Biome · sample of the new structure
Temperate forest
Terrain: a flat stretch of slow-moving river (easier to fish, safer to drink after boiling) beats a fast mountain stream in the same forest (colder, harder to fish, but cleaner).
Если вы потерялись в лесу
- Остановитесь. Сделайте несколько медленных выдохов. Если можете безопасно вернуться по собственным следам к точно известной точке — вернитесь. Если нет — не блуждайте: сообщите координаты и оставайтесь заметным.
- Проверьте тело и время. Кровотечение, боль, промокшая одежда, заряд телефона, связь, погода и остаток света важнее поисков еды.
- Выберите сухое место. Выше поймы, не в овраге, не под сухими или зависшими ветвями, не на корнях и торфе. Отметьте путь до воды, чтобы вернуться.
- Сначала кров и подстилка. Тент или навес уменьшает ветер и дождь; толстый сухой слой под телом важнее красивых стен. Костёр нужен только там, где его можно контролировать и полностью потушить.
- Подайте сигнал и подготовьте воду. Свисток, яркая ткань, сообщение с координатами. Прозрачная вода всё равно может быть заражена: кипятите или обеззараживайте.
- Не уходите «наугад» перед темнотой. Перемещайтесь только от непосредственной угрозы: пожар, паводок, падающие деревья или разрушение укрытия.
Day 1, hours 1–2 — scouting
⏱ 30–60 minutes, no more — this is scouting, not workA hollow, a ravine, or dense vegetation gives away water. Camp on dry, raised ground — not on a floodplain, not under standing deadwood. The main danger here is losing your bearings and the panic that follows, not an animal.
Day 1, rest of the day — cordage, fire, shelter
⏱ cordage ~30–60 min · fire 30–45 min (double that for a beginner) · lean-to 2–4 hours — usually the whole day's daylightThree things, in this order. Cordage comes first because without it you cannot build a fire-bow, a shelter frame, or a snare. Each step is broken down below.
1. Cordage from linden inner bark
How to tell a linden: a leaf the size of your palm, heart-shaped, with an uneven base — one half starts lower than the other. That's the key sign; other trees with heart-shaped leaves have a symmetrical base. The leaf edge is finely toothed, and young trees have smooth grey bark.
- Find a fallen or already-cut linden, or a thick branch. Never strip bark all the way around a live tree — it will kill it.
- With a knife or a sharp flake, cut the bark lengthwise and peel off a strip about a palm wide and a metre to a metre and a half long.
- Put the strips in water — a stream, a puddle, any container — for several days. The bark will soften and start to separate into layers. This is called "retting," and without it the fibre will be brittle.
- Pull the softened bark apart into layers: discard the outer crust, you need the inner layer — the inner bark, which is soft and fibrous. Tear it into finger-wide strips.
- Twist two strands in opposite directions: twist each strand away from you, then twist the two together toward you. Once released, the strands wind around each other and hold. Splice in new fibre by overlapping as you go.
No linden, or no time for retting — use thin spruce roots instead: dig up a pencil-thick root near the surface by the trunk, pull it out, clean it, and use it as is. It bends, ties, and holds. Faster still — strips of fresh willow bark.
- 1 Linden. The one sign that never fails is the uneven leaf base. Check that, not the heart shape — many trees have heart-shaped leaves.
- 2 Inner bark. The middle layer between the outer crust and the wood. Soft, fibrous, pulls off in strips. Brittle unmoistened, works after soaking.
- 3 Twisting. Each strand unwinds one way, then the two wind together the other way — that's what locks them and stops them coming apart. No knot involved.
- 4 Substitutes. Spruce roots and willow withies need neither retting nor twisting — use them when you need cordage today.
2. Fire by bow drill
The name sounds scary, the device is simple: a cord on a bow spins a stick, the stick rubs against a board, the friction sheds hot dust, the dust turns into an ember, and you blow the ember into flame. You need four parts.
- Board — a dry flat piece of softwood 2 cm thick: willow, linden, aspen, poplar. Test: your fingernail leaves a dent — it will do.
- Spindle — a straight stick of the same wood, thumb-thick, forearm-long. Blunt one end (for the board), point the other (for the handhold).
