The answer depends on what weather alerts are active, road conditions, visibility, and temperature. You should stay home if there’s a Blizzard Warning or Winter Storm Warning, if visibility drops below a quarter mile, if winds exceed 35 mph, or if temperatures with wind chill drop below -20°F. Travel is only safe during Winter Weather…
Most wilderness accidents happen on established trails during descent, particularly in popular national parks and recreation areas. About 90% of hiking accidents occur on trails rather than off-trail areas, with significantly more accidents happening during descent, especially at higher altitudes. The highest concentration of fatalities occurs in heavily visited parks like Grand Canyon, Great Smoky…
The easiest wild foods to identify are blackberries, dandelions, plantain, wild strawberries, and chickweed. These plants have distinctive features that make them nearly impossible to confuse with toxic species, grow abundantly across most regions, and require minimal foraging experience to recognize safely. If you’re new to foraging, starting with these five plants gives you a…
Stop immediately the moment you realize you’re lost. If you have 2-3 hours or less of daylight remaining, you should make camp right away rather than continuing to move. Even with more daylight available, if you’re uncertain about your location and no one knows where you are, staying put and establishing camp is usually the…
Start trapping immediately on Day 1 (after establishing shelter and fire), but delay active hunting until Day 3 or later. Set multiple traps during the evening of your first day to work overnight while you sleep. Focus your energy on passive food gathering methods like trapping and fishing rather than calorie-intensive active hunting, especially during…
The best time to set survival traps is during the late afternoon (3-5 PM), allowing them to be fully active during peak animal movement windows at dusk and dawn. Most small game animals are crepuscular, meaning they’re most active during twilight hours—specifically at dusk (evening) and dawn (early morning). Animals forage heavily during these periods,…
In a wet forest, you can find dry tinder under the sheltering branches of evergreen trees (especially pine, spruce, and hemlock), in the inner bark of standing dead trees, underneath fallen logs, in birch bark (which burns even when damp due to natural oils), inside dead lower branches still attached to living trees, in fatwood…
You can find edible insects for protein through online specialty retailers (Thailand Unique, Next Food, Bug Bazaar, ecoEat), major marketplaces like Amazon, specialty food stores, Asian grocery stores, some farmers markets, and protein bar brands like Exo and cricket powder suppliers like Entomo Farms. Most purchases happen online, with prices ranging from $15-35 for ready-to-eat…
You should collect rainwater for survival BEFORE a crisis hits, as soon as rainfall begins (after the first few minutes have washed away roof debris), during any active precipitation event, and particularly when municipal water systems are compromised or expected to fail. The best time is always now—establishing a collection system before you need it…
The solar still method doesn’t have a single inventor. The concept dates back to ancient Greece with Aristotle describing evaporation methods in the 4th century BC. Arab alchemists documented its use in 1551. However, Charles Wilson, a Swedish engineer, built the first large-scale modern solar still plant in 1872 at Las Salinas, Chile. During World…