8 ms·

US Army Survival Manual (2006) [pdf]

186 points by pappyo 12y ago

pessimizer 12y ago
Lots of knowledge in here, but my favorite piece has always been this treatment for intestinal parasites: "Tobacco: Eat 1 to 1.5 cigarettes. The nicotine in the cigarette will kill or stun the worms long enough for your system to pass them. If the infestation is severe, repeat the treatment in 24 to 48 hours, but no sooner."
- dmishe 12y ago
  Very nice. Is that some kind of US military standard issue cigarette? Because they so many varieties in content now.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    Also, if eating cigarettes doesn't work, you can apparently try drinking "2 tablespoons of kerosene but no more."
    - zxcdw 12y ago
      From a document called "Combat Survival and Evasion": > Depending upon the supplies, there is a worm remedy: swallow a couple of tablespoons of kerosene or gasoline. Kerosene is more effective but gasoline will do. Either will make you a bit sick, but will make the worms a lot sicker. It's amazing how the wording is very similar. This document is from sometime in 50's I think, written by a Korean(?) war vet (talks about his time being a POW and "stealing" a wooden house board by board until it was slowly gone altogether. The Chinese guards were confused but weren't amused.)
    - Spooky23 12y ago
      A common cough remedy in rural areas was a two tablespoons of kerosene chased by a tablespoon if honey.
      - JabavuAdams 12y ago
        The cancer cured my cough. Wow.
  - valarauca1 12y ago
    To your actual question yes and no. In the past, yes. Currently no. I think its more the principle. Nicotine, like caffine was evolved by planets as a pesticide. Animals (like parasites) that don't normally come in contact with it, likely don't have resitances to it. Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison.
    - gwern 12y ago
      > Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison. I don't know about 'advanced'; my understanding was that our protein were simply slightly different, enough to make nicotine not a potent poison, but just another substance you don't want to take too much of.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      >Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison. I think it takes eating four cigarettes to kill you.
      - aranazo 12y ago
        A cigarette contains up to a gram of tobacco with a nicotine content of 0.5 to 2 percent. A recent estimate of nicotine's human LD50 is in the range of 0.5 to 1 grams. A four cigarette dose would seem unlikely to be lethal.
        pessimizer 12y ago
        http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm#PartTitle:7.%20TOXICOLOGY http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm#P... 7.2.1 Human data 7.2.1.1 Adults The mean lethal dose has been estimated to be 30 to 60 mg (0.5-1.0 mg/kg) (Gosselin, 1988). 7.2.1.2 Children The lethal dose is considered to be about 10 mg of nicotine (Arena, 1974). 7.2.2 Relevant animal data Dog: oral LD50: 9.2 mg/kg mouse: oral LD50: 3.3 mg/kg (RTECS, 1985-86) rat: oral LD50: 50 mg/kg 0.5-1.0 mg/kg, not 0.5-1.0 grams. Don't go eating cigarettes. edit: http://abcnews.go.com/US/paul-curry-convicted-1994-nicotine-poisoning-death-wife/story?id=25881116 http://abcnews.go.com/US/paul-curry-convicted-1994-nicotine-... edit2: I see what you saw - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00204-013-1127-0/fulltext.html http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00204-013-1127-0...
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  Doing the same with garlic should also work. At least for some of them.
Luc 12y ago
I was not aware Pole Shift Survival was a thing. The internet really is a collection of wonderful things. http://pssurvival.com/ http://pssurvival.com/ "The information on this site is for those who wish to improve their chances for survival after the coming pending pole shift."
- ooz 12y ago
  The Earth's magnetic field and poles do change slightly, but it's not the end of the world as those guys would suggest. It's quite interesting really purely from a science and navigation point of view. So far the only thing I've heard is that they had to rename a runway from 09/27 to 08/26 in Jersey: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-29603156 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-29603156
  - arca_vorago 12y ago
    Just for clarity, they know the poles change slightly, the "end-of-the-world" view is based on the theory that once they shift a certain distance, there is a pole swap... not a shift, that causes all kinds of havoc on the ecosystem. I have never seen any good papers on the subject though, so am inclined to agree with your skepticism.
  - TallGuyShort 12y ago
    I think they are actually referring to geomagnetic reversal, believed by some to be a likely cataclysmic event, in which the poles could reverse entirely and it is supposed that the protective field would have a dramatic reduction in power for enough time to cause serious problems.
    - nathanm412 12y ago
      This site is literally talking about the entire planet being forced to rotate 90 degrees due to a rogue planet passing nearby. This sudden rotation would supposedly cause the crust of the planet itself to slip and rotate due to inertia. Sci-fi fans might actually get some enjoyment from this! http://pssurvival.com/PS/2-Pole_Shift/0-Pole_Shift_Description_Of_Events_2010.pdf http://pssurvival.com/PS/2-Pole_Shift/0-Pole_Shift_Descripti...
