SHELTER FOR BACKWOODS SURVIVAL SITUATIONS

In a backwoods survival situation, most people worry too much about food, water and fire, when they should be thinking about shelter. Most people can probably live four to six weeks without food. Water is certainly very important, but unless you are in the blazing hot desert, you can live anywhere from eight to fourteen days without it. Fire is also very nice and pleasant, but if you have good shelter, you can do without it. Shelter is the second most importance thing to a person's attitude when it comes to things that will help you survive in the backwoods.

Regarding attitude, Fear and panic are your biggest enemies in a backwoods survival situation. If you can keep your head calm, maintain an attitude of natural inquisitiveness about your surroundings, rather than feeling like it's your enemy, you will probably do all right. The key is being in harmony with nature, rather than acting as if it were your enemy.

Now, let's look at shelter. Shelters are quite easy to build using the available materials at hand. Shelters do not have to be worked out with great care and nicely detailed, they only need to be well insulated to keep you warm and dry if it should happen to rain. Shelters can be made with just about anything you find in the wilderness: dry leaves, sticks, branches, pine boughs; all of this are usually readily available and they are great for building a temporary debris hut.

A debris hut is probably the quickest type shelter to build. You want to make it just the right size. You want to build a debris hut that is big enough so that you can fit in it comfortably, but small enough so that there won't be a lot of empty space, so cold air will not surrounding you. The way to start building a debris hut is to start by making a frame work out of larger branches, which you can then place a layer of smaller branches. The ideal situation would be if you could find a tree branch that was about 8 feet long, and a tree stump that was about two or 3 feet tall. You could lean a tree branch on top of the stump so that the large end of the branch was on top of the stump and the small and was on the ground. The stump would be the entrance to your shelter, and the foot of your debris hut would be where the tree branch touched the ground. The next thing to do is use smaller branches to lay a framework in the shape of an A on both sides of the tree branch. Now it's time to start piling up leaves. Use pine boughs, ferns, or whatever is handy. The more insulation you have, the better. Two or 3 feet is not too thick. If it's going to turn cold at night, you will need plenty of insulation to retain your natural warmth while keeping out the cold.

This valuable knowledge of how to make backwoods shelter using the debris hut method will, hopefully, give you the added confidence you may need so you will remain calm and not panic in case you should ever find yourself in a genuine backwoods survival situation.