Interview with Jim at Survival Weekly

Jim at Survival Weekly, as site dedicated to all aspects of prepping and survival, has posted a review of my book Bug Out and the questions and answers to an interview I did with him that you may find interesting.  No worries about sound quality here as this interview is in writing.  Here is is from this page at Survival Weekly:

Author, adventurer, photographer, and all around wilderness expert. Scott B. Williams has truly been there and done that. He has traveled the world, living in some of the harshest climates known to man. All the while, practicing wilderness survival skills, learning what works and what doesn’t. His new book, BUG OUT, which I reviewed here, is part discussion on assembling a comprehensive bug out bag, and part travelogue of the best areas for bugging out in the United States. Scott was kind enough to sit down with me and answer a few questions. 

You have spent a considerable portion of your life in the outdoors, living off the land in a wide range of locations and climates. From your personal perspective, where did you have the toughest time? By that, I mean where did you find it the most difficult to obtain what you needed to survive?

It’s hard to rate one type of environment over another in terms of difficulty of living off the land, as they all present their own unique challenges. Of course, growing up in the Deep South and being accustomed to hot weather and sub-tropical conditions, I’ve found it easier to adjust to places like jungles, tropical seashores and islands and the deserts of the Southwest. For me personally, some of my trips in the high country of the Rockies, for instance, demonstrated that it would be difficult to survive there unless you really have your skills honed, especially in the cold months when you have the constant threat of hypothermia and food is harder to find. On the other hand, many of those cold locations are plentiful with big game, so if you have the means and the skill to take a larger animal and can preserve the meat before it spoils, you could be set for awhile. But these environments are not as easy to just walk into and start foraging and hunting small game as some of the other regions of the country.

I think we can all agree that knowledge/experience will usually trump gear/gadgets. The latest whiz bang gizmo may be all but worthless without the knowledge to operate it and an understanding of the principles behind it. With that said, there are certainly many pieces of equipment out there to help make a bug out situation a little easier. Any recent innovations you’ve come across worth mentioning?

I’m generally against gizmos and gadgets, mainly because they will likely fail when you become dependent upon them. But as long as it’s working, I particularly like things like the compact hand-held GPS units that are now available pre-loaded with detailed topo maps. Such a device can give you a lot of confidence and more freedom to travel in really trackless wilderness with the assurance that you can get where you’re going, even at night. I like the fact that I can locate an interesting point in some swamp or mountain area I’ve never been to at home in advance on the computer, then plug in the coordinates and use the GPS to go right to it.

Another useful gadget I like a lot is my Casio 1500 Pathfinder multi-function atomic watch that has a built-in electronic compass that has proven extremely accurate. The watch is solar-powered, so it never needs batteries, and it includes a barometer and altimeter function.

Another fantastic piece of technology that is incredibly useful for those of us who go to sea in small boats or kayak remote coastlines is the hand-held, reverse-osmosis Desalinator, which enables one to drink seawater and has saved many lives of those stranded on life rafts or in similar situations.

You’ve mentioned your preference for a machete over a large sheath knife both in BUG OUT and on your Bug Out Survival blog. I find this interesting as it is a unique perspective in my own studies of survival texts and I tend to agree with you. Could you explain to our readers why you have such a high regard for having a machete in a bug out bag?

Again, having grown up the jungle-like hardwood bottomlands and swamps of the Deep South, I have been around machetes all my life, and have long recognized the need for a blade that is big and heavy enough to quickly cut a path through briars, cane brakes and other thickets that would otherwise be difficult to penetrate. I also spent some time in my younger years working on a land-surveying crew, where we frequently had to cut thousands of feet of sight lines every day through these kinds of obstructions. Then, after that I saw the endless and creative ways the natives of Central America and the Caribbean use the machete and then tried some of these myself. I have found no tool that can substitute for a good machete. It’s lightweight, easy to carry, mostly maintenance free and can double as a formidable weapon.

One of the topics you address in BUG OUT is the fantasy versus reality of living off the land. I feel this chapter should be required reading for anyone entertaining thoughts of heading for the hills in a bug out situation. In your experience, what are some of the most common fallacies people have when it comes to roughing it in the wilderness?

People seem to fall into one or the other extremes: those who think they can head out in the wild like Tarzan with nothing but a knife, or a mountain man with a rifle and a bag of salt; and those who have formed the opinion that it’s absolutely impossible for any modern human to live off the land and without supplies to last months or years survival is hopeless.

