January, 2024 - The Phillosoph Blog

The other day I had to escort an engineer.

He managed to set off the alarm he was servicing, and was unable to get it to stop.

He had forgotten to bring the handle for his screwdriver bits. Girl in Sunglasses

Such farces are actually not that uncommon at this institution.

As the minutes rolled by and I sat there in the noise, it occurred to me I had some ear plugs on me. Actually the noise was not too bad, and using hearing protection to ignore an emergency alarm is probably setting a bad example!

Eventually the alarm was silenced by using the end of the nail file on my Swiss Army Classic. I have better screwdrivers on my tools, but the Classic on my keyring was most readily to hand.

The engineer was also having trouble with his spectacles. The rubber loops on the retaining cord he was using kept slipping off, and he was cursing the well known website he had brought them from.

All this reminded me of a topic I was thinking about when I was writing about ear plugs.

Ear plugs are a simple thing that can make all the difference if you have them with you.

Obviously, my penknives may be included in this.

Tweezers

Tweezers are another item I thought of, possibly because at the time I had been reviewing how to deal with biting ticks.

I carry a Swiss Army Ranger and a Classic, and each has a pair of tweezers slotted into a grip panel.

One pair has been ground to a point, as shown in this video.

If, for some bizarre reason, you do not carry a Swiss Army Knife (!), the tweezers may be brought separately.

So small and so cheap there is not really any good reason not to have a pair. Your main problem may be finding a good place to carry them so you can find them when needed!

Don't Forget Your Toothbrush

Personally, I do not have a toothbrush in my EDC. If I was heading to the wilds, I might rethink this.

If your lifestyle often finds you sleeping at someone else's house, platonically or otherwise, you may find it handy to have a toothbrush with you.

There are guards you may fit over the bristles, and two-part brushes, some of which have room for a tiny tube of paste.

Glasses Save Eyes!

The next “simple thing” did not immediately occur to me since I wear spectacles, and mine have photochromic lenses.

My girlfriend mentioned a Christmas she spent in Scotland. The snow made everything so bright she wore sunglasses whenever outside.

If you do not wear photochromic glasses, a pair of sunglasses is a worthy addition to your EDC or bug-out bag.

Excessive sun glare may occur in any season. See the “Too Bright” section of Greenbank's “The Survival Handbook”.

Glasses also protect your eyes from branches when moving through the woods, and other threats. That, incidentally, is one of the reasons I do not switch to contacts.

My glasses have saved my eyes from injury several times.

Spectacles or sunglasses are important and useful. When climbing, biking or during other activities there is an increased risk that you and your lenses may part company.

Which brings us back to the engineer and his malfunctioning retention cord.

Retaining Glasses

My left hip pocket contains a lighter, bandana and a collection of cordage.

Included in the latter is a retention cord I may use with my spectacles.

I literally found this lying in the street, the irony that something to prevent loss was lost not lost on me.

I have not had cause to use this retention cord yet, but it seems well suited for purpose.

The cord is tubular and fits over the arms of my spectacles, giving a long contact area. A sliding piece of plastic allows the cord to be drawn snug against the back of the head.

An effective retaining cord is a prudent thing to carry with you if you wear glasses or have sunglasses, even if, like me, you only fit it when the chance or consequence of losing your glasses is serious.

Suppose you do not have a retaining cord, or have lost it.

If you have been visiting this blog, you will probably have some paracord or other cordage available. A draw cord from your anorak could be used.

Here are two suggestions on how to improvise a retention cord for your glasses:

Instructables Glasses Lanyard

Comments

Both of these methods use slip knots to attach the cord to the arms.

One method uses a double overhand to form the slip knot, the other uses an extra couple of turns to form the overhand knot portion.

The video uses a double fisherman's knot to tighten and loosen the cord. A single fisherman's knot would be easier to adjust when needed. Perhaps he wanted all the knotted sections to match?

A slip bend would be a good knot for this application. This could be made with double overhands if desired.

