US Army Survival Manual: FM 21-76

As you can tell from the reviews, this book is a must for anyone who never have thought of what it takes to survive away from societal businesses.

How do you get water when water sources are polluted?

How long will you survive without water?

Prepare for accidents, because they will happen, more often than not.

And, more importantly, you may never know when you'll need to have this highly important manual to rely on.

Buy it, and read it, don't let it sit there without first becoming familiar to it's content. Don't wait until its absolutely necessary to use it first. It just may be a situation that you don't have time or much energy left to absorb the knowledge it contains.

Here is everything you need to know to survive in any outdoor situation. Although clearly written for soldiers, this book could save any civilian's life if these techniques are used.

This book covers many areas of outdoor's experience, with everything except the (POW survival) part coming into usefullness for the avid outdoor enthusiast. My only complaint would be the brief explanations and mediocre illustrations of some of the types of plants and traps/snares. Still, as a hunter and outdoor enthusiast, I will still surprised to read a few things I've never learned about or thought of using as a means of outdoors survival / trade.

This is the definitive guide for survival. I bought this book and I am going through all the chapters and it is taking quite a long time because the book is full of material including visual guides for building fires, traps, etc. Make sure you have this book in your backpack, truck, or car at all times. I believe you could save your life with the techniques if you learn them correctly. Make sure you read this and have the proper provisions. Also, be sure to share this with others. If you don't want to buy the paperback it is available as a free Army document, but I find I like the paper copy better.

The Army Survival manual is a great find. It provides detailed, understandable information on how to survive in many situations: in the desert, at sea, in an area where you don't wish to be detected (For civilians it's possibly useful for hostage/kidnapping situations, I suppose). It also has a lot of emotional support written into the text. This is clearly written directly for soldiers, but it could probably be reassuring if you were actually on your own.

I bought the book mainly as a reference that I could toss into our disaster-preparedness closet. I don't have any plans to use the information in the book, but I wanted a guidebook "just in case." This serves that purpose beautifully, but the "SAS Survival Guide" (the pocket-sized version of the "SAS Survival Handbook" is much better for this purpose. There isn't really much discussion of emotional issues in the SAS Guide, and there's no focus on evading enemy capture or things like that. But it's a much nicer book (the army guide seems like it's been Xeroxed a million times, and the print quality is questionable). The SAS Guide is a great size for tossing into a car glovebox, and it's easier to browse and search.

If you have the space and inclination, get both. They do both offer slightly different information. For example, the Army guide tells you how to get fresh water from sea water in cold climates by letting small amounts of sea water slowly freeze. (Fresh water will freeze out of the solution first, leaving a slushy saltwater glob that you can then remove from the ice--or something like that). The SAS Guide, on the other hand, tells you how to get fresh water at sea from a fresh-water gland along the spine of a fish. If you were really stranded, it would be great to have both. If you only get one, I would recommend the SAS guide though.