nether 12y ago
I think a wilderness therapy company marketed toward Bay Area techies would do pretty well.
- trhway 12y ago
  i think bears have got nothing on people surviving through lean agile scrum process innovatively implemented at a BigCo in a communication and collaboration fostering open floor office.
Jhsto 12y ago
For the curious, here is also surviving guide in a pdf form issued by Finnish defense forces in 1985: http://www.puolustusvoimat.fi/wcm/61ba4180411e702ea19ee9e364705c96/luonnonmuonaohjelmalumo1985.pdf?MOD=AJPERES http://www.puolustusvoimat.fi/wcm/61ba4180411e702ea19ee9e364... You probably can't make much out of the text, but pictures may be worth looking of, even though most of the traps demonstrated are illegal to make during peace. There's also cooking recipes in the bottom of the document, which contain oddities such as soup made from sprigs of a spruce. Though my personal favorite must be the depiction of how to kill a moose with a knife by jumping on its back.
- arethuza 12y ago
  Paddy Ashdown describes in his autobiography how one of the survival instructors on his SBS course introduced himself by place a live frog between two slices of bread and eating it and then saying "Survival is simple, if you can do that you will survive, if you can't do that you won't". [NB For those outside of the UK or Bosnia: Paddy Ashdown is a former UK politican - now in the House of Lords who had a rather interesting career - Royal Marines, SBS, MI6 then politics becoming leaders of the LibDems, the UK's third party].
  - _kst_ 12y ago
    "If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to either of you for the rest of the day."
- RichardFord 12y ago
  I always enjoy seeing small scandanavian tactics (Norway, Sweden, Finland) tactics against German, Russian juggernauts.
  - Jhsto 12y ago
    I've been told by several different people that in the Finnish service you are trained to battle against a nuke by first using your 'nuclear cloak' to wait for the fallout. After that, you are told to take a pruce branch and use it to clean others' cloaks from the fallout. Then you keep on fighting.
baddox 12y ago
> Reprinted as NOT permitted by U.S. Department of the Army, but by we the citizenry who paid for it That's certainly an attention grabber.
- gwern 12y ago
  It's also interesting legally: most works of the federal government are born into the public domain. So how is the Army keeping copyright, or are they just mistaken?
  - baddox 12y ago
    It's probably not the case with this manual, but I suspect the classification system could be invoked in many cases.
  - officemonkey 12y ago
    It's likely that the Army is not asserting copyright. They're just not providing it for distribution.
remarkEon 12y ago
If you guys enjoyed this, you'll love the Ranger Handbook. Still have mine from when I went through :) [0] http://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ranger.pdf http://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ranger.pdf
- steveplace 12y ago
  Since we're on a roll, here's a CIA manual on tradecraft https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/Tradecraft%20Primer-apr09.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
  - remarkEon 12y ago
    Oh wow this is a great one. Can't find the link online but some of the older, Vietnam era field manuals concerning radio-wave propagation and the NVIS effect are pretty amazing. Not as usefully today in the age of SATCOM, but a great skill nonetheless.
  - sveme 12y ago
    Found this one interesting: 2003 Iraq’s WMD Programs + Saddam failed to cooperate with UN inspectors because he was continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction. - If Iraqi authorities had destroyed their WMD stocks and abandoned their programs, they might refuse to fully acknowledge this to the UN to maintain Iraq’s regional status, deterrence, and internal regime stability. I wonder whether the internal decision making at the CIA before the 2003 war was really as simple as that.
- chrissnell 12y ago
  I wish I could post my "Engineer Bible" but it's FOUO. It's full of all sorts of fun stuff, including improvised demolitions, various breaching charges, and weirdo WW2-era stuff like the abatis [1]. Totally impractical for anyone here but a very entertaining read. There's a lot of math that goes into explosives if you want to do it right. [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abatis http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abatis PS- to above poster: saw your comments a few weeks back about leaving the Army and entering the tech workforce. I have experience with both. If you have questions or want to chat, my contact info is on chrissnell.com.
molsongolden 12y ago
An uncle gave me an early 90's version of this manual as a gift when I was in my teens. This manual, along with "The American Boy's Handy Book" resulted in days and days of outdoor activity and a plethora of failed boats/rafts/cabins/snares/spearfishing/etc... There are some awesome instructions in here and the print copy I have has an entire color photo plant identification guide in the back. My only word of warning would be to make sure the kids you expose to this are responsible enough for the knowledge. There are some last resort things like "how to poison an entire stream of fish by grinding up wild plants".
- FantabulousDay 12y ago
