“Survival is as much a mental attitude as physical endurance and knowledge.”
The SAS Survival Handbook is one of the must-have books to anyone, not only to expert survivalists or advanced hikers. This bestseller focuses on every aspect of survival in different environments and situations. In the following review we break down this SAS survival guide to show you what’s inside, what topics it covers and about who is the author, John ‘Lofty’ Wiseman.
About the SAS Survival Handbook
Whether you are a beginner or an experienced outdoors enthusiast, the The SAS Survival Handbook has something for everyone facing a survival situation or emergencies in different places, climate and circumstances. The revised version bring topics like Urban Survival with more than 100 extra pages added.
It’s written with easy to understand words and illustrations as well as diagrams on how to carry different tasks. From illustrations with edible and poisonous plants and animals to guides on how to build your shelter, survive a nuclear or chemical disaster, accidents in all the Earth regions and much more. The pocket version of this SAS Survival guide is perfect for the backpack and many people actually take this book with them when they go outdoors.
Topics covered in the book
The SAS Survival Handbook covers a wide range of topics that you can think of and many the you never heard about them. These topics came from categories like:
Preparation: How to be prepared and what you need to do before going out and basic survival skills in general. It also teach how to read the weather, types of survival kits and other essentials.
Camp making: Anything about finding good locations to building the right shelter, making tools and organizing the camp.
Eating: Prepare different types of plants and animals, how to catch them and what food to avoid.
Emergency and Medicine: Know how to treat yourself and others and how to manage to survive while injured.
Surviving natural and man-made disasters: Teaching how to react and get supplies in these kind of situations and how to survive if electricity, cell phone and internet are shot off.
Defending yourself: Combat techniques and how to use, get or create certain weapons to defend yourself.
Security: Protecting the loved ones and your propriety against theft or break-ins.
Surviving in different locations: Survive in any location on globe from the poles to the tropics, desert, mountains and on the sea.
Signalling: Make yourself visible to increase the chances of being find and build devices for the Morse code.
Is the SAS Survival Guide good for beginners or for a more experienced audience?
Since the book covers so many topics, sometimes is missing the depth of the advices on certain things and situations. Of course, the author couldn’t go so much into details about certain topics, but anyway, those that are already, are covering most of your skill knowledge gap.
Compared with other survival books, the SAS Survival Handbook is covering the mental aspect of a survival situation. Topic that is often missed by other books.
The book is perfect to have for both novice and advanced outdoor enthusiasts as well for the normal folks. Anyone had or will be in an emergency situation sooner or later.
About the author
John “Lofty” Wiseman is a former SAS soldier and instructor. He actually was in all kinds of environments and survival situation during his military career and he continues to teach until today. In case you don’t know yet, SAS is an elite, toughest British Fighting Force and many of the techniques in the book are from their training.
Wiseman is seven time best selling author and amongst a few that is in both Times nonfiction and fiction lists. Today, John “Lofty” Wiseman is living on Florida’s Gulf Coast and he’s doing regular appearances and speeches about survival and bushcraft.
Final thoughts
It’s one of the best or maybe even the best survival book that you may find out there. Lots of people said that they bought it decades ago and they still keep it in the bookshef and read it from time to time. The pocket version is even more practical due to it’s size,, it can fit in any backpack or pocket. Too bad that is not laminated to be water resistant.
One you have the SAS Survival Handbook, take it out with you every time while hiking, going to expeditions or just when camping with friends. It can save your life and definitely will be a good companion to read when you feel like it. Of course, if you want to specialize or be informed more deeper about a certain topic then you may find that in certain topics, the book is lacking of some advance details which is okay considering how many pages it has and the broad spectrum of topics covered.
Stay safe and informed!
