In survival conditions, shelter can actually take precedence in your survival priorities over food and water, even in adverse weather. Shelter can protect you from the glaring heat of desert sun, the wind, rain, and snow of alpine or northern climates, and from the biting, disease-vector insects of many places. In hot or cold weather, shelter can also provide you with a moderating influence against these, to increase comfort. If we realize that sleep deprivation leads to decreased mental acuity, then adequate appropriate shelter is a life-saving mechanism in survival, because it provides us the ability to get enough sleep to maintain good judgment and physiological function. For many people, shelter simply provides psychological protection from the bogeymen of not being in a modern house, which may be more essential to their health and welfare than those of us with more outdoors experience even recognize. The most common errors in constructing survival shelters are making them too large, and placing them in poor locations. A shelter must be large enough to protect you from inclement weather, including in some climates, the ability to place a heating source inside, but they should also be small enough to effectively trap your body heat, at least in cold climates. Shelter Site Selection In a survival situation, shelter may be the highest priority, but it is always a priority to some degree, even if you end up choosing—or being forced to choose—sleeping “under the stars” for a night or two. Whether moving in a forest, a desert, the alpine fastness, or a built-up, urban area, you should be looking for appropriate shelter locations, or “hide sites,” at least an hour or two before you intend to stop for the night1. As you are looking for appropriate hide sites, there are some important prerequisites you should be looking for: If you do not have shelter material with you, in the form of a tent, tarp, or sleep system with weather proof bivy bag, it should contain enough material of the type(s) you will need to build a shelter, and bedding. If you do have shelter building materials on your person, it needs to be large enough and level enough to allow you to pitch those shelters. For a tent, this will be a predetermined amount of “footprint” including the stake out materials of guy lines and tent stakes. For tarp shelters, it may require slightly less space, since you can secure edges and corners to bushes, rocks, etc. For a bivy bag, or similar, it may require only enough space to lay your body. This can also be modified through experience and training. I’ve often slept, on the side of a steep mountain, by wedging myself against the uphill side of a tree, and more than once, I’ve slept, in a swamp, by securing myself to a tree, with rope, in a seated position, so I wouldn’t fall over in my sleep and end up underwater. In some survival situations, the security situation may require that your hide site provides concealment from detection by other people. If you’re using one of the many makes and models of recreational backpacking tents available, this will require significantly more effort than if you’re using a hunting or military tent of camouflage, or if you’re using a simple tarp shelter. If you’re wrapped in a bivy bag or similar, you can often sleep, comfortably, in the middle of a thicket of briar and bramble, or tucked into a large boulder outcropping that seems impassible, let alone with enough space for someone to sleep. On the other hand, in some survival situations, hiding from potential rescuers, in the form of Search-and-Rescue (SAR) personnel, may be the last thing you want to do. In these cases, you’ll want to be in a location where even your camouflage tent or tarp may be obviously visible to air crews or personnel on nearby ridges searching for you with binoculars. Camouflaged or concealed escape routes may also be necessary, under some circumstances. Provides protection from wild animals, as well as from rockfalls or dead trees, known as “widowmakers” that may be induced to fall because of nocturnal winds. While wild animals are really not the hazard that many people seem to think they are, in apex predator country, they can be a hazard, especially if you’re sleeping with foodstuffs in your camp location2. Your hide site should be—as much as feasible—free from insects, reptiles, and poisonous plants. For insects, this is generally going to require being in a place with a steady, constant breeze. This will often not be possible if you’re also looking for adequate concealment though, as the brush disrupts the breeze. Which is your priority will depend entirely on the specifics of your situation. One advantage of living at high elevation is that venomous reptiles generally don’t survive above 6500 feet in elevation, because of the cold. Our county, for example, has no venomous reptiles, even though, if I go 20 miles south of my house, rattlesnakes make an appearance. In deserts and foothill regions, you need to avoid being in places where flash floods from distant rains may tear through unexpectedly. This is extremely common in many desert regions, including in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. A rain storm at high elevation in the mountains, 30+ miles away, may induce an arroyo to flood suddenly, with little warning. In alpine terrain, avoid the slide-out areas for avalanches and rockslides. Near surface water sources, or even dry depressions, avoid sites that are below obvious high water marks. Along rivers and streams, as with arroyos in the deserts, these can flood quickly, with little warning. The high water mark can also be dramatically higher than one would expect. I’ve seen placid streams in the Alleghenies and in southern Appalachia, with flood debris twenty feet above my head in the tree tops. Recognize that ideal sleep sites, in the same area, will differ between seasons. In winter, you’re going to want something tucked into the timber, with protection from the wind and snow, but nearby fuel at hand. In the same area in summer though, you may still want some trees for shade and concealment, but you’ll want a place in the wind, to keep insects at bay, and a close-by water source will be even more essential than convenient fuel. Whether you are in a survival situation with hostile actors around, or just camping the backcountry, and don’t want to spoil the experience for others, the military survival acronym BLISS is critical: Blend in with the surroundings, keep a Low silhouette and an Irregular shape. Keep your camp Small, and in a Secluded location. Under many conditions, the best shelter for survival situations is the sky. This common sense system saves