# Bare minimum supplies for wilderness survival



## Cygnet (Sep 13, 2004)

I know I'm not the only person with some wilderness experience here. (Backpacking since early childhood, including a number of solo hikes in my teens and early 20's, lots of desert experience. I gave it up due to back pain after herniating some disks -- will probably get back into it as my back issues are better to the point where I think I could carry a light load. I live in a private inholding surrounded by national forest right now, and have lived in remote areas since my mid 20's.)

Wondering what you guys consider the "bare minimum" for wilderness survival -- and what kind of country do you normally trek into?

I primarily spend time in Arizona's high country (generally over 5,000 feet and up to 7500 feet in areas) which is a temperate four season climate. Water is scarce but not impossible to find. (You need to know where it is.) Terrain is generally extremely rugged. Unpredictable weather can be a real issue. Not a lot of dangerous wildlife, unless you're not paying attention and step on a snake. Lots of natural food sources to supplement backpacking grub. 

Sometimes I hike in the deserts in winter and spring, which generally means freezing nights and warm days, and the potential for drenching rains. 

High winds can be an issue anywhere in Arizona.

Anyway -- my bare essentials for survival gear:



A really good pair of Gore Tex lined hiking boots, with steel toes and arches, ankle support, and sturdy "grippy" soles.
Abrasion/brush resistant pants
A long vinyl poncho with hood, that doubles as a tarp or groundcloth
A hat
Long sleeve shirt
T-shirt and shorts
Good jacket -- which jacket depends on the season. (In summer, it's just a windbreaker. In winter, a puffy parka.)
Gloves, for bush whacking and climbing
A good hefty knife suitable for using as a hand axe in a pinch
A multi-tool pocket knife, with at least one blade sharp and long enough to clean a fish.
Magnesium firestarter or magnesium shavings or steel wool
Magnifying lens for starting fire (The magnesium or steel wool is a backup to the lens -- the lens doesn't work when it's overcast or dark and it's not useful if everything is soaking wet, but you can run out of magnesium powder and the bars are murder on a knife. The lens never runs out.)
Matches, because easy.
Parachute cord
Fishhooks, sinkers, and monofilament. (I catch a lot more crawdads than I do fish, but a fishhook and a sinker still makes dangling the bait in front of the little buggers easy.)
Good synthetic sleeping bag
Foam sleeping mat, more for warmth than comfort. If I didn't have a mat I'd probably pile up vegetation to sleep on, but the problem with Arizona is that most vegetation is either thorny or I'm allergic to it or both! LOL.
Gore tex bivvy sack
Small aluminum pot
Aluminum water bottles (which you can boil water right in.)
A decent small backpack or very large fanny pack to carry everything in. (Bedroll lashed to the top.)
Calorie dense, protein/fat rich food that doesn't require cooking. I tend to take slim jims, beef jerky, hard cheese, tortillas, refried bean powder (requires hot water to reconstitute, but goes well with cheese and tortillas), crackers, chocolate, etc. If I'm lucky enough to catch a mess of crawdads or stumble on berry bushes or ripe prickly pears or grapes or whatever, I'll supplement my meals with that, but for the most part, I avoid cooking. I'd rather have a cold meal than a freeze dried glop meal ...
If I'm hiking in summer I often take a sidearm as well, because rabies is endemic up here and I have had a few close encounters with obviously ill animals. Fortunately, they were at the "staggering and stupid" stage and not the "attacking everything in sight" stage. 



If I want to hunt small game while I'm out, however, I use an air rifle. It's lighter than a .22 and quieter.


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## BillHoo (Mar 16, 2005)

Bare essentials?
- Flaked Obsidian blade
- Flint
- Some kind of animal bladder or skin to carry drinking water
- Hemp twine or cordage
- Birthday suit

That's pretty much all humans have needed for thousands of years across multiple terrains and climates. All the other "stuff" as George Carlin used to call it, just happened to be acquired along the way for overall survival (gathered wild foods, fire, animal hide clothing, agricultural skills, home building skills, writing/reading - information is a valuable survival skill, simple machines, industrial machines, boats, starships, lasers, etc.)

:icecream:


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## fordy (Sep 13, 2003)

Survival Rifle !

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTBvwZkAlfo[/ame]


.............~$260......fordy


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## Cygnet (Sep 13, 2004)

The problem with the bare essentials that you're quoting is it assumes a temperate climate and a pre-neolithic level of tech. And skin with more melanin than mine. *grin*

I could survive in my birthday suit around here in the summer on a nice day, but I wouldn't be real happy about it. (And anyone who saw me likely wouldn't be very happy either. ) And I'd probably end up with a pretty horrible sunburn within the first day.