- Bow — a curved branch as long as your arm, with your cord tied loosely to it. The cord should be slack: the spindle goes into it with a loop under tension.
- Handhold — a stone with a dimple, or a piece of hardwood, that you press down on the spindle so it doesn't burn your palm.
Assembly and technique: make a small dimple in the board, and next to it cut a wedge-shaped notch reaching the board's edge — hot dust will fall through it. Put a dry leaf or piece of bark under the notch. Wrap the cord once around the spindle, set it in the dimple, press down with the handhold, and move the bow back and forth its full length, slowly at first, then fast and with pressure. When smoke appears, keep going for another dozen strokes.
An ember is not a flame. A black, smoking pile will collect in the notch. Carefully transfer it into a "nest" of dry grass, birch bark, or cattail fluff, and blow long and steady, holding the nest in your hands. It will burst into flame all at once — feed it straight into a small teepee of thin twigs you've built beforehand.
- 1 The notch is the part that matters most. A wedge cut from the dimple out to the edge of the board, about an eighth of the way round the dimple. Without it the hot dust stays under the spindle and never gathers into an ember — this is the number one reason people say it "doesn't work".
- 2 One turn of the string. The spindle goes into the loop so the string wraps it exactly once. Two turns and the string saws through itself; none and the spindle slips.
- 3 Keep the string loose. A tight string will not let you fit the spindle and snaps. The tension appears by itself once the spindle is in.
- 4 Grease the socket. A green leaf, a little fat, resin or earth in the dimple of the socket — so the top of the spindle slides instead of heating up. Only the bottom is supposed to get hot.
- ! Prepare the nest for the ember beforehand. An ember lives for minutes. While you go looking for dry grass it will die, and you will have to do the whole job again.
What to light it with: tinder
A birch is impossible to mistake for anything else: white bark with short black horizontal dashes, peeling off in thin ribbons.
Birch bark is the best tinder of the temperate forest: it burns even wet, because it is soaked in resinous substances. Take only the outer ribbons that have already lifted, and never cut a ring around a living tree. Scrape it into a fluff with your knife — like that it catches a spark instantly.
What else works: dry grass rubbed into a "bird's nest"; cattail down; combed-out fibres of the same lime inner bark; crumbly rot from a dry rotten stump. All of it has to be dry and fluffy — an ember will not take to dense material.
3. Shelter: a debris hut of branches and leaf litter
What works is not the "roof" but the thick layer of leaf litter: it traps air, and air is the insulation. A thin hut of bare poles gives no warmth at all.
- Find a log or a fork at waist height. Lay on it the ridgepole — a straight pole a little longer than you are tall. The other end rests on the ground.
- Lean the ribs against the ridgepole from both sides — branches at an angle, close together, like a fir tree. You get a frame you can barely fit into lying down.
- Throw fine brushwood across the ribs — a lattice, so the leaf litter does not fall through inside.
- Pile on top leaves, needles, grass, moss — a layer from 30 cm, better up to your elbow. The test: from inside you should not see a single gap of sky.
- Stuff dry leaves inside underneath you at least 20 cm thick. The ground pulls heat out of you harder than the wind does.
- Block the entrance with your pack or an armful of branches. The tighter it is inside, the warmer.
Not going to finish before dark? Build a lean-to: one sloping wall of poles and leaf litter, open towards the fire. It goes up in 45 minutes and saves you from rain and wind almost as well. You can finish the hut in the morning.
🌙 Night 1
The hardest night — physically, because the shelter is still unfinished, and mentally, because fear and cold on the first night are normal and it does get easier; it is not a sign that you are failing. If the hut is not finished, do not finish it in the dark — sit by a small fire under whatever you already have, the lean-to or the frame, keep the fire going constantly but small. Do not leave camp in the dark for anything.
Days 2–3 — still the critical window
⏱ This is the famous "72 hours" — the FEMA and Red Cross standard: almost everything is decided in this window, and after it things get easierThe hut is brought up to a full layer of leaf litter. Water becomes a system rather than a one-off, using hot stones to boil. Snares go out, but the first catch is not guaranteed — that is normal, hunger is not the priority yet (see Part 1, the order of threats).
