{"id":366,"date":"2025-09-30T01:02:30","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T01:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/?p=366"},"modified":"2025-09-30T01:02:30","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T01:02:30","slug":"learning-survival-skills-epictactical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/?p=366","title":{"rendered":"LEARNING SURVIVAL SKILLS \u2013 EpicTactical"},"content":{"rendered":"
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LEARNING SURVIVAL SKILLS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christopher Nyerges\u00a0 [Nyerges has been teaching survival skills since 1974.\u00a0 He is the author of many books, such as \u201cHow to Survive Anywhere,\u201d \u201cUrban Survival Guide,\u201d and \u201cExtreme Simplicity.\u201d\u00a0 More information is at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n

DESERT SURVIVAL OUTINGS<\/p>\n

ONE WAY TO PRACTICE FOR EVACUATION<\/p>\n

Beginning in the early 1970s, I was a student in the WTI Survival Training School, operating out of northeast Los Angeles.\u00a0 It was founded and operated by Navy veteran Richard E. White, who wanted his students to be physically fit and mentally prepared for disasters.<\/p>\n

One of the training regimens was the high desert outings where we\u2019d practice survival skills for a few days. These skills included wild food collections, obtaining water, purifying water, making fire, cooking over a fire, navigation with a compass, some shelter building, creating a toilet, learning to stay clean with little water, communications, some weaponry practice, and more.<\/p>\n

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SONY DSC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

White always insisted that we \u201ckeep it real\u201d on our trips, and so while driving to the desert site, we were to mentally pretend that we were departing from the city due to a nuclear attack, and we were to not talk about mundane matters.\u00a0 \u201cRemember, this is not for fun and this is not a vacation,\u201d Mr. White, the sensei of the school, would remind the participant.<\/p>\n

Our site was five acres of open desert\u00a0 surrounded by miles of more open desert.\u00a0 The California Aqueduct was about two miles to the south, and to the north were stands of Joshua trees, and then mountains.\u00a0 There was typical plant life, which was profuse after the rains, and sparse the rest of the year.<\/p>\n

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Our \u201cBring List\u201d included those thing that we\u2019d need to survive and start over if we couldn\u2019t go back to the city.\u00a0\u00a0 Though we never had to completely live out of our meagre packs, we did realize that every need which the stuff in our homes fulfilled, we\u2019d now have to let nature fulfil that need.<\/p>\n

We dug toilet pits and made them private.\u00a0 We built fires for cooking and warmth and light.\u00a0 We dug for our water and we walked to and from the aqueduct with buckets of water.\u00a0 We learned how to eat some of the few foods that we could find in the desert \u2013 like yucca fruits, cactus, buckwheat seeds, wild mustards \u2013 and we utilized road kill that was not too old.\u00a0 We taught each other how to align the map of the area with our compasses, and we learned to walk in straight lines with the compass.<\/p>\n

Though these field trips were never easy, and never what we\u2019d call fun, we all went home realizing that we could survive, and survive well, by working together and sharing our skills.\u00a0 We learned that we could sleep without a sleeping bag, and without a bed in a bedroom.\u00a0 We realized that though we preferred a flush toilet and a running water, we could handle all our needs by our thoughtful use of the resources in our environment.<\/p>\n

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These field trips fulfilled two goals, maybe more.\u00a0 We developed wilderness survival skills, some of the basic outdoor skills found in books such as Larry Dean Olsen\u2019s classic \u201cOutdoor Survival Skills.\u201d\u00a0 And even though we were never forced to evacuate due to a natural disaster, we developed the knowledge of which things we needed, and which were unnecessary.\u00a0 If we ever had to run away from our homes, and to find refuge somewhere else, we each felt that we\u2019d know which skills were necessary, and what gear would be the most useful.<\/p>\n

To reiterate, we developed the necessary skills for surviving in the wilderness, and for evacuating, and for getting started again, not by thinking about it, and not by reading about it, and not by watching videos.\u00a0 We were not the smartest and we were not the richest.\u00a0 With our meagre budget and with our ruling desire to learn these skills, we practiced each of the component part until we were comfortably familiar with them.<\/p>\n

If you simply cannot get out into the field right away, you could get a feel for it if you intently watch a few key movies, while constantly trying to feel would it would be like to be in that situation, and constantly asking yourself what you would do.\u00a0 Consider such movies as the original \u201cLord of the Flies,\u201d the original \u201cFlight of the Phoenix,\u201d \u201cZ is for Zaccharia,\u201d \u201cThe Day After Tomorrow,\u201d \u201cThe Book of Eli,\u201d and many others.<\/p>\n

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Plus, in my case, I grew up with my mother, a staunch Catholic, often talking about \u201cthe end of the world,\u201d with whatever variation of that concept that she got from the church and from her conversations with friends who were knowledgeable about the Lady of Lourdes and the many prophecies that arose therefrom.\u00a0 This was the late 1960s and my mother was so concerned that she asked me to store water for the family in case of a pending crisis.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know much about the prophecies of Lourdes, but I was concerned about earthquake preparedness, and I eventually took care of our family\u2019s water storage, at minimal cost.\u00a0 I got about 40\u00a0 5-gallon buckets from local bakeries and delis for free, cleaned them, filled them with water, and stored them in our cellar. So I was primed to think about emergencies and to take some sort of pro-active action.<\/p>\n

In high school, one of my best friends, Nathaniel, and I got very interested in hiking, biking, and wild foods.\u00a0 We would read supposed CIA reports that announced that the U.S. would experience a crippling famine by the late 70s.\u00a0 We would discuss the consequences of such a famine, such as civil breakdown, no law and order, and maybe even cannibalism. Of course, we had no way of knowing that most of the dire news was being pushed by those who were selling buckets of \u201csurvival food,\u201d nor did we realize that economic incentive and new technologies made the feeding of more people possible.\u00a0 The famine never materialized, and we just continued to learn about wild foods and how to use them.<\/p>\n

And \u00a0we always tried to keep our eyes and ears open, ever aware to the\u00a0 constant challenges to human culture all over the world, all the time:\u00a0 war, civil unrest, earthquakes, mudslides, flooding, fires, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc.<\/p>\n

Yes, we have been grateful and thankful that (so far) our lives have not been shortened and our homes destroyed by any of the natural or man-made disasters. \u00a0The occurrence of disasters seems to be never-ending, so we do our best to never become complacent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LEARNING SURVIVAL SKILLS Christopher Nyerges\u00a0 [Nyerges has been teaching survival skills since 1974.\u00a0 He is the author of many books, such as \u201cHow to Survive Anywhere,\u201d \u201cUrban Survival Guide,\u201d and \u201cExtreme Simplicity.\u201d\u00a0 More information is at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com] DESERT SURVIVAL OUTINGS ONE WAY TO PRACTICE FOR EVACUATION Beginning in the early 1970s, I was a student […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-survival"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":368,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions\/368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}