Survival Shelter Buiding - 6 Things To Think About.

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Is your survival shelter helping or hurting you?

One of the keys to surviving in the wilderness is protecting yourself from the elements. If they don't kill you, they can certainly make you miserable. In fact, making a shelter should be among the first 3 tasks you perform once you have determined a camp site.  There are a variety of different ways to construct shelters and we will get into that later. For now, lets go over a few things you will need to consider before actually building your shelter.

In order to be safe and adequate, a shelter must exhibit the following characteristics in order to be considered effective:

1) Protection from the elements. Your shelter must protect you from sun, rain, wind, snow, etc. as much as possible.

2) Heat Retention. You need to prevent wasting of fuel (wood or your own energy) by making sure you add some type of insulation to your shelter that will retain heat. Typically, this is accomplished with branches, grasses, etc.

3) Drying Facility. If it wont keep you dry, why build it? If you are in a group, dry clothing goes a long way toward keeping people positive and healthy.

4) Ventilation. Although you probably stink, that's not why you need ventilation. You are probably going to have a fire close to your shelter. You want to make sure that CO2 can disperse and not get trapped in your shelter. Farts too.

5) Stability. You don't want your shelter coming down on you in the middle of a storm or strong gust. Take the weather and terrain into account before you construct your shelter. Build something that is appropriate for the time of year/season that wont scare the hell out of you when it falls on you during the night.

6) Free of Natural Hazards. Look around you before you decide on a place to build your shelter. Make sure you are not in an avalanche chute, under loose rocks, or under dead timber. Also, be careful about setting up shelter under trees, you don't want to get crushed by a falling branch. Make sure you are not setting up where a river or creek will inundate during a heavy rain. These things seem obvious, but if you are in an emergency situation, your mind may not be working at 100%.

You can build shelters that meet these requirements, or you can find natural shelters that meet some of these characteristics. Caves or overhangs can be great natural shelters, just be careful you don't share the cave with something larger than you. Having considered the above, there are a couple other things to consider: How big is your group? Are you trying to be seen or do you want to be concealed? How far are you from wood, water, food? Are there enough natural resources around you to construct an adequate shelter given all you have to take into account? Is your shelter too close to where you keep/prepare food? How long are you likely to occupy this shelter?  How close to water are you?  Water is heavy.

With all of the above in mind, lets now look at a few of the various types of primitive shelters you can build.

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