🌙 Nights 2–3
Шалаш уже уменьшает ветер, но проверьте щели и добавьте сухую листву или лапник снаружи. Дрова заготавливают засветло, чтобы не работать режущим инструментом ночью. Если нет бодрствующего дежурного, костёр перед сном полностью гасят: проливают водой, перемешивают, снова проливают и проверяют, что угли холодные на ощупь.
Week 1 — stability
⏱ The rest of the weekWater and food are sorted (in detail in the "Food and water" tab). Snares get checked every 12 hours — that is background, not a separate job.
🌙 Night, week 1
A real routine appears: in the evening, boil water for the morning, check the snares, stack firewood, then sleep a full cycle (the fear of the first nights has usually died down by now). Still do not let the fire go out entirely — it is warmth, and it keeps curious animals off (see the "Threats" tab).
Weeks 2–4 — building up
⏱ No hurryA bow of ash or yew. Tanning with oak or willow bark. Smoking meat over several days in indirect smoke. Firing clay where clay comes to the surface near water.
🌙 Night, weeks 2–4
With a tanned hide and a stock of smoked meat, the night turns into a question of comfort rather than survival. The main task is not to let routine dull your attention: the same fire, the same check around the camp before sleep.
A month and beyond — settling in
⏱ OngoingA log cabin or a dugout for good. A garden once you are settled. Plant medicine — with the same caution as food.
Animals
Make noise as you move — a bear sees poorly and hates being caught by surprise. If you see one, do not run and do not climb a tree, it climbs faster. Back away slowly, talking in a calm voice. If it makes contact: drop face down, hands locked behind your neck, legs apart, and lie still until the animal leaves. What to do: Do not run and do not climb a tree. Back away slowly, talk calmly, hold your jacket open to look bigger. If it makes contact — drop face down, hands locked behind your neck, and lie still until the animal leaves.
Not dangerous in itself, but a wounded one, or a sow with piglets, will attack. Do not approach; give way. What to do: Give way and put a tree between you: a boar runs in a straight line and turns badly. Never get between a sow and her piglets.
They carry encephalitis and Lyme disease — check your whole body after the forest and remove them within a day. What to do: Trousers tucked into socks, a full body check every evening. Pull an attached tick out with tweezers or a loop of thread, twisting as you go — do not smother it in oil. Watch the spot on your skin and your temperature for two weeks.
Тяжесть укуса заранее не определить. Не трогайте и не пытайтесь поймать или убить змею. При укусе: вызовите помощь, оставайтесь неподвижным, снимите кольца и часы, держите конечность в удобном нейтральном положении и накройте место чистой сухой повязкой. Не резать, не отсасывать, не прикладывать лёд и не накладывать жгут.
At night: animals are more active but avoid noise and light — a fire keeps them at a distance all by itself.
Water
Where to get it: streams at the riffles, where the water tumbles over stones — it is cleaner there than in a still pool; dew off the grass in the morning, which you wipe up with a cloth and wring out; in spring, birch sap from a cut in the bark. Standing puddles and bog water come last.
How to boil without a pot
A birch-bark or wooden container will burn on a fire. So you bring the fire to the water, not the other way round.
- Fold a box out of birch bark, pinching the seams with a split twig, or hollow a dip in a log. Pour in the water.
- Heat fist-sized stones in the fire until they glow. Use stones that are dry, not out of the stream: a stone soaked with water can burst and scatter the coals.
- Move the stones into the water one at a time with tongs made from a forked stick. The water will hiss and boil.
- Keep it boiling for at least a minute, adding fresh stones. Take the cooled ones out and heat them again.
Boiling is required even for clear stream water: the organisms get in from animals upstream, and that does not change how the water looks.
Food: protein first, plants second
Meat, fish and insects are safer than plants for one reason: they cannot be confused with a deadly lookalike. Getting a plant wrong costs your life; getting your catching method wrong only costs time.
The snare is the most productive trap for a beginner
- Find an animal trail: a narrow beaten path through grass or undergrowth, often with droppings and hair caught on branches. Setting one at random in the middle of the forest is pointless.
- Make a sliding loop out of cord — a free knot that tightens when pulled.
- Hang the loop over the trail: a fist across, with the bottom edge a palm's width off the ground. Tie it off to a peg or a bent branch.
