Biome · wind and an empty horizon
Steppe
The steppe punishes you not with cold and not with heat but with absence: no timber, no shade, no shelter from the wind, no landmarks. Everything that comes to hand in a forest has to be carried in here, or found in the floodplain.
Если вы оказались в степи
- Остановитесь и проверьте ветер. Отметьте направление, видимые дороги, линии электропередачи, строения и дым. Не бегите к далёкому объекту без расчёта времени и воды.
- Уберите себя из экспозиции. Днём нужна тень, в холод и ветер — низкий ветрозащитный экран. Не ложитесь в русло, балку или сухой овраг: их быстро заполняет вода.
- Сохраните воду и ноги. Закройте кожу, осмотрите обувь, лечите потёртости сразу. Пейте регулярно; источник проверяйте и обеззараживайте.
- Сделайте заметный лагерь. Яркая ткань, свисток, координаты. Укрытие должно быть низким и хорошо закреплённым: ветер срывает высокий тент.
- Огонь — последнее решение. При сухой траве, сильном ветре или запрете используйте холодную еду либо горелку на очищенном негорючем участке; открытый костёр не разводите.
- Дым, запах гари или быстро приближающийся фронт огня — команда уходить сразу. Двигайтесь к уже выгоревшему или негорючему участку, дороге, воде; не прячьтесь в сухой траве.
Day 1, hours 1–2 — find a fold in the ground
⏱ 40–60 minutes. You are looking for a dip, not for waterFlat steppe only looks flat: there are gullies, washouts, ravines and old channels everywhere. Your camp goes in a dip, not on high ground, contrary to the forest rule. A dip also tends to lead you to water. Straight away take a bearing on a visible landmark — a lone tree, a burial mound, a post: it is easier to lose your direction in the steppe than in a forest, because there is nothing to look at.
Day 1, the rest — fuel and digging in
⏱ gathering fuel 1–2 hours · digging and a cover 2–3 hoursCordage: twisted dry grass (a rope of it, plaited like a braid) or sinew from an animal you have taken. Fuel: dry grass burns away instantly, so you need three times the stock you think; more reliable is dried herbivore dung, for centuries the main fuel of steppe nomads: it burns long and evenly, almost without flame, and it lies right on the surface.
Shelter is built downwards, not upwards. A hollow dug into the ground with a wall of the cut turf on the windward side beats any structure built above ground: the wind passes over the top. Turf cut into slabs is the main building material here, in place of logs.
1. Grass cord — the only cord the steppe offers
There are no trees, so there is no lime bark and no spruce root. But there is grass everywhere, and twisted up it holds quite well enough to lash a frame, set a snare and tie down a load.
- Take dry grass from last year, long and without leaves — it has already given up its moisture and will not rot. Green grass will do too, but it has to wilt for a day, or it shrinks and weakens.
- Lightly crush the bundle in your handsso the stems soften and stop snapping.
- Divide the bundle into two strands and take hold of the middle.
- Twist each strand away from you, and twist them around each other towards you. Released, the strands wind together on their own and do not come undone — that is the whole trick, and knots have nothing to do with it.
- When a strand runs out, work a new bundle in overlapping by a palm's width, not end to end. Extend the strands one at a time, not both at once, or you get a weak spot there.
How much it holds. A rope the thickness of your little finger will hold a person's weight on a static hang, but breaks under a snatch. For anything that matters, twist it three times as thick or lay three finished ropes into one. Sinew from an animal you have taken is stronger than any grass — dry it, split it into threads and soak it before use.
2. Fire without wood: dung and a pit
This is not a last resort. The dried dung of grazing animals — cattle, horses, sheep, saiga — was the main fuel of the steppe peoples for thousands of years. It barely smells, burns long and evenly, and lies right on the surface: it is easier to gather than deadfall in a forest.
- Take only fully dried cakes — they are light and grey and break with a dry crack. Fresh, damp ones smoke and will not catch.
- Dig a pit a palm deep and as wide as a washbasin. In the steppe the fire always goes in a pit: above ground the wind carries off both the heat and the fire itself.