Winter? Not a chance. Stormy summer day? Extremely difficult.



BillHoo said:


> Bare essentials?
> - Flaked Obsidian blade
> - Flint
> - Some kind of animal bladder or skin to carry drinking water
> ...


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## Boo8meR (Aug 10, 2014)

Cygnet said:


> The problem with the bare essentials that you're quoting is it assumes a temperate climate and a pre-neolithic level of tech. And skin with more melanin than mine. *grin*
> 
> I could survive in my birthday suit around here in the summer on a nice day, but I wouldn't be real happy about it. (And anyone who saw me likely wouldn't be very happy either. ) And I'd probably end up with a pretty horrible sunburn within the first day.
> 
> Winter? Not a chance. Stormy summer day? Extremely difficult.




The problem with yours is that you said bare essentials and then quoted a list with 22 bullets and some of those have multiple items. What's bare about that?

-Knife
-Fire source
-A spool of 100lb braid



Winter? Start your fire quickly. Stormy summer day? I like a good shower.


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## Sandhills (Jun 15, 2004)

My grandfather starting in his early teenage years would spend a couple weeks at a time hiking in the Sierra Nevadas with just a rifle and what he could put in a bed roll. His bed roll was a wool blanket and the only food he took was some fat for frying fish and cornmeal and salt and pepper. He also had fishing line with a hook and sinker and a frying pan and also a pocket knife. I don't remember anything else but I know he traveled very light.


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## KMA1 (Dec 9, 2006)

Bare minimum? For me it would be a good knife. With a knife I can make shelter, fire and other tools. But a water bottle would also be helpful, but not absolutely necessary where I usually am in the woods. 

But other things like a fire starter, cord, monofilament line, basic fishing tackle, a small light, compass and quad map, heavy plastic sheet, machete or hand ax, some gorp, a pan and freeze dried food would make it a real restful vacation.


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## watcher (Sep 4, 2006)

For the absolute bare minimum all you need is your brain loaded with knowledge. But as for minimum 'stuff' a good edged tool is it. A knife or tomahawk/hatchet or a short ax all would work. With an edged tool you can make other tools to survive.


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## Shrek (May 1, 2002)

40 years ago Lawrence County Alabama had a petty criminal who just didn't like being locked up in the county jail.

Most every time they got close to catching him , he would slip off into Bankhead forest with a knife and the clothes on his back for a few months to a year.

The couple times they locked him up, he broke out within a few days and went to the woods.

The local media dubbed him the Wolf Boy for his 15 years or so of forest living after his county hoosegow escapes.

He finally graduated from minor offenses to a felony that landed him in a maximum security federal lock up in Kentucky where he died in his sleep in his late 40s/early 50s as I recall reading.

For years most of us figured he died in the forest after his last escape from the county lock up.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

Since i can see where this has gone is going 

lets change the question a bit 

*what is the bare minimum you have left the house with on an intended all day , over night or longer trip , and state your climate or the bare minimum you feel comfortable leaving with for such a trip
*


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

I will start with what i used this weekend 

I am a lousy minimalist went on a river trip over the weekend with the boy scouts 

my canoe a 17 foot touring canoe 
paddles 3
PFD 1 paddle vest each 1 spare horse collar 

ok this is where i am just going to stop because the list gets long lets just say it all fit in my canoe but as a scout leader you have to pack for all sorts of contingencies 

wasn't sure what i "needed" the spare PFD for but i thought it was a good idea and it didn't ad much weight , I was right 2nd day of the trip just as the last 3 canoes are shoving off for the second leg of our trip one of the boys informs us his life vest broke , sure enough he busted the lacing that holds the side of his vest together 

I took off my vest handed it to him he zipped and bucked and we adjusted the straps to fit , I was still Legal because i had the horse collar pfd in my canoe meeting the states requirement , we still met the BSA requirement that the boy be wearing a pfd in good working order 

horse collar PDFs are cheap and great for surviving in the water but they have a fault , no one wears them or wears them properly for very long no I didn't wear it either but i met the legal requirements , and i am a strong swimmer the boy was not


one piece of survival equipment besides a knife i carry all the time is a Bic lighter , cheap but they make fire very well and are far more dependable than any matches i have ever used


did you catch 3 paddles , yup used that spare paddle also when you take a large group on a trip some one always forgets to count something at least this time it wasn't a broken paddle

although I was on a boundary waters trip when a paddle broke sure glad we had an extra then also


I also no longer take a canoe trip with the scouts without bringing a big roll of good duct tape , boy scouts are sort of hard on equipment some times and as long as you have something left to tape to you can do a very usable field expedient canoe repair with good duct tape . that was not needed and stayed in my pack on this trip well accept for one fishing pole repair


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## Cygnet (Sep 13, 2004)

Thanks, Pete.

