Peter Kummerfeldt: A Better Way to Build a Fire

The ability to build a fire under survival conditions may save your life. The inability may cost your life!

As a Boy Scout survival skills volunteer, I have helped teach well over 10,000 people basic flint-and-steel firemaking skills. This instruction has been done during all sorts of weather extremes. I have tried and tested many different firemaking methods, with the goal of being able to recommend the right tools to make a firemaking kit that could a person’s life.

One thing I learned after all this research and training is this: The average person, even if given matches and gasoline, couldn’t start a fire under survival conditions! Firemaking, like any survival skill, must be practiced, and you have to start out with the right tools and training.
One of those training tools might be Survival expert Peter Kummerfeldt's new ebook: "A Better Way to Build a Fire."

Bug Out Vehicles and Shelters

The fertilizer hits the fan and you may have to evacuate your area.

Immediately, the roads and highways will be jammed with unprepared refugees, most of them fleeing in panic to go somewhere - anywhere - else.

A prepper will be prepared for this eventuality, hopefully, and will not join the mindless crowd. But there may be no choice regarding staying or going prior to or during a flood, earthquake, hurricane or tsunami. You may have to join the exodus.

So what is your plan, to get your family to safety, and do you have a vehicle you can depend on? Get some ideas by reading this review of "Bug Out Vehicles and Shelters."

The Prepper's Pocket Guide: 101 Easy Things You Can Do to Ready Your Home For a Disaster

A good place to start!

Ask a preparedness expert: What is the very first step to take? What is the first thing to do to get started on preparing your home and family for a disaster?

Chances are, that expert will tell you to start a discussion about the topic.

The Prepper's Pocket Guide is a list of  topics, vignettes and tips related to getting started.  If you don’t have any storage items or equipment, the idea of storing enough food, medicine, water and assorted supplies for an extended period of time can seem intimidating and overwhelming.

The beginner has to get over this first step, before he/she can get going on their own personal survival plan, and “The Prepper’s Pocket Guide” can help. 

Click here to read the review!

The Survival Template

How do you encapsulate a survivor’s mentality into a model that can be duplicated and personalized? That’s what John A. Heatherly teaches in his new book “The Survival Template.”

 This book  may be what is needed to help you focus and set up your personal short and long term survival plans and goals.

To read the complete book review, click here

I Sit and I Stay Kids: A Survival Guide for Kids (and parents, too!)

Kids need to be outside. They need to be taking advantage of our great outdoors as opposed to vegetating in front of computer or TV screens. Hiking, biking and enjoying our parks and wilderness areas are natural cures for the childhood obesity epidemic. And if the kids aren’t taught to appreciate the outdoors at a young age, who will take care of the parks and wilderness areas in a few years?
But anyone who goes into wilderness areas needs to be safe, and  “I Sit and Stay” teaches your children to be safe if they get lost.
To read the review, click here!

Peter Kummerfeldt: "Surviving a Wilderness Emergency"

This book should be required reading for anyone who ever ventures off the pavement.
Author Peter Kummerfeldt has walked the talk in the wilderness survival field for decades. Peter grew up in Kenya, East Africa and came to America in 1965 and joined the U.S. Air Force. He is a graduate of the Air Force Survival Instructor Training School and has served as an instructor at the Basic Survival School, Spokane, Washington; the Arctic Survival School, Fairbanks, Alaska, and the Jungle Survival School, Republic of the Philippines.
For twelve years, Peter was the Survival Training Director at the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado. He retired from the Air Force in 1995 after 30 years of service.
In 1992, concerned with the number of accidents that were occurring in the outdoors and the number of tourists traveling overseas who were involved in unpleasant and sometimes life-threatening incidents Peter created OutdoorSafe. He has addressed over 20,000 people as the featured speaker at numerous seminars, conferences and national conventions.
After extensive testing of the gear and techniques mentioned in the publication, I recommend this publication as the go-to book for wilderness survival.To read my review, click here!

"Survive" by Les Stroud (Peter Kummerfeldt Review)

Peter demonstrates firemaking  by rubbing two sticks together.

I finally got around to reading this book and, for the most part, thought it a useful addition to a person’s survival library.

