Stealth Survival

[Psychlonic]

As opposed to my experiences thread, this one is going to include solely methods that can apply to the night with the intention of remaining unseen and without leaving a trace. Emphasis will be placed on actual technique and not equipment as it is impractical to carry a large amount of survival kit with you during the operation nor it is especially necessary.

Why stealth survival?

This is meant to be both a practical pursuit and one which can become the entire point of the operation - to perform advanced bushcraft in the night where one shouldn't be while remaining undetected and leaving no trace after you leave. Operatives in rural areas may find the skill set useful as well if they find themselves in an escape and evasion scenario that finishes with them far from home/base in unfamiliar territory.

So let the knowledge flow and learning together commence. I'm sure many of you have your own pieces of knowledge you've acquired so feel free to chime in, anything goes. Just remember that you have to be able to do it in silence and with as little light as possible. This may require some rethinking of your know-how.

The first order of business is the least glamorous thing (and not especially interesting to type about either) but also the most important: navigation. If you fall under the category of the lost E&E operative, it may be imperative to leave your area immediately and get closer to home. Time is of the essence. If you cannot close the distance before daylight begins to break, you will need to consider creating a cache to store your equipment so that you can move inconspicuously or a hidden shelter to sleep the day away - rather difficult in seasons with longer days but potentially necessary.

At night you have a couple natural indicators that give you a rough idea of each direction - the moon and the stars. The moon follows a somewhat similar path as the sun at night when its out. It will start in the east and set in the west. For those in the northern hemisphere this will happen towards the south and for those in the southern hemisphere it will happen towards the north. If you happen to live on the equator, you only get east and west indication obviously.

The moon has obvious problems. For one, it's not always out. When it is out, even light cloud cover can obscure it since it doesn't blanket the entire sky like the stars do. The moon also does not follow reliable time scale like the sun does. Where you can check the position of the sun against the current time to roughly determine which direction the sun is in, this doesn't apply to the moon. It will be in different positions at the same times as it passes through its phases. It tends to gradually come out later and later into the night. This also means you can't rely on the shadows the moon casts to determine direction against the time either. Finally, the moon can be complete out of sight both in urban and forested settings. Heavy tree cover and buildings can both block it out. You will need to know the moon is out in advance and move yourself to a position to see it.

The stars are different. Chances are you already know the north star or the southern cross, depending on where you live. But can you easily find it in the night sky? If not, you need to learn what's easy for you to remember. Using the north star to locate north is pretty simple - unless you live somewhere extremely frigid right underneath of it, it points roughly north. The southern cross isn't quite as piss easy but still easy enough.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... x_crux.gif

Following Acrux to Gacrux, extend that distance mentally past Gacrux about four and half times. That point in the sky is roughly above the south pole.

You can optionally extend this by becoming acquainted with the constellations and know where they are at in any given time of the year, making the stars become your personal compass. In any case, the stars are not perfect either. Being dimmer than the moon, they can be obscured by ambient light especially in any remotely large cities. Cloud cover can completely hide the stars or just hide enough so that you cannot locate key stars and constellations. As with the moon, local standing objects like trees and buildings can also block important parts of the sky.

The moon and stars are there and the moon probably already plays into your operations. The knowledge is weightless and good to know regardless. Despite unreliability, they're available enough to make it worth your while.

This brings us to the compass. A compass is small and very light. It's also critical in finding magnetic switches attached to the inside of doors for security reasons so there is little reason to not bring one with you. It will always give you the four directions. For long range rural operations, some may opt to bring a GPS for navigation. This is the best method readily available for finding directions and mapping areas but it can fail with battery failure and will not help you locate magnetic switches.

Finally, there are also some more obscure methods of locating north and south. In many regions, moss will grow most heavily on the side facing away from the sun. This is because it prefers darker, damp environments. In the north this will mean moss grows on the north side of the tree and visa versa in the south. However, make sure you know your regional "habits" for this before attempting to rely on it. See it for yourself.

Another method is to create a crude floating compass with a piece of iron. This includes many steels. You can mildly polarize them by rubbing them repeatedly in the same direction with a material such as polyester or nylon. This is not a strong polarization by any means so using the lightest object possible is ideal. Most lock picks can work for this. If you find that it's too heavy, you may need to break the head off and use it alone. You can get a much more reliable polarization by using a magnet if you can find one - obviously much easier in an urban environment. Again, be sure you consistently rub in the same direction, not back and forth.

