1y ago

Is there a good collection of survival knowledge compiled somewhere?

I'm looking for a wide variety of topics. Feel free to call me crazy :)! But I would love any/all info regarding the following:

Self-sufficient farming and gardening techniques
Solar power installation and maintenance
Water collection and filtration methods
Off-grid food preservation options (canning, fermenting, dehydration)
Constructing and maintaining off-grid shelters (tiny homes, yurts, earthships)
Sustainable waste management practices
Home remedies and natural medicine for common ailments
Wild foraging and hunting skills
Basic wilderness survival skills (fire building, shelter construction, navigation)
Off-grid communication methods (shortwave radios, Morse code)
DIY appliances and tools for off-grid living
Sustainable living practices (permaculture, composting, recycling)
Essential off-grid kitchen equipment and cooking techniques
Emergency preparedness and disaster management
Financial planning and budgeting for off-grid living.

Please feel free to include any topics along those lines. I'm sure if you've read to this point you get where I'm going.

14 comments

I found this book to be a good start: https://www.howtoinventeverything.com
- I own this one, as well as Dartnell's The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch because I am a massive tech history nerd. (I'd love the idea of being able to survive a collapse but I'm too self-aware of my insufficient physical fitness for that, lol.)
  Also for those who've not heard of the BBC series Connections, it's AWESOME. More useful for entertainment than as a reference, but the first episode literally explores the question "what would a single human have to do to survive if modern life suddenly became unavailable?" Here are all the episodes on Archive.org.

Download Wikipedia and put it on a USB drive. Then buy a portable solar panel so you can charge some electronic device to view the wiki. There's a lot of farming, gathering, hunting, etc knowledge on Wikipedia.
The text only download is way smaller than the media download, but the media may be worth it for identifying plants.
- For anyone curious, here's a link to all the different downloadable versions of wikipedia: https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages
  The English "all maxi" version is just over 100 GB, updated Aug 2023

There is an android app which may help.
Also, having some information in your head will definitely help. I'm not an expert but I try to brush up on random relevant topics when I get some time.

I think I have an old Boy Scouts survival manual from the 50s that includes most of this.
- I was going to suggest the same.

http://www.survivorlibrary.com/library-download.html
Just do a search, there are many sites that cover a lot of topics that also have downloadable books.

https://kiwix.org/en/ Is a good tool that'll let you download and view Wikipedia offline. The whole thing.

If you don't already, a good thing to own is a road atlas of your country.
I also have been wanting an astronomical almanac that would have info like sunrise/sunset times (got that idea from I Am Legend), and various other sky stuff data I don't know how to use for timekeeping and navigation but would like to learn :] My lack of expertise (ok, maybe also motivation) has prevented me from finding one.
There used to be agricultural almanacs also, with recommended planting dates. I looked into the extant USA ones (Old Farmer's and Farmer's) but they seem to have devolved into something more like annual rustic-themed magazines with barely any useful info... :[

Check out the SAS Survival Handbook, that covers a good chunk of what you're interested in.

14 comments