134 Fun Facts About Survival Skills

The US Army survival manual warns that which body signal is a poor guide to how much water you need?

Thirst: drinking only when the urge strikes leaves you under-hydrated, so the manual tells soldiers to drink small amounts at regular intervals, even when they do not feel thirsty.

Which improvised shelter keeps a person warmest in deep alpine winter conditions?

A snow cave is the warmest option: dig the entrance below the sleeping platform so warm air pools, keep walls about a foot thick, and the interior holds near 0 °C while outside falls far below.

A plastic-sheet-covered pit with a cup beneath its weighted centre purifies water by which method?

Solar distillation: sunlight heats the covered pit, water vapour condenses on the underside of the sheet and drips from the weighted low point into the cup, leaving salts and microbes behind.

What is the base layer's main job in layered outdoor clothing?

To wick moisture away from the skin: sweat left against the body chills it, so the base layer moves it outward, which is why cotton, which soaks water up and holds it, is the classic cold-weather mistake.

Under the survival 'Rule of Threes', how long can a person typically last without shelter in extreme heat or cold?

3 hours is the shelter figure because exposure kills faster than a lack of water or food: the rule runs three minutes without air, three hours without shelter in harsh weather, three days without water and three weeks without food.

In forestry and camping, what is a 'widowmaker'?

A hanging dead branch or broken treetop is called a widowmaker because it can drop without warning: loggers named it for the widows it made, and campers are taught to look up before pitching a tent.

In a life-and-death situation, what quality is often said to separate survivors from the rest?

The will to live is the quality survival manuals single out; the US Army's FM 21-76 notes untrained people have survived on attitude alone while skilled ones who gave up have died.

In North America, how many whistle blasts in a row signal distress in the backcountry?

Three blasts, repeated after a pause, is the North American call for help; in the Alps and Britain the distress signal is six blasts a minute, and the answer from rescuers is three.

Iodine and chlorine purification tablets are considered ineffective against which waterborne germ?

Cryptosporidium's tough oocyst shrugs off iodine and chlorine tablets, which work only partly even on Giardia; a rolling boil, or a filter rated one micron absolute or finer, is what deals with it.

What does a 'go bag' or 'bug-out bag' hold?

Supplies for a short 72-hour evacuation: the figure comes from disaster agencies' advice that organised relief can take that long to reach people after a hurricane, earthquake or flood.

What does first aid say to do first for a companion's deep, heavily bleeding cut?

Press directly on the wound first; if pressure alone cannot stop a limb bleed, a tourniquet is the next step, heading off the shock that comes with heavy blood loss.

Which natural tinder is prized in wet weather because it does not soak up water?

Birch bark sheds water, so its papery outer layer lights even after rain; take it from dead wood or peel only loose curls, because cutting into a living tree's inner bark can kill the tree.

Fatwood, kindling that lights even when wet, is heartwood from which tree?

Pine: when a pine dies or is felled, the resin-soaked heartwood of its stump and taproot hardens and resists rot, and its shavings burn hot enough to start larger logs.

Which easy self-check do survival manuals use to show whether you are drinking enough water?

The colour of your urine: dark, strong-smelling urine heads the US Army manual's list of dehydration signs, and it tells soldiers to drink enough to pass at least half a litre a day.

Which fire lay, built against a log that doubles as a windbreak, is recommended in very high winds?

The lean-to lay shelters its tinder behind a log and props the kindling over it, so gusts cannot scatter the flame; the US Army version leans the kindling on a green stick pointed into the wind.

What does a sudden end to shivering usually mean in a badly chilled casualty?

Their hypothermia is deepening: shivering is the body's own furnace, and it shuts down as the core cools further; thinking blurs at the same time, so the casualty is the last to notice.

Why is a cold lake far deadlier than air of the same temperature?

Heat is lost much faster to water than to air because water conducts it away from the body, so a lake at a temperature that would make pleasant weather can still chill a swimmer dangerously fast.

In Morse code, which pattern signals the international distress call SOS?

