Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Survival Techniques

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If the author thinks because he includes every climate zone and briefly touches each subject makes his book an encyclopedia he is dead wrong. The information is very basic at best but includes nice drawings. Reading the section on primitive firemaking for example I doubt the author ever did it by himself (I did). He mentioned a lot of friction methods but omitted (as usual) the important details for success. If you want a real encyclopedia John Wiseman's SAS Survival Book would be a better choice.

This book is pretty bad. For one thing, while the pictures are interesting (pictures always are) they are incomplete, not showing the details one would need to understand how to implement them. Examples like, on the snares, the trip mechanisms are just impossible to see and he doesn't explain them well. Put it this way...if you were lost and had this book with you, you'd starve, freeze to death, or dehydrat by the time you figured out what he was trying to tell you.

The pictures associated with finding true north using your watch and the sun for example, he has (as far as I can tell) juxtexposed the one for "if you are in the northern hemisphere" with "if you are in the southern hemisphere" which would make you go exactly wrong...either the text is wrong or the pictures.

This is like this all over in the book. There are sentences that are confusingly written, sometimes obvious sections where he just left the sentence dangle...like in "surviving natural disasters/ tornados/action/inside there is one sentence all by itself (with a bullet) "If you are in a mobile home or trailer."

That's IT!

This is a terrible book. It could even be worse than not having any book. It tries to cover too much (which I wouldn't hold against it if it had made up for it with good information, well written for generalities. The sections on navigating is unfathomable and I KNOW some techniques.

The author should have gotten an editor that could read, and they should have given the book to a novice, or even someone with some experience and gotten feedback.

There are a few tips in there that are interesting and useful. But this book really is not usable as it is.

The work provides a plethora of survival techniques to be employed in hostile natural settings. i.e. deserts, moist zones and frigid

areas

The work explains how to construct underground shelters to withstand decreased temperatures and bad weather. Sample survival

foods are cited. i.e. Acacia, agave, baobab, date palm, amaranth,

wild gourd, carob and prickly pear. The book cautions against

the dangers of wild snakes like the venom of a mojave rattlesnake.

The author cites a number of tropical plants which are ideal for

consumption; namely, mango, nippa palm, sago palm, sugar palm ,

taro and the water lily. The work would be helpful for anyone

planning to live outdoors for any extended time period. The

information content would be invaluable for city dwellers

generally unfamiliar with comparative outdoor environments.