Friday, August 6, 2010

The US Army Survival Manual

The US Army Survival Manual is put together by the Department of Defense. It aims to provide soldiers with basic knowledge about the wilderness and survival techniques.

The publication is rather comprehensive in the scope of material covered. The dept of the discussion of each topic however is not ideal. The techniques demonstrated can give you a good idea of how to do something but they do not go into details or realistic evaluation of the time and effort that would be required to complete the project. Given sufficient time and energy, a creative person can certainly duplicate the survival tasks outlined in the manual, but keep in mind that the instructions provided are bare bones, and in most cases the projects will not go as smoothly as the pictures might indicate.

As far as I know, this manual is in the public domain. A copy can be obtained here, here, and many other places online.