What you do is take this piece and put it on a floating object so that you can place it in water. Again, you want something light. A leaf works wonders, but you can use anything of a similar weight that floats and will hold the polarized iron. This will give you a rough approximation of the north/south line.

Yet another method that can be used is observing buildings. This is by no means a rule but many newer buildings - including houses - are built to maximize their efficiency. If you see a slanted roof with tons of windows on one side by little if any on the other, you can be certain that those windows are facing the sun. Many regions also find that houses tend to be build facing in general north/south configurations with the front door facing one or the other.



So one way or another, you have the directions. Learn where as many things are in conjunction with your home or base. What's north of you? South? East? West? What direction are you going to be traveling in when you set out? You can use these things to know which direction to go if you get lost and when you get closer, you'll be able to see recognizable features again. A map of course will tell you everything, even a Google Maps printout, but many opt to not take one. A GPS will have you set up easily. But you can make do with none of these things if you absolutely have to. Learn your directional methods and stay observant for landmarkers.

Landmarkers are the more obvious navigational method. Find easy to recognize, unique objects be they natural or man-made. Street signs usually run in sequences and can give you directional ideas. Many areas have at least one thing lit up at night that stands tall. Knowing where it sits in relation to yourself gives you an easy indication. In total wilderness, there may be a silhouette of a mountain visible in the moonlight that can be your landmark. If you're anywhere close to civilization, city lights will be visible to you. Use them as well.

These skills may even enrich your operations outside of the need or perhaps desire to survive. Again, it weighs nothing and equipment is optional. I feel that any operative should carry a good compass because it's simply too valuable for knowing if there's a sensor behind the door you want to enter. It can save you a lot of trouble. But even without one, knowing your navigation will - if absolutely nothing else - increase your confidence.

In the next post things get more fun and hands on. I'll be starting with a topic I personally have tons of fun with and enjoy practicing on a regular basis - firecraft. If this seems impossible to mesh with stealth, that is hardly the case. I will illustrate ways I have used to not only create warming and cooking fires that are invisible from a distance, but ways to actually control the light it puts out to navigate in the darkness during emergencies.

[Psychlonic]

Alright so let's talk firecraft. Fire is historically one of the most significant developments in human advancement. It enables us to cook, stay warm easier in cold environments, and can enable one to see into darkness. Food may not be a necessity for an overnight operation or even coping with sleeping daylight away, and one may be able to stay warm through other means and use one's flashlight to see in the dark, I find the subject interesting anyhow. Fire can be created in a manner that is impossible to see unless you are standing right on top of it and similarly can be harnessed. It can also serve in an interesting hypothetical role where you are trying to cover lots of ground in the span of many days by night while trying to remain largely unseen.

Firecraft is an enormous subject, so much that it's difficult to try to cover it in one post. Instead, I'll try to start with the necessary information to get a fire not only started, but sustained and hidden. Later we can expand upon this with different starting methods and ways to contain the fire.

The key to any successful fire regardless of conditions is preparation. Most novices make the mistake of simply gathering a few dry materials that light easily and then proceed to throw on whatever nearby sticks are available. While this sometimes works, you're leaving it down to chance. If it doesn't happen to work, you might not know what's going wrong.

You need to gather a few things: fire starting equipment, tinder, kindling, and finally sustaining firewood.

For now let's keep the fire starting equipment basic: use a lighter or matches. We're going to dive into different methods going all the way back to the friction methods later but building the fire sustaining fundamentals right now is more important. Even with a lighter, good firecraft skills can more than triple the effectiveness of your lighter as you won't need the flame to be available as long. A lighter is also a very small, lightweight item so having one in your pants pockets during an operation isn't even noticeable.

Now let's go over tinder. Tinder is the real fire starting substance you use to get the fire going. You have spark holding tinder and flame holding. Since we're dealing with open flame starting for now, we're only going to cover the flame holding variety. Whatever you use from the upcoming list of materials, you need a good handful of the stuff.

When you think of flame holding tinder, just think about what looks like it would easily burn if you touched a lighter to it. In the wild, this can be dry grass, leaves, needles, old papery bark, sap-filled barks, or even fatwood. In the city, paper and cardboard are your best tinders. In either case, unless the material is soaked in a flammable substance it needs to be dry. Said flammable substances can be natural like tree sap, or they can be man-made like petroleum, gunpowder, grease, you name it. At night, it can be tough to find dry tinder. Look under any form of natural "shelter", such as thick bows, under fallen trees, anywhere you can. Failing this or the ability to find fatwood, you'll need to make your own tinder in the form of a fuzz-stick.