I wrote Chapter One to address these ways of thinking and present my opinions. I don’t want to mislead anyone into thinking that a bug-out bag is a guarantee of success and that by having it they will be able to just head for the hills and find the living easy. That’s why throughout the first part of the book I stress skills over stuff, and suggest extensive planning, location scouting, and even trial runs and test trips to sort out the gear in the bag and practice the skills.

But one big reason I wrote the book is to open people’s eyes to just how much uninhabited land there is all around them, even in a heavily-industrialized nation like the U.S. I wanted to present bugging out to the wild as an option and show that it can be done with the right skills and gear, and that there is hope, and you don’t have to just give up if you don’t have or can’t afford a well-stocked retreat somewhere in the countryside. No survival plan can be guaranteed to succeed. But those who are open to all the options will have a better chance than most.

What would you say are the three most essential things to include in a bug out bag?

This can vary with the region you live in, of course, but it’s always helpful to remember the “Rule of Threes”: 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food, and plan accordingly.

1. Shelter from the elements – at minimum a parka or poncho – preferably a good tarp and sleeping bag as well.

2. A reliable means of making fire.

3. Enough water and high-energy food to get you through the first part of the crisis and sustain you until you can begin trying to find more of both in the wild.

At the back of BUG OUT, you have a fairly extensive recommended reading list. If you could only pick two or three books to suggest concerning wilderness survival, what would they be?

The one that went with me on all my long kayak trips and many other excursions was How to Survive on Land and Sea, by Frank C. Craighead, Jr. and John J. Craighead, Naval Institute Press.

There are many newer ones that look good too, especially John “lofty” Wiseman’s SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in Any Climate, on Land or at Sea.

It will be different depending on your region, but I always suggest a guidebook to the edible and useful plants of the area you will be traveling through or bugging out to.

You have an extensive background in kayaking, canoeing, and boating in general. From a practical standpoint, would you recommend that mode of travel for a bug out situation?

Absolutely, assuming your are already in a region with navigable waterways such as streams and rivers or estuaries and the seacoast. A boat can immediately take you out of reach of the much larger percentage of the population that does not have a means to take to the water, and get you to places where you will be inaccessible to many that might want to cause you harm. The places it can take you will also offer better resources for living off of the land by virtue of their inaccessibility without a boat. The other advantages of course, are that you can carry more stuff, depending on the vessel, and you can use it for hunting, fishing and foraging once you get to your bug-out location.

I’m partial to boats of many types because of my extensive experiences with them and the many miles I’ve traveled unnoticed, even through populated areas. Bugging out by boat is not for everyone, but if you’re willing to put the time in to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills, it could be one of your best options.

Any new books on the horizon? What’s next for you?

I’m working day and night on my next survival-related book right now. It will be published by Ulysses Press as well, and is scheduled to be released in February, 2011. The title as of now is: Would You Survive?: The 13 Deadliest Scenarios and How Others Got Out Alive. The book will be a mix of fictional scenarios that puts the reader in each situation, and real-life accounts of some of the most harrowing survivor’s tales in recent times. The goal is for it to be both entertaining reading and informative at the same time.

Blog Talk Radio Interview with Dr. Prepper

I did a live interview by phone a couple of weeks ago on the "Dr. Prepper" show on Blog Talk Radio.  I was the second guest that evening after the interview with Daryl Stevenett, the found of Life Caps, a "survival pill" designed to sustain a person without food for days if necessary in a crisis.  I haven't tried the Life Caps myself, but they look interesting and certainly wouldn't take up much space in a bug-out bag. 

My part of the interview didn't go so well, mainly because I was out of town that evening and had to make the call from my cell phone.  The sound quality was not so good and Dr. Prepper had to keep asking me to speak louder, which broke my train of thought several times.  A lot of the questions were about my long-distance sea kayaking trips that led me eventually down the path to writing Bug Out and creating this blog.  If you're interested, you can scroll down through the list of recent shows below to the July 15 show and listen to it:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DoctorPrepperShowBlogTalkRadioFeed

Bug Out Boat: Folding PakCanoe

If you've read my Bug Out book, you know that a lot of the prime roadless bug-out locations that I describe are along rivers or in swamps, lakes or coastal marshes - especially in regions like the Gulf Coast Southeast (Chapter 5), the East Coast (Chapter 6) and the North Woods (Chapter 8).  Many of these locations will be inaccessible to you if you don't have a boat of some sort, and some of the most remote areas are only accessible by the smallest boats such as canoes and kayaks that can be carried over or around obstructions.