SOS is three dots, three dashes, three dots, chosen because the run is easy to send and hard to mistake; the letters stood for nothing, and 'save our souls' was made up to fit them afterwards.

How often is the word 'mayday' repeated at the start of a radio distress message?

Mayday is spoken three times in succession; Croydon airport radio officer Frederick Mockford proposed the word in the early 1920s, reputedly to echo the French 'm'aider', help me.

What is the recommended way out of a rip current?

Swim at a right angle to the flow, parallel to the beach: a rip is a narrow channel, so a short sideways swim leaves it, while fighting straight back to shore tires even strong swimmers into drowning.

What does a rip current actually do to a swimmer it catches?

Carries them past the breaking waves, then lets go: a rip is a surface flow, not an undertow, and it fades beyond the surf, so the danger is panic and exhaustion, not being dragged under.

NOAA says the fastest rip currents outpace an Olympic swimmer, at roughly what speed?

2.5 m/s, about 8 feet per second, is more than any swimmer can hold, which is why fighting a strong rip head-on ends in exhaustion; a typical rip runs nearer 0.5 m/s.

A line through the two 'pointer' stars at the end of the Big Dipper's bowl leads to which star?

Polaris, the North Star: extend the line from Merak through Dubhe about five times the gap between them and you reach it, and its height above the horizon gives your latitude.

The foil emergency blanket in most first-aid kits was originally developed by which organisation?

NASA developed the metallised film to insulate spacecraft and in 1973 used it in the emergency sunshade that saved the overheating Skylab station; marathon finishers are now wrapped in it to hold their body heat.

To get a storm's distance in miles, divide the seconds between flash and thunder by what?

Five: sound takes about five seconds to cover a mile while the flash arrives at once, so a ten-second gap puts the strike two miles off; if you can hear thunder at all, you are within reach of the storm.

What does the US National Park Service say to do if a grizzly attacks you?

Play dead, face down, with your hands clasped behind your neck and your pack left on; the advice flips for a black bear, where you should escape or fight back rather than lie still.

What colour is the smoke from a standard daytime marine distress signal?

Orange smoke is a distress signal in the international collision rules, beside red flares and SOS; under US Coast Guard rules it counts only as a daytime signal, so a boat relying on smoke still needs a separate signal for night.

Ferrocerium, the spark-throwing alloy of survival 'ferro rods', also makes the 'flint' in which everyday item?

Cigarette lighters: Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach, inventor of the gas mantle, created the cerium alloy in the early 1900s, and a scrape of steel still shaves off hot particles that catch fire in air.

Which heat illness, marked by confusion and a core temperature above 40 °C, is a medical emergency?

Heat stroke is the stage where the body can no longer cool itself and its temperature keeps climbing, so the casualty has to be cooled fast, by whatever means are at hand, while help is on the way.

Which once-popular snakebite 'first aid' step is now specifically advised against?

Cutting the wound to suck out venom removes almost none of it and adds tissue damage and infection risk; keeping the limb still and getting to antivenom is what works.

Which irritant makes bear spray work?

Capsaicin, the heat of chili peppers: bear spray fires a cloud of it at a charging bear; it is a deterrent, not a repellent, so rangers warn never to put it on your skin or gear the way you would insect spray.

How long must water stay at a full 100 °C boil to inactivate most micro-organisms and viruses?

About one minute at a rolling boil is the CDC guideline, rising to three minutes at high altitude, where water boils at a lower temperature; few other field methods, CDC notes, deal with every kind of germ.

A personal locator beacon's 406 MHz distress call is first picked up by what?

Orbiting satellites of the Cospas-Sarsat system can hear a 406 MHz beacon anywhere on Earth and pass its position to rescuers, who then home in on the beacon's separate 121.5 MHz signal.

What does the cold-water HELP posture for a life-jacket wearer involve?

HELP, the Heat Escape Lessening Posture, means hugging the knees tightly to the chest with arms pressed to the sides, shielding the groin and the sides of the chest, where heat escapes fastest; a group huddles the same way.