My list would be for a multi-day cross country trip in temperate-to-cool conditions at high altitude (Arizona or sometimes Utah when I was younger), and it's about what I took with me most of the time, plus a book and camera gear, and if hiking with multiple people, maybe a camp stove. 

I generally hike in an unpredictable temperate high-altitude climate. By "temperate" I mean it's not -40, usually. It is, however, highly unpredictable and the weather can and does kill people who aren't expecting Arizona to be so extreme.

In, say, December, it might be 70 degrees out. Or it might be 40 degrees, and raining an inch an hour. Or 20 degrees, 60 mph wind, and snowing _hard_. Or 5 degrees, 2% humidity, and 60mph wind. It can do all of this on the same day. A nice summer day might be 90 degrees, blue skies, and humid, and then fifteen minutes later (NOT exaggerating), 45 degrees and hailing and raining several inches in one storm. You sometimes get little to no warning before a storm hits, because of the effect the mountains have on the weather. A little puffy cloud can explode into a monster storm in literally minutes. 

I've had to thaw my boots in the morning more times than I can count, and my water bottle too, and both were in the bivvy sack with me when I went to sleep. In spring/fall. _Not _conditions you want to be running around in your birthday suit in. (Aside from sunburn issues. I've had a second degree sunburn. Don't want to repeat the experience.) Heck, I've had water freeze when left by a drafty window here in winter.

In winter, I might hike in the desert, but that has the same issues as the high country the rest of the year -- potential for heavy rain, freezing temps, and always, always, always, wind. 

For a brief day hike, I usually take a knife, a mag fire starter plus matches, a nylon poncho, layered clothing, water, a salty high-protein snack, and good boots. And a cell phone.   (Which usually, but not always, works up here. If I get hurt, I can summon help with the cell phone. If the problem is that I'm stranded due to bad weather or I hiked too far and can't get back before dark, at least I can let my family know I'm fine and that I'll be home after the weather clears or a day late or whatever.) 

If I break an ankle and can't move, I'd plunk my butt down someplace where I'd be visible to searchers, and the poncho and a fire would keep me alive until someone found me. In fact, that's what I'll be taking when I go berry picking in a bit. The berry patch I'm headed for is within a mile of the house and I'll be riding there on a quad. If I was going much farther, I'd take a lot more. If I was going someplace where there was a low water crossing prone to extended flooding, I'd take a full survival kit. 

In fair weather, if the stars all lined up, I could survive off the land with just a knife too.

With my luck (and most of my camping stories go, "... And then it started to rain ...") the weather wouldn't be fair, I wouldn't be able to get a fire going (you try keeping a fire going when it's pouring down a couple inches of rain an hour and you don't have a tarp to shelter the fire with and no handy cave or dry overhang presents itself), and at best I'd be miserable and at worse I'd be dead.


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

do you know who Nessmuk was?

one of the most interesting items he carried was a axe/hatchet he had made per his design.


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## fordy (Sep 13, 2003)

...........I just viewed the Ray Mears Bushcraft Knife , it appears to be priced ~$375 .........Way to much in my opinion ! Very nice knife but , I won't invest that much money in a singular tool . , fordy


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

elkhound said:


> do you know who Nessmuk was?
> 
> one of the most interesting items he carried was a axe/hatchet he had made per his design.



yes , I read his book gorge Washington sears that is , it has been a while since i have but he had some very good ideas 

his knife doesn't often get reproduced very true to the original not that i am sure it needs to be 

While Gorge Washington Sears was definitely an avid outdoors man and deffinitly started the kind of light weight simple idea , it has come so far and with terrific engineering and can still go further that I am not sure his trio is ideal any more and maybe it never was for everyone but i think what the tri makes us think about is reducing gear analyzing tasks in our own camping , in the end i see Sears as a writer and outdoors man and knowing a few writers I don't always find them to have the best idea most thoughtfully engineered often they research well available things and are able to present an idea well in type often their writings should make us look at how we do things and find our own trio rather than take and just copy theirs 

Sears tailored tools for his use and him, it should be our goal to understand the characteristics of the tool and how we use the tool for our tasks to find or make the best tool for us


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

cygnet , makes a very good point about being able to call and let family know he is ok and just waiting out the storm , or if he needs more help 


my son just took hunters safety , and most people would figure that the major concern is gun safety and it is but as a very strong secondary message they pushed " plan the hunt, hunt the plan " this is make up a plan where and when you will be hunting what area , and when you expect to be back , a few of the guys helping with the class are sherrifs deputies and are the ones who get the call when someone doesn't come home and they have seen a bunch of things , they gave some things often involving a cell phone text or call that will keep them from being dispatched un-nesscarily but also a lot of things you can do to help them find you , letting a friend or family member know where you will be when you expect to be back.also things you can do so that if your found hurt they can help you faster.

