Wilderness Survival Training: Practicing Resourcefulness

Pause to calm down and organize your thoughts. This will be time well spent.

You are your greatest resource in a survival situation

When traveling into the backcountry we should all be as prepared as possible. This includes carrying a decent survival kit. At a minimum this should include more than one way to start a fire, a means for purifying and holding water, and some form of protective cover such as a trash bag, emergency wrap, or bivvy bag.

What if you don’t have these things or if you need something beyond what you thought to bring? This is where thinking creatively can serve you well, perhaps even save your life.

Establish survival priorities

In all likelihood, you will be concerned with more than one thing. Do you need to make a shelter, find water, or signal for help? You can only do one thing at a time and chances are good that one thing is more important than the others.

Take a few minutes to breathe deeply and calm yourself. This will go a long way toward using your resources effectively. Decide what your most important action will be, then focus your efforts on that thing.

Next, consider that the nature of the questions you ask yourself will have a huge impact on the number and quality of solutions that present themselves. Ask yourself questions — out loud, if necessary — to generate ideas. Don’t judge these ideas harshly. Try to come up with as many ideas as you can that address the priority you have set.

Take inventory what you have and consider all of the ways it might be used

What do you need to do to survive?

Let’s say you have determined that you need to start a fire. Certain options will surely come to mind first: lighter, matches, or a ferro rod. These are good options, but there are many more ways to start a fire.

If you don’t have the most obvious means for starting a fire make a list of all of the methods you know of. This could jog your memory and open up additional viable options. Perhaps you’ve made a bow drill fire before? If so, you have an additional avenue to explore.

What do you have on you to help you survive?

Creating a bow drill fire requires some type of rope or cord. Others things will work, however. Take an inventory of what is in your survival kit, car, pack, your pockets, purse, wallet, and your clothes themselves, looking for options. For a bow drill cord I have used a belt, a bandana, clothing, cattail cordage, cedar roots, a rifle sling, and a plastic grocery bag. There are plenty of other things that would work as well.

What resources might you be able to scavenge from the things around you?

Pro tip: Play with alternative uses for things when you aren’t in an emergency situation. This can be a fun exercise. A car key can be used as a crude saw, chapstick can lubricate a bearing block, and a purse strap might work as a bow drill cord. Get good at using alternate types of gear.

What can you find to survive?

Sadly, human garbage is almost everywhere. Many human-made materials have properties that are difficult to find in nature. Search the area for signs of human activity: old foundations, fence lines, roadsides, logged areas, junked cards, and anywhere that humans might have been. You may find something.

Depending on your needs, even a small piece of something might make a huge difference. Finding a few feet of sturdy cordage suddenly makes a bow drill fire much more feasible.

Pro tip: In addition to practicing well-known survival techniques, look into survival hacks that make creative use of the items around you to survive.

Consider not only the object, but also its parts and contents. You need to weigh the value of the intact object against the value it might provide if compromised.

How can you use an item or its parts?

The best use of the things you have at hand, may require you to ruin those objects. Perhaps you need to break your eyeglasses to put the lenses together back-to-back to focus the sunlight for a solar ignition. Perhaps there is a battery inside an electronic device that could be used to make a spark. You need to weigh the value of the intact object against the value it might provide if compromised. Remember, most things can be replaced.

I have torn the hem off of my t-shirt, soaked it in water, and twisted it to create a strong cord for a bow drill fire. Yes, that t-shirt was ruined, but in a bad situation, this would be a worthwhile sacrifice.

What can you do instead?

Don’t be too set in your ways. Keep your eyes and your mind open to things that might work. Don’t be too quick to abandon ideas.

As an example, I was once using a bow drill set with a pine spindle and hearth. I had a hard piece of oak for the bearing-block. As I struggled to get an ember, I noticed that the oak bearing-block was smoking more than the hearth. While I couldn’t account for this unusual phenomenon, I could exploit it. I flipped the whole set over, using the bearing-block as the hearth and the hearth as the bearing block. I was able to get a glowing ember using the new configuration.

You have more resources to survive than you realize

We all tend to see and use things in limited ways. Looking beyond those limits could save your life in a wilderness survival situation. I hope this article has helped you see that you probably have more resources — both mental and physical — than you realize.

Until next time, keep learning!

-Dug North

EXERCISE: Practicing resourcefulness with the bow drill friction fire

Here’s a video of me practicing resourcefulness. I create a glowing bow drill ember with some items that you don’t normally use for a friction fire. Please note: this is NOT a survival technique! I am definitely not proposing that you carry a coat hanger, beer bottle, and plastic bag into the woods with you. Rather, this is an example of using resources in unconventional ways.

Troubleshooting campfire Problems Using the Fire Triangle

Sometimes a match alone won’t start a fire

In Part 1 of this series, we learned about the fire triangle and how heat, oxygen, and fuel are all needed for a fire. Next, let’s take a look at how we can use this knowledge to troubleshoot problems we might encounter when starting an outdoor fire. So, how do you start a campfire and keep a fire going?

Fire problems Associated with Heat

Problems with heat almost always have to do with not having enough of it. This prevents the pyrolysis process from happening. Without those gasses, there is nothing to react with oxygen, and thus prevents combustion. 

The fire triangle: heat fuel and oxygen

Fire built on damp ground

A tinder bundle that is lit on damp ground  -- or worse, on snow and ice --  will lose much of its heat in attempting to warm and dry the surface below. This may prevent adequate heat from getting to the next largest size of tinder or fuel

Solution: move the fire to a drier location.

Solution 2: build your initial fire on top of some aluminum foil which creates a barrier between the fire and the wet ground.