A fuzz-stick, sometimes known as a featherstick, is a length of dry wood that has had the outside lightly shaved into many small, delicate ribbons. Using a small blade, such as on your multitool, gently shave small ribbons from the sides of the wood but try not to shave them completely off. Working from one end to the other, continue creating ribbons that accumulate at one end of the stick until you have a stick that appears to have a head of hair on it.

There is a good video on the subject here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcpVhm1bUwU

Before we think about lighting these things, we need to think about how we're going to keep the fire going once the tinder is lit. This is where kindling comes in. Kindling is somewhat easy to light firewood that the burning tinder will ignite. Kindling builds the foundation of the fire and creates the heat necessary to eventually ignite large pieces of firewood which will sustain your fire for long periods.

Like tinder, you kindling needs to be dry and flammable. Use dead wood for this, such as off a dead tree or perhaps laying on the ground if it's still dry. You may also need to cut away wet wood in soaked conditions to get down to the dry wood. Just chop the outside away, revealing the inner, dry wood. Kindling should be no longer than the length of your forearm with a starting diameter of a small twig and larger pieces you'll build up to being around two or three fingers in diameter. You might also opt to create larger, rougher fuzz-sticks as tinder. Another trick is to shave larger chips off of a length of wood to use as a starting tinder, created in the same way you'd make a fuzz-stick except that you shave larger pieces and make sure they are removed from the main piece.

You can sustain the fire for short periods of time using only these things. Kindling can be your main firewood if you aim to keep the fire small, which many situations will warrant. Larger firewood follows the same principle as kindling anyways - it needs to be dry and grow progressively larger compared to the kindling. So with that said, let's talk about lighting it up.

If you made your fuzz-stick properly fuzzy and it's nice and dry, it will probably light right up with only a couple seconds of exposure to lighter flame. Dry paper and cardboard will also light right up, as will fatwood in any conditions. For dry grass, leaves, and needles, or bark, you really want to smash them to a pulp. If you have leaves and a combination of anything else, put the leaves on top and smash with a rock or the end of your knife if it has a pommel.

When you're ready to light, have your smallest kindling nearby and position yourself so that neither wind nor rain/snow can give you problems. Also make sure you're located so that this first open flame exposure can't be seen from a distance. If the area you intend to build the fire at is not dry, create a platform out of kindling for the fire to sit on without having to combat the cold moisture of the ground. Hold your tinder at one end and light from the bottom while you hold it up. Quickly move the tinder to your fireplace and begin to stack kindling over and around it in either pyramid configuration or like a tepee. While the tinder is burning, hold some pieces of kindling above the fire vertically so that they catch fire more easily. Use these as matches to ignite more and more wood. This helps make the process a little more fail safe. Dry tinder can be a precious commodity and you do not want to waste it on a fire that goes out.

The reason for building the fire in this manner instead of having your tinder already set up and surrounded with kindling is that you will need to use this method to start fires in deep pits like you will want to make in order to remain seen. More on this later.

Once your kindling is burning good, stack another loose tepee or pyramid around the first one. When you are burning inside of a pit as you will want to in the "real thing", this is a good time to put larger pieces or wet wood at the top so it can dry out as the fire burns. Just make sure you still have room to feed more fuel into the fire. Continue to feed the fire as needed, just make sure not to smother the fire or introduce too many cold/wet pieces that will lower the coal temperatures and slowly kill the fire.

Some miscellaneous things to keep in mind. You can make a good firestarter by stuffing pinecones with smashed grass if available. In more urban areas, you can burn plastic once your get your fire hot enough. Certain plastics will burn really hot and keep the fire going, but this comes at the expense of easy to smell, toxic smoke. This is unsuitable for many ideas that will follow and makes you easier to locate. Chemical fuels may also be available which can be used in improvised stoves, making the entire process easier.

These are fire fundamentals that will enhance your ability to successfully use other fire starting methods and even greatly improves your chance at using a mere lighter. It also makes the difference between using one match and using 2 or more, doubling your supply. Lots of guys will just hold lighter on a piece of wood and wait for it to catch fire. This is wrong and the philosophy will make using more primitive methods almost impossible.