- Narrow the gap at the sides with twigs, so the animal goes through the loop and not past it.
- Set a dozen loopsrather than one: only a small share of them fire. Check twice a day.
Your hands smell. Hold the loop in the smoke of your fire or rub it with earth — a human smell frightens animals off.
Even simpler than a snare: fishing, with a hook of hawthorn thorn or bone and a line from the same cord, and insects — grubs in rotten stumps, grasshoppers, ant eggs. Unpleasant but safe and nourishing. Cook them.
Plants you can eat without taking a risk
The list is deliberately short. It only includes what an inexperienced person can identify by one or two obvious features. Everything that takes experience has been left out of this guide — not because it is inedible, but because the price of a mistake is out of all proportion.
The leaves sit strictly in pairs opposite each other, the edge is coarsely toothed, and stem and leaf are covered in stinging hairs. It stings when you touch it — and that sting is your proof you have the right plant. Boil 5–10 minutes and the sting is gone. Young tops are best.
The leaves lie in a rosette straight off the ground, the stem is hollow and carries no leaves, a broken stem gives white milky sap, and the flower is yellow. You eat the leaves, whose bitterness goes with boiling, and the root.
Take it only when you can see the brown cigar-shaped head on top — then there is nothing to confuse it with. The rootstock and the white bases of the young stems are edible. It grows at the water's edge.
A leaf with rounded lobes and a nut in a "cap" — recognisable at once. Raw, it is poisonous because of the tannins. Shell it, crush it, soak and boil it through several changes of wateruntil the water stops turning brown.
Dangerous lookalikes — the things that kill people
Two cases where the edible and the deadly grow side by side and look alike. Look at the difference, not at the general resemblance.
If the brown head is there, there is no doubt. The leaf is flat and soft, with no sharp ridge.
The young spring shoots look like cattail. It never has a head; it has a large flower instead, and the rootstock is poisonous. The rule: no brown head — we do not touch it.
It stings, leaves in pairs, no umbrella of white flowers.
An umbrella of many small white flowers, the stem smooth, hollow and blotched with purple, with an unpleasant mousy smell. Deadly in a small dose. Edible members of this family exist, but only a specialist can tell them apart — which is why this guide bans the whole carrot and parsley family outright, with no exceptions.
Не проверяйте незнакомую ягоду на коже или во рту. Отсутствие жжения не подтверждает съедобность, а малая проба не гарантирует безопасной дозы. Если кто-то уже съел неизвестный вид, сохраните образец или фотографию и как можно быстрее свяжитесь с экстренной службой или токсикологическим центром; не вызывайте рвоту без указания специалиста.
nothing — just scouting
twisted cordage · stone flake knife · bow-drill set · debris hut or lean-to
bark and wood containers · snares · figure-4 deadfall · bone hook
bow and arrows · tanned hide · clay pots · smokehouse
log cabin or dugout · garden
↳ Improvised gear (pump, shadoof, charcoal)↳ How the levels work in general
Where to put it: six checks
You choose the spot once and it is expensive to change. Walk the site and check in this order:
- Dry and higher up. A slight rise, not a hollow. The test: dig a spade's depth — if water appears in the hole within an hour, the spot is no good.
- Water within five minutes' walk, but no closer than twenty paces to the bank: flooding, damp and mosquitoes.
- Look up. Dead trees, cracked branches, leaning trunks within one and a half tree-heights — clear them or move. A falling branch breaks a roof, and a person.
- Where the wind comes from. The blank wall faces the prevailing wind, the entrance faces away from it. Easy to work out: look at which side the trees have broken limbs and leaning crowns.
- Sun. The entrance and the single window face south (in the northern hemisphere). That is free heating for half the day.
- Materials to hand. Clay, stone, poles and water all need to be within a hundred paces. Every extra metre is one you will walk hundreds of times.
- 1 A stone footing. A course of flat stones round the perimeter, set a palm's depth into the ground. A post driven straight into the soil rots in 2–3 years; on stone it stands for decades — wood and clay must not touch the ground. Dick Proenneke started the same way in Alaska — he laid a gravel footing for his cabin from stone lifted off the lake bed.
