The Survival Handbook: Essential Skills for Outdoor Adventure

I got this book today in the mail and I love it. Very well written material. It covers everything from gear selection and survival kits to clothing, procuring water and food, signalling, making a fire, building shelters, first aid, using a map and compass, and surviving environments ranging from the mountains to the desert.

I love to hike and spend time in the outdoors so this book is potentially lifesaving if I ever have to put the knowledge to use. Please note: this book is pretty big and heavy. It is not a book you want to pack away with your survival supplies!!!! I recommend taking it along to practice some of the skills on your next outing, but it is literally impossible to totally absorb all of this information unless you have years of field experience and training. That kind of exposure comes with time.

Remember one important acronym if you don't care away anything else. "Please remember what's first." Or quite simply PRWF. Protection (appropriate clothing, fire, and shelter), Rescue (signalling and navigation), Water, and then Food in order of importance. Make a plan before you venture into the wilderness. Always tell somebody where you are going, make/model and license plate of the vehicle, what you are wearing, when you expect to arrive, and when they will hear from you. If an emergency happens and they don't hear from you they will contact authorities to assemble a search party. Stay with your vehicle if possible because that is the first place searchers will look. Start getting your signal devices ready (signal mirror, whistle, smoke bomb, bright clothing) because you might only have a chance at rescue once.

I own and have read several survival books. This one is outstanding. The digital "pictures" provide excellent detail, and the breadth is impressive. If you're looking for the survival book to solve all of your problems and answer all of your questions, you've come to the wrong place. Such a book simply doesn't exist. However, if you're looking for an excellent "cover-all-the-bases-in-impressive-detail" book, you've found your book.

A few of the complaints I've noticed here, and my observations:

1. The book is too large to carry in your backpack.

Yes, it is. I bought the paperback--the binding is excellent for a paperback, but it is still too large for a backpack. But the book never claimed to be a "carry-along," and the scope of the book would be greatly hindered if it were distilled into a pocket guide. I'm using it to learn and practice at home--I don't want to teach myself after the fact.

2. The book is not detailed enough.

Look, it's just not realistic to expect complete depth in all areas. This book gives you the essentials (just as the title says), but it doesn't spend 30 pages on buckskin tanning like Naked Into the Wilderness (great book, by the way). This should be expected. This book deals with the various climates you might normally expect to survive in. Is it a dissertation on Boreal Forest survival? No.

If you're in the market, which is why you might read my ramblings, I urge you to buy this book. It will get you started, it will get you thinking, and it will get you ready. Then, once you know what you're doing and that you want to narrow your focus to the deserts of the southwest, or the northwest rainforest, you can purchase Mors Kochanski's stuff, or John McPherson's stuff, or Ray Mears' stuff.

You can get more of a feel when you preview the book. The "Contents" section will tell you all that is included and if this book is for you. This is an excellent all-around survival guide, and the next step is location specific. Good luck!

It was a good book, but I don't know if I would call this a survival book. I would have titled it "The Camping Handbook". I was expecting more outdoors survival stuff and less lessons on four wheel driving. I understand why that type of stuff is in there, but the book seemed like more of a camping book than a survival book. For example, there is a large guide on buying a backpack, but a very small section on how to make your own out of sticks n' stuff if you lost your store bought backpack. I expect the section on making one to be much larger than buying one in a survival book.

Good things:
- Informative
- Easy to read
- Good illustrations

Bad things:
- More camping instructions than survival
- The physical size of the book is too large to carry around.
- Too many guides on buying gear. (Good idea in general, but not in a book labeled "survival".)

Over the years we’ve looked at and read a lot of survival/bushcraft books. Unfortunately we’ve found that many of them are so dense with text that it is hard to assimilate and retain the information that they are attempting to impart. So, if you are looking for a great book on survival situations and techniques that has lots of illustrations, “What to Do” decision trees and detailed step-by-step instructions, you should buy this book.

In our opinion the book strikes a great balance between the information that you need and showing what it means and how to do it. The book is laid out logically and the illustrations are plentiful and concise. Measuring 7½ x 1 x 10 inches and weighing ~2 pounds this 320 page book the book is probably too big to take in your backpack – but is certainly the right size to put in your car or to study at home before you hit the trails.

The book has sections on:
Before You Go
On The Trail
Camp Craft
Taking Shelter
Water and Food
In An Emergency
First Aid
Appendices on Wild Food and Natural Dangers

We really like all the detailed illustrations in this book. They are what set it apart from so many other books on the market.

If you are looking to get a book of survival that gives you great information that is straight to the point without fluff, this the book for you. It includes alot of information on a large variety of subjects from deserts to jungles and more. Now, don't expect much (there is some) advanced survival skills and knowledge, if you are looking for advanced information you will to find a book specifically for your topic. This book is great for the beginner to intermediate skill set. Regardless if you want to know something about a variety of subjects as pertaining to the outdoors this is a good option..

