Survival Shelter

There may come a time when you need to build a survival shelter for yourself or your family. Fortunately it can be fun for the whole family to learn to build. The structure is simple and is meant to be temporary, but they can be made more permanent with the right materials. Additionally, you should attempt to build your first shelter before you actually need to.

The purpose of a survival shelter is to provide protection from precipitation, wind and a cold and/or wet ground. One thing many people overlook is the fact that even if you have a roof over your head, you can get wet from below. If the ground is wet or snow covered you need to line the floor of your shelter with something to help water proof and insulate it. You can use plastic bags, evergreen branches, leaves or grass. If you have nothing to line the floor with then you need to sleep sitting up to reduce the amount of your body exposed to the wet or cold ground.

Warm Climate Shelters

When building a shelter use anything you can find for building materials. Birch bark can be pulled off of rotten logs and used as shingles for a temporary roof. You can also use other barks, pieces of cardboard, debris from any kind of wreckage or large leaves for roofing materials. Small sapling trees one to two inches in diameter and six to ten feet tall are best for your structure (framing). They are relatively easy to cut down and readily bend. Heavily leafed branches make great thatch for the roof, wall(s), and bedding. You can build a basic survival shelter by finding two trees that are close together. The trees should have straight trunks and low hanging limbs. Use the best limb that you have as a cross member and lash it to the low hanging branches of both trees. The cross member must be strong enough to support the weight of the rest of the branches.

When you are selecting trees keep the prevailing wind direction in mind. Ensure that you build the shelter to protect you from the wind. You can place the other poles against the cross member and lash them; it is your choice whether your survival shelter has two sides or one. Once you have built the structure you can cover it with whatever is available. Your survival shelter will not be completely waterproof, but the goal is to make it as waterproof as possible.

When it is not raining and you need shelter immediately you can use dry leaves to make a temporary shelter that will keep you warm until you can build something sturdier. You should be able to collect enough dry leaves to make a pile several feet thick in 30 minutes or less. Use half of the leaves on the bottom and the other half on top. You can sleep warmly in the middle of the pile even in freezing conditions.

If in a heavy snow area you can build a shelter of snow blocks. You can either build the shelter completely of snow blocks or use a wall of snow blocks to protect your shelter. Cut the blocks out of the snow with a shovel or practice using your feet to stop out blocks.

A survival shelter in serious winter survival where there is only snow and you have sloped hillside dig a snow cave about three times the size of your body. This will be small enough to keep warm but big enough to not condense around you as it settles. In the back of the snow cave cut in a shelf for a bed. This will allow the coldest air to settle on the floor of the cave and give you a smaller area off the ground to heat with your body. Run your hand along the top of your shelf bed to smooth it or else as it warms you will end up getting dripped on.

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