- On the windward side put a stone, a lump of turf or the earth you dug out — a screen half a forearm high.
- Light it with dry grass and fine splinters, but grass burns away instantly — keep three times more of it to hand than seems necessary, and add dung the moment the flame catches.
- After that the fire settles into an even heat with almost no flame. Cooking on it is easier than on wood: the embers hold their temperature for hours.
Before lighting, pull the grass up for two paces around the pit. A steppe fire starts from a single spark and travels faster than a person can run.
3. A shelter built downwards
In a forest you hide from wind behind a wall. In the steppe there is nothing to build a wall from, and if you did build one it would blow away. So here you go below the level of the wind: it runs over the ground and over you.
"Turf" is the top layer of earth with the grass and roots in it. The roots hold it together like reinforcement, and it cuts into dense slabs that stack like bricks. In the steppe it is the one building material available without limit.
- Find a natural dip — a gully, a washout, an old channel. Digging a dip deeper is always easier than digging from scratch.
- Dig a pit your own length and waist deep. No deeper: cold air sinks at night and settles on the bottom.
- Cut the turf you take out into slabs about the size of a shoebox and stack them grass side down as a wall along the windward edge of the pit.
- Roof the pit with poles, the bones of a large animal, or anything long — and turf on top, grass side up. Leave the entrance on the lee side.
- On the floor, dry grass two palms deep. Bare earth will pull the heat out of you overnight.
The rain test: dig a shallow channel round the pit draining away downslope. Without it the first downpour turns your shelter into a bath — the commonest mistake when digging in.
🌙 Night 1
The wind usually picks up at night, and an open sky means heavy heat loss — even in summer a steppe night is noticeably colder than a forest night at the same latitude. Build the fire in a pit and screened on the windward side: in the open it burns through twice the fuel and barely warms you.
The advantage of an open horizon: the stars are fully visible, and if you need to find the compass points, night here is the best time of day. The drawback: your fire is also visible for tens of kilometres (see "Why you left").
Days 2–3 — water and the floodplain
⏱ The critical window. The main job is to turn occasional water into permanent waterWater in the steppe collects in dips and floodplains. Move downhill, along converging animal trails, towards a band of taller, greener vegetation — that is almost always a river or an oxbow. Find the floodplain and you get everything at once: water, willow and birch (timber for a frame and for cordage), thickets for shelter, and game coming down to drink.
🌙 Nights 2–3
A stock of fuel for the whole night, gathered in daylight, becomes part of the routine. Fire in a pit; belongings weighted down — a sudden night squall carries off anything loose. If there is tall dry grass nearby, remember that a steppe fire travels faster than a person can run. Burn off the ground around your fire in advance, or build it on bare earth.
Week 1 — the steppe starts feeding you
⏱ The rest of the weekOpen ground and an abundance of grazing animals make the steppe richer than forest for hunting, if you have anything to hunt with. Snares on the trails down to water, traps at burrows (except marmot burrows — see "Threats"), birds. Containers appear, and boiling, and smoking over a dung fire.
🌙 Night, week 1
A dug-in shelter roofed with poles and turf holds its own heat. The routine: fuel for tomorrow, check the snares, weight down anything that could fly away. The fire is kept at night partly because it keeps wolves off — in open country there is less cover, for you and for them.
Weeks 2–4 — the composite bow
⏱ Weeks, not daysThe crowning achievement of Level 3 in this particular biome: horn on the inner face works in compression, sinew on the outer face in tension, with a wooden core between them, all held with glue from hide and bone. Such a bow is more powerful and noticeably shorter than a simple one — which is everything when shooting from horseback or from cover in the grass. The Scythians and the Mongols made them this way. It is not a quick solution: one gluing and drying of the layers takes weeks.
A month and beyond — a felt dwelling
⏱ OngoingThe wind problem is finally solved not by digging in but by shape: a round demountable frame of springy poles (willow and birch from the floodplain) under felt or sewn hides. Wind flows around a dome from any direction instead of hitting a flat wall. The Scythians lived this way — Herodotus already describes their wagon-dwellings — and later the Mongols. It goes up and comes down in 1–3 hours, which is worth it if you are following the game rather than staying in one camp.