Why can't a person sink completely into quicksand?

It is about twice as dense as the body, roughly 2 grams per cubic centimetre against 1, so you float about waist deep; the real danger is being held fast while the tide comes in or exposure sets in.

What is the only definite and reliable treatment for severe altitude sickness, including HACE and HAPE?

Immediate descent is the one treatment that reliably reverses HACE and HAPE; even 300 to 1,000 metres lower brings improvement, while oxygen, dexamethasone, nifedipine or a portable hyperbaric bag only buy time.

Trench foot usually sets in at what kind of temperature?

Above freezing: trench foot needs wet, not frost, and can set in at up to 16 °C in well under a day; First World War armies fought it with dry socks, whale-oil grease and regular foot inspections.

Which common backcountry injury is treated with the RICE protocol?

A sprained ankle is the classic RICE case: rest, ice, compression and elevation. Dr Gabe Mirkin, who coined the acronym in 1978, later wrote that ice and complete rest may delay healing rather than help it.

Civil defence agencies in New Zealand and the US teach which drill for when an earthquake strikes?

Drop, Cover, and Hold (US agencies add 'On'): drop to your hands and knees, cover your head and neck, crawling under a sturdy table if one is near, and hold your position until the shaking stops.

Which friction fire-making method needs no cord, just a spindle and a hearth board?

Hand drill: the spindle is simply spun between the palms, whereas the bow drill loops a bowstring round it so that sawing the bow back and forth does the spinning.

Which paradoxical act do people in the last stages of hypothermia often perform?

Taking off their clothes: in 'paradoxical undressing' a freezing, confused person strips; one explanation is that exhausted muscles stop clamping the surface blood vessels, and the rush of warm blood feels like burning heat.

During World War II, inventor Mária Telkes designed an emergency kit that made drinking water for whom?

Pilots stranded at sea, and torpedoed sailors: carried aboard life rafts, her kit turned seawater into drinking water, and it is credited with saving the lives of downed airmen late in the war.

Type III paracord is nicknamed '550 cord' after a minimum breaking strength of 550 what?

Pounds-force: Type III cord must hold at least 550 lbf; it began as the suspension line of military parachutes and reached campers after the Second World War as army surplus.

The first 15,000 Swiss Army soldier's knives, delivered in 1891, were made in which country?

Germany: no Swiss firm could yet make them, so the order went to Wester & Co. of Solingen; Karl Elsener, whose company became Victorinox, began making them in Switzerland that year and came close to bankruptcy trying to match German prices.

The hikers' 'Ten Essentials' list first appeared in print in which book?

The Freedom of the Hills, the Mountaineers club's textbook, printed the list in 1974; the club had taught it since the 1930s so a climber could handle an emergency and safely spend an unplanned night out.

Which word for wilderness skills is in the titles of a Mors Kochanski book and Ray Mears's BBC series?

Bushcraft: in Australia the Army had soldier Les Hiddins research survival in the north, where Aboriginal people showed him foods such as the Kakadu plum; the work made him TV's 'Bush Tucker Man'.

Avalanche transceivers worldwide transmit on which standard frequency?

457 kHz has been the single international standard since 1986, so one maker's beacon can find another's; the first effective units, sold from 1971 under the Skadi name, used 2.275 kHz.

How is a quinzhee winter shelter built?

By hollowing out a shaped pile of loose powder: the heap is first left for a couple of hours so the snow crystals bond, then dug out from inside; an igloo, by contrast, is built up from cut blocks of hard snow.

What is the second hole of a Dakota fire pit for?

Feeding air to the flames: the second hole, joined to the fire chamber by a tunnel, draws in a steady underground draft so the fire burns hot and nearly smokeless, keeping a low profile.

What kills most buried avalanche victims in the first 35 minutes, as survival falls from 92 to 30 percent?

Suffocation: Swiss data on 422 buried skiers showed that air, not cold, decides the first half hour, which is why companions are taught to dig at once rather than leave to fetch help.

