Why Professional Survival Training is Necessary

I just posted an article many of you may find interesting.

It is on Why Professional Survival Training is Necessary and a little about some of the poorer training methods I have seen over the years.

The article points out one of the biggest problems with Survival Instruction, that is we have no standards and few checks and balances to ensure you get you monies worth when taking instruction.

Yes the Last two paragraphs at the end that are a sales pitch.

It was a good article, I enjoyed reading it and it has a lot of truth in it.

I also spent a few minutes looking at your resources on the internet links.
I noticed while I was looking at your resource pages that a lot of the links to the resources seem to be broken, especially the second level of links on the resources' pages.
You might want to archive some of the ones that are still there.
You might want to find a way to kill the broken ones because they make a bad impression when people hit them.

Thanks, I found a few broken links and cleaned them up.

Good points - Its good to be clear on what sort of "survival training' you're offering/ taking. Most of what people need is of the " stay alive for three days in the woods' sort; not the apocalypse / shoulda learned flint knapping sort.

I have had the opportunity to teach the Wilderness Survival badge for scout camp a few times, and gone on the overnights where the boys build their own shelters, improvise some things. I think there's an old thread about it on ETS. I have seen a lot of the things mentioned in your article, in terms of instructor skill level, advising on the badge, and it's a little scary to see some of the folks that were "teaching" the boys.

Personally, I always feel like I need to learn more. I've taken courses from NOLS, SOLO, and the AMC in wilderness leadership, survival, and first aid training, along with years as a SAR volunteer in the White Mountains. Still, I always feel like I have a lot more to learn. On the other hand, I have been paired with adults as instructors who don't appear to ever have had to overnight with just what's in their pockets, let alone teach wilderness survival. I don't buy the "we're all volunteers" answer on this topic, I just think there's too much riding on what we're doing for that. There are way too many folks that aren't smart enough to know what they don't know...

"Knowledge is like an iceberg,
The more you see the more you know is below the water"

Somewhere I heard that "the more you know about any particular subject, the more likely it is that your answer to any question about that subject will include words like: 'maybe' or 'it depends.'

The more you know, the more aware you are of what you don't know, and always remember, "Ignorance breeds certainty."

Your approach seems to recognize these truths. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the article. I agree with your assessment of types of training available, which can be applied to so much more than wilderness survival. Most of the training problems come from the instructor either being out to prove something, or just not being qualified.
I taught firearms and other topics in the FLETC and also have experience teaching Boy Scouts and other groups of youth and adults outdoor survival and other topics. It's a fine balance to teach so the student "gets it" and not overwhelm them with stuff, and yet teach what they need to know. It's important to focus on principles, which will apply in any situation, and then add a variety of techniques to apply those principles in different ways depending on circumstances. This teaches them what they need to know, and opens them up to experimenting with different ways to accomplish the goal without being locked in to any one method. I think this produces a much better result. It motivates them to continue to experiment and learn after the formal training is concluded.

Interesting, quick breakdown of survival school philosophies. That bolded sentence about survival skills not being difficult but rarely practiced enough is certainly a key point. Actually, sounds like almost everything new I've had to do for work, too!

Actually, the sentence before, about how a survival situation can either be a challenge or a terrifying, overwhelming ordeal is true of so many unexpected situations. For example, I'm a sunny California boy, have never driven in the snow, and would probably be absolutely freaked out if I started skidding on the ice even at a relatively slow speed, while someone who grew up in this stuff could calmly deal with it.

Naw Arney, we all freak out when we start skidding on ice.

We really just hope we will keep heading for the ditch instead of the front end of the truck in the oncoming lane.

I remember driving though Montana and bounding over a hill going about 60. I simultaneously saw both the narrow bridge sign and the oncoming semi.

"It not really the situation that scares you, it where you might end up"

Funny how everything seems to slow down for a moment at times like that.

When things "slow down" is when you are REALLY in trouble.

Yup