The “cobra knot” used in the Instructables' method is actually multiple overhands tied in the centre of a second piece of cord. This would have been clearer if a different coloured piece of cord was used for demonstrating this part.

The simplest way to adjust a retaining cord is probably to tie a lapped overhand loop in the doubled cord. This is probably one of the few knots that may be easily adjusted when your hands are behind your head.

The other methods may be more secure, however.

All this talk of knots brings me to my final topic.

I have rewritten Scrapboard Knots, adding more content, more knots and tweaking the format to use less paper.

All of the knots mentioned in this blog may be learnt from this booklet.

Scrapboard Knots is free, but donations and tips are welcome, and much needed at the moment.

My girlfriend was telling me how her sister in Brazil had managed to acquire a piece of land. Living on her own land is something that my girlfriend has often said that she would like to do.

“You will have to teach me survival”, she added.

I admit I was a little surprised by that request. She is an incredibly practical person.

When she was a little girl, she would escape her toxic home environment and live on the beach, catching fish. I suspect there is quite a bit she could teach me.

However, she is a very wise lady, and part of wisdom is knowing what you do not know!

What should I put on her reading list, I pondered?

Camping and Woodcraft (Kephart)

My first thought was “Camping and Woodcraft” by Horace Kephart. Photo of Hoeace Kephart

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to know this is one of my favourite books. I prize my old 1927 reprint of the 1921 edition. Around 884 pages, yet fits in an M65 jacket pocket.

This book is definitely something I will save, come the apocalypse.

It is rightly called a classic and a title that every outdoorsman should read.

The book is out of copyright, so I have a number of alternate editions in PDF, found for free on-line.

Camping and Woodcraft may have been written over a century ago (1906/1916), but is still a wealth of useful knowledge. It is no bad thing to know how things may be done without Gore-tex and GPS.

The Survival Handbook (Greenbank)

The first book I actually sent my girlfriend was “The Survival Handbook” by Anthony Greenbank. This may also be encountered with the alternate title of “The Book of Survival”.

Greenbank's book seldom appears in recommendations for survival libraries. It seems to be relatively unknown.

It is an excellent book and is a must-have in my opinion.

The Survival Handbook is a great book since it includes many possible emergency situations that other manuals neglect.

Packed with useful information and easy to read and navigate. Even readers “not into survival” will find something of worth within its pages.

This book was first published back in 1967, long before the “survival craze” when many manuals were produced. Consequently, there are a few minor points that need updating.

For example: current advice is to remove ticks by gently pulling them with tweezers, rather than the older approaches in this and many other books. Fisherman's Knot

I would also stress that you should not join different ropes with a reef knot, even with a couple of half-hitches added. Always use the fisherman's knot, as is later recommended by Greenbank. A fisherman's knot is a pair of overhands, so is probably easier to learn and remember than a reinforced reef.

Scorpion claws are not poisonous. Claw size is generally inversely proportional to potency of sting.

I am also dubious as to whether any coat worthy of the name would make a good signalling kite. It seems more prudent to keep your coat on and use your shirt for a use where a garment may be potentially lost.

Of course, no book is perfect and remains perpetuatlly up to date. This is why we should read more than one book on any topic. The more angles you look at something from, the better you will know it.

These very minor points aside, I would wholeheartedly recommend a copy of Greenbanks's Survival Handbook for any survival library.

Usefully, the Survival Handbook is a standard sized paperback, so there is no reason that one could not put it in a ziploc bag and carry it with you in a rucksack pocket.

The SAS Survival Handbook (Wiseman)

For a more “conventional” bushcraft/survival manual, Greenbank's book is nicely complimented by “The SAS Survival Handbook” by John “Lofty” Wiseman. Also available with the alternate title of “The SAS Survival Guide” or “SAS Survival Guide”.

A revised edition was published in 2009.

Probably the only thing wrong with this book is the title. Even way back in 1986 when this book was published, it was already a cliché that nearly every other survival-orientated item was claimed to be either SAS, Special Forces or Green Beret. I will stress that John Wiseman is a verified genuine former member of the SAS, however.

