Captain Dave's Survival Center

Captain Dave's Survival Guide

The Worst Approach: When you have no where to go

OK, let's assume that the worst has come to pass and not only is it unsafe to stay at home or go to your safe house, and you have no other viable choices. The disaster is so grave that there is no government infrastructure you can rely on to come and "save" you or relocate you. You have no survival retreat of your own, your friends and family are no safer, and you have no destination to go to. Perhaps the problem is a severe pandemic that is leaving dead bodies in its wake, or perhaps it is a period of lawlessness after an EMP strike that knocks out the electrical generating system for the entire region. What do you do?

Captain Dave's answer is to camp in the wilderness until the trouble passes. Use the available information from the news media to identify where the worst problem lies and head way from it. If possible, identify a state park, national park or wilderness area (the bigger the better) in the "safe" area and head to it, preferably by vehicle. Bring as much food, camping gear, and tools as you can fit into your vehicle. Key items to bring would include:

Vessels to haul and store water as well as personal-size water bottles
Water filters and purifiers
Several ways to start a fire (matches, lighters, flint and steel, etc.)
Pots, pans and utensils suitable for outdoor cooking. (Large pots for boiling water, cooking soup and other tasks are critical.)
Plates and utensils suitable for preparing food and for outdoor use (probably plastic or metal plates and cups)
Salt, pepper and basic spices
Tupperware and similar food storage containers
Freeze dried, dehydrated and canned food that is easily transportable and require no special storage considerations and MREs or other long term storage foods
Other foods should include flour, corn meal, pancake mix, and baking essentials such as baking powder and baking soda
Hand tools such as hatchets, axes, saws, shovels and knives
Basic non-powered woodworking tools
Sleeping bags and foam mats
Tents, tarps and rope
Sanitation and cleaning supplies, including dish detergent and hand cleansers
Personal hygiene products, from toothbrushes to toilet paper
Several changes of clothing for each person
Rain gear and warm outerwear
Comfortable and durable shoes and several pairs of socks
Books on wilderness survival, primitive living, and gathering wild foods
A radio and batteries; solar power or crank radio is preferred
Walkie-talkie radios and solar chargers for the same
Light sources, including flashlights and candles
First aid kits
Fishing gear
Traps and snares
Firearms and ammunition

Get as close to your chosen location as possible via car, even if you have to resort to traveling on fire roads that are not open to the public. In a serious emergency, law enforcement will have far worse things to worry about than you using a fire road. (Having local maps is a big help. You can buy a big book of maps for your state and neighboring states at any major book store.)

The best way to go use a fire road or other path than is chained off is to park at the entrance and have part of your party stay with the vehicle. Have a scouting party walk the fire road to ensure it is not blocked and is passable by your vehicle. Make sure there is a place where your vehicle can turn around to get back out if you need to. Scout for good camp sites well off the beaten path and a place to park the vehicle.

The scouts should also search for a place to set up your base camp. It should be uphill from a water source, and not in an area that could be flooded. A small rise is nice, as water runs downhill, and you don't want it to run into your tent or shelter. Make sure you are not under any trees with dead limbs that could drop on you. Normally, camping in a clearing is advised, but you may wish to find a site that is better hidden and more defensible. Also consider where you will dig your latrine and other sanitation issues.

If a suitable location is not found, the scouts return to the vehicles and go on to the next fire road. If a suitable location is found for the base camp, the scouts return to the vehicles. At that point, a bolt cutter should be used to cut the chain at the end away from the park service lock. After your party has driven through, use your own lock to re-lock the chain. This will allow you a way in and out without re-cutting the chain or leaving it down and inviting others to try the road. Once you have passed through, you may even want to block off the road or make it look unused.

Drive to the scouted site and park. Set up the campsite, being sure to carefully erect your tent(s) as you may be there a while. If you have multiple families and tents, space them out a bit to give each other privacy. You want to be close enough to share a communal fire but far enough apart that you are not in each other's laps.

Carry the necessary items to your campsite, but leave some items in your vehicle where they will hopefully be safe, dry and secure. Food that may attract bears or other aggressive wildlife, for example, should be left in the car or tied on to a tree limb at least 20 feet off the ground some distance from the camp.

Once the camp is established, you will need to assign everyone duties. Overall, you need people to secure the camp site, improve the camp, and guard the camp. Others may be responsible for gathering food while still others for preparing it. Someone should be responsible for overseeing the health of the camp inhabitants and to ensure good hygiene is being maintained by all.

