer before
the next gets on. This is how small recon teams survive without carrying a lot 
of bullshit with
them. It only gets bad when one of the guys has gas!

A vehicle will block the wind but the compartment is too big to retain body 
heat. You will freeze if you stay in a car or aircraft. Strip cushions, carpet, 
floor mats, insulation, etc. from the vehicle to line your shelter with. If you 
have tools and can remove the hood or trunk lid you can use these for a 
reflector to direct heat in one direction from a fire.

If you are fortunate enough to have the materials to construct a lean-to, build 
one similar to the way you built your fire. Keep the openings away from the 
wind, and towards your fire. Use a reflector to direct the heat into your lean-
to.

Clothing What do you have to work with? Thin material should be put closest to 
your body, as should wool. If you have extra foam from seat cushions, stuff your 
shirts and pants with it. It will work as insulation. Extra clothing can be 
stripped in to pieces of about 5" x 4' and used as wrapping for extra socks. The 
russian army has always used wool strips for field socks. You want to have the 
material that best holds in heat  closest to your skin. This same concept can be 
used when you have the luxury of a sleeping bag. Sleeping bags are designed to 
hold in heat much better than clothes. When you get into a bag, remove all of 
your clothes and lay on them. Naked, your body heat will be trapped between your 
skin and the bag. Otherwise your heat escapes through the thin material of your 
clothing, and stays between your clothes and the bag, until it dissipates.

If you have no clothes for the environment you find yourself in, you will have 
to use the shelter for clothing. Keep your shelter VERY small and use 
insulation. This is your only chance to survive.

If there is plenty of snow/ice  you will have agood water supply if you have a 
fire and a container to melt it in. DO NOT EAT SNOW. It will lower your body 
temperature and bring on hypothermia. Always melt it and get it warm first.

Do not drink alcohol of any kind. It will thin your blood and  increase your 
urine output. If it's strong enough, you can use it as a disinfectant, or to 
help start your signal fires if an aircraft approaches.

Now that you have your fire and a shelter it is time to improve the odds of 
rescue. The international distress signal is three(3) of anything or the letters 
SOS. Don't build three fires because it wastes fuel.   Scrape out three large 
circles in the snow by dragging something around. If it snows these will fill 
in. If you have access to lots of branches or something that provides a good 
contrast to the white snow, lay them out to form 3 large X's. What looks big to 
you on the ground looks very small from an aircraft at 10,000 feet. Your X's 
should be 100 - 150 feet across and 75 feet apart. If you have the wood build 
three fires in the middle of each but don't light them. Keep your main fire 
going so that you'll be able to take a torch to the other fires in a hurry. 

Smoke will be quite visible from the air also. Large piles of pine needles smoke 
well, as does rubber, plastic, or oil. Be careful about burning critical 
supplies however! I would not throw a poncho, sheet of plastic, or rubber boots 
on the fire in a vain attempt to signal a distant plane. You will have to use 
common sense. If the plane cannot land near you, and has to radio for help, you 
could be there a while longer anyway. With bad weather it might take a rescue 
party several days to get  you. If the pilot is an idiot, or lacks a GPS or 
LORAN, he might report your location as being 20 miles away from where you 
actually are.

You may want to find a book named "White Dawn". It chronicles the lives of three 
men who were lost in their small whaling boat in the arctic back in the 1800's. 
It is an excellent work of fiction and provides many accurate details of how 
northern aboriginal peoples survive in their climate. If you are inland you will 
not have much opportunity to hunt for seals. In some areas of the north, the 
only thing you will find are lemings, lichens, and maybe a fox or two. (if there 
are enough rats to feed them). Near the sea you will be able to hunt seal. That 
far north and you won't find much snow, it is too arid and cold. On the Ice pack 
you will have to build your shelter with ice, and heat it with animal fat. If 
you wind up on the ice pack, with no supplies, there is little I can tell you 
here that will save your life. You will have to stay warm long enough to get 
rescued, which had better be pretty quick.
 