Adult CPR chest compressions should be delivered at what rate per minute?

100 to 120 a minute is the guideline rate, and it matches the beat of the Bee Gees' 'Stayin' Alive', which the American Heart Association uses to teach people the rhythm of hands-only CPR.

Urushiol, the rash-causing oil in poison ivy, is also found in parts of which fruit tree?

Mango: the tree's sap and the fruit's peel carry urushiol, as its relative poison ivy does, so people sensitised by one can get the same itching, blistering rash from handling the other.

The SODIS method disinfects drinking water by leaving it in sunlight in what?

Clear PET plastic bottles: SODIS relies on ultraviolet light and heat together, so colourless, unscratched soda bottles are laid in full sun for at least six hours, or for two days when the sky is mostly cloud.

Juliane Koepcke survived a 1971 air crash and walked 11 days through whose rainforest?

Peru: LANSA Flight 508 broke up in a storm over the Peruvian Amazon on 24 December 1971, and Koepcke, the sole survivor, followed a stream for days using skills learned at her parents' Panguana research station.

Which two survivors of the 1972 Andes crash completed the trek over the mountains to find help?

Parrado and Canessa set out on 12 December 1972 with Antonio 'Tintin' Vizintín, who was sent back after three days so their food would last; more than a week into the trek they met Chilean horseman Sergio Catalán.

Poon Lim's 133 days on a raft began when what sank his ship in 1942?

A German submarine, U-172, torpedoed the British ship Benlomond in the South Atlantic; Poon Lim lived on fish caught with a hook bent from a torch spring until Brazilian fishermen found him 133 days later.

Mauro Prosperi was lost for more than a week in 1994 after straying off course in which race?

Marathon des Sables, the roughly 250 km stage race across the Moroccan Sahara: a sandstorm blew the Italian policeman off course, and he surfaced in Algeria, 291 km from the route, having drunk bats' blood, he says, to stay alive.

After 14 months adrift in the Pacific, where did fisherman José Salvador Alvarenga wash up in 2014?

The Marshall Islands: Alvarenga's boat grounded on Ebon Atoll in January 2014, 438 days after leaving Chiapas, Mexico, in November 2012; he lived on raw fish, turtles, birds and rainwater and counted moons to track time.

Aron Ralston, the climber portrayed in 127 Hours, was pinned by a boulder in which US state?

Utah: Ralston was trapped in Bluejohn Canyon, near Canyonlands National Park, for 127 hours in April 2003 before breaking his forearm, cutting it free with a dull multitool, rappelling 65 feet and hiking out.

The tale of Hugh Glass, mauled by a bear in 1823 and left for dead, inspired which film?

The Revenant stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Glass; as the story goes, his companions took his weapons and left him, and he reached Fort Kiowa and tracked them down, only to forgive the younger.

Texan pathologist Beck Weathers was left for dead in a 1996 blizzard, then walked into camp alone, on which mountain?

Everest: Weathers lay in the snow overnight, given up by rescuers who could do nothing for him, then woke from a coma and walked to camp; frostbite cost him his right forearm, his left fingers and parts of both feet.

Shackleton's 1916 open-boat voyage in the James Caird sailed from Elephant Island to where?

South Georgia: the 1,300 km crossing of the Southern Ocean in April–May 1916 was chosen over the nearer Falklands because it ran with the prevailing westerlies rather than into them; the six men landed at King Haakon Bay.

Under what pseudonym did Chris McCandless, subject of Into the Wild, travel to Alaska?

Alexander Supertramp was the name he took on the road; the abandoned bus where he died drew so many hikers who then needed rescuing that Alaska airlifted it out by helicopter in 2020.

Who wrote the 1987 young-adult wilderness novel Hatchet?

Gary Paulsen wrote Hatchet, a 1988 Newbery Honor book about a boy who survives a bush-plane crash with only the hatchet his mother gave him; Paulsen drew it from life, and his memoir Guts recounts his own moose attacks and plane scare.