YOU DON'T KNOW UNTIL YOU DO. Reading this isn't enough. If you don't practice any of this, the information is useless.

Once you can competently build a fire, you need to be able to burn it so nobody can see it. This is the real art.

Fire gives two clear indicators - smoke and light. Smoke can be both seen and smelled, but at night this is all dramatically decreased in severity, especially during bad weather where you're more likely to want to build a fire. Light is a constant threat.

First let's focus on hiding the flame. The solution is simple: reduce the number of angles a fire can be seen from. Another lesser issue that is created from the flame is that it will illuminate surfaces which also reflect light. Position your fire so that it cannot illuminate an easily seen surface. You can also create fire reflectors that will both help keep you warm and hide the light. Using a smaller one near the fire and a larger one farther away on the opposite side can be used to reflect the light so that what little even emerges from your pit cannot be seen from farther way.

Which brings us to the pit. The best solution in a natural environment is the dakota fire pit. This consists of two pits - a large one to hold the fire and a smaller one to allow air into the base of the first pit. This means you must connect the two. A good video on this available here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z0hbxlPyTU

As you can plainly see, using this style of pit is much light putting a flashlight into a hole and pointing it straight up in the air. Not going to be easily seen. Given a small enough fire, this can be built under a tree so that the low limbs are not illuminated and the tree filters any possible smoke. The ideal stealth fire, invisible in the daytime too. If you need a larger fire, just make the pit wider and deeper.

You'll need to use this same principle in an urban environment. If you cannot find a lot to sleep in and use this method, it's likely you'll have to construct some sort of artificial solution. The hobo stove made from a large coffee can may be the solution you need. Alternatively you can simply place a couple of holes at the bottom to get air into and just made the fire in the can as-is. Use something to block the holes visibly from a distance, such as a couple of rocks placed one foot out from them.

Ingenuity will be key, here. There's no telling what environment you'll find yourself in. It's the principle that's important. Always remember the Dakota fire pit. Even if you cannot build it, using the same idea to make something else will help.

Now let's consider smoke. Smell is your largest concern here, since normally seeing smoke won't be possible but it can still be a concern. The biggest thing you can do to avoid smoke is to avoid burning toxic materials. Plastic and rubber are big offenders of this. Another thing you can do is "filter" the smoke as described by having one under a tree.

Smoke visibility is also reduced by the fuel you use and "filtration". Using clean burning woods or ones that make darker smoke will help. Small pieces of evergreen are ideal for this, a small fire sustained using piece of pine - for example - with the occasional piece of fatwood tossed in will produce almost no smoke. Clouds of white smoke coming up from the fire will be illuminated by the fire's light so you want to avoid making this happen.

If you've made it this far, you hopefully have an idea of how this all works. You want a small, smokeless fire built deep and shrouded from sight. Next time I cover firecraft - whenever that may be - we'll go further into the subject with different fire making methods, pits, and torches. As always, feel free to chime in with your own ideas.

[Xanatos]

Another advantage of having a fire in a concealed pit is that your eyes are less exposed to open flame, thus preserving your nightvision. If the goal of the fire is warmth the you may wish to have your back to the fire (to keep it warm) while curling up in a ball to insulate your front, rubbing your chest with your hands if necessary. If you need to turn around to either add fuel, cook or warm your hands have one eye closed while squinting through the other eye. Keeping your nightvision sharp means you can scout the perimeter easier and if you need to run away from/extinguish your fire in a hurry you won't be fumbling around in the dark.

Another tip for reducing smoke is to avoid tossing in unnecessary amounts of tinder to increase flame. Dry leaves, grass, paper and other flammables produce a lot of white smoke and the fallen ashes can choke the embers. If you need to increase the flames to keep the fire from going out use more kindling (twigs, etc) and blow on the embers to get more oxygen into the fire.
From experience, I find blowing on the embers in short bursts to be more effective than blowing a steady stream of air. Blowing in 5 strong bursts provides more oxygen for the fire and means you won't get dizzy as quickly.

[Psychlonic]

Thanks for the input.

While not a very vital skill/equipment mod, I recently modified my slingshot to be able to shoot arrows with good power and accuracy out to about 20 meters. I wanted to share how this was done since the mod is almost "free" meaning that if you already carry a slingshot then you won't notice this at all. I'll also cover some basics in arrow making so you don't have to carry your own and can only use the idea if it is absolutely necessary.

