Human physiology doesn’t change in order to make a story better. But sensationalized stories of survival will always draw eyeballs, with the result being foolish and untrue beliefs being formed. I’m not a fan of how the media portrays survival episodes. They are looking for sensational stories, not to tell the truth. The result is [...]
Rants
Recently it was brought to my attention that our website has been plagiarized again. Someone took our ideas and words (verbatim), used it as their own to sell programs similar to ours, and didn’t cite where they got it. Two days ago I received an email from a friend in Canada regarding a recent plagiarism [...]
There are a lot things referred to as survival skills these days that have nothing to do with survival. Survival is keeping your body alive. It’s pretty simple, but not easy. Over the short-term, defined by how long you can fast and go without food (longer than a month), you need to maintain your body [...]
The new breed of bushcraft and survival social media celebrities, the ones with the popular channels, large followings, etc., seem to not know what they’re doing. The old rule of ‘fake it until you make it’ is as common as ever, but it’s new iteration, taken directly from their mouths seems to be ‘pay attention [...]
We’ve had a lot of content plagiarized from our website over the years. As a result we created a “name and shame” plagiarism policy, where we publicly call-out the people who do it. And this morning I learned that it had been done by someone I know. Not cool. Compare our course assessment page with [...]
“Imagine after being exhausted at the end of a hard day, you are coming home to this [long silence]. In the little remaining daylight he cannot possibly return to his main hut, his only recourse is to fix this one.” -Werner Herzog from “Happy People” The trapper then commences to put his small cabin back in [...]
Well, it happened again. I received an email from a friend about someone who has copied some of my stuff. Over the years, people have copied my text, photos (which is why every photo I post now has a watermark), and even my anecdotes. More than twenty-five times. I’ve always taken the high road, emailing [...]
I’m a member of a hate group. Not any longer, but I was for a few hours. Someone added me to one on Facebook. I wasn’t aware that someone else could add you to a group without your consent, but one day I received 14 email updates from this group which alerted me that I [...]
If you’re going to teach a course on wilderness living skills, you should have lived in the wilderness for at least a short period of time. The term is too often embraced by those who want to sell skills classes, but have no experience actually living outdoors with no infrastructure. Let the buyer beware. Reality [...]
This morning I read an article on winter survival written by an individual who not only has no idea how to keep the body alive in the winter, but also had seemingly no experience in the cold without a truckload full of gear. It seems I have read hundreds of these, but maybe it’s only [...]
A guy called me yesterday with questions about our Summer Survival Weekend Course. We spoke for several minutes about what the course covers, what he could expect, and other related topics. Then said he had a question about religion. He asked if we incorporated spiritual teachings or Native American ceremonies in the course. I immediately [...]