- 2 Posts. Uprights an arm thick, dug in or standing on stones, every 1–1.5 metres. This is the skeleton; everything else hangs on it.
- 3 The wattle. Flexible rods — willow, hazel, birch — are woven horizontally between the posts. You get a lattice for the clay to hold on to. Weave from the bottom up, each rod passing in front of one post and behind the next.
- 4 The daub. Clay mixed with straw or dry grass and water is pressed into the wattle from both sides, a palm thick. The straw stops the clay cracking — and that is the entire secret of a thousand-year-old technology.
- 5 The roof. A pitch of at least 45° — on a shallow roof the water sits and finds its way inside. Covering: straw, reed, shingles, bark, conifer boughs — laid overlapping from the bottom up.
- 6 Hearth and chimney. Stonework laid in clay. A chimney is not optional, and not a "gap in the roof" but a flue: carbon monoxide has no smell and kills you in your sleep.
- 7 Floor. Beaten clay, or a deck of poles raised a palm above the soil. Bare earth pulls out heat and pulls in damp.
- ! You do not daub in rain or frost. Wet daub slides off, frozen daub cracks across the whole wall. Work in dry warm weather, and put the roof up before the daub, so the walls dry under cover.
How to build a wattle-and-daub house
- Mark out a rectangle 2×3 m per person, with pegs and string. To check the corners are square without any instrument: the diagonals must be equal. Measure them with the string and move the pegs until they match.
- Lay the stones round the perimeter: strip the turf, level it, set flat stones edge to edge. Check level with water in a dish, or a string and a weight.
- Set the corner postsfirst, then the ones between, every 1–1.5 m. Tie them together along the top with a horizontal plate — this is the most important part: without it the frame folds like a house of cards.
- Weave the walls with rods. Do not rush — dense wattle holds the clay, sparse wattle drops it. Leave openings for a door and one small window.
- Put the roof up before you daub. Ridge, rafters every 60–80 cm, battens across them. The overhang is at least half a metre past the wall: it protects the daub from rain, and it decides how many years the daub will last.
- Mix the clay with water and straw — with your feet in a pit, like dough. Mixed right, a lump holds together in your hand without crumbling and without running.
- Daub the walls from both sides, pressing the clay into the wattle. Let it dry for 1–2 weeks, then fill the cracks with a second thin coat. Cracks will definitely appear; that is normal.
- Build the hearth of stone laid in clay, and take the flue up above the ridge. The first fire is small and long: the stove is drying itself out, and a big fire straight away will tear it apart.
- Floor, door, sleeping bench. The door is a woven frame daubed with clay, or a nailed-together panel; hang it on leather or wooden hinges.
The check before winter. Light the fire and walk along the walls with your hand out: wherever it draws, add clay on the outside. Build an earth berm — a bank of soil along the walls, knee high. It closes off the coldest place in the house, the joint between wall and ground, and costs one day's work.
If you have a real axe — then instead of wattle and daub you cut a log cabin, and that is better in every way except how long it takes. The logs in each course are laid butt-end alternating, the corner notches cut downwards so water does not run in, and moss goes between the courses. In 1968 Dick Proenneke put up a cabin like that alone in Alaska in a single summer, with hand tools, and lived in it for over thirty years.
Insulation: where the heat actually goes
↳ What to build it with: improvised gear↳ When to build it: seasons
Smoke, air and the door
Door
The main threat of this biome. Fire runs uphill and downwind, and across dry grass faster than a person can run.
Signs in advance: a smell of burning that is not your fire, ash or flakes of soot out of the sky, animals and birds all moving the same way, a red glow at night.
What to do: не исследовать пожар и не пытаться тушить его самостоятельно. Сообщить координаты экстренным службам, выполнить указание об эвакуации и уходить по известному пути к дороге, воде, каменистой площадке или другой зоне без растительности. Направление огня меняется с ветром и рельефом, поэтому универсальной команды «вниз» или «поперёк ветра» нет.
Если отрезаны: немедленно сообщить точку, уйти от травы, кустов и деревьев на максимально большой негорючий участок и защищать дыхание от дыма. Канава в растительности не является надёжным укрытием.