The SAS Survival Handbook is an excellent choice for any survival library. It is easy to read, yet very detailed. Copies may be found at very reasonable prices.

The original book was nearly a foot square (228 x 238 x 22mm). I remember looking at my copy and wishing for an edited-down smaller version more suited to carrying in the field. Someone else obviously felt the same, because a few years later a Collins Gem edition was released. Amazingly, this was pocket-sized yet preserved all of the original content! Collins Gem edition of SA Survival Guide, Wiseman

Collins Gem edition of SA Survival Guide, Wiseman

My Gem edition has spent several decades in a ziploc bag in a side pocket of my rucksack. It has travelled from Hong Kong to Brazil and up to Iceland. If nothing else, it has served as an educational way to spend my time while waiting for a bus.

Both sizes of SAS Survival Guide include a coloured section illustrating various edible plants. Other Collins Gem titles may also be of interest, such as “Food for Free”.

The SAS Survival Guide/Handbook is another “must-have” for any survival library. In fact, get the large version for your bookshelf and the Gem for your pack.

Between Kephart, Greenbank and Wiseman you now have a pretty sound foundation for your survival library. It does not hurt that your survival library happens to be relatively compact and lightweight.

If you brought the Gem edition of the SAS Guide, all three books should fit in your bug-out bag.

If you buy the titles recommended above, you have acquired a lot of useful information for a relatively modest outlay.

I suggest that at least some of your library is hardcopy, for when the power is out.

How about some free books to supplement these?

US Field Manuals

Many readers will be familiar with “FM 21-76”, the US military survival manual. Cover of FM 21-76

On-line copies are freely available from a number of sites, there being no copyright on US field manuals. Many on-line copies lack the appendixes, such as the extensive illustrated appendix of edible plants, for example.

FM 21-76-1 was a related publication about SERE.

The current version of FM 21-76 has been redesignated FM 3-05.70.

Many of the sites you can download FM21-76/FM 3-05.70 from will have other field manuals on topics of interests such as navigation, hygiene and first aid.

If you want a printed copy of a field manual, these are available from a number of publishers. Price, cover and sometimes title will vary.

While these survival manuals are now described as “all services”, they were originally written as advice for downed aircrews, and this should be remembered when reading certain sections.

US field manuals tend to be clearly written but are not necessarily concise: FM 3-05.70 is 676 pages long.

There is also sometimes a tendency in field manuals for information to become institutionalized. New content may get in, but older, possibly no longer accurate content is slow to be removed.

I cannot do better than the advice Robert DePugh gives: FM 21-76 should be carefully read at home, and then left behind with other items not worth taking along. Air Force Handbook 10-644

Also worth a look are the Air Force manuals AFM 64-3, AFR 64-4 or AFH 64-5. Latest version is AFH 10-644 (also found here). These are a little harder to locate on-line.

The military manuals are not as “easily digestible” as Kephart, Greenbanks or Wiseman. They are, however, “information dense” and provide excellent background and context for the other books, at a price that cannot be beat, free!

The exception to the above statement is AFH 64-5. This is a compact and very readable work. It has several gems of information that are not often seen in many other works.

If I have one quibble about 64-5, it is that many of the illustrations are remote from the relevant text. Better and additional illustrations of some of the plants described would have been welcome.

As for any older text, some of the advice or information given may be out-of-date. For example, in the section that recommends any part of a seal, including the liver, may be used, no mention is made that the liver of the bearded seal (like that of the polar bear) is toxic.

If any publisher wishes for a new survival title, an updated version of 64-5 would be worth considering.

I would highly recommend that AFH 64-5 is the first military survival manual you consider reading.

The above recommendations will have given you a pretty comprehensive survival/bushcraft library.

In later blogs, I will review other titles, including those that are more specialized in their field.

You will also need some books on self-defence. For these, scroll down and follow the links.

I am very short of money at the moment, so you custom or donations will be very much appreciated!