A survivalist, as the name implies, should be a master of survival skills. These skills.
However, aren’t born with.
They need to be acquired and subsequently harnessed to be of any value.
The best way to do this apart from actually practicing them?
Reading books.
Real paper books.
Not ebooks that are stored on e-readers, since such devices are also fair game for electrical interference.
Physical books possess a longevity superior to electronic-based ones, especially if stored properly, making them the ultimate tool in your arsenal.
So which books are the cream of the crop?
We recommend you invest and read these 5- the best of the best survival books, even if you would not consider yourself a survivalist.
They teach important life skills that might even help save your life one day, so why not?
1. SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere by John “Lofty” Wiseman
If there was one book to rule them all, this would have to be it.
Considered the end-all guide for every disaster scenario imaginable, this is more than a post-apocalyptic survival guide as it also focuses on real-life scenarios that could happen at any time.
Considering the fact that this book is written by the former instructor for survival of the British elite special air services unit, you can safely place a bet that he knows what he’s talking about.
Trapped in a burning building? This covers that. Never set up camp before? You’re covered there too.
This all-encompassing book won’t disappoint and is a must-have whether you are a devout prepper or just an average joe looking to gain basic life and survival skills.
2. Bushcraft 101: A Field Guide to the Art of Wilderness Survival by Dave Canterbury
A book specializing in surviving in the great outdoors if you expect to spend an extended period of time outdoors or even if you’re just preparing for your first camping trip.
The book teaches skills such as making fire, trapping game, and outdoor cooking, to making knots that might be essential to surviving.
The author, Dave Canterbury, is a bonafide expert on survival skills, also being part owner of the Pathfinder School in Ohio, voted one of the 12 best survival schools in the USA.
3. The Prepper’s Medical Handbook by William Forgey MD
This is a truly exceptional book with one major caveat – you need to actually prepare for disaster scenarios by gathering the necessary medical devices beforehand.
This is why this book should actually be considered a prepper’s survivalist guide.
This book teaches basic medical techniques and practices performed by various healthcare professionals so that you can survive in the event that emergency medical service is not available.
This book can be considered much more traditional in the sense that it uses a lot of widely accepted medical practices performed today and not alternative wilderness techniques.
4. The Survival Medicine Handbook: THE essential guide for when medical help is NOT on the way by Joseph Alton, M.D. and Amy Alton, A.R.N.P.
Taking a different direction from the previously mentioned Prepper’s medical handbook, this is considered a more true survival medical handbook in the sense that what to do if you have nothing prepared and encounter an emergency.
Each scenario that the book discusses assumes the fact that no medical help is available or forthcoming, necessitating the usage of whatever is available at the time.
Wound dressing, using wild plants as medicine, along with long-term hygiene and sanitation are all discussed in this book.
The book also discusses more obscure real-world scenarios such as hurricanes and landslides, which while good to know, seems to deviate from the purpose of the book a little bit.
The lack of illustrations or images to assist with the visual identification of plants might make it harder in real life for an inexperienced person to do so as well.
5. How to Eat in the Woods: A Complete Guide to Foraging, Trapping, Fishing, and Finding Sustenance in the Wild By Bradford Angier And Jon Young
Forget all those fancy skills.
They amount to absolutely nothing if you are unable to find something to eat.
One of the first things that you need to consider in order to survive is how to get food.
This book will help increase your chances of survival by showing you how to take advantage of the food sources abundantly available around you in the wilderness.
The book will help you learn to identify edible wild plants, including fruits and various nuts.
The fact that it contains very thorough descriptions will help to ensure that you choose the right ones and remove any doubt.
In addition to this, you will also learn to hunt. Human beings are apex predators, even though over the course of millennia many of us have lost the skills to hunt.
This book will help teach you the essentials about how to track, make traps and kill trapped prey.
This includes not only land-based animals but also fish.
If you’ve never cooked before, this book won’t teach you how to make a Michelin Worthy meal, but it will teach the basic skills of cleaning and preparing food including not consuming the parts that might make you sick.
The book also contains a very important section about how to make portable water, since it’s never a good idea to drink water from a random source without first purifying it.
All in all, this should be one of the first real survival books you read.
In Conclusion
Food, shelter, medical. The necessities don’t change. And survival doesn’t necessarily happen by chance.
You would be hard-pressed to survive a disaster or real-life scenario without access to food, sanitation, or basic healthcare.
Far too many people rely on conventional medicine and services, which are threatened with collapse virtually every single day of our existence.
This is why prepping and survival skills are no longer just for the recluses of the world, but something you should try to develop as well.
If I had to sum it up in just a few words, I would say your ability to survive correspondence with preparation and how adaptive you are when disaster strikes.