Most importantly, no one should be allowed to sit around depressed or complaining. Keep all hands busy so people are worn out by nightfall. Everyone should have one or more of the following roles:

Leader

Establishes rule and procedures
Final arbitrator of dispute and decision maker.
Also a motivator and encourager as well as a dealer of discipline.

Quartermaster

Maintains inventory of everything from matches and bullets to water bottles and canned foods
Ensures nothing is wasted and that everything that can be reused is
Doles out supplies on an as-needed basis and prevents waste or unnecessary use

Wellness Officer

Provides medical care and first aid in the case of injuries
Ensures prevention by enforcing good hygiene rules
Identifies threats to health and takes steps to prevent injury

Keeper of the Fire

Builds and maintains the fire ring. May also:

Design and build a clay or mud oven in which items can be baked
Design and build a smoker to smoke game and fish for storage

Gathers and stockpiles firewood, from kindling to larger wood (dont use green wood or pine trees which can impart a bad taste to the food)
Ensures that the fire remains lit and rekindles it from coals to preserve limited supply of matches

Bringer of Water

Transports water from the local source to the camp
Ensures water is filtered, treated or otherwise purified before use
Keeps track of water filter elements and when to replace them
Maintains and cleans water vessels, filters and bottles

Preparer of Food

Cooks and prepares food, as well as cleaning up afterwards. (See the section below on perpetual stew.)
Also preserves food through smoking, drying, etc.
May also butcher game and tan hides

Gatherer of food

Gathering wild food, from vegetation and mushrooms to fruits and berries, depending on your location and the season. May also fish or hunt.
Husbands resources so that vegetation can grow back for future harvests
Notes location of out-of-season items for future harvest

Hunter/trapper

Hunts game. May also fish
Runs trap line
May also serve as a scout, butcher and/or tanner

Engineer

Ensures the camp is set up to withstand local weather conditions
Sites and digs latrine
Builds and improves shelter from locally available materials
Builds furnishings, tools and weapons from locally available materials

Scout

Scouts the surrounding area for threats, potential food sources, etc.
Relays information on food to Gatherers and leads them to food sources. May guard gatherers while they work
Seeks out additional or better camp sites, should it be necessary to move
Identifies defensible positions near camp and evacuation routes, should it be necessary to leave the cap site
Ensures any approach by the road is secured

Obviously, this is quit a list -- ten jobs. Does this mean you have to have 10 people? No. One person can wear multiple hats. Perhaps the keeper of the fire is also the preparer of food. Maybe the gatherer is also the scout or the trapper. Perhaps some jobs such as food preparer and bringer of water -- rotate from day to day.

While some jobs, like preparing food, keeping up the fire, and checking the trap line must be done daily others can be handled less frequently. For example, the entire group might spend the morning of Day 1 gathering firewood, the morning of Day 2 and 4 gathering wild food, and the morning of day 3 washing clothes and bodies and cleaning up the campsite. Then the cycle can repeat. Obviously, there needs to be flexibility as weather or a successful hunt may disrupt one day's plans. The day after a large kill, for example, might be largely dedicated to preserving the food and preparing the hide for tanning.

This also brings up the question of how many people does it require to survive in a wilderness camp site. The minimum recommended number is four able bodied people. Two adults with two young children is not enough for long term survival unless the adults are highly skilled and practiced and are very well prepared. Two adults with children 12 or older are far easier, as are larger family groups. While it is possible to have two or more families, they must be compatible and have skills that complement each other. One family totally relying on the other will often not work as the less skilled group will feel that they are getting the "bad" jobs while the high skilled group (who probably supplied the bulk of the food and survival goods) may feel that they are being taken advantage of.

How long do you have to live in the wilderness? That depends on the scope of the emergency. The hope is that the problem will pass and you can emerge from the wilderness and return to civilization. If not, you need to gradually turn your camp site into a homestead by building a cabin.

Remember, you are in the wilderness to escape disease, death and destruction and that the hope is this will be a temporary escape, not a permanent one. Certainly we don't want to start rebuilding civilization in a tent in the wilderness area. But if the problem lasts more than a few months, you should consider building more permanent structures, such as a wood cabin, and then domesticating animals and planting crops. As this is not easily done in a mountainous region, you may have to come down from your wilderness camp and, after careful scouting, take over an abandoned farm or house in a valley or in the foothills.