And then I got to the part where Les writes:

“A good signal mirror can also serve as a fire starter by reflecting the sun’s rays.” (Page 28)

How do you do that?How do you concentrate the rays into a spot hot enough to ignite tinder using a flat surface? A highly polished parabolic reflector can be used, but not a flat surface!

On one level, this kind of miss-information just irritates me. On a more serious level,  it angers me since it confirms for me that the writer hasn’t tested the process and has just accepted someone else’s information as factual!

To read the rest of the story, click here.

Desert Survival Skills

David Alloway, author of Desert Survival Skills,  has experience and the survival skills, and his book is worth reading, even if you don't live or recreate in an arid area. Alloway is an interpretive naturalist at Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas,  and has practiced arid land survival techniques in the United States, Mexico and Austraila for over 20 years.
Alloway himself became the first non-Australian to complete the 200 K Pilbara Trek in Western Australia. He holds certificates in emergency medicine, search and rescue and swift water rescue. Subsequently, Alloway writes from a hands-on experience background, and the book is excellent information for anyone  who ever goes into wilderness areas.
Click here to read the review!

The Survivors Club

Most of us can’t take all the survival field classes and seminars we’d like to, and only a fool would create an emergency to see how he might react. And may God  preserve and protect  the people who rely on the “survival” or “reality” shows to learn survival skills!  I fervently hope these folks never have to use what they learned on prime time!
But the rest of us can read and study, and hopefully get an insight into how we might act under extreme stress. That knowledge is a tool we must use, and it must be included in every survival kit. 
The Survivors Club is a book that presents some of this critical information.
Author Ben Sherwood interviewed people who have survived everything from the World War II Holocaust to the Twin Towers tragedy on 9/11. He was seeking a common ground, a kind of definition, about why some people survive catastrophes, disasters, and emergency situations and why others don’t.
Click here to read the review!

Bug Out: The Complete Plan For Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It’s Too Late

Here’s the scenario: Warning sirens are blaring. You have 15 minutes to evacuate. What will you do? By the time the evacuation starts, it’s already too late. Being prepared makes the difference between survival and disaster.
This is how the stage is set for “Bug Out,” the latest book by Scott B. Williams. The publication presents information to help you create an escape – a “Bug Out” – plan from a disaster area.
Williams helps you make a plan to survive a disaster and to put  together a “Bug Out Bag.” Most preppers or survivalists have some variation of this collection. The premise is that you have a portable, personalized kit with the tools needed to remove yourself from a bad situation.

To read the rest of the review, click here!

My Top Five Survival Psychology Books

One goal of  SurvivalCommonSense.com is to help you develop the survival mindset that will keep you alive. So, let’s start with the baseline knowledge of what happens to people, mentally, in a survival situation. Until you know what might happen in your mind, or in the heads of the people around you, there’s no way to come up with a plan to survive.
With a survival mindset, you can survive anything. Without one, you won’t!
These five are among my favorite survival psychology books, and they deserve a place among your prepper or urban or wilderness survival tools. Here’s some good choices to get you started on creating your survival library!

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

I read “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, And Why” by Lawrence Gonzales, in a few marathon sessions. The fast-paced accounts of real life survival situations are mesmerizing. It’s a good survival mindset read and I couldn’t help wondering what I might do in some of the situations.
This book is good information for anybody who practices survival common sense, because a survival mindset must be established before you will be able to use any tools and training you might have aquired.  In the book,  Gonzales mentions 12 points that disaster survivors seemed to have in common.  These points are definately worth reading and thinking about, even if you don’t get anything else out of the book.
To Read the rest of the review, click here.

‘Camping’s Forgotten Skills: Backwoods Tips From a Boundary Waters Guide’

A good way to prepare for potential emergencies is to read and learn from informative books with practical, usable information. “Camping’s Forgotten Skills: Backwoods Tips From a Boundary Waters Guide” by Cliff Jacobson is one of those literary resources that should be part of any survival or prepper library.
The book was first published in 1992. Author Jacobson is an Eagle Scout, a teacher and guide in the Boundary Waters. He has written 11 other wilderness-related books.
Jacobson writes that it’s important to have high tech equipment, and know how to use it. But (and here’s where we get into the survival common sense philosophy) what happens if you become separated from your stove when your canoe capsizes? How will you repair a large tear in your tarp or tent fly? Can you start a fire to prevent hypothermia?
Click here to read the review!