Excerpt: Survive!: Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere

Dec. 22, 2008 — -- "Survivorman" host and producer Les Stroud has written a real-world guide to survival using his decades of experience for the title.

Read an excerpt of the book below.

It was decidedly fate. Soon after quitting the music industry and resolving to live a life of outdoor adventure at the age of 25, I opened the newspaper one morning and saw a small ad for a wilderness survival course. Not long after, I found myself on my first solo outing: curled up in my shelter, boots sticking out the entrance, rain teeming down . . . and I was giddy. I realized then and there that I was reliving my boyhood days of building shelters behind our family cottage, only this time I could stay out all night. I was hooked, and since then, wilderness survival has figured prominently in my life.

In Surviving the Extremes, Dr. Kenneth Kamler writes, "Human beings are the only animal whose emotions, spiritual imperatives and lust for adventure overrides our survival instincts. We get into trouble because we have an insatiable desire to explore. We know very well we have assumed risks when we travel in an extreme environment and that our decisions could have fatal consequences." My own insatiable lust for adventure has seen me voluntarily place myself, time and time again, in survival ordeals or extreme adventures. I used to do it for fun, and I guess I still do.

I have always channeled my creative energy toward filling voids, doing things that nobody else has done. Creating a survival series for television was no different. I had seen lots of survival films; they seemed dry, boring, and of little interest to anyone but the hardest-core survivalists. What was missing was the drama that unfolds in real-life situations. I realized that to really show how to survive you need to go out and actually doit—and film the experience. Out of this thinking, my idea for producing a television series, eventually called "Survivorman," was born.

From the get-go, I vowed not to let Survivorman make a mockery of survival by incorporating games and challenges, or by cheating my way through it by staying in hotels every night or bringing along a makeup artist to help me look dirty. There would be no camera crew to offer me food and assistance. I needed to be out there, alone, just as I had for years trained to be, actually surviving, or at least coming as close as I could to simulating that experience.