  In what circumstance would you want to poison an entire stream of fish? Would the fish be edible after being poisoned? Or is this for another purpose?
  - mitchell_h 12y ago
    It's a way to catch a good amount of fish, quickly, without any specialized gear(nets, etc..). It also doesn't require you to sit there, in the open with a fishing pole. Drop the poison, hide. Run back and collect. They're very edible after being poisoned. The amount of "poison" it takes to kill(really stun) a fish isn't much. No where near the amount needed to harm a human.
    - molsongolden 12y ago
      Yep, and I believe they mention a plant or plants that only affect cold-blooded animals so the fish is safe for consumption.
- pizza 12y ago
  From p. 107: > Make fish poison by immersing walnut hulls in a small area of quiet water. This poison makes it impossible for the fish to breathe but doesn't adversely affect their edibility. Wowzer
CamperBob2 12y ago
I hope the rest of the advice is better than the advice for magnetizing a compass needle: If you have a battery and some electric wire, you can polarize the metal electrically. The wire should be insulated. If not insulated, wrap the metal object in a single, thin strip of paper to prevent contact. The battery must be a minimum of 2 volts. Form a coil with the electric wire and touch its ends to the battery's terminals. Repeatedly insert one end of the metal object in and out of the coil. The needle will become an electromagnet. No, the needle will not become an "electromagnet," once it's outside the coil. It won't even become a good permanent magnet if you follow these directions, because you'll tend to demagnetize it every time you withdraw it in the same direction you inserted it. (I actually tried it with a power supply, a spool of wire, and a couple of screws. Dropping a screw through the coil in one direction 10 times will give it the same amount of magnetism that moving it in and out about 200 times will impart.) In any case, none of this has anything to do with the battery's voltage except to the extent that it provides more current per turn. A 1.5V 'AA' cell would work fine for creating a compass needle unless you wasted your time with those instructions. But hey, at least now I know that polar bears are best avoided, and that drinking kerosene will get rid of intestinal parasites...
secfirstmd 12y ago
If anyone here is interested in the topic I can really recommend the survival courses run by Ray Mears company called Woodlore. They are brilliant. The guys there are so good it becomes less about survival and more about living!
masolino 12y ago
PDF Producer: GNU Ghostscript 7.05
madaxe_again 12y ago
It's a great book. I keep a copy in my scram-bag, as it's the kind of knowledge that could be the difference between life and death, one day.
- ooz 12y ago
  So you can read the "how not to be eaten by bears" section while being eaten by a bear? If you're going to rely on stuff like that, its best to commit to knowledge and practice.
  - madaxe_again 12y ago
    Oh, I know much of it like the back of my hand, and have spent plenty of time doing outdoorsy stuff, and have found myself in a few genuine survival situations, and I'm here to spout crap opinions on the web still, so...! It's mostly handy for "was it the one with the serrated leaves, or the one with the smooth leaves which is toxic?".
    - ooz 12y ago
      Good stuff. Glad to hear! I've been foraging for 25 years so that knowledge is sort of built in (at least in the UK) but I still won't touch mushrooms!
gallerytungsten 12y ago
This used to be published as "Survival, Evasion, and Escape" with the same field manual number. I have an old printed copy dated 1969 which includes the missing Evasion and Escape sections.
- philwelch 12y ago
  That sounds suspiciously similar to the SERE course the military does: "Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape". "Resistance" entails resisting torture without divulging secrets to the enemy; in SERE training they will actually put you into stress positions and waterboard you, which is where they got the idea to do that kind of thing to prisoners.
zeeshanm 12y ago
I think the following two paragraphs are very applicable to founders: It takes much more than the knowledge and skills to build shelters, get food, make fires, and travel without the aid of standard navigational devices to live successfully through a survival situation. Some people with little or no survival training have managed to survive life-threatening circumstances. Some people with survival training have not used their skills and died. A key ingredient in any survival situation is the mental attitude of the individual(s) involved. Having survival skills is important; having the will to survive is essential. Without a desk to survive, acquired skills serve little purpose and invaluable knowledge goes to waste. There is a psychology to survival. The soldier in a survival environment faces many stresses that ultimately impact on his mind. These stresses can produce thoughts and emotions that, if poorly understood, can transform a confident, well-trained soldier into an indecisive, ineffective individual with questionable ability to survive. Thus, every soldier must be aware of and be able to recognize those stresses commonly associated with survival. Additionally, it is imperative that soldiers be aware of their reactions to the wide variety of stresses associated with survival.