Remember that hunter gather cultures were usually nomadic because they would consume all the resources of one area. (This is one reason that you may want to scout out other camp sites.) Establishing herds and flocks of domestic animals relives much of the burden by providing a more continual source of food, fiber and leather than hunting. Being a primitive hunter-gatherer living in a tent is a difficult, dangerous life. Being a primitive farmer living without electricity and power tools is not easy, but it is a huge step forward with an improved level of survivability.

Perpetual Stew

In a wilderness camp such as described above, food preservation is a challenge. There is no refrigeration and smoking and drying works better for some foods than others. Keeping a pot of soup or stew constantly simmering on the fire is an excellent way to preserve food while ensuring a hot meal is ready to go. Perpetual stew also can be filling and stretches limited amounts of meat.

Simply put, you add whatever you have harvested to the pot daily.

For example, the day starts off with pancakes made from your dwindling supply of pancake mix. A few nuts and/or berries gathered the day before are added to it for flavor. There is no butter or syrup, but people are happy to have "real food" from before the fall and no one complains.

After breakfast, everyone sets off on their tasks. Let's say that the food gathers came home with small wild onions, some watercress and other greens, wild carrots, and handful of pine nuts and some mushrooms. The trap line caught a possum and a raccoon.

Lunch is a salad made from most of the greens with some of the onions, carrots and mushrooms added to it. Perhaps some smoked fish or dried meat from a previous catch can be added to it.

Everything not set aside to be eaten immediately goes into the pot with the butchered possum and raccoon after they are browned over an open flame. Simmer for a few hours and this will be the main course at dinner. Maybe the scout comes home a few hours before dark tired and hungry after a 12 mile hike. He did not kill any game, but his backpack is full of cattail roots. He can have his hot bowl of stew right away while he tells the gatherer about a meadow he has discovered with several edible plants and a pond that looks like it has turtles in it. Afterwards, he works around the camp site in hi other role as the engineer while the food preparer bakes the cattail tubers in the embers of the fire. There is enough cattail for everyone to have one that night and leave plenty to be fried up for breakfast the next morning. The leftovers are sliced and added into the stew for the next day.

Throughout the day, the food preparer adds water to the stew to keep it from drying out. By adding whatever is available, you get a blending of flavors and the heat kills any germs. Even the toughest rodent flesh softens nicely in perpetual stew. If necessary, a can of vegetables, some dried noodles, barley, or rice can be added to the pot, again stretching out your valuable and limited food supplies. Maybe some dumplings are dropped in once a week.

Does the stew pot ever get emptied? Of course. On a day when there is plenty of food available say a deer was killed or a 50 pound beaver caught in a trap the stew is eaten at lunch and the pot cleaned. The pot may be needed during the butchering. If it is cool enough, you can hang the deer to age while a haunch is cooked. Strips of meat should also be cut off and smoked into pemmican or jerky for consumption over the next few days.

But afterwards, when the majority of the meat is eaten or preserved, whatever is left is browned and goes back into the pot for the next day's food. Maybe there is enough that you have it for breakfast as well as dinner. In this kind of survival situation, we don't worry about having "breakfast foot" for breakfast you just eat what is available.

Keep in mind that your Preparer of Food may also spend much of his or her day gathering food or at another task, and cannot be expected to dedicate every hour of every day to cooking and preparing food. Baking is time consuming on the best of times, and even more so in primitive conditions. Perpetual stew allows everyone to have a wholesome, filling meal at almost any time.

Nuts, berries and other fruits probably should not be added to the pot, but just about any meat (including reptile) and vegetable can be. Even grains gathered in the wilds. You can mix red meat and fowl, or you can separate them in different pots for a bit of variety. Fish stew should probably be done separately as fish do not lend themselves as well to the long simmering process as red meat does.

Cabins and Shelters

Many parks have primitive cabins and shelters along major trails that can be reserved for use by hikers and campers. These may seem to have advantages over a primitive wilderness site. For example, they are more weather hardy than a tent and may have a wood stove and a nearby water source. The problem is that you are unlikely to be the first and last person to have thought of this cabin. That means it may be occupied when you show up. Or, once you occupy it, someone else may show up and want it. Every day you are in a cabin or shelter that is on all the park service maps, you have to be prepared to defend yourself. Preferring to avoid conflict rather than seek it out, Captain Dave recommends avoiding these cabins and shelters in favor of a wilderness site.

Similarly, well known caves on maps should also be avoided for the same reasons. However, if you find a cave or abandoned mine that is not a tourist attraction, you should seriously consider making it your base camp.