IN WRITING SURVIVE!, I have tried to pull as much wilderness survival information from my memory as I can. Given that the past eight years have seen me survive in some of the most challenging environments on earth, much is still fresh in my mind.
Before I started producing Survivorman, I figured that my survival skills, all learned in North America, were pretty well honed. However, surviving alone in the jungles, deserts, oceans, and mountains of this planet have taught me how much I didn’t know. And I’m still learning.
From the herbal remedies of the Waorani to the hunting skills of the Inuit, there are many wonderful survival skills that exist only within disappearing cultures. When I spent time in the Amazon, for example, I was amazed to learn that there were still 70 confirmed uncontacted tribes living in its jungles. Call me naive, but I had been convinced that everyone who could have been discovered had been discovered. Clearly that isn’t so.
At the other extreme, new technologies are making survival easier and involve little more than pushing a button and waiting for rescue. PLBs and EPIRBs, cell phones and BlackBerries, and the new SPOT messenger technology have all made wilderness travel safer than ever.
In my research, I discovered that many survival publications are filled with outdated or untested skills and methods that may not help at all if you are in real jeopardy. Throughout the writing process, I always put myself in the position of an inexperienced person, lost and alone, and in need of basic survival knowledge that would keep him or her alive.
In my TV show, I like to throw in the occasional advanced survival skill. But that’s just for fun, and this book is not about having fun. It’s about surviving. That’s why I have stuck to the most essential, trusted, and universal skills—skills that have kept me alive in the far-flung corners of the globe.
So, if this book is in your hands because you are in trouble, don’t panic: calm down and assess your situation. Skim the book to the chapters that pertain to you. Make a plan. I sincerely hope there is something here that will improve your knowledge base and provide you with some practical ideas…even if it means ripping out some of the pages to start a fire!
You will survive. And perhaps like mine, your story can be told someday.