186 points by pappyo 12y ago

Lots of knowledge in here, but my favorite piece has always been this treatment for intestinal parasites: "Tobacco: Eat 1 to 1.5 cigarettes. The nicotine in the cigarette will kill or stun the worms long enough for your system to pass them. If the infestation is severe, repeat the treatment in 24 to 48 hours, but no sooner."

dmishe 12y ago
Very nice. Is that some kind of US military standard issue cigarette? Because they so many varieties in content now.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Also, if eating cigarettes doesn't work, you can apparently try drinking "2 tablespoons of kerosene but no more."
  - zxcdw 12y ago
    From a document called "Combat Survival and Evasion": > Depending upon the supplies, there is a worm remedy: swallow a couple of tablespoons of kerosene or gasoline. Kerosene is more effective but gasoline will do. Either will make you a bit sick, but will make the worms a lot sicker. It's amazing how the wording is very similar. This document is from sometime in 50's I think, written by a Korean(?) war vet (talks about his time being a POW and "stealing" a wooden house board by board until it was slowly gone altogether. The Chinese guards were confused but weren't amused.)
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    A common cough remedy in rural areas was a two tablespoons of kerosene chased by a tablespoon if honey.
    - JabavuAdams 12y ago
      The cancer cured my cough. Wow.
- valarauca1 12y ago
  To your actual question yes and no. In the past, yes. Currently no. I think its more the principle. Nicotine, like caffine was evolved by planets as a pesticide. Animals (like parasites) that don't normally come in contact with it, likely don't have resitances to it. Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison.
  - gwern 12y ago
    > Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison. I don't know about 'advanced'; my understanding was that our protein were simply slightly different, enough to make nicotine not a potent poison, but just another substance you don't want to take too much of.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    >Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison. I think it takes eating four cigarettes to kill you.
    - aranazo 12y ago
      A cigarette contains up to a gram of tobacco with a nicotine content of 0.5 to 2 percent. A recent estimate of nicotine's human LD50 is in the range of 0.5 to 1 grams. A four cigarette dose would seem unlikely to be lethal.
      - pessimizer 12y ago
        http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm#PartTitle:7.%20TOXICOLOGY http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm#P... 7.2.1 Human data 7.2.1.1 Adults The mean lethal dose has been estimated to be 30 to 60 mg (0.5-1.0 mg/kg) (Gosselin, 1988). 7.2.1.2 Children The lethal dose is considered to be about 10 mg of nicotine (Arena, 1974). 7.2.2 Relevant animal data Dog: oral LD50: 9.2 mg/kg mouse: oral LD50: 3.3 mg/kg (RTECS, 1985-86) rat: oral LD50: 50 mg/kg 0.5-1.0 mg/kg, not 0.5-1.0 grams. Don't go eating cigarettes. edit: http://abcnews.go.com/US/paul-curry-convicted-1994-nicotine-poisoning-death-wife/story?id=25881116 http://abcnews.go.com/US/paul-curry-convicted-1994-nicotine-... edit2: I see what you saw - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00204-013-1127-0/fulltext.html http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00204-013-1127-0...
higherpurpose 12y ago
Doing the same with garlic should also work. At least for some of them.