Animals
See above. Do not take them, do not butcher them, do not touch ones found dead — a dead animal is more dangerous than a live one. Their burrows are still useful as a marker: there is usually water nearby. What to do: Do not take them, do not butcher them, do not touch ones found dead — however hungry you are. Do not sleep on a colony.
Обычно избегает людей, но зимой риск выше. What to do: не убегать и не поворачиваться спиной; собраться группой, держать детей рядом, выглядеть крупнее, говорить громко и медленно отступать. Еду и отходы убрать от жилья. Не оставлять огонь без дежурного.
В высокой траве смотрите под ноги, носите закрытую обувь и не пытайтесь поймать 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.
There are no fewer of them here than in a forest, and tall grass is the perfect place to meet one. Check your whole body every 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.
Water: dips, gullies, oxbows, river floodplains. Dig at the lowest point of a gully, where the vegetation is greener and thicker than the rest. Converging animal trails lead to a watering place — the most reliable indicator there is in the steppe. Boiling is not optional: watering places are far more contaminated by livestock and wild animals than forest streams.
Protein is the basis. The steppe is rich in grazing animals and birds. Snares on the trails to water, traps, birds' nests in spring. Marmots and ground squirrels aside, hunting is easier here than in a forest: you can see game from far off, and the trails are predictable.
What you can eat without risk of a mistake
As in the other chapters, doubtful plants are left out. The reliable species are the same as in a forest, and they grow in the floodplain and along the gullies:
The leaves sit strictly in pairs opposite each other, and it stings when you touch it — that sting is the check. Boil 5–10 minutes.
A rosette of leaves straight from the ground, a hollow stem, white milky sap where it breaks, a yellow flower.
Only when you can see the brown seed head. It grows at the water's edge — in the steppe that means the floodplain and the oxbows.
find a dip · take a bearing on a landmark
cord from twisted grass · a dung fire · a dug-in shelter with a turf wall
containers · snares on the trails to water · smoking
the composite bow (horn + sinew + wood) · tanned hide · felt
a demountable felt dwelling · following the game
Where to put it
- In a fold of the ground — a gully, a washout, an old channel. Not on a crest: that is where all the wind is, and all the snow in winter.
- But not at the bottom of a gully: water goes there after every downpour and cold air sinks into it at night. The ideal is halfway up the slope.
- Next to the floodplain, if there is one: it gives you water, timber for the roof, willow for wattle, and shelter from the wind.
- The turf underfoot has to be dense: thick old grass with a felt of roots. Young sparse grass gives a slab that falls apart.
- Not on a marmot colony. The burrows undermine the foundation, and the animals themselves are dangerous (see "Threats").
- 1 Dug in to waist height. Half the house is already built by nature: earth below half a metre holds an even temperature all year.
- 2 Turf blocks. Slabs about 40×20×10 cm (16×8×4 in), laid grass side down, breaking the joints like brick. The roots grow into each other, and within a year the wall becomes a single mass.
- 3 The roof. Poles from the floodplain, reeds or grass across them, turf on top grass side up. A shallow fall, but a fall there must be.
- 4 Drainage. A channel round the house falling away downslope. Without it the first downpour floods the dug-out — the main reason such houses get abandoned.
- 5 A sleeping bench above the floor, at knee height, with a thick bedding of dry grass.
- 6 A dung hearth with a flue. In the steppe you burn dung cakes, and a stove for them is built with a large firebox and a gentle draw: it burns slowly and evenly.
- ! Turf is heavy. A wet turf roof weighs enough to break undersized poles. Take beams twice as thick as seems necessary and set them closer together.
How to build a turf house
- Cut turf while it is damp. After rain or early in the morning the slab holds together; in dry weather it crumbles. Score the ground into strips with a knife, a spade or a sharpened bone, and undercut from below.
- Dig a pit waist deep, and heap the spoil into a bank on the windward side.
- Lay the blocks grass side down, breaking the joints: the joint of the upper course falls in the middle of the one below. Every 3–4 courses, wet them and tread them down — the wall settles and compacts.
