Book Review: Survive! Essential skills and tactics to get you out of anywhere, by Les Stroud
My Overall Impression of Les Stroud’s Book, Survive! Essential skills and tactics to get you out of anywhere alive
My overall impression of Stroud’s Survive! is that it’s a book that leads its genre. It’s a must read, must buy book for anyone who ventures into the wilderness, or otherwise wants to prepare for any type of survival situation, making it a book for everyone. It’s an authoritative book based on facts and the author’s hard won experience, written carefully, conscientiously and in an engaging way. In short, this book is a highly readable, authoritative reference text to pretty much everything you want to know about survival.
I purchased a copy of this book and keep it handy on my outdoor adventure reference shelf. It’s a hefty tome of 362 pages, its value far exceeding the $20 I spent on it.
Disclosure - I’m a Long Time Fan of Les Stroud
I must disclose that I’m highly prejudiced in favor of recommending this text. Like Stroud, I’m a Canadian and an outdoorsman. I also love the great boreal forest that carpets one third of North America and much of Alaska. Moreover, I’m a long time fan of his TV show, Survivorman.
Overview of the Book - Survive! Essential skills and tactics to get you out of anywhere alive
Survive! is an authoritative, comprehensive, and dare I say, hardcore, badass text on preparing yourself for survival situations. Throughout the book, Stroud emphasizes preparation. In fact, Chapter one focuses on preparation. Then Chapter Two focuses on preparing your own survival kit. Chapter 8 presents a number of checklists to follow to prepare for survival emergencies.
For bushcrafters, the book covers the technical basics of survival in the wilderness. It details how to obtain fire, water, food and shelter as well as how to administer first aid. Chapters 5 through 8 deal with the essential survival imperatives of water, fire, shelter and food, while Chapter 13 provides an excellent introduction to first aid. Those chapters alone should secure this book a prominent place in your reference library.
Further Details on Les Stroud’s Book, Survive! Essential skills and tactics to get you out of anywhere alive
Stroud argues that you should assemble your own survival kit. The book provides a series of checklists for tools and materials to include in a personal survival kit, a home survival kit, and the survival kit for your vehicle.
Stroud delves deeply into the psychological aspect of survival. In fact, he devotes an entire chapter to that topic, covering it comprehensively in chapter 3. He explains how preparation is key to survivability, including psychological preparation.
Many of the examples in the book portray survival in the harsh conditions of Canada’s boreal forest. But the examples also go much further afield, to the deserts of Namibia, tropical forests of Costa Rica and Belize, the frozen wilderness of Canada’s Arctic, and the deserts of the American Southwest. The book also covers how to survive disasters and calamities at home.
While chapters 5 through 8 cover skills and techniques for bushcraft survival in the wilderness, the book goes far beyond bushcraft, to cover the skills you’ll need to survive emergencies and dire situations in general.
In other words, the book details the skills you’ll need to survive, whether you get lost in the wilderness, or fall victim to natural disasters and other calamities in the heart of civilization.
Additional chapters cover survival skills, techniques, tools and mindset for signaling (Chapter 4) survival travel and navigation (Chapter 9), special dangers and hazards (Chapter 10), and extreme weather (Chapter 11).
My Conclusion about Survive! Essential skills and tactics to get you out of anywhere alive by Les Stroud
Weighing in at 15 chapters and 365 pages, Survive! is a hefty reference text book on survival. It’s densely packed with information from a man who spent two decades applying his survival skills in some pretty hairy situations indeed.