Luc 12y ago

I was not aware Pole Shift Survival was a thing. The internet really is a collection of wonderful things. http://pssurvival.com/ http://pssurvival.com/ "The information on this site is for those who wish to improve their chances for survival after the coming pending pole shift."

ooz 12y ago
The Earth's magnetic field and poles do change slightly, but it's not the end of the world as those guys would suggest. It's quite interesting really purely from a science and navigation point of view. So far the only thing I've heard is that they had to rename a runway from 09/27 to 08/26 in Jersey: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-29603156 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-29603156
- arca_vorago 12y ago
  Just for clarity, they know the poles change slightly, the "end-of-the-world" view is based on the theory that once they shift a certain distance, there is a pole swap... not a shift, that causes all kinds of havoc on the ecosystem. I have never seen any good papers on the subject though, so am inclined to agree with your skepticism.
- TallGuyShort 12y ago
  I think they are actually referring to geomagnetic reversal, believed by some to be a likely cataclysmic event, in which the poles could reverse entirely and it is supposed that the protective field would have a dramatic reduction in power for enough time to cause serious problems.
  - nathanm412 12y ago
    This site is literally talking about the entire planet being forced to rotate 90 degrees due to a rogue planet passing nearby. This sudden rotation would supposedly cause the crust of the planet itself to slip and rotate due to inertia. Sci-fi fans might actually get some enjoyment from this! http://pssurvival.com/PS/2-Pole_Shift/0-Pole_Shift_Description_Of_Events_2010.pdf http://pssurvival.com/PS/2-Pole_Shift/0-Pole_Shift_Descripti...

nether 12y ago

I think a wilderness therapy company marketed toward Bay Area techies would do pretty well.

trhway 12y ago
i think bears have got nothing on people surviving through lean agile scrum process innovatively implemented at a BigCo in a communication and collaboration fostering open floor office.

Jhsto 12y ago

For the curious, here is also surviving guide in a pdf form issued by Finnish defense forces in 1985: http://www.puolustusvoimat.fi/wcm/61ba4180411e702ea19ee9e364705c96/luonnonmuonaohjelmalumo1985.pdf?MOD=AJPERES http://www.puolustusvoimat.fi/wcm/61ba4180411e702ea19ee9e364... You probably can't make much out of the text, but pictures may be worth looking of, even though most of the traps demonstrated are illegal to make during peace. There's also cooking recipes in the bottom of the document, which contain oddities such as soup made from sprigs of a spruce. Though my personal favorite must be the depiction of how to kill a moose with a knife by jumping on its back.