- Leave a narrow entrance on the lee side and one small window. Span the openings with a pole.
- The roof: beams every 50–60 cm, a dense layer of reed or grass across them, turf on top grass side up. An overhang past the wall is essential, or the rain washes the courses out.
- Dig a channel round the house and lead it away downslope. Check it in the first rain and correct it.
- Render the walls with clay inside, if you have any: it stops the crumbling, the insects, and the rodents that otherwise live in the wall itself.
- The stove and flue — of stone and clay, a firebox for dung cakes, the flue above the ridge.
Honestly about the drawbacks. A turf house crumbles, insects and mice live in it, and in heavy rain it can leak. The prairie settlers put up with all of that for years — because the alternative was the wind. Clay rendering inside and a good roof remove three quarters of the problems.
The nomadic version. If you are following the game you do not need a house — you need a demountable frame of bent floodplain withies under hides or felt. The round shape sheds wind from any direction, and it goes up in 1–3 hours. The Scythians and Mongols lived this way, and it is not a primitive substitute for a house but a different engineering answer to the same problem.
The wind: what this house is fighting
Smoke, air and the door
Door
Dry grass burns faster than a person can run, and the wind drives the front at the speed of a car. There is little smoke and the flame is low — which is exactly why it gets underestimated.
What to do: go across the wind, never downwind and never uphill. Safety is where there is nothing left to burn: water, a salt flat, a ploughed strip, a road, a rock outcrop, ground that has already burned.
A backfire is a steppe-dweller's trick and a last resort: if the front is close and there is nowhere to run, set the grass alight in front of you on the lee side, let a patch burn out and step onto it. This can only be done with time in hand and in the open, or you simply set yourself alight from the other side.
Prevention: burn or trample a clear patch around camp in advance.
Wind in the steppe builds up with nothing to stop it. A squall carries off anything loose, flattens awnings, puts out fires and can knock a person over.
What to do: get into the dug-out and weight everything light down with stones or bury it. Do not try to hold an awning down by hand: torn cloth can be mended, a dislocated shoulder cannot.
The steppe and the prairie are the classic place for tornadoes. The signs: a dark funnel, a roar, a green sky, large hail, a sudden stillness.
What to do: move at right angles to the funnel's track. The only shelter is a dip: a ditch, a washout, a ravine, a road cutting. Lie face down, cover your head, hold on to something rooted. Do not shelter under a lone tree and do not stay in a light structure.
Безопасного положения снаружи нет. При первых признаках грозы двигайтесь к капитальному зданию или закрытому автомобилю. Если они недоступны, уйдите с возвышения и открытого поля, не приближайтесь к одиноким деревьям, столбам, воде и металлу; группа расходится, чтобы один удар не поразил всех. Не полагайтесь на приседание как на защиту. Возвращайтесь наружу через 30 минут после последнего грома.
Steppe hail can be large and it arrives with no cover about. Shield your head with a rucksack or anything else, and get into the dug-out. Hail often comes before a tornado — afterwards, watch the sky rather than relaxing. What to do: Take cover in a dip, shield your head with a rucksack. After hail, watch the sky: a tornado often follows.
The winter steppe is more dangerous than the summer one. In a blizzard visibility is nil, there are no landmarks, and people walk in circles two hundred metres from camp.
What to do: do not go out. If it catches you, do not walk — dig in: a hole in the snow, back to the wind, roofed with whatever you have. From camp to the water and to your stores, run a guide rope in advance: in a blizzard it is the only way back.
The steppe looks level, but under the turf there are washouts, collapsed gully roofs, abandoned wells, silage pits and slurry pits. The last are particularly dangerous: they are covered by rotten boarding and there is no air inside.
Signs: round depressions, a patch of grass a different colour and height, a hollow sound, a gully edge with an overhanging lip. What to do: go round patches and dips, and do not walk along the very edge of a gully bank. Do not put your dwelling on a marmot colony — the burrows undermine the foundation, and the animals themselves are dangerous. Never go down into any pit you find.
- Time — leave straight away, not after packing.