Which mountaineering memoir turns on a climber cutting the rope that held his injured partner?

Touching the Void: Simon Yates cut the rope without knowing how far Joe Simpson would fall; Simpson dropped into a crevasse on Siula Grande, crawled out on a broken leg and reached base camp hours before Yates was due to leave.

On the survival show Naked and Afraid, two strangers meet undressed and must last how many days in the wilderness?

21 days is the challenge: each survivalist may bring one item, such as a machete or a fire starter, and either can 'tap out' at any point, leaving the other to reach the pick-up point alone.

'Rabbit starvation', described by Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, strikes people who live on almost nothing but what?

Lean meat: the illness comes from too much protein, not too little food, so a person can eat plenty of rabbit and still sicken; in a year on an all-meat diet under hospital observation, Stefansson tolerated lean meat alone poorly.

Lofty Wiseman's best-selling survival handbook carries the name of which British unit, in which he served?

The SAS: Wiseman helped run the regiment's selection course, deciding which soldiers were fit to join, before he turned to teaching survival to campers and hikers.

Which ancient mummy was found carrying amadou, the 'tinder fungus'?

Ötzi, the Alpine iceman found in 1991, kept the tinder fungus in a pouch sewn to his belt, together with a flint flake, as part of what looks like a fire-lighting kit.

Snow blindness is essentially a sunburn of which part of the eye?

The cornea: snow blindness is photokeratitis, a UV burn of the cornea's surface cells, the same injury welders call arc eye; pain starts hours after exposure and clears within a day or two once the eyes are covered.

Acorns must be leached before eating to remove which bitter compounds?

Tannins: these bitter polyphenols interfere with protein digestion, so acorns are soaked or boiled in several changes of water until it stops turning brown; cattle and horses that gorge on raw acorns can be poisoned.

Ten-year-old Tilly Smith cleared a Phuket beach before the 2004 tsunami thanks to what?

A school geography lesson: two weeks earlier her teacher in Surrey had shown the class film of the 1946 Hawaii tsunami, and she recognised the same frothing, swelling sea in time to get her parents to raise the alarm.

More than half of US flash-flood deaths happen to people doing what?

Driving through flooded crossings: the National Weather Service says over half of flood drownings are vehicle-related, since 12 inches of moving water floats many cars and two feet carries off most SUVs and pickups.

What do US wildland firefighters deploy as a last resort when flames overrun them?

Fire shelter: the fold-out foil tent reflects radiant heat and traps breathable air, shielding a trapped firefighter from superheated air while the fire passes over.

Disposable air-activated hand warmers get their heat from the oxidation of which metal powder?

Iron: oxygen and moisture turn the finely divided iron powder into rust, a reaction that gives off heat and that salt speeds up; refillable pocket warmers instead burn liquid fuel over a platinum catalyst.

The 'safety match' works because which ingredient sits on the striking strip instead of in the match head?

Red phosphorus: the safety match keeps it on the striking strip, apart from the chemicals in the head, so the match lights only when the two meet; Sweden's Gustaf Pasch devised the idea in 1844 and the Lundström brothers industrialised it.

Why was Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk left alone on a Pacific island in 1704?

He asked to be put ashore: Selkirk judged the Cinque Ports unseaworthy and demanded to be landed; the ship later sank, and he spent four years and four months on Más a Tierra before Woodes Rogers rescued him in 1709.

The first wind-chill tables were worked out by Paul Siple and Charles Passel while stationed where?

Antarctica: on the US expedition of 1939 to 1941, Siple and Passel hung a small plastic bottle of water in the wind on their hut roof and timed how fast it froze; Siple himself coined the term 'wind chill'.

Which measure of combined heat and humidity is thought fatal above 35 °C, even to fit people resting in shade?

Wet-bulb temperature: at 35 °C sweat can no longer carry heat away, so even a fit person in shade beside a fan keeps warming; the deadly European heat wave of 2003 never passed a reading of 28 °C.

Traditional Inuit snow goggles cut glare using what instead of lenses?

