A New Outdoor Diet

Wild Food, Natural Medicine and the general topic of Useful Plants is a a BIG subject and takes a long time to master. I've spent years learning and have only touched the surface. Many people dedicate decades to the subject and still don't know it all. If you want to get into foraging, the I'll share this method which should give you a progressive path needing no prior experience and allow you to go as far as you want without becoming swamped or having to carry a book with you wherever you go.

We can only take in so much in at a time and so trying to rote learn a whole book of information is not the way to go. What with all the leaves & flowers, nuts & berries, roots, bark, tubers, confusion species and not even to mention the sheer number of species; it's an absolute minefield.

The key to cracking this topic is practice through repetition and a realistic rate of progress which matches your level of exposure to the outdoors. If you walk your dog twice a day, every day, then you can pick this up quicker than the city dweller who only gets out once a fortnight.

Here's core of the method. Like success in trapping is based around understanding animal behaviour, success in foraging is based around understanding plants (and fungi). Let's start with the fact that availability of species depends on season, latitude, altitude, climate, gradient, orientation, habitat, soil type, local animals and other stuff. Thankfully, you don't have to learn any of that in advance. All you have to know is that there is some or there isn't.

Next, we have to understand that different parts of plants are useful and not only are we interested in leaves, fruit and nuts, but also shoots, buds, flowers, seeds, wood, bark, roots, tubers, sap, resin, etc.   and these only exist at certain times of the year; buds in Spring, foliage in Summer, fruit in Autumn and tubers through Winter, for instance. Thankfully, you don't have to remember all of this in one go either. All you need to know is that which is available right now and that which has gone before.

"So where do I start?", I hear you ask, "and why have you told me all this stuff I don't need to learn". Well, dear readers, you don't need to learn all this stuff, but you will, naturally and as for starting, I'll give you a phrase my dad used, "if you don't know where to start, just start". A caveat to this was "unless super glue is involved", but that's another story.

This is where we start; March, 2012 and this is what we're going to do: Each month, we're going to learn one plant, one tree and one fungus. That might not sound like much, but as each month passes, we get to build on the ones we know and our internal database will grow and grow. Sometimes we'll repeat the same species, as the season changes and the plant provides us with a new resource.

It's important that we choose the right set, so we're going to start with things that are common and everywhere, or "ubiquitous", which is one of my favourite words. From a survival perspective, it's better to be able to recognise things that are more likely to be around than it is to know the ultra-rare specific variants which, though interesting, are unlikely to be helpful. Additionally, we need to know what's available here, now and soon, not last season or miles away.

This month, we learn something new, next month, the fun begins. Not only do we learn a new set, but we get to watch the progress of our existing set and build on the knowledge we've gained. One day, we're going to see elder flowers, and as time progresses, we'll then see elderberries. We'll see hawthorn twigs, then leaves & ultimately fruits and by knowing where the silver weed plant is, with its cooling leaves, we'll know where the silver weeds tubers will be.

Here's March's set:

Beech Tree, Nettle Leaf, Jew's Ear Fungus

Why have I chosen these, you may wonder. The answer is simple: you can't really fail to find them. they are distinctive, they don't have anything species which are comparable, they have a wide variety of uses and they have a nice progressive future.

The above are all the visuals you're getting right now from me, but I will post an article on each one this month. I've already partially covered Jew's Ear in Make No Mistake, which also addresses confusion species, which should not be your concern right now.

Your mission is to head on out and find them. Here are a few clues:

• Beech is probably the only tree which still has dried leaves hanging on it.
• Nettle is EVERYWHERE, but especially in rides between grass and woodland or in hedgerows. 
• Jew's Ear can be found on dead Elder, which is the one of the most popular trees in the UK.

So, not only have we learnt three species here, but we've got the bark, old leaf & bud of beech, the look of an early nettle and not only Jew's ear, but (dead) Elder, which is a rather useful firewood. Things to take in are season, location and surroundings. Learn where these are and we can watch the progress. Start to take notice of things like bark, branch structure and companion species for beech. Take note of the places where nettles grow where dogs are unlikely to wee and try to recognise elder in this form at least. Watch them change over time.