Exposure - Desert
Since there is nothing in the desert to hold in the heat, it dissipates quickly 
after the sun goes down. Deserts can drop to near freezing over night. During 
the day the temperature will soar and fry your brain, dry you out, and kill you. 
For this reason any movement should only be at night. For shelter you must  get 
out of the sun. If you can, dig a hole to get in and cover it. Do not strip off 
your clothes. Have you ever wondered why arabic people wear those long, heavy, 
hot looking clothing on their heads and bodies? It is because moisture 
evaporation is your worst enemy in the desert. Clothing helps keep in this 
moisture and slows evaporation. It must be loose enough to allow heat loss. You 
will need to stay warm at night, refer to the arctic topic above.

Water is the most important thing to consider in the desert, it must be 
conserved. Long term drinking of urine can make you sick, but if it's all you 
have you will have to drink it. Succulent plants like cactus also contain water, 
as do the bodies of snakes, lizards, and other animals. Suck every drop you can 
from them, but avoid the poison glands in snakes (they are right behind the head 
in the neck). The only two parts of animals in North America that cannot be 
eaten are the livers of the polar bear and bearded seal. They contain toxic 
amounts of Vitamin A.

If you have plastic or a poncho you can collect water at night in the desert. 
dig a hole (or use support sticks) as wide as the plastic. Make a hole in the 
plastic at the center. Stretch the plastic over the hole and weight down the 
edges with rocks. Press down the center of the sheet or tie it to a tock to pull 
it down. Place a container under the hole. When dew forms on the plastic it will 
roll down hill through the hole and it into your container. Use your poncho 
during the day as shade.

Do not drink alcohol, it will increase your urine output and aid in dehydration.


Exposure - Jungle
Here, heat and sunlight are your worst enemies. Insects and water contamination 
are also major problems. The heat and humidity of the jungle makes for rapid 
bacteria growth. Any untreated wound will fester within a few hours. In a day or 
two a cut can become bad enough to cause gangrene. You must protect yourself by 
turning down sleeves, blousing your pants to keep insects out, and wearing 
gloves and a hat. 

Water must be boiled well to kill parasites. Safe water can be found in water 
vines. These are very thick vines that hang down from large trees. You know, the 
ones that Tarzan swings from? Cut one at a 45 degree angle, move up the vine and 
cut it off about three feet up or sever it  to release the suction. Hold your 
mouth under the vine and the water will flow out. This water is safe to drink 
without boiling. Try not ot let it run along the exposed outside of the vine 
though, that area will have tiny creepy crawlies.

Jungle streams are usually as deep as they are wide. Diffenbachia (or 'dumb 
cane') can be crushed and  added to water to stun fish.

Chinese Star Apples, Mangoes, bananas, coconuts, and other fruits are safe to 
eat if you wash them with sterile water first. The seeds of the Star apple are 
poisenous. Many species of tree frogs in the rainforests are highley toxic. They 
are recognized by there bright vivid colors. If you are very careful not to 
touch them, you can use their skin secretions for poisenous blow gun darts.

Blow guns are difficult to make, but I'll tell you how for the hell of it. Take 
a limb and split it length-wise.
scrape the bore of the weapon into both halfs. It must be perfect. Allow it to 
dry and polish the bore halfs smooth. The two sides must fit perfectly. (This is 
harder than it sounds). Bind the two back together with bark or vine strips.

Darts are made from any  wood that can be sharpened. To launch the dart a small 
tuft of fiber (like cotton) from the stem of a (????) tree branch is balled 
around the base of the dart.

During the rainy season, grubs can be found in the center of (????) trees. I 
can't remember their names but I know what they look like.

Build a platform or hammock to get off of the ground when you sleep. Insects 
will eat you alive if you don't.
Mud can be used to keep mosquitos off.

The jungle is a garden of eden compared to the desert or the arctic. With a 
little common sense anyone should be able to survive. 

I don't know of any poisenous plants that don't tast extremely bitter and nasty. 
If the leaf tastes mild it is probably OK to eat. When in doubt, try a little 
piece first and wait a couple of hours. If nothing bad happens try twice as much 
and wait again. Keep doing this until youve tried enough to have made you sick. 
If you are still O.K. then it's probably safe to eat. There are exceptions to 
this rule, most notably among berries. Some berries don't taste too bad but are 
poisenous.

You should educate yourself before going to a new area Pictures in books never 
look like the actual plant. Generally, if it crawls, walks, or slithers on it's 
belly it is safe to eat.

Back to HQ, More Survival -- Arctic, Desert, Jungle Go on to Evasion 