Narrow carved slits: the goggles, carved from driftwood, bone, walrus ivory or caribou antler, fit tightly so the only light reaching the eye passes through a thin slit, which also sharpens vision like a pinhole.

The name of pemmican, the dried-meat travel food, comes from a Cree word meaning what?

Fat: pemmican comes from the Cree pimîhkân, built on pimî, fat or grease, because melted fat bound the pounded dried meat into the dense, portable food that fed the canoe crews of the fur trade.

US forecasters warn that which commonly used tornado refuge is actually one of the worst places to shelter?

Under a highway overpass you are open to the wind and its flying debris, and cars left beneath it block the road for everyone behind; people sheltering at overpasses were killed in the Oklahoma outbreak of 3 May 1999.

Which outdoor word comes from a German dialect term for an extra night watch?

Bivouac: the German biwacht, 'by-guard', is said to have been a citizens' patrol backing up the night watch; French armies took the word for troops kept on guard overnight in the open, and the camping sense came later.

Why do mainstream experts reject the 'Universal Edibility Test' promoted in a few survival books?

Tiny doses of certain plants can still kill: a single bite of water hemlock root can be fatal, no more than the test's swallowing step, and some toxins act only after the waiting periods, so a 'pass' proves little.

As a last resort for a badly infected wound, the US Army survival manual suggests letting which creatures clean it?

Maggots clean out dead tissue: the manual says to expose the wound to flies for a day, then remove the larvae before they start on healthy flesh.

The folk rhyme 'Red on yellow, kill a fellow' helps hikers in the southern US recognise which venomous reptile?

Coral snake rings put red beside yellow; the rhyme's second half, 'red on black, poison lack', covers the king snakes that mimic it.

In the film Cast Away, Tom Hanks's stranded character befriends a volleyball named after which sporting-goods brand?

Wilson gets its face from a bloody handprint, left when Chuck hurls the ball away after cutting his hand while trying to start a fire.

Which wild food does the US Army survival manual rate at 65 to 80 percent protein, against 20 percent for beef?

Insects are also the most abundant life-form on earth and easily caught, though the manual warns against any that sting, bite, or are hairy or brightly coloured.

Which knot, sometimes called the 'king of the knots', can a person awaiting rescue tie around the waist with one hand?

The bowline makes a fixed loop that is easy to untie even after bearing a load, and it is well known as a rescue knot for people who have fallen onto a ledge.

In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, what do the stranded schoolboys use to light their signal fire?

Piggy's glasses are later stolen in the middle of the night by Jack and his tribe, and Piggy is killed when he goes to ask for them back.

Which mountaineering term, for a concept a Swiss doctor described in 1953, covers altitudes above about 8,000 metres?

The death zone has too little oxygen to sustain human life for an extended time, and the Swiss doctor who conceived the idea called it the lethal zone.

The US EPA says a few drops of which unscented household product can disinfect a gallon of unboiled water?

Bleach works at 8 drops of the 6% kind per gallon: stir, wait 30 minutes, and the water should carry a slight chlorine odour.

According to the US Forest Service's advice for lost hikers, what is 'your greatest enemy' in the woods?

Panic is what the agency's STOP drill is built to prevent: stop, think, observe and plan, and do not move at all without a specific reason.

Which 1851 novel was inspired by the whaleship Essex, whose crew spent months in open boats after a whale sank it?

Moby-Dick drew on a real ordeal: the crew drifted for months in whaleboats, and the survivors eventually resorted to cannibalism.

Which British adventurer and former SAS trooper hosted the wilderness television series Man vs. Wild?

Bear Grylls went on to become The Scout Association's youngest-ever Chief Scout in 2009, at the age of 35, and held the post until 2024.

Which Olympic distance runner survived 47 days adrift in the Pacific in wartime, as told in Unbroken?

Louis Zamperini's bomber crashed during a search-and-rescue mission; when he finally reached land he was captured and held in four Japanese camps.

Set adrift by mutineers in 1789, which Royal Navy officer sailed an open launch over 3,600 nautical miles to Timor?

