good buy?

I have this one and thats a good price. It civers the basics but not a ton of details. I'm sure there is some more in depth stuff out there. maybe some of the experts hanging around can suggest some better manuals.

How about guys whats the best survival manual?
 
How about guys whats the best survival manual?
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Now you've went and opened up a can of worms. A much debated subject I'm sure.
I own that one and you're right it is basic but a good addition to a library.
The SAS pocket guide is much loved as is the BSA handbook.
 
I agree with rebeltf. This topic can open a big can of worms. If you ask 10 members, you'll have many repeats of the same sources, but about 7 or 8 'favorites' or 'best'. That been said, The SAS pocket Survival guide is excellent. I got mine for about $9.00 in Overstock.com.

My favorite Survival manual up to now (here we go) is 'The Encyclopedia of Outdoor Survival: Based in the Training and Techniques of the SAS' by Barry Davies. I got it at Half Price Books for $9.98. The book does not have any information that you could not find in most good survival manuals like 98 Degrees, The Complete Wilderness Training Book, How to Survive Anything, Anywhere, or the U. S. Air Force Search and Rescue Handbook.

What I like about The Encyclopedia of Outdoor Survival is the way the author explains things. He doesn't assume that you know what he is talking about, nor that you can see him demonstrate the techniques. That makes his discussions very complete and his descriptions very visual.
 
I have the older version that also has sections on evasion and escape, you know, just in case you're ever stuck in a communist prison camp. It's a decent book, the pictures arent great, I wouldnt rely on them when trying to ID edible plants.
 
Preacher Man said:
My favorite Survival manual up to now (here we go) is 'The Encyclopedia of Outdoor Survival: Based in the Training and Techniques of the SAS' by Barry Davies. I got it at Half Price Books for $9.98. The book does not have any information that you could not find in most good survival manuals like 98 Degrees, The Complete Wilderness Training Book, How to Survive Anything, Anywhere, or the U. S. Air Force Search and Rescue Handbook.
QUOTE]

Whenever I check out a book on survival, the first place I go is to the fire making section. Rightly, or wrongly, I judge the rest of the book by what it says there. In Davies book, it says: " Do not expect to make a fire instantly (bow and drill); the drill will need to 'bed' itself into the baseboard and this can only be achieved after hours of constant drilling." Page 59 - SAS Encyclopedia of Survival, Barry Davies, Virgin Publishing, 1999, ISBN# 1-85227-866-8 After reading this nonsense, I quietly put the book back on the shelf. The reason I have the quote, is I use it to point out the misinformation that is contained in some books. BTW, if I'm not mistaken, this book sold for $50 up here in Canada.

I'm not familiar with The Complete Wilderness Training Book, How to Survive Anything, Anywhere but I like the other two.

And krz, it would help if you were a bit more specific. Do you want an general overall book on survival, do you want something specific for a particular area, like desert survival, do you want the techniques to be technology based, or do you want to rely on more primitive techniques, using materials found in nature?

Doc
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rebeltf said:
The SAS pocket guide is much loved as is the BSA handbook.
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The handbook you have in mind is, specifically, the Boy Scout Fieldbook, right? Incidentally, the version that'd been around for decades just got replaced about a year or two ago; anyone assembling a survival library might like to acquire one of each, as the old one's really good on things like pioneering, but the new one is much-updated.

saturnine138 said:
I have the older version that also has sections on evasion and escape, you know, just in case you're ever stuck in a communist prison camp. It's a decent book, the pictures arent great, I wouldnt rely on them when trying to ID edible plants.
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I'm trying to figure out which version of this is which. I have a version--probably 1970, 1973?--that seems not to have the evasion-and-escape stuff. I'm interested in checking that out. Which version(s) have that? Also, what's the most modern version that's publicly available--I know lots of stuff has changed since Vietnam.
 
Incidentally, some of my faves for survival literature are these:

For how to survive when you get lost on your day-hike:
98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping your A__ Alive, by Cody Lundin. Lundin can do the "aboriginal living" stuff, but this book is emphatically not about that. He focuses on assembling, and learning to use, a minimalist kit that you can carry everywhere you go, and which is geared toward keeping you alive for the 72 hours until you're likely to be found. Lundin lives near Prescott, Arizona (high country; it snows there each year, but desert is within easy reach), so his stuff is of pretty broad application. Not much at all by way of identifying food plants, trapping, hunting, etc.--much more about getting found. Lundin may be a contributor to this forum, and he's certainly e-mailable; google him at alss adventures; his e-mail may be abodude at alssadventures dot com , but I'm not sure that's right.

For how to develop a stone-age hunter-gatherer level of technology, with an eye toward longer-term survival,
Outdoor Survival Skills, by Larry Dean Olson. (Maybe it's "Olsen"; I always forget.)

I also like "Lofty" Wiseman's SAS Survival Handbook (precise title may be slightly different,) Bradford Angier's Survival with Style, and have had a lot of fun since I was a kid, reading and trying to implement the stuff in the above-referenced military survival manual, FM 21-76. One problem with the latter, of course, is that it tries to cover a lot of stuff that you're just not going to see on the North American continent; and I've never been too confident about identifying plants based on black-and-white line drawings from a book; I do much better having had them pointed out to me in the field by someone who knew what she/he was doing.
 
The handbook you have in mind is, specifically, the Boy Scout Fieldbook, right? Incidentally, the version that'd been around for decades just got replaced about a year or two ago; anyone assembling a survival library might like to acquire one of each, as the old one's really good on things like pioneering, but the new one is much-updated.
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Oops hehe yea that book. Forgot the name :)
 
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