Solution 3: build up a structure of sticks or tree bark to get the fire off the ground. Dry materials are best.

Sparks can sometimes be too brief

Sparks from ferro rod are too brief

The spark scraped from a ferrocerium rod may be too brief to warm up and ignite your tinder. 

Solution: If using a ferrocerium rod, try incorporating some flash tinder. Flash tinders are extremely fine tinders that accept the smallest spark and then burn very hot and fast. This can help spread the initial flame to more of your tinder bundle. Common flash tinders include such as cattail fluff, milkweed fluff, and magnesium shavings. 

Pro tip: the ferro rod itself can be used as a type of flash tinder. Slowly and carefully scrape unburned shavings from the rod into your tinder bundle. This requires some patience and care. These ferro rod shavings will ignite within the bundle when you later use the ferro rod to shower the tinder bundle with sparks. 

A regular match may not provide enough heat

Flame is too brief

The flame from a match may not last long enough to light small kindling directly.

Solution 1: use finer tinder to allow the match flame to catch hold.

Solution 2: use a bigger match! There are several brands of large matches that burn longer and hotter. Consider the UCO Titan Stormproof Matches, which burn for 25 seconds.

Solution 3: use a flame extender. The flame from a match can be transferred to a small candle, a long sliver of fatwood, or strips of birch bark. This will give you a longer flame that can help you light less-than-perfect tinder. 

 Pro tip: some conifer tree resins are very flammable. A glob of pine pitch on the end of a stick can make a great flame extender.

Fire problems associated with Oxygen

Problems with oxygen most often take to form of an inadequate access

The Fuel is Limiting Airflow

It can be tempting to put a lot of fuel on a small fire but this can be a problem if it prevents enough air from reaching the system. A fire that isn’t getting enough oxygen will have diminishing flames and often a lot of smoke.

A fire needs good access to oxygen in the air

Solution 1 : Blowing and fanning a fire are well known solutions, but somewhat labor-intensive. Blowing can be made much easier and more efficient by using a small tube such as a pocket bellows directed at the base of the fire. 

Solution 2: Consider learning to build a fire lay. A fire lay is an arrangement of fuel into a structure that helps to ensure that adequate air can reach the fire. Common fire lays included the tipi and the log cabin.

Solution 3: If there is a prevailing wind, create a gap in the fuel out on that side of the fire. This creates an opening into which the wind can enter, effectively blowing on the fire for you. 

Solution 4: Finally, recall that hot air rises. This means you can dig a trench below the fire to provide air from underneath.

Pro tip: there is a fire lay designed to allow you to adjust the amount of oxygen available to a fire. My friend, The Gray Bearded Green Beret, has a great video demonstrating the elevator fire lay.

Fire problems Associated with Fuel

Damp Wood

The moisture in damp wood robs heat from the fire triangle. The heat energy is wasted in turning water into water vapor. This will delay or prevent the wood from reaching the point of pyrolysis. 

A flame source with its own integrated tinder

Solution 1:  Look for dry wood. The lower dead limbs of conifers are often dryer than what is on the ground. Look under logs, bark, or trees with a thick canopy. If you have a saw or axe, seek the inner portions of standing dead wood, which is often dryer. 

Solution 2: Use a lot more tinder. A very large tinder bundle -- especially one made of birch bark or fatwood, which will burn when wet -- can dry out your kindling and get your fire going. 

Solution 3: Use an accelerant to help things along. This could be a natural resource such as pine pitch or a commercial fire starting tinder which typically burn longer and hotter than most natural tinders.

Solution 4: use a flame source that integrates a long-burning tinder. Examples include UCO Sweetfire Fire Starters and UCO Sweetfire Behemoth Fire Starters, both of which burn for many minutes.

Pro tip: once you have a fire going, be sure to use it to dry out any damp or wet firewood.

Fuel Added Too Quickly

Adding too much wood too quickly can stifle a fire that is still being built. This is a combination of problems: not enough air reaching the fire and not enough heat to ignite the excessive amount of fuel.

Solution: only add more fuel, when you see flames extending well above the fuel that is already in the fire.

A dense mix of kindling sizes often works best

The Wood Pieces are Too Large

If the wood is very large, it will be able to absorb a great deal of heat before it breaks down and starts to volitilize gas.  This problem may show up as a weak or diminishing flame with the kindling or firewood failing to ignite.

Solution 1: make sure you have a range of kindling sizes mixed together. This mix should include matchstick, pencil, and then magic marker size pieces.

Solution 2: use and axe or knife and baton to split the wood. Dividing in this way the fuel reduces the mass of each piece while also increasing its surface area relative to its volume. This will help any applied heat to start the pyrolysis process.  

Fuel is Too Spread Out

It’s a very common mistake to have the tinder or kindling arranged loosely and too spread out. The problem here is that one burning piece of wood isn’t able to effectively heat any adjacent pieces. Said another way, each individual piece of kindling may burn in isolation, failing to support the larger chain reaction of combustion.

Solution: Bringing the pieces of fuel closer together. This allows all of the burning pieces to heat each other, reinforcing the combustion chain reaction.

Fuel Located in the Wrong Spot
Both heat and flames rise. Fuel placed too far to the side of a tinder bundle is unlikely to receive enough heat to ignite.

Solution: place your smallest and most dry tinder directly above your tinder bundle. This may require making some quick adjustments on-the-fly so be ready to act once the tinder bundle is lit.

Resources

  • UCO Sweetfire Fire Starters

  • UCO Sweetfire Behemoth Fire Starters

  • Fatwood

* Some of the links on this page go to Amazon and some go to the website of my friend, Josh Enyart, The Gray Bearded Green Beret. I make a small commission on these referrals, and I appreciate your support!