In a storm the forest becomes more dangerous than open ground. You do not stay in the forest in a strong wind. Get out to a clearing, a felled patch, an open low bank, and lie down. The dangerous ones are: standing dead wood, trees with a broken top, leaning trunks, branches hung up overhead. Survey the camp for these in advance, on a calm day — once the wind has started it is too late to be walking among trees. What to do: In a strong wind, get out of the forest into the open and lie down. Clear the camp of dead wood and hung-up branches in advance.
Count the seconds between the flash and the thunder and divide by three — that gives you the distance in kilometres. Under 30 seconds and you are in the strike zone.
What to do: безопасного положения снаружи нет. Не останавливаться ради «позы от молнии», а двигаться к капитальному зданию или закрытому автомобилю. Если они недоступны, снизить риск: уйти с гребня и открытого поля, держаться подальше от воды, металла, скал и одиноких высоких объектов; в группе разойтись. Ждать в безопасном укрытии 30 minutes after the last thunder.
A river rises in hours, and in a narrow valley in minutes, from rain falling upstream that you cannot see. Put the camp above the line of old debris and grass caught in the bushes: that line is the mark of the last flood. Do not cross a flow deeper than your knee — at that depth the water already knocks you off your feet, and in muddy water you cannot see holes and snags. What to do: Camp above the line of old debris in the bushes. If the water clouds or gets loud, go straight up the slope, not along the channel.
In the forest it is barely dangerous in itself — what is dangerous is what falls. Move away from big trees and rock outcrops, sit down in the open and wait it out. Afterwards: check whether cracks have opened in the ground and whether a landslip has undercut trees above the camp; expect aftershocks in the hours and days that follow, and they can be stronger than the first one. What to do: Get out into the open away from trees, rocks and buildings, sit down and wait it out. Afterwards, expect aftershocks and check the slope above your camp.
The sign: a dark funnel from a low cloud, a roar, a sudden stillness and a drop in pressure. Move at right angles to the way it is going, rather than running straight ahead of it. Shelter is any dip in the ground: a ditch, a gully, a hole. Lie face down and cover your head with your hands. A car, or a building of light materials, is not shelter. What to do: Move at right angles to the way the funnel is going, lie face down in a ditch, cover your head with your hands.
There can be voids under a forest: limestone caves, abandoned mine tunnels and cellars, filled-in wells, old trenches and dugouts. A collapse opens instantly, and often under someone who has simply walked past it a hundred times.
Signs: round dips with steep edges, fresh cracks in a ring, turf sinking, trees leaning in all directions like a fan ("drunken forest"), a stream that goes underground and does not come back out. What to do: go around it and do not approach the edge — it collapses in pieces. Test a spot before you build on it: walk it, tapping the ground with a stick, and watch for sinking after rain. Never climb down into a hole you have found: carbon dioxide collects in enclosed voids, a person loses consciousness in minutes, and there is nobody to come and get you.
- Time. The less time you spend there, the less you have taken in. Leave straight away, not after packing.
- Distance. Every step away from the source cuts the dose, and cuts it fast.
- Shielding. Any mass between you and the source: earth, logs, a wall, water. Dense beats thick, thick beats thin.
Nuclear — what the forest does
The forest both helps and hinders. It helps: a dense canopy catches some of the fallout, which settles on the crowns instead of on you. It hinders: those same crowns then shake it all down in rain and wind, and forest floor and moss hold contamination for years — which is exactly why forest mushrooms and berries stay dangerous longer than anything else after an accident.
- The first minutes: get under cover — a dugout, a cellar, a gully, a pit roofed with logs and earth. Half a metre of earth cuts the radiation several times over.
- Take off your outer clothing and shoes and leave them outside — that removes up to 90% of what you carried in on yourself. Wash your hair without combing the dust through it.
- Sit tight for at least a day, better two or three: the most dangerous fallout is the first 24–48 hours, after which the level drops fast.
- Water: closed and deep is safer than open. A spring, a covered well, a deep borehole — yes. Rainwater, puddles, a stream after fallout — no. A filter takes out some particles along with the silt, but it does not make the water clean of what is dissolved in it.
- Food: tins and anything that was sealed are safe — wipe the outside. Later: avoid mushrooms, forest berries, moss, lichen and the meat of animals that feed on them — contamination builds up most of all along that chain.