William Bligh reached Kupang in the Bounty's launch with the men loyal to him, losing one to an attack on the island of Tofua along the way.

'Beaver fever' is the North American nickname for which gut infection, caused by a parasite that beavers also carry?

Giardiasis rarely lives up to the nickname: fever occurs in only about 15% of infected people, while diarrhoea can drag on for weeks.

Which towering cloud with a flat, anvil-shaped top warns hikers that lightning and hail may be on the way?

Cumulonimbus clouds are nicknamed thunderheads, and the shelf of the anvil can run many kilometres ahead of the main tower.

What is the name for a pile of stones raised by walkers as a trail marker or to crown a mountain summit?

A cairn can be anything from a small pile of stones to an entire artificial hill, and in prehistory they were raised as memorials and burial monuments.

On a topographic map, what does it mean when the contour lines are drawn very close together?

A steep slope crowds the lines because each one marks a set step in height; where two or more lines merge, the map is showing a cliff.

Which navigation method estimates a position from a known starting point using speed, heading and elapsed time?

Dead reckoning needs no landmarks, but its errors compound over distance; biologists call the animal version of the trick path integration.

Which hormone do auto-injector pens deliver to treat a life-threatening allergic reaction, such as one to a bee sting?

Adrenaline, also called epinephrine, is the emergency treatment for anaphylaxis, and the pen is pressed into the outer thigh so the large muscle there takes it up fast.

Which two-word motto did Robert Baden-Powell give the Scout movement in his handbook Scouting for Boys?

Be Prepared was coined to match Baden-Powell's own initials, and he defined it as a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty.

In the Northern Hemisphere, a watch's hour hand aimed at the Sun puts which direction halfway between it and 12 o'clock?

South lies midway because the Sun takes 24 hours to circle the sky while the hour hand needs only twelve to go round the dial.

What do navigators call the angle between true north and the magnetic north that a compass needle points to?

Declination differs from place to place and drifts over the years as the magnetic pole wanders, which is why survey maps print the local figure.

Orienteering, the sport of racing between checkpoints by map and compass, grew from military training in which country?

Sweden's Military Academy Karlberg first used the word 'orientering' in 1886, for crossing unfamiliar terrain with a map and compass.

Naismith's rule, devised by a Scottish mountaineer in 1892, helps hill walkers estimate what before setting out?

Walking time comes out at one hour for every 3 miles on the map, plus an extra hour for every 2,000 feet of ascent.

Dolbear's law lets campers estimate the air temperature by counting the chirps of which creature?

Cricket chirps counted over 15 seconds, plus 40, give the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit, a shortcut to the formula Amos Dolbear published in 1897.

Which condition, seen in marathon runners, comes from drinking far more water than the body can get rid of?

Hyponatremia means the excess water has diluted the blood's salt so far that organs, especially the brain, can no longer function properly.

Which mushroom, easily mistaken for edible species, is blamed for the majority of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide?

The death cap's toxins survive both cooking and freezing, and as little as half a mushroom is estimated to hold enough to kill an adult.

Which wetland plant of the carrot family, with a root smelling of raw parsnip, ranks among North America's most toxic?

Water hemlock contains cicutoxin, a poison that overstimulates the central nervous system and causes seizures once the plant has been eaten.

An almond-like scent in a wild plant's leaves is, the US Army survival manual warns, a characteristic of which poison?

Cyanide compounds are why the manual singles out chokecherry, noting that horses have died from eating wilted wild cherry leaves.

Which marsh plant with a dense, sausage-shaped flower spike has starchy rhizomes that foragers can eat?

Cattail is the American name for what the British call bulrush; when ripe, its heads break up into a cottony fluff that drifts off on the wind.

Which large, wood-eating moth larva has long been a staple food of Aboriginal Australians in the desert?

The witchetty grub tastes similar to almonds when raw; lightly cooked in hot ashes, its skin turns crisp like roast chicken.