What you'll find is, once you seen these up close, you'll start to recognise them from afar. The beech leaves hanging on will give away the location. The environment for nettles can easily be seen and the dead elder is very good indicator for Jew's Ear, which is otherwise quite well camouflaged until you get up close. Do go forth and investigate, it'll prove it's working.

This is all you need to do this month. Just learn these three and as little or as much extra about them as you want. With each passing day outdoors, you'll see your set over and over again. You should consciously spot the, confirm them and relay any useful information you know about them to yourself.  This process reinforces the knowledge and is a lot easier than making notes or carrying books. Your confidence will grow.

As time progresses, you'll begin to predict locations subconsciously and if you watch this blog, you'll catch the additional posts containing useful information on each one, including uses as well as methods for harvesting, cooking and preservation, where applicable.

For those who are out more then others, two a month might be more the mark, so here are a few more to try: Ash, Penny wort and Morel. Again, you can't really go too far wrong with these, but no clues here other than it's worth looking up False Morel, which is only just a reasonable lookalike for the real thing. I'll cover all three of these this month too.

Happy foraging, watch out for further posts and I hope you find this method as useful as I do.

REMEMBER: Do no pick or eat anything you can't positively identify as safe and legal

Domain Update

I've just updated this blog to use the domain http://blog.artandscienceofsurvival.com/ which seems to be causing some interesting redirect, page not found and caching problems. Please comment on this post if you encounter anything odd.

Things in Tins

Born from the military concept of "you might have to survive using only the stuff in your pockets and your knife when you ditch your bergen and webbing because you're running for your life", the compact survival kit has to be small and light enough that you'll carry it on your person, rather than in your bag, and large enough that it can contain all the useful kit you might need. This is very similar to the "possibles pouch" which neatly contains all of the kit you would carry around the woods or a bushcraft gathering, giving you the opportunity to perform general tasks without having to grab something from your sack.

I find the "tobacco tin" survival kits of a suitable size to be carried in a jacket pocket, thigh pocket, or in some old first aid or camera case on the belt. Contrastly, the larger Web-tex one is a bit big and not so robust and although has more capacity, breaks the first rule of survival kits, see above.

All of the items in the kit should be multi-function, so rather than packing snares, pack wire, which might be useful for other things. Little hooks are good for catching both big and little fish, but big ones can't catch small. A tampon is a good source of tinder, as well as a good wound dressing. A condom, though good for holding lots of water (albeit quite unstably), might be considered not as versatrie as a zip lock bag which can hold "enough" water whilst still being useful for holding food, or to cover a burn, say. Metal tins could be used as pots and the shiny lid as a signalling mirror. This is not possible with a plastic or canvas pouch kit. For Christ sake don't keep your kit in the handle of your knife. Even Ray Mears released one of these back on the day, as they were all the rage after the film Rambo. All they do is weaken the knife, which is kinda silly.

Again, similar to the possibles pouch, the survival tin is supplemented with other carried items such as a knife, steel, compass, whistle and first aid kit, which I tend to keep on me at all time I am hiking, camping, teaching or bushcraft socialising. Again, none of these are in my bag. To this end, it can contain smaller versions of these items, which although not as good as the real thing are still useful. Rather than remove lesser versions, however, we keep the kit complete so that is can be used in isolation and is a "one stop shop", should it be the only thing you can grab.

My Current Kit

An off the shelf survival kit should be seen as a starting point, to be updated and added to depending on your whim and the environment you are travelling to. Some things can't be sold with the kit, such as pain killers or other medicine you might take regularly. You might like to add such as a survival straw, heliograph, tinder card or cotton wool, which also stops it rattling. Some people update the tin by replacing the electrical tape with duck tape, some wrap it with paracord. I've replaced the knife in the mine with the Web-tex knife, which is a slimmer, generally better knife; I've seen some with a mini Opinel blade. If off to the jungle, you may wish to put in a broad spectrum antibiotic and some anti-malarials.

