Welcome to the first in a series of short articles dealing with the subject of wilderness survival. Every year thousands upon thousands of Americans step off the asphalt into God’s great wide open world. It is also true that many of these people are neophytes when it comes to being in the woods. Some get lost or are injured and cannot return from where they came.
As a culture, the United States has some of the finest first responders and rescue personnel on the planet. We have technology that allows us to find humans in the wilderness, day and night. That being said, even our rescue personnel need time to find lost and injured campers and hikers. They cannot be everywhere at once.
The focus of this series will be to consider how you, or anyone who might be lost or stranded due to circumstance, can stay alive and assist those who are looking for you. Each installment will focus on a single topic, in order to keep it simple. Today we are going to discuss fire.
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Wilderness Survival Pt. 1 – Fire
Build a Fire
Unless you are on the move, as soon as you realize you are lost or stranded, build a fire. I don’t care if you are not cold or wet, build a fire. The only reason you would not want to build a fire would be due to a lack of fuel for the fire. That being said, most places where you might be stuck will indeed have ample fuel for fires.
While you might be thinking about neatly cut and split firewood, there are far more things in the wild that will burn. Dried moss, tree bark, pine needles, dry leaves, dead or dried out scrub brush, animal dung (dry, of course), all of these will burn and provide white or gray smoke.
The trick, naturally, is to get the fire started. You need not only a spark (match) but super dry, fibrous tinder to get the fire going. Sadly, many people will purchase the “emergency fire starter” kits from a camping store and go forward with the belief that they can just scrape sparks onto a pile of sticks and a fire will appear.
Magnesium sparklers are excellent survival tools as they will not be ruined by rain or water like matches and disposable lighters.
You must have material to catch the hot sparks or the match fire. Before you attempt to light a match or strike a spark, find some very dry, fibrous tinder. Look inside of a hollow log or a hole in a tree. Chances are good you will find a bird or mouse nest. These are brittle, dry, and filled with “fluff” that will burn easily. If you are lucky enough to have dry paper, that will work as well (but that’s best case).
Feminine hygiene products are also fantastic tinder. Maxi-pads and tampons work tremendously well. For the maxi-pad, cut down the middle and open it up to expose the absorbent material. This creates a pocket to catch the sparks. Regarding a tampon, you want to fluff it up until it resembles a giant cotton ball. Now the tampon is ready to catch sparks.
With your tinder in hand, stop. Don’t strike a spark until you have some small kindling to get the fire going with your tinder. Start with dry sticks that are pencil thin or pine needles, dried tree bark, etc. Beware of using leaves in the beginning, they tend to smother your fire.
You will want to have larger sticks (thumb width) close at hand to put on the kindling as soon as it is burning. Then you can move up to larger, thicker firewood that is about the width of your arm. Amateur fire builders often try to go too fast too soon. They try to put large pieces on before the base is good and hot.
Now that you have a single fire going, go ahead and build two more so that you have a triangle. Separate the fires by about five meters so that they will look like three fires from the air not just one. An airborne rescue team that spots a fire triangle will be assured that it is a deliberate signal for help, not just a coincidence.
At night, keep the fire hot and smoke free. In the daytime, add pine needles, grass or leaves to create heavy smoke for signaling.
Fire is your friend. It provides warmth, light, signaling, and critical psychological comfort in a crisis.
Wilderness Survival Pocket Life Saver Items
- Magnesium Fire Stick, Razor knife, 18D Combat Blood Soaker (tampon) x 2
- Wilderness Survival PLS Kit
Paul Markel
Good tips.
Thanks, I knew this but nice to have it in writing so when I teach my Honey Badgers I don’t leave anything out.
Great info! Thank you for what you do
Good tips.
Great review on fire .These tips covering all survival by SG might make a good needed reference book as long as its short and direct . I think civil unrest would overcome most of us,especially less mobil older ones (big part of SG audience I bet) if a big disaster occurred but for a lost camper super.
Solid info that could save your life. Thanks Professor Paul, your work to educate the masses is a value to the community and is appreciated.
Well done. The only thing I would add is to gather a LOT of wood before you start the fire. Not just kindling sized, like you mention in the article but fuel, as well. The fire will take more wood than you think it will. And three fires will take a LOT more. Gather LOTS of wood. For natural tinder, use “squaw wood.” Look at trees near you, especially low growing ones, scrub trees. At about eye heght find very thin branches, no bigger than a match stick, the thinner the better. Gather a LOT of these. They burn easilly and burn hot enough to light the kindling sized (pencil width) pieces. If you lay these in a crosshatch pattern on a raised parallel set of sticks then put the match or lighted tampon, etc. under the crossed sticks they will light and get your fire started in minimum time.
The “K.I.S.S.” method survival style…..
Great article! This is a basic skill that sadly too many people do not understand.
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Good article and some good comments.
I would suggest that if people do not already know, find out the various trees and plants that grow in your area, and be ableto identify those trees and plants. The reason for this is while all wood burns, some woods burn better than others.
As Prof Paul pointed out, just having a match or fire starter does not mean you will be able to start a fire. So people need to learn and practice the skills of fire making, with and without modern items, and in different seasons. IMO.