Survivalist: Making Shelters

Being able to make a shelter will make a big difference in your survival.

Once you realize you need shelter, start looking for a spot as soon as possible. When you are looking for a spot to pick to make a shelter you must make sure..

1. The material you need to make it is close by.
2. The area is large enough and level enough so you can lie in your shelter comfortably.

You must also make sure the spot is safe (Dead trees falling/rocks falling/insects/poisonous plants). You must also be safe from environmental problems (flash floods, avalanche or rockslides, bodies of water that could rise dangerously high).


Once you find a good spot you have to figure out what kind of shelter you need. You have to consider...

1. How much time & effort it will take to build it.

2. Will the shelter protect you from wind/sun/rain/snow?

3. Do you have the tools needed to make it? If not, can you make your own tools?

4. Is food and water close by?

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If you are in a wooded area and have enough natural materials, two types of shelters you can make are a Lean - To or a Debris Hut .

Lean To's take longer to build but will protect you from the elements.

One Way To Make A Lean - To Shelter

1. Find two trees about 2 meters apart.

2. You will need one pole about 2 meters long and 2.5 centimeters in diameter; five to eight poles for beams; cord or vines for securing the horizontal support to the trees; and other poles, saplings, or vines to crisscross the beams.

3. Tie the 2 meter long pole (branch) to the two tress about waist high. (For the horizontal support)

4. Place one end of the beams on one side of the horizontal support. (The side the wind is coming from)

5. Crisscross saplings or vines on the beams

6. Cover the framework with brush, leaves, pine needles, or grass working from the bottom up.

7. Make bedding inside with grass/brush/leaves.

And there you go, a lean to shelter. You can also make a fire reflector wall to keep the heat from a fire inside the shelter.

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The second type of shelter is a Debris Hut . This type of shelter is very easy to make and will keep you warm.

1. Start getting a good, strong ridge pole and place it against a tree or stump.

2. Lean branches of deadwood against the pole to form a sloped roof.

3. Thatch the shelter with leaves/grass/sod or anything else you can come up with.
Make sure you pile it on thick for warmth and to keep water out.

Very easy and very simple.

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There you go. Two shelters that can keep you from the elements in a survival situation. Hope I helped a little bit.

Very nice and very accurate. Ive found a Debris Hut not only the simpilist but it will keep you the warmest on those cold nites and the coolist on those sweltering days. but made of debris it is a very tempory solution. Thats really ok because there so simple to make you just make Another a short ways away.

Hope you don't mind me adding this, one of many sites with good diagrams for those who have'nt made a shelter before. Some other good info there too.

Wilderness shelters

CX.

I've made a few of these shelters. One thing not to forget is making your bed the cold ground will just suck the heat out of you if you don't. Leafy branches(less branch more leaf) work quite well, basically just stick them into the ground at an angle until you have a decent layer over the ground.

I see some people carry military type groundsheets which can be used for shelters, and other pieces of material are sometimes carried for the same purpose.

I know smaller is preferred when it comes to packing your BOB, so does anyone use a tent without the poles?

If you're not scared of a needle and thread you could attatch loops to specific points on the tent material so that you could tie the tent up to a tree with cord or bungees. No poles saves on space in your bag and it does'nt matter when the poles or the elasticated inner breaks.

Not sure if it would work too well, never tried it to be quite honest but at least a tent is a ready made room. You could still use the guide ropes and tent stakes as they take up no room at all. I reckon i could squash up a 1 or 2 man tent pretty small, or small enough to go unoticed at the bottom of a rucksack.

You could always cam it up if you really needed to. If you are thinking of camming the tent up, either spray the thing with camo colours if you're artistic or sew elastic strips all over it so you can slip in cam from the environment.

I only mentioned this because i know many people spend ages seeking out specific bits of material, or spend good money on military style ponchos, when they probably have a couple of old tents in thier shed doing nothing. A bit of adapting and hey presto! Saves you messing about in the woods for hours knocking up a shelter to keep you dry.

CX.

That could work. Or you could take it and put it over a log and you'd have a shelter.

Don't forget, a lean-to is a temporary shelter.

You should know how to build a real shelter that works best for the area you plan to hole up in (and a familiarity with other options just in case). Log cabins if plenty of wood, Sod cabins if no wood but plenty of grasses, adobe for desert areas etc..