Most importantly, is that you learn to use all of the equipment inside. It's not good learning on the job when it all goes pear shaped and given how cheap most of the components are, they are easily replaced, so get out and have a go. Don't forget to replace anything you use or break and remember to sharpen the knife. There's no point in having a well collated kit one day if it's half empty when needed.

Of course, there is the general debate about the need for such things, but having one in the car or one in my hold luggage on a plane or even a "non-sharp" version in hand luggage (please call your operator for confirmation) makes me feel confident that I have some useful kit should the proverbial hit the proverbial. I don't tend to take them to bushcraft meets, but I do if I'm wild camping in the middle of Wales. I don't take one on the train, but I do take one on a plane.

Survival kits are, like first aid kits and flares, the sort of things that are carried and never used, but can be life savers in situations where you needs their contents. It's all well and good knowing you can make a compass from a needle, fishing hooks from bones, cordage from nettles and a whistle from a reed, but how useful would it be just to not have to bother when you've got more important things to think about, like icy wind, water treatment and hungry children?

Igloo Man

Swedish man was/was not trapped in his car for two months/a bit living on only snow, but maybe other stuff

Peter Skyllberg may or may not have survived an ordeal which may or may not have been a miraculous survival story.

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Frankly I don't care if this recent survival story is true or not, but it does raise some interesting survival questions. Let's take them in a pretty standard order of priority; that is to say, let's deal first with the things that would kill us first.

Stuck?


Apparently, he was stuck in the car, under two feet of snow. Well, it wasn't an avalanche, so I have to wonder how he managed to get stuck inside during even the heaviest of snow storm. Might have been worth checking the weather forecast to if there was an indication of such a storm for him to have been so quickly snowed in. Maybe packing a snow shovel would have been an idea. There was no mention of him being knocked out, and even if he slept through his snow storm, it's not beyond the wit of man to open or even break a window and poke your way out. He had to have some form of ventilation, or he'd had suffocated.

Temperature

They say the temperature went down to -30°C, but let's assume that's the press playing the statistics cards. I had a quick look at the statistics for the area and it turns out.

The month of January is characterized by essentially constant daily high temperatures, with daily highs around -3°C throughout the month, exceeding 3°C or dropping below-12°C only one day in ten. Daily low temperatures range from -12°C to -10°C, falling below -22°C or exceeding -1°C only one day in ten.

February wasn't much different. That's not actually that exciting. Yeah, you wouldn't want to stand outside in your birthday suit, but it's not exactly Arctic conditions. Given that the guy had a sleeping bag, we can assume that he also had some sensible clothes too. Pretty good preparation, I'd say.

Shelter

What's immediately apparent about a car, is that it's already wind and waterproof, which is nice. Something else that's useful about a car, is that's it's insulated from the ground rather well, it being not only raised off the ground, but held up by inflated rubber tyres. So far, so good.

My former colleague was quoted in the Telegraph as saying that trying to survive in a car was going to be gruelling, since it was made of metal. If this was an isolated fact, it would be true, since a metal shelter is highly conductive of heat and quickly evens out the inside and outside temperatures, basically, making the inside temperature fall to that of the surrounding environment. I imagine the quote was taken from a quick phone call, which is the normal way the press gets a sound bite for a story.

It turns out, if you have a look at the press photos, that there was a good 50cm of snow on the top of the car and given that he was dug out, we can assume that was covering the whole car. Snow is about 80%, which makes it a great thermal insulator. Snow has a thermal conductivity (k) of around 0.16 W/m K, which is better than brick (0.18), but not quite good as wood (about 0.12) but it's about 7 times better than glass (1.1), 250 times that of steel (55) and 1400 times better than Aluminium (237). We can assume the car had some form of meagre insulation, but we all know how quickly a car gets chilly after you've stopped blowing warm air into it.

Heat transfer is inversely proportional to thickness of material, that is to say that twice the thickness of material yields half the heat transfer and hence half the heat loss over the same period of time. Standard  maximum roof insulation is around 270mm thick, which is around half the thickness of our snow. The materials vary, but it has a conductivity of around 0.04, which if four times better than snow. That makes good roof insulation only twice as good as the snow. So, that's not all bad either.