- Distance — every step away from the source cuts the dose.
- Shielding — any mass between you and the source: earth, stone, water, a wall.
Nuclear
Your main protection here is the very pit you are digging for a dwelling anyway. Half a metre of earth cuts the radiation several times over, and a dug-in shelter with a turf roof is a ready-made fallout shelter.
- Dust is the main carrier. Dry steppe raises dust, and the wind lifts what has settled all over again. Face covered, gaps stuffed, the entrance curtained with damp cloth.
- Leave outer clothing and boots outside — that is up to 90% of what you carried in.
- A day at minimum, better two or three.
- Water: a well and a spring, yes; open ponds, oxbows and puddles, no.
- Food: milk and meat from grazing animals are dangerous — they concentrate the contamination from all the grass they have eaten. That is the steppe's main food chain and its main route of contamination.
Chemical
Heavy gases run down into gullies, washouts and into your pit. Here everything is reversed: go up, onto a ridge, and across the wind. The steppe is the one biome where climbing to high ground is the right move.
Breathe through damp cloth, keep your eyes shut, and once out, undress and wash from the top down without scrubbing the skin.
Biological
There are few people, and that protects you. But the steppe has a standing threat of its own that behaves like a biological weapon: marmots and ground squirrels carry plague, and infection comes through cuts while butchering. Never take them and never touch ones found dead — however hungry you are.
- Do not approach herds or people, and do not go into sheepfolds or abandoned farms.
- Boil water without exception: steppe watering places are more contaminated by livestock than forest streams.
- Isolate anyone who falls ill, separate dishes, one person caring for them.
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
- Grass rope, a dung fire, digging in — the first week.
- Snares on the trails to water, containers, smoking — the first month.
- A turf house — in 2–4 weeks; this is the fastest house in the guide.
- Reaching the floodplain: timber, willow, water, game — that is where people settle.
Three years
- Tanned hide, felt from wool — the steppe gives that better than anywhere.
- The composite bow of horn, sinew and wood — the summit of the local craft.
- A demountable round dwelling: wind flows round the dome from any direction.
- Firing clay from the gullies; sowing in the floodplain.
The ceiling, and an honest limit
- Achievable: a warm dwelling, steady hunting, hide and felt, a bow, pottery.
- Out of reach: anything needing timber in quantity — a log cabin, large machines, sustained heat for metal.
- A peculiarity: the steppe's ceiling is higher for a nomad than for a settler. It is the one biome where "a house" may turn out to be a mistake.
The bottleneck of this biome
Timber and fuel. Everything that comes to hand in a forest has to be carried in from the floodplain here, or replaced by turf, bone and dung.
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
- Abandoned farms, sheepfolds, grain yards — boards, roofing sheet, pipe, wire, containers, sometimes grain.
- Farm machinery in the fields: metal, belts, cable, bearings, hydraulics.
- Power-line poles and shelter belts — almost the only timber in the steppe.
- Roads and grain elevators: sacks, drums, tarpaulin.
What that unlocks
- Timber and sheet iron remove the biome's main limitation. The roof of a turf house stops being its weak point.
- Wire makes ideal snares for steppe game.
- Grain you find is seed, not just food. The steppe is the best arable land of all nine biomes.
- Containers solve the water problem in the dry season.
The trap on this path
Farms stand in plain sight and on roads. Plus the steppe risk: marmots and ground squirrels around the buildings — do not touch them (plague), and do not sleep where there are many of them.
The ceiling by year
| Timescale | With bare hands | On salvage |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | A turf house, hunting, a store for winter | The same in two weeks + a proper roof |
| Year 3 | Hide, felt, a bow, pottery, sowing in the floodplain | A plough from salvage, grain, containers — the move to farming |
| Year 10 | A nomadic or semi-settled household for a family | A small holding with arable land — a ceiling above the forest's |
Protecting yourself and your family
Children in the steppe. The main risks are getting lost (there are no landmarks) and fire. Teach them: from camp, only as far as a visible landmark and back; if you see smoke or flame, run across the wind to water or bare ground, not to camp. Agree a meeting point that can be seen from everywhere.