some times we are so spoiled by instant anywhere communications , that we fail to plan or communicate very well with each other any more think what would we have done before cell phones , we would have made a plan and based it on times and locations


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

GREENCOUNTYPETE said:


> yes , I read his book gorge Washington sears that is , it has been a while since i have but he had some very good ideas
> 
> his knife doesn't often get reproduced very true to the original not that i am sure it needs to be
> 
> ...


yes i do agree totally....its like this phenomenon going on right now and for past good many years of batoning a knife...i never...ever...ever....seen a woodsman,hunter,outdoorsman etc do that in real life until i seen it on youtube.i have been around lots of very old woodsmen in canada and lots of locations across the u.s. and many former special forces and never once seen a knife batoned.

i like the way his small axe is described how one side of it is thicker to get faster splitting of firewood materials.i always have at least a mini hatchet on me out in the bush.


the personel thing is for me the most used knife ever has been the small rapala fillet knife..its about worn out after 23ish years of use.but i use to harvest alot of fish and it ran double duty in my kitchen too.


that canoe he talks about....i could never get my fat humbunkuss in it....roflmao


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## DEKE01 (Jul 17, 2013)

My special forces bud went thru SERE (survival, escape, resistance, evasion) school twice. He liked it so much he became an instructor. IIRC, the students got the clothes they were wearing, 12 inches of fishing line, a fishing hook, and had to cross 60 miles of forest in 3 days without getting captured. If they were captured before finishing the 60 mile trek, they were tossed out of the school. At the end of the 60 miles, they were picked up and sent to a mock up of a Soviet style prisoner of war camp. 

So minimum gear is basically nothing, but it is no fun and depends on how motivated you are.


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## Cygnet (Sep 13, 2004)

I'm female, LOL.  Just a huge tomboy since early childhood. 

My philosophy on knives has always been to carry two. One is a pocket knife or multitool with a razor sharp blade for cleaning fish and small game. The other is a heavier "hunting knife" that I carry on a sheath on my belt, mainly used for shaving kindling and magnesium and occasionally tasks like digging or chipping off rock samples (die hard rockhound here). They're two different tools with two different uses, and not really "duplicates." 

Oh, one other thing I carry that I forgot to mention -- eyeglass repair kit with extra screws AND a spare pair of glasses. I have pretty severe myopia. It would not end well if I didn't have my glasses. (An eye doctor once informed me, "Do you know you're not legal to drive without glasses?" And my response was, "That's okay, I couldn't find my truck without them anyway.")


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

I picked up a tomahawk this last year http://www.trackofthewolf.com/Categories/PartDetail.aspx/473/3/TOMAHAWK-OR compared to a hatchet it is a little lighter and a lot more throuwable , not sure when besides at my target i would actually through it , the noce thing is making a replacement handle for it is a easy enough task if you do brake it 

my favorite knife right now is the kit knife i made http://www.trackofthewolf.com/Categories/PartDetail.aspx/453/4/KNIFE-KIT-CAM-W while not a nessumuk it shares soem qualities of it , a thin blade that slices potatoes and cheese well as well as meat , aprox 5 inches long , long enough but not too long , it has been a great knife i use it every day from making my sandwich at lunch to gutting , quartering deer , filletting fish , it does not skin fillets well , but if you scale them with the back side of the blade there is no need to , the blade lends it's self very well to spreading mayo , butter , peanut butter , all important as sandwiches are the most common use daily.

I would probably say my Gorge Washington sears type trio would be , my Swedish carpenters hatchet , my green river knife and my Gerber multi tool.

if i added one thing to that it would be my Acme 1967 US GI trenching shovel a bit heavy but the best trenching shovel i have ever had 

I am also fond of my corn knife , basically a 18 inch machete i have had it about 18 years and it is light and works well for brush clearing and small fire wood tasks 

most of these accompany me on any trip i take and can all be found in my truck at any time , the knife usually rides on my belt


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

my canoe is a old town Penobscot 17 , I really like it i bought it in 99 I might have chosen a different canoe but i got a discount with old town at the time that put it ahead of any others based on price for the weight at the time.

2 people and a weeks gear is no problem 

I am however a firm believer in kneeling while paddling it is just so much more stable and efficient using more of you body to pull the paddle through the water 

one thing to remember was that sears was not a large guy if i recall he was only 5'3" and 103 pounds , I am 6'2" and nearly 300 pounds I could toss a sears over my shoulder and go for a walk 
so his gear and big person gear is going to have to be different , but there is much we can learn from the quest for light weight and efficiency


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