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Survival Shelters – What Works Best?
By Steven Gillman

All the various types of survival shelters serve one basic purpose, and it isn’t to have an attractive home for your night in the woods. Of course there might be some psychological value to certain styles. There may occasionally be a need for protection from animals as well. But the primary purpose of a survival shelter is to keep your body temperature up.

It is hypothermia – loss of body heat – that causes most deaths in survival situations. A good shelter prevents this in the following ways:

1. It keeps out the wind.

2. It keeps out the rain or snow.

3. It creates space that can be heated by your body, or with a fire and other means.

People with no skills will sometimes survive in circumstances where others with survival knowledge have died. Why is this? It can be their knowledge or intuition of the principles involved in survival. Knowing how to build a lean-to shelter using natural materials is great, but a lost hiker with no skills might be more likely to survive by burying himself for the night in a pile of dry leaves and grass. Perhaps he simply recognizes that it’s easier for his body to heat the space under those leaves than a larger space in a lean-to shelter.

Sometimes a little understanding of the principles involved and a willingness to think is more important than specific skills. Of course, even better would be thinking, understanding and having the specific knowledge and skills to build various survival shelters.

Survival Shelters

Look at what is available, and consider how you can use it. A rock to get behind might block the wind. A large downed tree might work too. A snow cave is also good for keeping out the wind. Even if you have a tent, a wall of snow blocks can help keep the wind out. Setting up camp in the right place makes all the difference in how much wind you are exposed to.

When rain or snow are likely, a shelter that can keep you dry becomes crucial. Again, look around. How can anything and everything be used? A broken canoe might be worthless for getting you down the river, but it still could be used as a shelter, or as part of a roof. Plastic garbage bags and any other plastic in your backpack might be used for roofing. A cave or overhanging ledge can be a great way to get out of the rain and snow.

Consider the materials around you in terms of how waterproof they are, and how you can use them. Pieces of birch bark can be pulled from rotten logs, for example, and layered over a lean-to like shingles to keep the rain out. Other tree barks may work for this. Cardboard, pieces of a wrecked plane, and large leaves can be used as roofing materials as well.

You can get wet from below as well. For example, a snow cave or shelter made of snow blocks will keep the snow from falling on you, but you can get soaked from the snow underneath you. When the ground is wet, make a floor of plastic or evergreen branches or grass. If materials are limited, try sleep sitting up to decrease the amount of your body that is exposed to the wet and cold ground.

How much space you create with your survival shelter is crucial if it is cold. Make it too big and the temperature inside will be almost the same as outside. You need a small enough space that your body heat or candle or small fire will be able to heat it. A pile of dry grass with a plastic sheet spread over it (crawl inside), for example, is more likely to keep you warm than a large lean-to with a fire in front.

Mix and match the various styles of shelters. Get creative. The snow might not be suitable for an igloo, for example, but a lean-to of evergreen boughs could be covered with crusty pieces of snow for extra insulation. A pile of dry grass or small brush shelter inside a cave would give you rain protection while reducing the space that has to be heated. The ultimate in survival shelters? Whatever works for your situation.

Copyright Steve Gillman. See the page “Survival Shelters” for more on specific shelters, including illustrations: http://www.The-Ultralight-Site.com/survival-shelters.html

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Survival Shelters – What Works Best?