arethuza 12y ago
Paddy Ashdown describes in his autobiography how one of the survival instructors on his SBS course introduced himself by place a live frog between two slices of bread and eating it and then saying "Survival is simple, if you can do that you will survive, if you can't do that you won't". [NB For those outside of the UK or Bosnia: Paddy Ashdown is a former UK politican - now in the House of Lords who had a rather interesting career - Royal Marines, SBS, MI6 then politics becoming leaders of the LibDems, the UK's third party].
- _kst_ 12y ago
  "If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to either of you for the rest of the day."
RichardFord 12y ago
I always enjoy seeing small scandanavian tactics (Norway, Sweden, Finland) tactics against German, Russian juggernauts.
- Jhsto 12y ago
  I've been told by several different people that in the Finnish service you are trained to battle against a nuke by first using your 'nuclear cloak' to wait for the fallout. After that, you are told to take a pruce branch and use it to clean others' cloaks from the fallout. Then you keep on fighting.

baddox 12y ago

> Reprinted as NOT permitted by U.S. Department of the Army, but by we the citizenry who paid for it That's certainly an attention grabber.

gwern 12y ago
It's also interesting legally: most works of the federal government are born into the public domain. So how is the Army keeping copyright, or are they just mistaken?
- baddox 12y ago
  It's probably not the case with this manual, but I suspect the classification system could be invoked in many cases.
- officemonkey 12y ago
  It's likely that the Army is not asserting copyright. They're just not providing it for distribution.

remarkEon 12y ago

If you guys enjoyed this, you'll love the Ranger Handbook. Still have mine from when I went through :) [0] http://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ranger.pdf http://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ranger.pdf

steveplace 12y ago
Since we're on a roll, here's a CIA manual on tradecraft https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/Tradecraft%20Primer-apr09.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
- remarkEon 12y ago
  Oh wow this is a great one. Can't find the link online but some of the older, Vietnam era field manuals concerning radio-wave propagation and the NVIS effect are pretty amazing. Not as usefully today in the age of SATCOM, but a great skill nonetheless.
- sveme 12y ago
  Found this one interesting: 2003 Iraq’s WMD Programs + Saddam failed to cooperate with UN inspectors because he was continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction. - If Iraqi authorities had destroyed their WMD stocks and abandoned their programs, they might refuse to fully acknowledge this to the UN to maintain Iraq’s regional status, deterrence, and internal regime stability. I wonder whether the internal decision making at the CIA before the 2003 war was really as simple as that.
chrissnell 12y ago
I wish I could post my "Engineer Bible" but it's FOUO. It's full of all sorts of fun stuff, including improvised demolitions, various breaching charges, and weirdo WW2-era stuff like the abatis [1]. Totally impractical for anyone here but a very entertaining read. There's a lot of math that goes into explosives if you want to do it right. [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abatis http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abatis PS- to above poster: saw your comments a few weeks back about leaving the Army and entering the tech workforce. I have experience with both. If you have questions or want to chat, my contact info is on chrissnell.com.

molsongolden 12y ago

An uncle gave me an early 90's version of this manual as a gift when I was in my teens. This manual, along with "The American Boy's Handy Book" resulted in days and days of outdoor activity and a plethora of failed boats/rafts/cabins/snares/spearfishing/etc... There are some awesome instructions in here and the print copy I have has an entire color photo plant identification guide in the back. My only word of warning would be to make sure the kids you expose to this are responsible enough for the knowledge. There are some last resort things like "how to poison an entire stream of fish by grinding up wild plants".