The folks who are most likely to need the bug-out strategy in the first place are those in some of the larger urban or suburban areas of these regions, many of whom live in apartments or other situations where storing boats is problematic.  There are many solutions to such obstacles, but it occurred to me that many readers here may not be aware of some of the options available, like the PakCanoe, a folding canoe that I have personally had quite a bit of experience with in some really tough conditions.

Folding kayaks have been around for a long time, based as they are on the original kayaks from the Arctic that were built with a skin-on-frame construction.  Folding canoes are more difficult to engineer because of the lack of decks, which add rigidity and tie the hull sides together.  But Alv Elvstad, the designer of the Pak Boats line of folding canoes and kayaks, has overcome the difficulties and has been producing a proven folding canoe for quite some years now. 

These canoes range from shorter solo craft to the 17-foot tandem expedition canoe like the one shown above.  They consist of a take-down aluminum frame that assembles much like the aluminum poles in a modern tent, and a skin of tough PVC coated fabric with a Hypalon bottom like those found in a Zodiac inflatable dinghy.  These canoes are not fragile as you might think at first glance.  Instead, they excel in handling whitewater rapids and absorb the bumps and blows of rocky rivers better than many hard shell canoes.

The best part about these boats is that they can be disassembled and stored in a closet in your apartment or kept in the trunk of a car or otherwise carried on a larger bug-out vehicle until you get to where you need a boat.  My experience with the 17-foot PakCanoe began in 1995 when my friend and fellow Mississippi writer Ernest Herndon and I decided we wanted to canoe the remote Patuca River in the Mosquitia Region of Honduras.  If you ever saw the movie or read the novel, The Mosquito Coast, this is the river part of the story takes place on.

You don't get to a river like the Patuca by driving to the boat ramp. The upper reaches of this river are surrounded by mountainous jungle.  To get there, we hopped a ride on a missionary bush plane out of La Ceiba, on the coast, to a Rus Rus, a Miskito Village near the Rio Coco, which forms the border with Nicaragua.  There's a dirt road that leads from Rus Rus a bit farther up the Coco to the village of Auas Bila, and from there we had to travel by motorized dug-out up the Coco to a place where a foot path leads through a pass in the mountains separating the Rio Coco from the Rio Patuca.  We could not have carried any sort of rigid canoe on this trip, the first obstacle being the bush plane flight, and then the trip up the Rio Coco, which has many rapids, then the two day trek on a muddy trail through the jungle to the Rio Patuca.  But with the PakCanoe stored away in two duffel bags in addition to all our camping gear and food supplies, the trip was doable with the help of some Miskito guides we hired at Auas Bila.

Here's a photo of the giant dugout we took up the Rio Coco, along with our guides and the bags containing the canoe and gear.  The village outboard for the big canoe is not yet mounted here:

The assembly site at the end of the trail connecting the Rio Coco with the Rio Patuca.  The guides had to use their machetes to make a clearing big enough for us to camp and put together the 17-foot boat.  There was no sandbar or other opening on the river bank here.  You can barely see the rolled up red canoe in the photo below, almost swallowed up in all that tropical greenery. 

We said goodbye to our guides and set off paddling down the Patuca, our destination the village of Brus Laguna, on the Caribbean coast of Honduras.  Once we started moving downriver, the scenery opened up like this:

Here's a shot of Ernest Herndon with the PakCanoe somewhere on the Patuca.  We made it all the way to the coast without issues with the boat.  It carried the load well, handled minor rapids we encountered, and allowed us to make a decent daily mileage, though not as much as we would have made in a sleeker fiberglass or wood canoe.

At the end of the journey we disassembled the boat on the beach at Brus Laguna and once again loaded it in a small plane for a flight back to civilization. The trip was a success, made possible by this well-designed and well-built folding canoe.  Ernest ended up keeping the boat and we later used it on a trip down the rock-strewn Ouachita River in Arkansas, among other places. 

Everything has downsides, of course, and the PakCanoe is no exception.  For one thing, it's expensive, as are all quality folding boats, whether canoe or kayak.  The other drawback is long-term durability, which is going to be less than most hard-shell boats.  Ernest patched the hull time after time over the years, but eventually gave up on it after it reached the end of its useful life.  It wasn't too much of a loss as we didn't have to front the expense of buying it for our trip because the designer sent it to Ernest for free, as he was seeking reviews at the time and we gladly obliged him by testing it.

In many bug-out situations, long-term durability may not be as important as having a boat right now when you need it.  The main thing is having the means to reach an inaccessible location until  you can do better, so if you live somewhere that doesn't accommodate a rigid canoe or if you drive a vehicle you can't carry one on, you may want to look into the PakCanoe or one of the similar folding sea kayaks.  I'll be writing about those here as well in a future post.