You’ll know how much we’ve gone on about there being no substitute for learning your prepper skills through action. There’s no getting around the need for practical learning, practising what you have learned, and doing those routines over and over again.
No amount of shiny new equipment, we argued in a blog on the 2nd of June can be a substitute for practising, enhancing, and developing your skills through continual use.
But we also want to make the case for the proper time and place for book learning. Books can be an extremely useful source of knowledge, tips, suggestions, and experiences from those who have been through it all before. Books can give you insightful background. Books can shine new lights onto the prepper skills and talents you are already developing.
With that in mind, here is a brief selection of books for preppers. Dip into them from time to time, get the gist of the advice they contain, and keep hard copies of them to hand – just in case some of the theory becomes a distinct reality.
This is something of a classic for any outdoor enthusiast or those looking for survival tips in just about any environment or location.
Already considered to be something of a survival bible, it continues to reappear in successive new editions.
Bushcraft 101: A Field Guide to the Art of Wilderness Survival
This is another in the series of bushcraft manuals by survivalist Dave Canterbury, who gives a personal spin on his extensive knowledge of the great outdoors – with accounts that urge and encourage you to explore that next patch of wilderness.
In this collection of tips and advice, you will find suggestions about:
- choosing the kit you’re likely to need;
- making those tools and supplies you’re without;
- foraging for and cooking food; and
- shelter from the elements.
When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff you need to survive when disaster strikes
The title pretty well sums it up. This packs in all you need to know about how to survive – both physically and psychologically – when disaster strikes while you are at home, at work, or driving in your car.
Aimed towards urban and suburban town-dwellers, this is a handbook designed to ensure that you are fully prepared BEFORE any disaster or calamity occurs.
The Survival Medicine Handbook
As the subtitle explains, this is a self-help guide about what you need to do when medical help is NOT on the way.
It’s written by two American medics – Dr Joe Alton and advanced registered nurse practitioner (ARNP) Amy Alton – a husband and wife team with survivalist experience and training. They also maintain a website, Doom and Bloom, which has the declared aim of putting “a medically prepared person in every family”. As “Dr Bones and Nurse Amy”, they also host a radio programme and YouTube channel.
Bushcraft Illustrated: A Visual Guide
Another in the Bushcraft series by survivalist Dave Canterbury, the lavish illustrations of this tome make it the outdoor and survivalist specialist’s coffee table book.
To describe it as such might be doing the book something of a disservice, though, because it is also packed with lots of very practical tips and advice on everything from bushcraft and wilderness survival skills to the types of shelter you can make and the tools you are likely to find useful in any crisis situation – with detailed illustrations, of course.
How to Stay Alive in the Woods: A Complete Guide to Food, Shelter and Self-Preservation Anywhere
Our final suggestion for your library shelf goes to underscore the timeless nature of survival skills for anyone venturing into the great outdoors.
. Sections are naturally divided into those dealing with sustenance, warmth, orientation, and safety. It offers step-by-step guides on such indispensable skills as catching game without a gun, safe foraging, how to build a shelter, making warm clothing, self-protection, and signalling for help.
Summary
These few brief suggestions in no way provide an entire bookshelf of published works – but they might form a great start to boost the beginning of your prepper journey.
We make no excuse for continuing to urge action, practice, and physical endeavour above armchair learning – but there is still a place for the latter. These books might help to serve that purpose. But they can only do that, of course, if you read them – now, rather than cracking them open only when you are up against it.
You won’t need hundreds of books or anything like a whole library of them. But we’ll be adding a few more posts like this one from time to time to help build up your handy reserve of prepping reference materials.
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