Wilderness Survival

This page provides materials and information for Scouts in Troop 149 working towards earning Wilderness Survival Merit Badge. There is also a section of reference material for other counselors to use if they would like.

	Introduction Basic information
	Requirements, Pamphlet & Study Guide Required reading
	Personal Survival Kit Be Prepared!
	Additional Materials Misc. Links & Documents
	Lesson Plan A counselor's aide

Introduction (top)

Wilderness Survival is a rewarding merit badge. The skills and knowledge gained during the course of working on this badge will help prepare you with the understanding and confidence that you can take care of yourself in an outdoor emergency situation. And learning how to survive in any circumstance is one of the purest examples of the Scout Motto "Be Prepared." Learning the proper skills and having a few key pieces of the right gear in advance of an emergency can make the difference between an uncomfortable situation or a disaster.

The first step towards earning any merit badge is to read the pamphlet! Don't worry if some of the material doesn't make sense at first. We will cover the material in class. The requirements can be divided into three main parts:

Knowledge & Skills
Constructing a Survival Kit
Constructing & Sleeping in a Survival Shelter

I will also distribute a study guide. This information will help you structure your learning, provide reference and study material supporting each requirement, and serve as your notebook or journal for recording the experiments and your study plot observations. Keep all of your pages from the guide for your own personal record but please return the binder so I can use it for future groups (it's wise to keep copies of all of your merit badge work even after you have earned it in case records get lost or misplaced).

If at any point you have a question or are not sure of what has been covered or what needs to be done, ask me!

Requirements, Pamphlet & Study Guide (top)

The study guide is a supplement to the merit badge pamphlet. It include worksheets for several of requirements, as well as additional reading material for most of the requirements. Use of this guide is not required. It is only to serve as a guideline to help you understand and/or complete the requirement.

Wilderness Survival Requirements (Word Document )

Wilderness Survival Requirements (Acrobat PDF )

Wilderness Survival Merit Badge Pamphlet (Word Document )

Wilderness Survival Merit Badge Pamphlet (Acrobat PDF )

Wilderness Survival Study Guide (Word Document )

Wilderness Survival Study Guide (Acrobat PDF )

Personal Survival Kit

Building a survival kit is fun. It's an opportunity to collect items and gear designed for use when your safety and welfare may be at stake. The overall objective to include items that will be useful tools in an outdoor emergency in securing the three main necessities; shelter, water & food. The fun part is to gather items that are small and often have multiple, creative uses. Size is important because if your kit is too large you are not likely to want to carry it with you on hikes and campouts. A survival kits safely stashed in your tent does you no good in an emergency on a day hike! Multiple use items are important because you can carry less items, which keeps it small. Why carry two tools for two tasks if one tool will do them both.

Doug Ritter from the Equipped To Survive Foundation (http://www.equipped.org) has spent a lot of time and thought in developing a small personal survival kit. He began this process as a pilot who noticed that most pilots where ill prepared for emergency landings. So he started to develop an emergency landing kit for his plane. From there he realized a good survival kit is critical in many other situations. So he started to design and test other kits, including a small personal survival kit (PSK) for everyday carry. Doug has graciously allowed us to reproduce the contents of his Mini PSK on our site. We will be using this list as the basis for building our own PSK kits for the merit badge. Adventure Medical Kits worked with Mr. Ritter to develop a pocket-size survival kit that contains most of the items needed. They offer a bulk order discount and we will assemble a group order for interested Scouts (and Scouters). The cost is actually much lower than it would be than to purchase many of these items separately on your own. More info coming soon.

	Doug Ritter's Mini PSK Kit
	Pocket Survival Pak™ by Adventure Medical Kits

Additional Materials (top)

Here you'll find additional material that can help you learn Wilderness Survival skills and techniques. Some of this is in your Study Guide. But some of the material just wouldn't fit or was not directly related to requirements. I hope you take some time to browse this material and these sites so you become aware of what information or resources are available to you.