So the mod is easy enough. I followed this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGIcCRJGYug

He also goes into improving the design here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6LxKfpAPYA

And then adds a fishing concept to the idea here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyxjnDNHW7Y

Now the fishing mod is something you're not likely to want to add for the purposes of night ops but I threw it up here anyways as it was a related video. And while the whisker biscuit addition is nice, the simple keyring used in the original video is more than good enough. There's no reason to spend any money on a feature that you as an operative are unlikely to use except in dire emergency where, again, the ring works fine.

So these videos show you how the whole thing works. It's pretty crafty. Your power is entirely dependent on your bands, so if you have stronger bands you get more force behind your arrow. It's as simple as that. I'm using a simple heavy draw tubular band that I bought for $4 and get effectiveness out to about 20 meters, tested on haybales. In addition, I use a black coated keyring held into position by some extra thick rubberbands.

My model of slingshot folds closed so the whole package is really compact. I don't often bring it along on night ops but when I do it fits nicely into one of my larger LBV pouches. It will also fit into a cargo pocket easily enough and can even fit into a back pocket with only a minimal amount of the forks sticking out.

Well this is great and all for daytime camping and survival, but what about night ops and stealth survival? It's a bit silly to carry arrows with you IMO so the way to go is to make your own as the situation warrants. If you're still reading, I'll assume you're interested in this idea so I highly recommend you practice making a few at home so that if you need to later, it'll be much faster.

You need two things, mainly. A dried hardwood shoot of a suitable diameter with no cracks and a soft stone that's around the size of your hand. By dried, I mean it needs to be dead and cured. You don't want living, green wood unless you have zero choice in the matter. Green wood flexes and loses strength easily, while dried wood is hard and will retain its shape. For your stone, look around for one of suitable size and test it for hardness. Scrape it with a harder rock or use a tool from your multitool you don't mind digging into rock. It needs to be soft enough for you to carve a groove into with either said tool or a harder rock. Concrete may work for this as well.

When selecting your dried arrow shaft, you want hardwood if possible. "Hardwood" really means deciduous (leaves fall in colder weather) and isn't always hard. Softwoods are your evergreens and while typically soft, can occasionally be hard. Lilac, apple, orange, yew, hickory, oak, rowan, walnut, etc. These all make good arrow shafts. You can make them from softwood if you have to but it will be harder to work with and won't perform as well. Before cutting one down, you need to know how long of an arrow you need. Generally you want your arrows to be just slightly longer than the length of your arm. Remember, you want full pull on your slingshot to get maximum power out of it, and you can't have your arrow falling out of the ring if it gets pulled too far back.

Once you have a shaft, you need to create a straightening tool. That's what the rock is for. You need to create a groove down the length of the rock so that the shaft can sit in it loosely and be plied. If you have a multitool with any level of quality, the saw tool will work for this on a sufficiently soft stone. If not, you may be forced to gouge with another rock. Just be careful not to make too much noise while doing this. In an urban environment, you might also find something else to gouge with.

Now you need to prepare your shaft. Use a blade to skin the bark off and try to make the entire length of the shaft as uniform in diameter as you can with the exception of one end. Leave a knob on one end of the shaft so you can easily grab it with your slingshot pouch. Whittle down and knots and bumps sticking up. Again, your multitool might be of help. Many models have a file somewhere on them that is useful for filing down stubborn areas to match the rest of the shaft.

Finally, you need a fire. Build the Dakota fire pit and maintain light and noise discipline. There are two ways to proceed from here. You can use the open heat of the fire or if at all possible you can place a container of water over the fire to create steam. The latter method is far superior but not as likely to be available to you given your night ops equipment.

What you'll be doing in either case is holding any bent areas in the shaft over the heat or steam. You want to avoid charring the arrow and with steam you don't quite want too much steam as to make the shaft weak. This is an art and again, you need to practice. While this post may seem long and paint the process as complicated, all of this can be done in a matter of minutes up till this point. So don't despair.

When a bend is heated up properly, take the shaft to your stone and place the heated area into the groove. Straighten the bend by pressing down into the stone and hold in place until it cools down/enough water evaporates so that it stays straight. Repeat this process for remaining bends in the shaft.