Chemical
An industrial accident, a spill, a cloud on the wind. The signs: an unfamiliar sharp smell, watering eyes, a tickle in the throat, a metallic taste, dead birds and insects, dead fish in the water.
The key difference from radiation: almost all dangerous gases are heavier than air and flow downhill. So the behaviour is the opposite — go uphill and across the wind, onto high ground, not into a gully and not into a dugout. In a chemical cloud, a hollow, a cellar and a pit are the most dangerous places there are.
Breathe through folded damp cloth and close your eyes if you can. Once you are out of the cloud — undress, leave the clothes, wash with water and soap or ash, working from the top down. Do not rub your skin: that works it in deeper.
Biological: an illness that came from people
You will not be able to tell a deliberate release from an ordinary epidemic, and it does not matter — what you do is the same. In this sense the forest is the best place you could be: it is passed on by people, and there are no people around.
- Distance instead of everything else. Do not go near people, do not go into settlements, do not take things from abandoned camps.
- Water is boiled without exception, hands are washed before eating, and the latrine goes far from the water and from where you sleep.
- Anyone who falls ill is isolated at once: a separate shelter, separate dishes, a separate towel, and one person looking after them rather than everybody taking turns.
- Do not touch dead animals and do not eat carrion you find — not at any level of hunger.
↳ Why you left: nuclear threat and epidemic in detail↳ People: contact and protection
Path A — with bare hands
You know everything humanity knows, but you have nothing except your hands and what grows around you.
The first year
- Fire, cordage, a hut, snares — by the end of the first week.
- Birch-bark and clay vessels, smoking, tanned hide — by autumn.
- A house of wattle and daub — by the end of the first summer, if you started in spring.
- Wintering with a store of nuts, acorns, smoked meat and firewood.
Three years
- A garden of wild plants transplanted next to the house: sorrel, nettle, root vegetables.
- Bow, arrows, steady hunting. Dried herbs, honey from wild bees.
- Pottery firing, lime, brick — everything that is done at 900 °C (1,650 °F).
- A hand mill, a water wheel on the stream, a shadoof.
The ceiling, and an honest limit
- Achievable: a warm dry house, steady food, pottery, leather, nettle cloth, simple machines.
- Not achievable alone: metal. There is no bog iron in a temperate forest, and without it there is nothing to start the bloomery process with.
- Never: glass, electricity, precision mechanics. That is the work of a community of dozens, not one person.
The bottleneck of this biome
Not food and not cold, but solitude and injury. The forest forgives almost anything except a broken leg two days' walk from camp. Everything a lone person plans is built around not getting hurt.
Path B — on what is left
The same place, but within a day's walk there is something people abandoned. That does not cancel self-reliance — it only speeds it up.
What to look for here specifically
- Summer houses and allotment associations — the great prize of the forest: seeds, tools, glass jars, greenhouses, wells.
- Forestry stations and towers: saws, axes, cable, jerrycans.
- Forest roads and abandoned machinery: metal, wire, belts, batteries.
- Hunting cabins and ranger posts: stoves, cookware, salt.
What that unlocks
- A steel axe and a saw compress the house from a summer to a month. This is the biggest single jump available.
- A glass jar means preserving: winter stops being hungry.
- Seeds of cultivated plants are the only find that reproduces itself.
- Nails, wire, strapping — strength where cordage gives out.
The trap on this path
Summer houses and depots attract everyone — and it is the one place in the forest where you will meet people. Second: what you find makes you soft. Someone who lives a year out of tins can do nothing by the time they run out.
The ceiling by year
| Timescale | With bare hands | On salvage |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | House, fire, food for winter, pottery | The same in a month + preserving in jars |
| Year 3 | Garden, bow, leather, lime, simple machines | Real tools, a greenhouse, a store of salt and seed |
| Year 10 | A homestead for 2–4 people, everything up to 900 °C | The same plus metal — but only until it runs out |
Protecting yourself and your family
Children in the forest. Give them real work — brushwood, water, counting the days by the fire. Teach them two things before anything else: do not go out of earshot, and what to do if you do get separated (stop, make noise, stay put). Those are the same rules by which rescuers find 97% of lost people within a day.