Give your position away

If you can determine your position, it's important to ensure that you know how to describe it. This is best illustrated with latitude and longitude, the most internationally recognised coordinate system used on all sea and air charts as well as most GPSes and mobile phones. Many instruments display position in different format and if you say it wrong, it's possible to send the rescuers to the other side of the planet, which isn't going to help. If you follow this rule of the numbers and symbols, it doesn't matter what format the device uses, you'll always be able to convey your correct position so that the search and rescue crew are tasked to the right location. 

What is the Emergency Services Number?

What is the emergency services number in the UK? The USA? How about Canada? Australia? India? Germany? France? That's a trick question really, as France has three different numbers for their services. Are they all free to call? Can they all be called from mobiles? Can they all be called from foreign mobile? Can you text any of them?

Chances are, you'll know the answer to two or three of those questions, but in a survival situation, should you be presented with the opportunity to phone for help, you must know the answer or you're missing a vital opportunity to get rescued. Read on and easily remember how to contact the emergency services throughout most of the world.

Wild Food & Natural Resources Course - Autumn Round up

Three seasons in and thanks for sticking with it. I hope by now the course has proven itself useful and shown you that by working your way the year in a progressive fashion, you forget less and with a background of the basics of ecology, climate and botanical sciences, it all fixes into place. By now you'll be confidently spotting and hopefully munching wild edibles in a number of habitats. With winter here, you might be going out less, but there is still a lot to learn. You'll have noticed some of your earlier plants coming back, so here's a round up of everything we've learnt in Autumn, together with a look at that which has gone before and how that's faired with passing seasons.

Who is the greatest of them all?

I had to do it ... I asked that question that keeps getting asked in one form or another; "who is the best survival guy?". It's been asked as Mears vs Grylls, it's been asked as Bushcraft vs Survival and it's been asked generically and with specific context. I tried to make it as contemporary as possible.

The question I posed was "Which of these do you think would, today, survive longest or get out quickest if placed on their own in a random, realistic survival situation with bare bones kit?".

The poll can be found on Facebook and was prepopulated with few choice survival types and voters were allowed to add their own.