After reading an article about a guy who lives in a cave, I now wonder how one would survive in the wild for years on end. Hopefully survival experts can help.

How to find shelter?
How to find food?
What to do if you break a bone and no one is close to you?
Protection from predators?
Protection from poisonous insects?
Everything else you need to survive?

How to find shelter? Caves, or make a "tent" out of branches with leaves on top in a slop up against something.
How to find food? Berries, plants, animals, fish
What to do if you break a bone and no one is close to you? place the bone
Protection from predators? Don't go near them
Protection from poisonous insects? look above
Everything else you need to survive? It's out there, just find it.



This stuff has always been common sense for me. Other people not so mcch, I don't know why it is easy for me.

A. you build your shelter.
B. You hunt it and grow your food.
C. You man up and set your own bone breaks and practice herbal meds.
D. you kill the predators and eat them.
E. Keep skin covered during buggy season. keep a fire going out doors the smoke will deter the smaller insects. Rub cedar on clothing. And most important get use to having bug bites.
F. The only thing you really need is the will to survive.

Good luck

Originally posted by Maddogkull
After reading an article about a guy who lives in a cave, I now wonder how one would survive in the wild for years on end. Hopefully survival experts can help.

What to do if you break a bone and no one is close to you?

Find something to make a sling or splint with. Pull the bone into alignment. Secure. Find a safe place to rest that you can get food, water at.. Hope that it's an arm.

Bone breaks are pretty effectively healed on their own. Unless it's really bad to the point where there are bones potruding from the skin.. But if you're like that, you really need to be at a good hospital.

You just do it. lineline

2lines

First question I would have for you OP, is this: Are you thinking about running off and living in the wild? Are you just asking because you have no idea how people survived without modern society? Are you planning on someday being in a position, i.e. TEOTWAWKI, where you need to leave society for an extended period of time, if not forever?

All of the above scenarios have different answers. If this is planned, you can stockpile supplies and read up on how to live off the land with very little. Teach yourself how to cope with things that you don’t even think about today as they are taken care of for you by society.

If you are just curious about how it’s done, asking 4 or 5 one line questions isn’t going to do you much good. Living off the land, be it in a cave, building a more elaborate structure, natural medicines, food sources be it birds, fish, game, gardening, or wild edible gathering isn’t someone that can be summed up or learned in a couple of quick posts.

This is something that takes years of practice, learning, and even some skill. Personally, and most other "survivalists" I know, would be more than happy to work with you to teach you how to accomplish a feat as moving off the grid, but if its just general knowledge questions and you have no interest in actually learning how to be self-sufficient, I suggest a library card and a few "Survivor Man" episodes.

My suggestion is to first go into a sporting goods store and buy a few books on camping, or even the good old Boy Scout Manual. Fresh water, food, and shelter are going to be your immediate needs. And it helps if you have the proper tools to get these things.

Look at it this way. At some point in time, a few thousand years, maybe, all of your ancestors figured it out. You can, too.

Common I was expecting answers that I already don’t know. Like someone said, eat berries, well what source can I use to find out what berries might kill me. Predators...if you live in the wild you bound to come across them UP CLOSE. So what do you do? It’s harder said than done. Snakes and poisonous insects might sneak into your tent, then what? Please no stupid questions like try the berry and see if you die, or let the insect bite you. Intellectual conversations please

How to find shelter?
-Depends on where you are. Natural shelters, like caves and tree wells cand work wonders. Or lean-to, snow cave, etc.

How to find food?
-Agains, depends. No matter where you are though, make sure to have as many options as possible. Don't rely on one thing. Set up snares on hare runs, and dead falls for squirrels and coons, set up hooks for fish, or ojibway bird traps... as many as possible so you can increase the chance of eating. The upside of traps is that you don't actively hunt leaving you time to harvest plants or keep your shelter together.

What to do if you break a bone and no one is close to you?
-Put her in a sling or splint or both and hope for the best.

Protection from predators?
-Be noisy and you shouldn't run into predators in the first place. Also, don't think of them as predators, because they don't think of you as prey. There hasn't been any attacks on humans by a healthy wolf or bear without provokation. So as long as you make sure that they know you're there, and try to keep out of their teritory (scraping, dropping etc) you should be fine. Worse comes to worse, make a weapon. Spear is best bet... if you have a knife for the spear head that's even better. Gives you good reach for killing snakes or anything like that.

Protection from poisonous insects?
-Don't know what to tell you... other than rattlers and the occasional black widow we don't have anything poisonous around here.