Topic: The Best Survival Books of 2022 (Read 144 times)
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Why It Made the Cut
Survivor Man Les Stroud attributed this classic as being foundational to his own survival book. If you want to learn basic survival skills that can be applied almost anywhere, then you’ll want to keep a copy of this one in your pack.
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Bradford Angier’s How to Stay Alive in the Woods, though almost a century old, provides a ton of evergreen survival information on everything from tying knots to preparing porcupines for sustenance. If the language seems a bit outdated, remember, it was written when Truman still occupied the oval office. But there’s a reason this remains one of the best survival books out there. The accessible and detailed instructions make it easy for beginners to wet their feet in the survival waters. Yet, these skills remain relevant for perilous situations you might encounter in the wilderness today.
I spoke with Les Stroud, author of Survive! and creator of the television show Survivorman, and he pinned this book and Christian Troebst’s The Art of Survival as the roots to his own. Stroud found the practical directions in this book realistic and applicable to numerous survival situations, which in his opinion, separates it from a lot of other survival books. This ultimately led him to want to correct a lot of misconceptions and problems that other survival books claimed as true when he wrote Survive!
“Frankly, when it co*es to survival, there’s a lot of harmful information out there that people try to pass as true,” Stroud said. “And, unfortunately, it’s not until you’re actually in a survival situation that you realize this strategy or skill that you read about actually doesn’t work. This is incredibly dangerous and misleading for readers. So, when I wrote my book, I wanted the information to be referenceable and usable.”
If you’re wondering if Stroud’s book, like Angier’s, includes practical, usable survival skills, you can always watch reruns of his show, and see him perform a lot of these himself. Or better yet, like Stroud encourages, get out there with a survival expert and see for yourself.
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Why It Made the Cut
James “Nick” Rowe’s Five Years to Freedom gives a grueling account of his time as a POW in Vietnam and also unveils the psychological demands of surviving worst-case-scenarios.
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Five Years to Freedom recounts Green Beret Lieutenant John “Nick” Rowe’s time in a Vietcong POW camp. While captive, he endured physical and psychological torture as he learned to survive not only day by day but even hours at a time. After escaping the camp and later returning home, Rowe advocated for SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape) training and its development for Special Forces.
I spoke with Mike Glover, 18-year Army veteran, former government contractor and Special Forces SGM, and CEO of Fieldcraft Survival, who cites Five Years to Freedom as his favorite and most influential survival book.
“Survival isn’t always about technical skill,” he said, “it’s also about your mindset and resilience, and Rowe’s book highlights those intangibles that survival requires.”
Glover noted the impact that Rowe’s experience played in shaping SERE training that’s required of all Special Forces today, which Glover also co*pleted while actively serving.
“His long-term captivity gave him endurance, sometimes hour by hour, to stay alive,” he said. “It’s a humbling read because he focuses on one’s ability to cope with and manage stress, and you’ll start to better understand the mental and phycological experiences that survival, in this case, behind enemy lines requires.”
Rowe’s book isn’t a traditional how-to guide, but its focus on mental and psychological endurance highlights an area of survival that doesn’t get as much attention as rubbing two sticks together to start a fire. Nonetheless, these concepts are crucial to surviving a worst-case scenario.
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Why It Made the Cut
The Forager’s Harvest provides a nearly co*prehensive and clearly identifiable guide to wild edibles in eastern North America and how to find, identify, and prepare them.
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Both Clay Hayes and Les Stroud were hesitant to reco*mend one co*prehensive book on wild edible plants, mainly because these differ so drastically from region to region, let alone all around the world. They both reco*mended that the best way to familiarize yourself with wild edible plants is to go with a professional into the field and learn first-hand. In fact, they both suggested this as the main way to learn and that reading about them only plays a supplemental role. It isn’t just about correctly identifying edible plants but knowing that mistakenly identifying the wrong plant can be life-threatening.
That being said, if you’re looking for a book (or three) to help expand your wild edible vocabulary, The Forager’s Harvest (and the two books that follow it), provide a co*prehensive catalog of the edible plants across North America. The first book mainly focuses on the eastern portion of North America, while the latter cover plants found in the American and Canadian West.
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Why It Made the Cut
This pocket guide covers everything from minor cuts to strokes and heart attacks and how to handle them when you’re out in the field.
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If you’re looking for a co*prehensive and packable first aid book to keep with you while you’re in the field, The Pocket Guide fits the bill. It covers everything from minor scrapes to life-threatening injuries and illnesses. Every section incorporates how-to-identify instructions for symptoms and how to assess and treat them. And at around five inches tall, this book can easily ride in your hiking backpack.
Survival books are typically how-to or instructional books that provide a basic knowledge of how to stay alive in an unexpected or disastrous situation until you are rescued or return to the safety of civilization. Still, survival books aren’t just limited to this and may include topics such as, bugging out, wilderness living, first aid wilderness, and even doomsday prepping.
While this might vary depending on who you read, the 5 most important survival skills are fire, shelter, signaling, finding food and water, and first aid.
The Ultimate Survival Guide written by John Wiseman, is a co*prehensive survival book that covers everything from starting a fire to surviving a tornado.
For this review, I interviewed experts, Les Stroud, Clay Hayes, and Mike Glover on their fields of survival expertise as well as their top reco*mendations for survival books. Along with these reco*mendations, I also included some of the most well-known survival books that cover other areas of survival.
Whether you’re hunting, hiking, or riding out a storm in your living room, make sure you’ve done your due diligence for preparing with one of the best survival books. But you shouldn’t just limit your training to these pages. Make sure you spend some time in the field with a professional to better understand what skills actually translate to survival. You might never have to use these skills, but if you do, you’ll be glad you learned them.
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