|
| Wilderness Survival | 
| Authors: Mark Elbroch, Michael Pewtherer
Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $8.82
You Save: $8.13 (48%)
New (30) from $8.82
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 291556
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0071453318
Dewey Decimal Number: 613.69
EAN: 9780071453318
ASIN: 0071453318
Publication Date: April 13, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
|
| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 15 | | NEXT » |
 Great intro! May 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this. Mostly very good explanations of some survival techniques well-placed among the story of his summer in the woods in New England. This is not a comprehensive handbook, but a very nice, easy to read, introduction. Some of the philosophical ramblings were forgettable, but several bits gave me an appreciation for our connection (or lack thereof) to nature that is missing in some survivial textbooks. Definitely recommended as an introduction!
 Worth reading! April 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I highly reccomend this book. Some have said the title is misleading and that the book isn't about survival, but what is the most important part of survival? Attitude! And this book helps you to think about that attitude and what it means. The skills talked about are both survival and wilderness living skills, both of which are needed in survival situations. If you only learn how to read a compass and use a signal mirror, you MIGHT survive if you get lost in the wilderness, but you will need to know much more than that, and this book shows you how you can learn without having to be in a wilderness. The things they write about are real experiences.
Putting it all Together November 28, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I very much enjoyed this book. The simple description is that it's a journal of a few guys who wanted to put all the individual skills of survival together and see how they fared. The skills section is not a list of every survival skill, but a description of how to do each skill they used on their 46 day trip. The fact that they were not in some remote wilderness has no bearing on the fact that they provided for themselves while they were in the woods (the pizza meal did not sustain them for 46 days...did it?). They hunted, caught fish, harvested wild plants, made shelters and carried no gear other than their clothes and knives, how cool is that? One of the great things about this book is that you can see how they prioritized, how they strung all the skills together to form a way of life for the duration of their trip.
The only little thing I was not liking, was that the moment a skill was mentioned in the journal, the instruction on how to do it was inserted, even when there were only a few lines left of the journal. It would be better if the instruction came at the end of the chapters, but no biggie.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any who enjoy the outdoors and particularly to those who would make a similar trip.
 Wilderness Survival or Shame? November 18, 2007
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
The title is what made me order this book. I wanted to hone my own survival skills that I'd gathered over the years, and the context of a story rather than a guide was quit appealing. Unfortunately what I found was of little value. I must say the whole context of the book is a little hokey. While other true survivalists have been known to fly into remote areas like Alaska with just the basics, these guys simply wander off a few hiking trails in the vicinity of an urban area. One gets lonely quite quick and leaves whenever he wants. 7 days into the journey they all hit the local restaurant for pizza, then the very next day have the gall to club a baby fawn to death in the name of "survival". Later Mexican food is brought in by a girlfriend.
This is not "survival" to me, just three guys choosing to live in the woods next to a highway. There was no danger from predators, disease or hypothermia. This self-serving exercise took place in the peak of summer in a hand-picked abundant forest, with emergency services and civilization only a walk away. Yet with all the clubbing, spearing and snaring they did, there was always the usual justification for there actions in controlling excess populations of animals.
There are certainly better books on the skills to exist in the woods, better written and richer in knowledge. True survival stories are also far more rich in adventure and authentic in nature. Pass this one unless found in a clearance bin and you need fuel for a campfire.
 Good Philosophy - Not so Good Advice November 10, 2007
4 out of 10 found this review helpful
As a person who has been camping outside since he was eight in all types of weather, I found this book strange and interesting. Interesting in the intellectual sense of the term -- here are two city slickers in middle life getting the wilderness religion. Strange in the sense that almost all of that they do, could not be classified as survival. If you are looking at this book as an interesting way to go "wild in an semi--rural area" and learn a few interesting tricks. Most of them better practised in your garage (since you would be dead from starvation and most certainly hypothermia by the time you got to use them). Then this is an interesting book. It should be titled differently -- perhaps "Weekend Wilderness for the Urban Man" of "50 Projects for You to Make by Hand on a Desert Isle Assuming You have Unlimited Food, Good Shelter and Water" -- do not get me wrong... there are a lot of great ideas here, and the book is very worthy... but it's not Survival.
This book should be read more for its musings on man's place in modern society and his relationship to the land. In this sense the first-person accounts are very good and unique to this style of writing -- one does wonder what it would be like to run about the leafy (from what I can tell largely close urban) wilderness and try to "survive."
There authors took minimum tools and clothes and minimalist attitudes in this backyard, road-crossed "wilderness" and tried to live. Many of the things they did, the experiences they gained are worthy ideals and even more interesting for anyone contemplating such an adventure experience.
The problem with the book is simply this: If you were actually in a survival situation there is little that this book can teach you on immediate survival such as thwarting hypothermia, finding your way out and attracting attention. The latter two endevours the authors tried to avoid as part of their experiences -- which is completely fine. But the danger is of course that someone (largely some urban refugee with little practical experience, deludes themselves into thinking that this book actually "teaches" survival. It is does not... it teaches a person how to have a sorth of new-age wilderness experience.
If you were to use this book as the basis of survival in a wet and cold environment you would be dead in hours! Period. In fairness to the authors, that is not the purpose of this book, but with a title such as "Wilderness Survival" it is very likely the purpose of its readers.
The most glaring example is the oft-cited debris hut. To anyone that has ever built one we all know that these only work in environments that are largely dry and above freezing. Try building a debris hut on the Olympic Pennisula in the middle of November and you will quickly realise that these shelters get wet in hours and remain waterlogged for days and weeks. Inside the book our heroes actually have to take shelter in an older building when they are drowned out of their debris huts. Other survival huts are not mentioned. Nor is any cold-weather survival at all. As any person can tell you, survival outside of the desert (and even in a desert) IS cold-weather survival. ( I should note that I have been building a variety of shelters since about eight. I actually abandoned a debris hut when lost overnight -- it as leaking very badly, when I was 13 and managed to find that most rare of things on the Canadian Pacific Coast -- a dry spot under a tree).
Although the instructions on building tools and clothes are good, these are secondary to surviving, and should be noted as such. As for stalking the animals mentioned in this book. I can believe large parts of it... other parts smack of fanciful invention -- like following the black bears into the forest... Maybe I just did not live in the forest long enough to acquire a stench of forest normality that calmed the aninmals... but I have never seen nor heard of animals behaving in some of the ways they are described in this book.
Be all that as it may I enjoyed this book through numerous bathroom reads and also it gave me ideas of my own... but I will leave the debris hut behind. It is a book to be used in conjunction with more practical survival guides -- best of course being that of the world's most proficient special forces in the world -- "The SAS Survival Manual."
|
|
|
Wildlife, nature and the Environment
Sponsored Links
Learn how to get your own Amazon Book shop | |
