How to Survive Anywhere: A Guide for Urban, Suburban, Rural, and Wilderness Environments [Paperback]

Christopher Nyerges (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2006

Well-illustrated, easy-to-follow, step-by-step survival instructions

Practical tips for anyone, anywhere, in almost any survival situation

This unique book addresses the basic survival skills needed to keep you alive and healthy in the woods, suburbs, and city. Each chapter focuses on a primary area of concern--water, fire, food, shelter, clothing, tools, and weapons--describing in detail practices applicable to all environments. This one-of-a-kind guide provides real solutions to life-threatening situations caused by natural or man-made disasters, as well as the challenges encountered by anyone who wants to live more independently from modern systems, for a few days or a lifetime.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Christopher Nyerges has instructed thousands of children and adults, on field trips, lectures, and classes in ethno-botany, on basic survival and living skills for both wilderness and the urban environment through his School of Self-Reliance. He is the editor of Wilderness Way magazine and lives in Eagle Rock, California. For more information about the author and the School of Self-Reliance, go to www.ChristopherNyerges.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Stackpole Books (September 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811733041
• ISBN-13: 978-0811733045
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #411,378 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A seriously lacking work, December 29, 2006

By 

Sumpitan - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Survive Anywhere: A Guide for Urban, Suburban, Rural, and Wilderness Environments (Paperback)

Christopher Nyerges is a renowned wilderness survival instructor with decades of experience and a special knack for wilderness foodstuffs. With this knowledge I - an avid outdoorsman and amateur botanist - awaited the arrival of my first book by this author. It being a brand new volume on a subject with great many predecessors, I was anticipating the latest, up-to-date basic information on how to stay alive in unexpected catastrophies of various magnitude.

No book with a pompous, all-encompassing title like "How to Survive Anywhere" can possibly live up to its name, let alone a 264-page pocket book. But not being one to judge a book by it's cover, I read the book with an open mind. (Besides, titles like this are often not made up by the author but by the publisher.) Turned out naming was not the only fault in this work.

"NOTE: This book does not comprehensively deal with navigation and direction-finding," is a disclaimer the ninth chapter of "How to Survive Anywhere" starts with. Unfortunately, the same warning characterizes much of this book.

Besides water Nyerges puts an emphasis on discussing fire - the need for it and how to make it, and rightly so. But even this vital survival subject is plagued with hard-to-understand omissions. For instance, nowhere is the crucial latter half of every pre-matchstick firemaking method - the nurturing and feeding of the tiny initial coal into flaming tinder -explained or shown. Without that knowledge the survival firemaker is bound to fail, no matter how good an improvised fire set she managed to come up with. Moreover, while a dozen firemaking methods are listed here, not a word is spent on how to get a fire going after ignition succeeds: what to gather for firewood and what not, how much to gather it for various situations, how to arrange the wood for optimal combustion and different needs, or how to keep the fire at bay during sleep - none of these phenomenally important "What then?"-questions are answered. Firebuilding is an art as much as firemaking, and one without the other leads to perishing instead of survival.

An issue like improvised weapons is glossed over with two pages (!) in a style more often found in RPG handbooks: instead of giving a single useful fact on how to make any of these weapons, let alone use them, Nyerges tells us (p. 206) that "Initial practice is necessary to learn how to swing and release the sling" or that boomerangs are such that "If unskilled, don't rely on this method for hunting." Dull truisms are on offer here as well as elsewhere, with little more than clumsy line drawings to show us what a weapon like bow and arrow kind of look like to complete the chapter.

When discussing edible wild plants Nyerges' grasp sharpens temporarily - one can see where this man's actual hands-on knowledge lies. However, little else than good pointers (worth the single star) on how to start one's own botanical studies follow - 2x3" singular black&white photos of edible plants are truly insuffient for positive identification. And while a dozen nearly global edible plants are briefly introduced, no hard information on the nutritional value of them is given. Plants like chickweed (p.183) and purslane (p. 190) are tasty and rich with micronutrients, but contain so little energy that one would starve to death even if she ate purslane and chickweed all day long. Even a basic discussion of energy plants vs. salad plants, or of the nutritional priorities of people in a survival situation is left untouched here.

Instead of a to-the-point, efficient manual on 21st century survival techniques this book is a loosely organized, out-of-focus ramble more appropriately titled "Some Notes by a Veteran Survivalist", with tales like how Nyerges once spent a night in an outhouse. "The odor was not terribly bad", Nyerges informs potential farmyard survivors. Elsewhere he spends a good portion of a page to recommending the products of a certain Eli Miller, an Amish beltmaker. In a global survival book! Earlier, three pages and four photographs are used to illustrate the making of a yucca brush, hardly the information one needs to know when faced with immediate dangers like hypothermia, dehydration, hostile people and animals or injury.

Instead of showing us how to "survive anywhere", the author seems keen to give recommendations to numerous other survival / primitive skills books by renowned authors such as John McPherson or Thomas Elpel. "Read it", Nyerges says in more than a couple of occasions. "..instead of this", I have to add. Truly one of the worst survival books I've read in a genre known for its share of armchair experts.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a valuable book, February 19, 2007

By 

RichardG "RichardG" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: How to Survive Anywhere: A Guide for Urban, Suburban, Rural, and Wilderness Environments (Paperback)

There are a great many books on survival in all manner of settings, but I've not seen one that attempts the scope of this one.

I found his style straightforward and engaging, and the material very helpful. I can't emphasize enough how much ground this book covers. No single book will be the comprehensive manual for all scenarios, and Nyerges doesn't attempt that. What he does, and well in my opinion, is to provide a solid general foundation that can be applied to a wide range of circumstances, situations which are likely to become relevant to not just the outdoorsman, but also to the average person living in cities prone to floods, earthquakes, and other such crises.

Sure, as one of the other reviewers mentioned, given the breadth of what's covered the author might have provided more detail in some sections. But for most people that would mean a book that weighs in at more than a thousand pages and winds up spending more time looking impressive on someone's book shelf than in their hands where it can inspire good thinking about these things.

As the author himself points out, there are other resources where more detailed information can be found on specific topics, and Nyerges provides those references. But at the same time he covers the basics sufficiently here, and in many cases goes beyond the basics.

Is this book the ultimate bible on saving your skin? I don't think any single book will be. But as an introduction to the skills and awareness needed to survive in a wide range of likely scenarios, this book does what it sets out to do, and in a format that's accessible for the average reader.

I've bought a few copies for friends and family, and even have one more on its way to me now.

19 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lot of not so common sense, January 9, 2007

By 

C. Hollingsworth "Wandering One" (Wenatchee, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How to Survive Anywhere: A Guide for Urban, Suburban, Rural, and Wilderness Environments (Paperback)

The casual reader might think this another one of thousands of "Survival Manuals" out there, but Nyerges does a nice job of making it a "self reliance" manual. I sometimes think that some of these books are written by people wanting to sell something, but this book had some excellent "not so common" sense advice about making your home self sufficient, and not calling attention to oneself. It may not impress the tactical gear loving crowd so much, but I think the book should be on everyone's bookshelf who has an interest in long-term survival.