weight, time, energy, money, and increases your visibility of your surroundings, maximizing security. A single person—or a even a small group of people—provides a much lower visual signature than a group of tents or even tarp shelters, strewn about a meadow or wooded glade. Even if you are carrying shelter materials, not using them except when absolutely necessary, will increase their longevity, allowing you to have them later, when they are essential. If you are not using a shelter overhead, with the requisite demands on your time for set up or construction, you can move longer into the evening, or morning, and it takes literally seconds to flop down on the ground and begin your priorities of work, such as meal preparation and sleep. Despite these obvious advantages though, and my personal preferences, I recognize that most people seem to assume that being in a survival situation will mandate that they always have some sort of shelter. While I find it amazing—even appalling—that most people, including experienced backpackers, seem to regard a tent as obligatory outdoor gear, even in fair weather, I also have come to recognize that most people seem to need the perceived security of four walls, even when those walls are lightweight nylon. There are, of course, times when some sort of shelter becomes important. Very cold weather can be one of them. When the mercury dips well below freezing, and you need to conserve every single possible calorie that your body generates, protection from the elements can be crucial to health maintenance3. Even in such cold temperatures though, it is possible to sleep comfortable and secure, as long as the wind remains calm—or blocked. One night at Fort Stewart, Georgia, as a young Ranger, we were inundated with freezing rain, and temperatures in the teens. At the time and place, the only sleep gear we carried in our rucksacks was a poncho and poncho liner. With high winds whipping the frozen rain across flesh like so many razor blades, it was a miserable night. Until that is, I discovered an old tank track about two feet deep in the mud. I crawled into the hole to get below the wind, wrapped poncho and liner around me, and slept tolerably well, until morning, only waking when my Ranger buddy shook me for my turns on security. I’ve also slept comfortably, in the Tetons in October, wrapped in nothing more than a summer weight sleeping bag, in a cluster of willows, and wakened to find six inches of fresh snow atop the sleeping bag and ground, and temperatures well into single digits. In any kind of windy conditions though, even when the temperatures are up around freezing, even the warmest, but unprotected sleeping bag will often prove inadequate to the task. In any appreciable snowfall—I count that as anything over 8-12 inches—you may also find some sort of shelter essential to adequate sleep. In extreme temperatures of course—summer desert highs in the triple digits, and winter lows pushing or exceeding -20F, a shelter of some sort will be absolutely essential just to survive, let alone to reside in comfort. On the other hand, while it is not a widely shared experience, even among experienced, “expert” backpackers and outdoorsmen, you seldom need shelter in the rain, from late spring through early autumn in most places, and never a tent. Even when rain is heavy and wind driven, a well-set up tarp shelter will provide more than adequate shelter to keep you dry, while also providing much greater situational awareness of your surroundings. Too often, I’ve watched people stuck inside even the brightest colored tents, succumb to depression and lethargy, when stuck inside for days on end in beating rainstorms. Even under benign conditions, a tarp shelter, with the ample views provided, in a driving, weeklong rain storm, will tempt you to get out and experience the wonders of your surroundings, despite the wet. In a survival situation, it is much easier to convince yourself to get up and move around, given the views from under a tarp shelter, than from within a tent. In lighter rains, simply donning a rain jacket, and continuing to move around, will keep you adequately warm to survive, and a simple bivy bag, or even just a tarp or poncho tossed over your bedding, can be more than adequate. Despite this though, a tent of some sort may be well-worth the weight and inconvenience if you expect to need to set up a semi-permanent or long-term camp and move from it each day, for fishing, hunting, foraging, or security, during a lengthy rest period. It’s convenient, under those circumstances, to be able to leave most of your equipment—as well as weary or injured traveling companions—inside the tent, while you move about less heavily encumbered, but knowing it is all protected from the weather. No tent will keep out all wildlife, of course. Ants can miraculously find ways into tents, even tightly secured with zipper and “no-see-um” mesh. Mice will chew a hole right through nylon or polyester tent fabrics—and certainly through cotton canvas! But, a well-battened down tent, even a floorless canvas wall tent or tipi, seems to do a pretty good job of keeping out birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and even pack rats. This is predicated of course, on the fact that you keep your tent and camp relatively clean and organized. Foodstuffs left out, inside a tent, will draw even reluctant critters into your abode. Sharing a hunting camp in Idaho once with another guide, I returned to camp one afternoon, client in tow, to find a badger inside the canvas cook tent, scarfing down the other guide’s leftovers from breakfast, where he’d left the plates and bowls out on the wooden table. It’s debatable whether the badger or myself was more upset about the encounter. Of course, no matter how well-secured, two types of common thieves will not be kept out of your tent, if they find it: human thieves, and man-habituated bears. Neither is particularly uncommon, even in remote wilderness these days, and under survival situations, may become more of an issue, quickly.4 Tents There are two basic types of tents: canvas tents and backpacker tents. Canvas tents, in the form of the commonplace “wall tent” or “cabin tent” and the American Indian tipi are probably the ideal for long-term survival use, but are prohibitively heavy for man-pack mobility. These will be limited to use by those traveling in vehicles, with pack horse or pack mule strings, or via canoe/boat5. Backpacking tents offer a confusing, vast array of designs, most easily categorized by function and structure. Read the rest: https://www.patreon.com/posts/shelt...paign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link Continue reading...