The survival book that I will be reviewing today is The Survival Handbook: Essential Skills for Outdoor Adventure, Written by Colin Towell. The book is a manual style survival guide aimed towards educating the reader in outdoor adventure survival. The book is split into 7 large educational sections including: Preparation, On the Trail, Camp Craft, Taking Shelter, Food and Water, In an Emergency, and First Aid. This a complete guide aimed at helping even the most inexperienced adventurer through many situations. The book contains thousands of helpful tip, tricks and general knowledge to help those who are interested in taking their first outdoor adventure. Through detailed step-by-step instructions and diagrams, the book walks you through specific tasks for almost any situation that you may find yourself in, as well as giving the reader the basic understand of task and the mechanisms to understand from the bottom up. The Autor is Colin Towell, a British Army Special Air Service (SAS) Veteran with more than 30 years of experience, he was also the British Navy’s Chief survival instructor, which means that he is more than qualified to be the author of a book like this.
My personal experience with the book was very good. I was extremely pleased how much was covered for a book that is not oversized and would easily fit into a backpack if you ever needed to check it for reference. I believe that this book would be vital to bring on an adventure if I were to embark on one. To show how in-depth this book is, I thought we would talk about the sections relating to building, lighting, and maintaining a fire. For this section alone there are twelve pages dedicated to making a fire. The book educates you first on the components that are required to get a fire started. It explains that heat, oxygen and fuel are the basic components and that there are many different ways to go about getting it started. Then continues to include choosing the area of ground that you will build your fire on, and explains you never want to light a fire directly on the ground. It continues to talk about tinder and different ways to acquire. Fuel is the next part of the instructions; this is the actual wood that is used to keep the fire going and the best types of wood to choose for the job. Next, there is a eight by five box diagram that outlines the types of tires you can make including; how to build it, where to use it, why to use that type of fire, and the uses of the fire. The next section outlines the different ways you can make sparks to light a fire with another diagram with the required gear, how to do it, and comments to help you along the way.
As a visual learner I feel as though the diagrams in this book truly give great step by step instructions throughout the book on every skill that is presented within the book. For that reason, I would definitely recommend this book for other that are looking to get educated on outdoor survival or adventure. I also think that this book is just a good one to have in the case of an emergency and would recommend it to anyone that wants to be prepared in case of an emergency or natural disaster. It is a book designed to teach people who have no knowledge on how to survive in the wilderness so it could be a major help to anyone that may eventually find themselves without water, food, or shelter. For instance, it would be great for someone to have if a hurricane came and there was no electricity or water, the book could help them find food, shelter and clean water until things return to normal.
I was a massive fan of this book, as stated before, the book really takes challenging tasks and break them down step by step to allow the reader to fully understand how to accomplish the task. The book is easy to read and has picture diagrams to help you understand what needs to be done, as well as extensive instructions that in my opinion go above and beyond what may be required. My favorite part of the book was the way the information was presented to the reader. This is because it first gives you the basic understanding of how any task operates, then it tells you what you will need to complete that task, and then finally tells you how to complete the task. I think that this is very important if you are attempting to complete a task that you have never done before. By first explaining the basic mechanisms of the task the reader can understand how to complete it from a basic standpoint, which helps translate it into an actual skill. I feel like many guides simply just present the information on how to do the task instead of explaining why and how you have to do it that way to complete the task. My least favorite part of the book was the appendix which included Wild Foods and Natural Dangers. This section is rather small and does not include pictures of what the food and dangers look like. They do have a description on how to identify them, but if they had added a picture to the appendix for all of the items it would have be much easier to identify them. If I could add anything to the book, I would include a section on dangerous animals and how to avoid them. I feel like this is a large part of outdoor adventure/survival and should have been included in the book. Many peoples greatest fear around outdoor adventure is the wildlife and a section like this could really help to educate those that are reluctant to go on an adventure but may be too frightened by the wildlife.
Overall, I was a huge fan of the book, I think that it is a great place to start if you are looking to find literature that will help you to learn about what it takes to go on an outdoor adventure, or even just to have in your house in case of an emergency. I do not think the book is fully suitable for adventurers that plan to go on adventures that go on for weeks, for that I would suggest something with more advanced skills, but for a beginner or someone who is looking for a survival manual in case of emergency it would be a great choice. I was very pleased with the book overall and will definitely be keeping it on my shelf just in case I ever run into a situation where I may be without electricity or water, there are a bunch of great skills that can be learned from this book.

Having a military knowledge of survival and a survival camper, I look at books for more knowledge. Sometimes a technique is updated or there is a better one.
You can always learn more. I first saw this book as a hard cover in a Barnes and Noble Book Store. I liked it immediately because it has a no nonsense, simple approach. In a survival situation, the last thing you need to be is complicated. I saw it online in soft cover and purchased it. Don't think that the soft cover is any less in quality. The pictures are the same, as is the info. There are no short cuts that cheapen this book. It is excellent. Yes, it may be too big to carry around. So, set up a day of two each week and teach yourself the book as if you were in class. The knowledge weighs a lot less when in your head!

I've watched every "survival" show since they first became "a thing." After reading just the chapters in this book I had no idea just how little I knew about survival. The information is far more than I could have researched on my own. Now if I could just get off this couch.

This book is very useful for a person who a newbie. I have looked at about 5 different survival books and this one was my favorite so far. Great descriptions and pictures for the visual learner. And categories range from all areas of survival. Each category explains in detail but typically only 2 pages per category as shown in my pictures.

Fun book with lots of good information. If you're looking for a field guide to take with you on trips, this isn't it though. It's large and heavy and more of a (useful) coffee table book than a guide.