I know there have been threads on the popular survival books, and of course, the excellent list on Doug's website, but does anyone have any recommendations for unusual, old, rare, esoteric, and/or cool survival books that hardly anyone has ever heard of?

I've always been a fan of Bradford Angier but I don't know how rare he is. He was a book editor in the 1950's who moved to Canada and became a fulltime outdoorsman. Some of the info in his books is outdated but there is a lot of common sense included as well.<br><br>Chris

The one failing of survival manuals is readability. Remember how Lewis Carrol's Alice dried off? John Muir wrote of a night caught out in a storm. He had to call out to his companion just to confirm each was alive throughout the night. Yet he remarked on the incredible beauty of the storm itself. I promptly refitted my cold weather gear upon reading that chilling passage- during a California summer! CAMPING AND WOODCRAFT by Horace Kephart is a classic of common sense and readability. His Preface quotation of Richard Harding Davis on personal gear willl bring tears of laughter to Altoid tin debaters ;O) The works of his contemporary Nessmuk are a fun read also. The gear is dated, but paraphrasing Gandalf " I see by looking ahead, and looking behind me."

I'd nominate two very different books that aren't "survival" books, but each has had a huge influence. "Tunnel in the Sky" by Robert Heinlein (science fiction), and "The Complete Walker" by Colin Fletcher (non-fiction, backpacking).<br><br>What I've learned from "survival manuals" tends to blend together. There's so much overlap, very few of them are really distinctive, and many are so dry as to be almost unreadable, no matter how interested you are in the subject. <br><br>What I've learned from each of these books stands out clearly in memory, and there's never any question of the source.... and life keeps reinforcing the lessons (if you're lucky enough to survive forgetting them the first time).<br><br>I've got family in North Carolina in the middle of the blackout area. It was days before we could get a phone call through. They moved there from Connecticut to get away from things like that, having lived through the week-long blackout and ice storm there in the 70s. Suddenly they're asking questions about all that funny stuff I have in the basement again.<br><br>Not a year goes by that I'm not glad that I became familiar with Heinlein and "Tunnel in the Sky" at an impressionable age.

"The Ten Bushcraft Books" by Graves. Originally published in the 50's as ten separate volumes, the single volume edition currently available for some reason excludes the book of traps.<br><br>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0446327476/103-6993279-9243838?vi=glance<br><br>He was an Aussie commando trainer WW11 Pacific theatre.<br><br>Lots of neat info, not very dated as the only equipment relied on is axe and knife.

I have an older version of that book with the trap section included. There are some nasty bow and spike traps included.<br><br>Chris

Again, this is not a "survival book" (despite the title) and I don't know how rare it is - I just did a search on "Peter Goodchild" on Amazon and the book was reprinted in 1999, but "Survival Skills of the North American Indians" is a good read. <br><br>It does contain information that would be useful in a survival situation, but it's not a "how-to" manual; rather, it's a (IMO) well-researched look at how the native population lived in North America before we white fellers came along. (For example, Goodchild describes how the Indians of California would hunt deer - they would station as many hunters as they could get at intervals 0f 50 to 100 feet along a deer run. When a deer came by, one hunter would jump out and chase it toward the next hunter, then that hunter would chase it toward the next, and so on, until the deer dropped from exhaustion and the hunters finished it off. Not much use in the survival situations we discuss, but a fascinating piece of information anyway (to me, at least).<br><br>I bought this book in the gift shop in Waterton National Park in southern Alberta; I've never seen a copy of it before or since (and I'm a bookshopaholic ;-) However, as I said, it is available from Amazon. I see also that Goodchild has another book which I think I will order - "The Spark in the Stone: Skills and Projects from the Native American Tradition".

Is "Tunnel" the Heinlein book in which the "kids" are going off on their survival test, & get marooned? One of kids takes his older sister's advice (and her knife, as a spare) to carry a good blade, rather than some battery powered gizmo.

IIRC, you're right--excellent lessons in many of Heinlein's works, including "Farnam's Freehold" and "Friday", too.

I keep Fletcher's "Complete Walker III" near to bedside; it's about worn out...time to get another copy.

David

Fletcher's Complete Walker IV is, along with all previous versions, also by my bed side. This one has the points of view of both Colin and Chip Rawlins.

I find it fun to read each versions various areas and see how much has NOT changed over the last nearly 30 years of backpacking.

As Colin says the basics of survival comes down to pretty much just being prepared, good equipment and good skills.

One of my favorite undiscovered books is:

The Winter Wilderness Companion: Traditional and Native American Skills for the Undiscovered Season
by Garrett Conover, Alexandra Conover, Elliott Merrick

This one covers winter operations via snowshoe and tobaggan. More traditional skills rather than modern highly specialized skills. (Wool, cotton, rawhide, canvas, wood stoves rather than fleece, goretex, plastic, nylon and multifueled stoves). Much along an updated Paradise Below Zero by Calvin Rutstrum.