This is your core arrow. You can use it as-is in your slingshot if you want by adding a simple carved arrowhead. Harden the tip in the fire. Adding fletching will make it more accurate and creating a broadhead will make it more effective on targets.

Fletching can be anything - you can sandwich the top of the shaft in two pieces of duct tape if you like, creating a twin-fletch config. Cut the ends toward the head at angles to help it slip through your ring easier. Use your imagination - the main issue is having material to actually attach the fletching. You need either cordage, adhesives, or tape. Cordage can be made but that's for another post. You may have some excess string on you. If you REALLY have to use this and have nothing else, you can unravel a non-essential item of clothing. Actual fletching material also includes tape as well as feathers, certain leaves, cardboard, plastic from bottles, you name it.

Broadheads are a more complicated matter in some areas. Your most likely bet in an urban situation will be from a metal food can (aluminum from soda cans is too soft), from which you can simply cut out an arrowhead point, crudely grind with your multitool file, hard stone, or concrete. Then carefully split the end of your shaft and glue/tie/tape the head on. In other areas, you may be reduced to bone, stone, or even glass. Stone and glass can be knapped into arrowheads, knives, spear points, and more, but this is a huge skill set and understandably few on here will be able to do. Bone is far easier to work with and you can make a good point from it easily enough with a knife or better yet your multitool.

But again, if you can't properly make either it's NOT a big deal. A simple shaft with a knobby grip on one end and a fire hardened point on the other will perform admirably. A broadhead would be a good idea to take down something large like a deer but for smaller critters down to about the size of a rabbit the simple wooden arrow will be enough. With practice, the slingbow is crazy accurate within its range so pinpointing vitals on small game will be easy.

All this available with just a little bit of practice and a dirt cheap modification to your slingshot. If you pack a slingshot with you, you have NOTHING to lose by adding the ring. And if you feel like going out with the sole purpose of camping out somewhere with nobody knowing you're even there, the idea is great because it allows you to hunt with arrows in limited fashion without having to pack an obvious bow with you. Something to consider, anyways.

[Urgon]

AVE...

NEVER burn polyurethanes or PVC! Those will produce phosgene while burning, especially if there is not enough oxygen. And you don't want to get poisoned by this gas...

There are those burning gel fuels used in stoves and fondue burners - good to get your fire going. They are sold in tubes or cans, so are easy to keep in your backpack. And are really cheap. In case of emergency you can just light the fuel and use it to get some heat. One can of gel fuel can burn for up to 4 hours. Also a good idea is to have a storm-proof lighter and/or butane torch. They are small, cheap and can save your life sometime...

It is a good idea to make and learn, how to use a classic string sling. It is an effective weapon, can be used to break lights, throw fireworks and other things to draw the attention away or to hunt animals. Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs-ZfTTNXa4

Make bolas - one with heavy, metal weights, and one with weights made of leather bags filled with pieces of lead wrapped in some rugs. This way you will have one set for hunting and stopping people, and other for training. More about bolas: http://www.flight-toys.com/bolas.htm

[Psychlonic]

To be clear, the toxic gas those plastics put out isn't an instantaneous gas that will kill you on the spot unless you're in a really tight area (in which case almost any fire is a bad idea) but rather highly carcinogenic. You'd have to really suck in tons of that stuff to die on the spot. This is coming from someone who has already burned tons of plastic and is still sitting here with clear lungs and clean tests. A few small pieces of plastic here and there to raise your core fire temperature on a cold, wet night won't harm much if you stay low and let the smoke pass. Again, it's a survival tactic. Nobody should be going out and throwing plastic on their campfires before roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over it.

Small update here. I got back yesterday at noon from a weekend camping trip where a buddy and I set up a hidden camp in the forest near a 4-way intersection. These were gravel and dirt roads, nothing major, but still a fair amount of traffic given the remote location.

What we did was go into a dense area covered with younger trees that stood no taller than 15 feet. We gave ourselves a good "buffer layer" of trees on any side and then began to clear an area in the middle to build camp. I was using a heavy bolo (knife style, not throwing device as detailed by Urgon) while my friend had a hatchet. We cleared enough space to build two lean-tos, a heat reflector, and of course a camp fire.

We made the lean-tos face the roads to block the fire, with a huge angled heat reflector on the opposite side of the clearing. Our lean-tos had beds raised about two feet off the ground. The fire pit itself was only half-buried with airways, we didn't use a full dakota pit. Finally, we lined the inside of our lean-tos with space blankets. It's the middle of winter here and gets well below freezing temperatures at night - especially in the mountains - so staying warm was important.