FantabulousDay 12y ago
In what circumstance would you want to poison an entire stream of fish? Would the fish be edible after being poisoned? Or is this for another purpose?
- mitchell_h 12y ago
  It's a way to catch a good amount of fish, quickly, without any specialized gear(nets, etc..). It also doesn't require you to sit there, in the open with a fishing pole. Drop the poison, hide. Run back and collect. They're very edible after being poisoned. The amount of "poison" it takes to kill(really stun) a fish isn't much. No where near the amount needed to harm a human.
  - molsongolden 12y ago
    Yep, and I believe they mention a plant or plants that only affect cold-blooded animals so the fish is safe for consumption.
pizza 12y ago
From p. 107: > Make fish poison by immersing walnut hulls in a small area of quiet water. This poison makes it impossible for the fish to breathe but doesn't adversely affect their edibility. Wowzer

CamperBob2 12y ago

I hope the rest of the advice is better than the advice for magnetizing a compass needle: If you have a battery and some electric wire, you can polarize the metal electrically. The wire should be insulated. If not insulated, wrap the metal object in a single, thin strip of paper to prevent contact. The battery must be a minimum of 2 volts. Form a coil with the electric wire and touch its ends to the battery's terminals. Repeatedly insert one end of the metal object in and out of the coil. The needle will become an electromagnet. No, the needle will not become an "electromagnet," once it's outside the coil. It won't even become a good permanent magnet if you follow these directions, because you'll tend to demagnetize it every time you withdraw it in the same direction you inserted it. (I actually tried it with a power supply, a spool of wire, and a couple of screws. Dropping a screw through the coil in one direction 10 times will give it the same amount of magnetism that moving it in and out about 200 times will impart.) In any case, none of this has anything to do with the battery's voltage except to the extent that it provides more current per turn. A 1.5V 'AA' cell would work fine for creating a compass needle unless you wasted your time with those instructions. But hey, at least now I know that polar bears are best avoided, and that drinking kerosene will get rid of intestinal parasites...

secfirstmd 12y ago

If anyone here is interested in the topic I can really recommend the survival courses run by Ray Mears company called Woodlore. They are brilliant. The guys there are so good it becomes less about survival and more about living!

masolino 12y ago

PDF Producer: GNU Ghostscript 7.05

madaxe_again 12y ago

It's a great book. I keep a copy in my scram-bag, as it's the kind of knowledge that could be the difference between life and death, one day.

ooz 12y ago
So you can read the "how not to be eaten by bears" section while being eaten by a bear? If you're going to rely on stuff like that, its best to commit to knowledge and practice.
- madaxe_again 12y ago
  Oh, I know much of it like the back of my hand, and have spent plenty of time doing outdoorsy stuff, and have found myself in a few genuine survival situations, and I'm here to spout crap opinions on the web still, so...! It's mostly handy for "was it the one with the serrated leaves, or the one with the smooth leaves which is toxic?".
  - ooz 12y ago
    Good stuff. Glad to hear! I've been foraging for 25 years so that knowledge is sort of built in (at least in the UK) but I still won't touch mushrooms!

gallerytungsten 12y ago

This used to be published as "Survival, Evasion, and Escape" with the same field manual number. I have an old printed copy dated 1969 which includes the missing Evasion and Escape sections.

philwelch 12y ago
That sounds suspiciously similar to the SERE course the military does: "Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape". "Resistance" entails resisting torture without divulging secrets to the enemy; in SERE training they will actually put you into stress positions and waterboard you, which is where they got the idea to do that kind of thing to prisoners.

zeeshanm 12y ago

I think the following two paragraphs are very applicable to founders: It takes much more than the knowledge and skills to build shelters, get food, make fires, and travel without the aid of standard navigational devices to live successfully through a survival situation. Some people with little or no survival training have managed to survive life-threatening circumstances. Some people with survival training have not used their skills and died. A key ingredient in any survival situation is the mental attitude of the individual(s) involved. Having survival skills is important; having the will to survive is essential. Without a desk to survive, acquired skills serve little purpose and invaluable knowledge goes to waste. There is a psychology to survival. The soldier in a survival environment faces many stresses that ultimately impact on his mind. These stresses can produce thoughts and emotions that, if poorly understood, can transform a confident, well-trained soldier into an indecisive, ineffective individual with questionable ability to survive. Thus, every soldier must be aware of and be able to recognize those stresses commonly associated with survival. Additionally, it is imperative that soldiers be aware of their reactions to the wide variety of stresses associated with survival.