Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

"HOW TO SURVIVE ANYWHERE" is an excellent survey of survival tools, materials, techniques and strategies covering widely diverse circumstances. As a lecturer on "Post Crash Wilderness Survival" for the FAA, I find this book a valuable resource including information and techniques previously unknown to me. For anyone making a study of the subject of survival, this is a valuable addition to their library.

This book mixes together, in unequal portions, wilderness survival, primitive living, urban survival, and self-sufficiency. Therein lies its weakness and likely appeal. Chapter titles are: (1) water, (2) fire, lighting, energy, (3) health and hygiene, (4) clothing and shelter, (5) the world is tied together with fiber, (6) food, (7) tools and weapons, (8) first aid, (9) navigation, (10) what is survival?.

Highlights include water via solar still and transpiration bag, beer can water filter, fire via hand drill and bow drill, cooking via cardboard box solar oven, nature's soap-yielding plants, building an igloo, plant fibers, edible plants, the survival kit, and natural containers.

Because the book has such a broad focus, it appears at times a superficial hodgepodge of ideas and methods. The book seems inclined towards the theme of getting along without modern conveniences if you can, yet using cast-off items from the modern world if available, or otherwise using techniques that mimic primitive living skills -- as if the underlying aesthetic were: if you made it, it's better than if you bought it, even if you made it from something you bought; and if you found it, it's better than anything you bought; and if it's made from natural, Earth-born objects, it's even better yet. This is, in one sense, simply the notion of getting along with less, but more pointedly, it is getting along with less expense, and ultimately, with less of the modern, ready-made world.

In a survival situation, of course, you have to make do with what you've got around you or can find, and you will need to create out of that what you need but do not have. In wilderness survival this is the reasoning behind learning how to start a fire with natural materials, create cordage from plant fibers, and build a shelter from tree limbs and leaves. The easily carried survival kit is an effort to prevent a complete descent into the primitive.

Concerning food in wilderness survival, the author admits: "[W]hen we are speaking of survival skills, the knowledge of food plants is arguably the least important, while also being arguably one of the hardest to master." (p 171) It's easy to know which animals we can eat, but learning the edible plants takes study and time.

In primitive living pursuits, which are about a self-imposed, imitation lifestyle far more than about survival per se, there is a simple aesthetic: natural materials only, and no iron smelting allowed. (After all, the iron age gave impetus to a long procession of ever more complex tools, which led to the modern age; so if you let iron in the door, you're on your way out of the primitive.) The American Indian is one reference for this lifestyle. Basket and mat weaving, discussed in this book, have only occasional application to wilderness survival, but a clear value to primitive living. Nature's soaps are probably another example. The chapter on edible plants straddles wilderness survival and primitive living, with less value for wilderness survival, as indicated by the previous paragraph.

In urban survival there is the opportunity to lay out your supplies before their need arises: water storage, a wood burning stove, vegetable gardens and stored food, candles and oil lamps, extra blankets and a backyard tent. The city utilities being shut down and food markets closed, your well-being depends upon your forethought and material preparations. This book recommends a cast-off water heater, stripped of its shell, cleaned of internal sludge, painted black and recommissoned as a water storage tank or solar water heater. Notice the aesthetic. There is some advice on food storage, but the chapter on food is mainly about edible plants, an urban survival topic only if you've grown them in your backyard.

In self-sufficiency, the concepts, attitudes and preparations of urban survival are extended to everyday living, but this time the disconnection from city utilities and markets is intentional, not done by some event external to the household. Self-sufficiency goes beyond primitive living and incorporates many objects from the modern world, while keeping as much of a financial independence from it as possible, at least after the initial investment. A couple of minor examples from the book are making a solar oven with cardboard boxes, making a capote or vest from a wool blanket, and making a backpack from a blanket or old drape or even from a pair of jeans. The improvised solar water heater fits here, too.

The chapter on navigation is not about using a compass or reading a topographical map. It is on reading the stars and sun: locating north, estimating the time and the number of hours before nightfall.

The author recommends several books along the way, including the novels Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle, Earth Abides by Stewert, The Wall by Haushofer, My Side of the Mountain by George, and Hole in the Sky by Hautman.

This is a great book for anyone with an interest in survival. The author does a great job making it readable to anyone. Lots of great tips that can be used in just about any environment.

I enjoyed the book, got a few interesting ideas on how to live better in a crisis. Very good book.

has a very easy flow to the info in the book and is easy to understand.A good survival book

Very well written and thought out. Covers a lot of ground thats both useful to a survival situation and a primitive lifestyle. There is something for everyone to learn in this book.

This Book is a must have for anyone that is serious about learning survival. IF your in Southern California You should check out his weekend classes as well.