Hand Outs

	Code Card (Acrobat PDF ) Ground and air emergency codes. Include Morse code and body signals. .
	First Aid (Acrobat PDF ) Extract from the merit badge pamphlet that discusses all of the first aid treatments required for the badge .
	Priorities (Word Document ) Priorities (Acrobat PDF ) Extract from the merit badge pamphlet that lists the seven survival priorities .
	PSK Cheat Sheet (Acrobat PDF ) Foldable page to be printed on two sides of a waterproof paper, trimmed and inserted into your Personal Survival Kit (PSK). Designed to fit into the popular Altoid Mints tin used by many for PSKs. .
	Scout PSK (Excel Spreadsheet ) Scout PSK (Acrobat PDF ) Easy to use contents list based upon Doug Ritter's Mini PSK Kit. .
	S.T.O.P. (Acrobat PDF ) Stop Think Observe and Plan. The most important think to remember to help you set priorities if you get lost. .
	When Should Survival Training Begin? (Acrobat PDF ) A true story of a Scout surviving lost in the middle of winter by using his most valuable survival tool - his brain.

Articles (sorted by MB requirement)

Requirement 4 - Describe the steps you would take to survive in the following conditions:
1. Cold and snowy

2. Wet (forest)

3. Hot and dry (desert)

4. Windy (mountains or plains)

5. Water (ocean, lake, or river)

Spring Camping Equipment Checklist
Here's a handy one-page sheet for new scouts on what to bring for an early spring campout where the weather can be spring-like one moment and turn winter-like the next.
.

Winter Camping
Two very important handouts for cold weather camping that are part of Mr. Guy's winter camping presentation:

	Okpik Winter Sleep Systems handout (Acrobat PDF )
	Okpik Winter Clothing handout (Acrobat PDF )

Requirement 6 - Using three different methods (other than matches), build and light three fires.

	U.S Army Field Manual 3-05.70 - Chapter 7 : Firecraft (External Link ) Several techniques of building and starting fires explained. .
	Fire - A Survivor's Best Friend by Doug Ritter (External Link ) Explains the importance of fire building and evaluates several alternatives and fires starting gear. .
	Fire and Rain by Dr. Andr� F. Bourbeau A short article that drives home the importance of learning and practicing your fire building skills .
	How To Make Char Cloth Tutorial (Acrobat PDF ) Step-by-step instruction how to make a valuable fire-starting tinder.

Requirement 7 - Do the following:
        1. Show five different ways to attract attention when lost.
        2. Demonstrate how to use a signal mirror.
        3. Describe from memory five ground-to- air signals and tell what they mean.

	U.S Army Field Manual 3-05.70 - Chapter 19 : Signaling Techniques (External Link ) Includes diagrams of body signals, markers, fire & smoke and signal mirrors. .
	Light On The Subject by Doug Ritter (External Link ) An evaluation of different lights, including LED lights and chemical sticks. .
	Sound Off! by Doug Ritter (External Link ) Why rescue whistles are so important and what to look for when choosing one for your kit. .
	Signaling Group by Doug Ritter (External Link ) An evaluation of several products including mirror and flares, as well as a description of several useful techniques.

Requirement 8 - Improvise a natural shelter ... Spend a night in your shelter

U.S Army Field Manual 3-05.70 - Chapter 5 : Shelters (External Link

)
Include improvising a shelter using ponchos or tarps, snow shelters and building a temporary structure using branches.

Requirement 9 - Explain how to protect yourself from insects, reptiles, and bears

Requirement 10 - Demonstrate three ways to treat water found in the outdoors to prepare it for drinking.

Links

	Basic & Wilderness Survival Equipment (External Link ) Extensive discussion on survival techniques and equipment from the Equipped to Survive website. Includes several of the individual articles listed above in the Links section, but the entire site provides a wealth of information beyond those few articles. Doug Ritter's hands on reviews of what works and what doesn't is especially useful as his pragmatic approach and analysis provides real world reviews that could save your life some day. .
	ETS Survival Forum (External Link ) An online public forum on the Equipped to Survive website that's loaded with tons of information from several years of survival discussion. It's a great site to both lurk and learn, and to post your questions for answers or ideas for discussion. .
	ETS Survival Kits Contents (Excel Spreadsheet ) Spreadsheet with all of Doug Ritter's survival and emergency kits contents. Each kit is listed on separate tabs. .
	U.S Army Field Manual 3-05.70 - Survival (External Link ) A website version of the U.S. military manual used to train service men. Some of the topics are specific to the service, such a evading capture. But many of the chapters are very useful for Scouts. A few of the chapters specific to the merit badge requirements are list above separately in the articles section.

Lesson Plan (top)

This is the lesson plan I developed to guide me in conducting merit badge sessions with the scouts in my troop. Please feel free to copy it and borrow what you find Helpful for your own personal use.

Coming soon!