A huge fatwood stump provided us with excellent starting material for a fire. We were able to maintain a small fire throughout the day that put out smoke invisible in the daytime from the roads and of course made starting really easy. I started all fires with flint, steel, and charcloth using a shredded aspen bark tinder nest used to ignite said fatwood.

In fact, it was hidden so well that a truck stopped and parked so close to our camp that I could have easily shot the driver with my slingbow from where I was sitting. We even had a fire going still and I had water boiling over it.

We managed to find lots of rose hips, some young scouring rush shoots, pine cones with nuts still inside, and of course loads of pine and fir needles for tea. In addition, I scraped some red willow bark then gathered mullein and kinnikinnick leaves to make traditional native smoke mixture out of.

We had just finished up when night began to fall. Even though we started the day early, winter days are short and there was a lot of work to be done. Once again, camp was invisible from the road even with a roaring fire. The structures and natural surroundings completely blocked off all light output.

I set the smoking ingredients on a flat rock near the fire to dry then put some water in my canteen cup along with some rose hip flesh and fir needles. You need to remove the seeds from rose hips as they're poisonous and the process is honestly really tedious without a mesh screen to smash the pulp through but catch seeds. I consider them more of a luxury item then a true survival skill as the effort to pick then process them is not worth the gain without proper equipment.

Next, I put my rush shoots into my larger pot to boil. These are quite tough at first and take a lot of time to soften up but when they do the result is somewhat comparable to asparagus. After these were going, I set the cones near the fire to roast and burst open.

Long story short here, the camp kept us warm on a cold ass night but also kept us completely hidden even when we threw on massive pieces of firewood to keep the fire going throughout the night. We used hot rocks near the fire under our bed to allow heat to radiate upward into our bodies which helped, and the space blankets helped contain the heat in our lean-tos even better. The smoke mix was used just before passing out to help sleep come easier.

All in all, it was a successful night. Now I know this isn't a transition from night op into survival and the terrain was unlike anything most of us are likely to encounter at night during such, but hopefully some of you can glean some useful ideas from that.

Some of these will be expanded upon later, like the flint and steel fire making method, edible plants, fatwood, etc.

[Ghost]

Any tips on using a firebow? That skill has been on my to-do list for a while now.

[Psychlonic]

Was planning to make a longer post later on the subject along with hand drill then flint and steel. The process is two stage, stage one always being the prep work outlined above so you have something to drop your coal into and ignite into flame. Step two of course is the bow drill itself.

Without getting too in depth since I don't have time to make a full post on the matter right now, you want your bow to be a curved piece of somewhat green wood, your cord to be thick, tough, and grippy (paracord will work but it's actually not the best for this application), the drill should be hardwood, and the baseboard softwood. The socket also needs to be hard - it can be hardwood if need be, bone is better, or anything that will firmly hold your drill, really.

Alright, so here are the tricks. First, for some reason nearly everyone who does this uses a single wrap around the drill spindle with their cord. This is ridiculous. There's no reason to not use the Egyptian method which involves a knot and several wraps around the drill that will hold it tight and prevent slipping. If you try it the normal way, you'll find out really fast why this is a concern. YouTube the technique for instructions.

Second, always kneel in a stable position and have your lead foot sit on the baseboard to hold it. Have your off-arm that holds the socket "attach" to the front of your leg at the wrist as to stabilize it and hold it square above the socket and drill.

Third, use sand or whatever gritty material is available in your baseboard hole to increase friction. Just a quick trick to make the process faster. The faster you get a coal, the less energy/calories you use.

Fourth, sharpen the tip of your drill that goes into the baseboard to a pretty sharp angle. A more blunt tip doesn't generate as much friction and therefore heat.

Fifth, make sure you have a good notch for the coal to fall down and have something below ready to catch it. A chunk of bark works great for this. When you have a coal, wait a moment to pull the drill out of the hole and then gentle place the bark with coal into your tinder nest.

There are a lot more fine details but many of them are intuitive and you'll catch on to with practice. But these ones are really valuable and helped me a ton. The Egyptian method is by far the single most valuable trick there is and I don't understand why more people don't teach it. Whoever wrote some of the military doctrine out there must have been a kewl.