Other than the igloo and snow hole, another example of snow insulation is that of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 which famously crashed in the Andes and became the subject of a book and the film Alive. Other than the well publicised cannibalism, an avalanche covered the fuselage of the plane, killing nine, but arguably aiding the survival of the remainder.

So, what's heating up the air in the car? Well, as far as I can tell, there was only one heat source available, and that was our guy. We humans emit energy at a rate of about 100 Watts, normally, which is why a party in a small room always get a bit warm. A cheap bathroom heater is about 400W and a car is a rather a lot smaller than even my tiny bathroom. As the air in the now insulated car heats up, we cool down more slowly, so burn less calories keeping warm, unlike standing outside, where we just keep loosing heat to the largely constant temperature air and ground. 

All in all, the snow covered car is not a bad shelter at all.

Fire

Our hapless 'igloo man' was next to a wood. I still don't think he was stuck in it, so I'm going to assume he could have got out. Now let me think ... I'm cold and next to a wood. I know, I'll light a fire. Bit a no brainer. 

"But what if he didn't have anything to light a fire with?" you may ask. Well, other than the quite difficult "rubbing two sticks together" methods, he had a car, and there are loads of ways of lighting a fire with bits of car. More realistically, however, someone who travels out to photograph Elk (as it seems he was) in those conditions, should be carrying something to light fires with. If not, then frankly, get out of my gene pool. That's basic preparation.

Sat by a fire by day, sleep in the car by night. That the most efficient way of keeping warm if you don't have the skills to keep a fire going all night.

Rescue

Our chap was obviously remote and said to be about 1km from a road. This road was described as "main" and there were reportedly hundreds of mapped snowmobile tracks. I don't really understand how he could not have signalled for help or gotten to the road. Either he didn't bother, or he didn't want to get rescued, or he wasn't there for long at all. Hmmm.

Sensible solutions for someone wanting to get noticed from an off road position are signs and smoke signals. That's a blog post by itself, but he obviously missed a trick there.

Water

So, snow, that's water right? Well yes, but it's cold. This chap was said to have survived by "eating snow and ice". Good old Daily Mail, but even the Telegraph alluded to the same. More likely, he would have eaten melted snow, see above for methods of melting. 

What's wrong with eating snow? Well, consuming snow directly means that you have use energy to melt it. Even if we use body heat to melt it in advance, we're still using our own energy, albeit not from the core directly. Even if we let the nice warm air in our car warm it up, we're still taking heat from the air we heated up ourself which we'll then have to heat up all over again we have to find another way.

I'm just going to assume the car wouldn't start, because that would be a sensible way of melting snow, even if you were trapped in the car. Would also keep you nice and warm for a bit. I reckon even a little Fiesta would idle for 30 hours or so on a half tank.

Food

He had a bit of food, but it would have run out. Snow doesn't have any nutritional value, nor does any part of a regular car. So, let's play along with the whole "trapped in the car" lark. What's going to happen here? Well, first we'll consume the sugars stored in muscles and the liver, then we're going to burn lean muscle and fats. The rule of thumb is that we can last about month without any food and make a complete recovery. There are a few contributing factors to this, largely environmental, but also some biological. 

So how did he last that long? Well, I'm going to assume that he had a bit of food kicking around, he kept as warm as possible, he had a little more fat than the average guy and was just one of those people who last longer. 

He was reportedly malnourished, which you'd expect. There is also a possibility that's he's had permanent internal damage, but at least he's alive.

Hibernation

Some sources suggested he went into a state akin to hibernation. Really? Come on!

Escape

This section is left for an exercise for the reader.


All in all, I don't buy it. It seems to be that the chap did not make the effort to try to survive, just curled up and waited to die. Maybe there was something more psychological going on. Maybe he wasn't really there for two months. Maybe he wasn't really trapped in the car. Who knows. It was interesting exploring the possibilities though.

Give some thought to the preparation you might now make, if you risked ending up in the same situation and the actions you might take to get yourself out of the situation in a more timely fashion.