The word 'jerky', for strips of dried meat, comes through Spanish from 'ch'arki' in which Andean language?

Quechua, the language of the Inca, used ch'arki for dried, salted meat; American Spanish made it charqui before English borrowed the word around 1850.

Which name is generally used in the American Southwest for the domed dwelling known in the East as a wigwam?

Wickiup frames of arched poles were roofed with whatever was to hand, from grass and brush to bark, reeds, mats or hides.

What name is given to the basic shelters left unlocked and free for walkers in remote parts of the Scottish Highlands?

A bothy provides no bedding, mattresses or blankets, though most have a fireplace and stand close to natural fresh water.

Which improvised shelter does the US Army survival manual call 'one of the best' for warmth and ease of construction?

The debris hut begins as a tripod of two short stakes and a long ridgepole, with large sticks propped along both sides to carry the covering.

In the US Army manual's memory aid built on the word SURVIVAL, what does the letter I stand for?

Improvise is the step the manual expects to come hardest: an 'easy-to-replace culture', it warns, leaves people out of practice at making do.

Smothering a large signal fire with green leaves, moss or a little water produces smoke of which colour?

White smoke stands out against dark forest, and for a pale background the US Army manual suggests adding rubber or oil-soaked rags to turn the smoke black.

Which spoken radio call signals an urgent problem that is not yet life-threatening, one step below a mayday?

Pan-pan comes from the French 'panne', a breakdown, and tells rescuers a problem is urgent without asking them to drop everything, as a mayday does.

Which emergency phone number is built into the GSM mobile standard and works in every European Union country?

112 can be dialled from any GSM handset even when it is locked and, in some countries, with no SIM card present.

A safety programme developed after the 1981 search for Jimmy Beveridge teaches children lost in the woods to do what?

Hug a tree, the programme says, because it calms a frightened child and keeps them in one place, where searchers find them far more quickly.

A vault dug 130 metres into a sandstone mountain on Norway's Arctic island of Spitsbergen stores backups of what?

Crop seeds keep well there because Spitsbergen has permafrost and no tectonic activity, and the vault holds duplicates from gene banks around the world.

What name is given to the unseen companion that exhausted climbers and polar explorers report sensing beside them?

The third man factor takes its name from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, in lines inspired by Ernest Shackleton's sense of an extra companion on his final trek to safety.

Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda kept up a guerrilla war in the jungle of which country for nearly 29 years after 1945?

The Philippines' Lubang Island hid Onoda until 1974; he lived on wild fruits, game and stolen rice, and gave up only when formally relieved of duty.

Which Harry Potter star played real-life Amazon survivor Yossi Ghinsberg in the 2017 film Jungle?

Daniel Radcliffe plays Ghinsberg as he is separated from his fellow backpackers and survives alone for weeks in an uncharted part of the Bolivian Amazon.

Which painting by Théodore Géricault shows castaways from a French frigate wrecked in 1816, all but 15 of whom died?

The Raft of the Medusa shows the hurriedly built raft on which at least 150 people were set adrift for 13 days off the coast of today's Mauritania.

Which American sailor drifted alone on the Atlantic for 76 days and told the story in the bestseller Adrift?

Steven Callahan's boat was holed by an unknown object in a night storm a week out from the Canary Islands, and he had to abandon it as it swamped.

What term describes a sturdy knife whose blade steel runs right through the handle to the butt?

A full tang may be narrower than the handle but still runs its whole length, whereas a partial tang stops short of the end.

What is the bushcraft term for splitting wood by driving a sturdy knife through it with blows to the spine?

Batoning is most useful for getting at the dry wood inside a log for fire making, and it drives the blade through much as a froe is used.

Lyme disease, spread by tick bites, takes its name from a town in which US state?

Connecticut's town of Lyme is where the illness was first diagnosed as a separate condition, in 1975.

A steadily falling reading on which instrument warns hikers that stormy weather is on the way?

A barometer let Otto von Guericke do just that in 1660: he found the air pressure unusually low and predicted a storm, which arrived the next day.