Wilderness Survival: How to Build a Shelter that Can Save Your Life

It was dark inside my survival shelter, but I could hear the birds outside beginning to wake up. Blearily, I poked my head outside to see the new day. The sun was just coming up, and I could see my breath in the crisp late fall air. There was frost on the ground, and the wooden bowl I had made the day before had a layer of ice in the bottom. It was just flat out cold and definitely below freezing, yet I had slept warm and dry inside my survival shelter with nothing but my jeans and a light sweatshirt on. I had no coat, no sleeping bag - and no fire.

For a week I lived in a survival shelter in the Pine Barrens wilderness in New Jersey (yes, believe it or not Martha, there is wilderness in New Jersey). I didn't think it was such a good idea to wait until I was in a real survival situation to start practicing how to build a survival shelter. So I took an advanced wilderness survival course from survival expert Tom Brown, Jr.¹ It was like taking out an insurance policy in staying alive under extreme conditions.

Even though I knew the steps of how to build a survival shelter before I ever went to the course, it took me a couple of days to tweak the shelter enough so that I could get a good night's sleep under the cold conditions. I am including some of the things I learned the hard way, so you don't have to.

Out of everything, building a good survival shelter is the most important skill for staying alive. A person can go for a month without food, 4 days without water, but exposure to the elements can kill you overnight from hypothermia.

Survival shelters can be made out of the natural material you find in the area in which you are lost. If it is late and you do not have time to make a full-blown survival shelter, stuff your clothing with as much dead, dry leaves and other material as you can. The dead air space created by this "scarecrow stuffing" is what will keep you warm. The more dead air space there is, the warmer you will be.

Teach your children how to stuff themselves like a scarecrow to stay warm if they ever get lost. Play a game with them, and see who can be the best scarecrow. You might have them wear 2 long-sleeved shirts and two pairs of pants for comfort. Then tell them to stuff leaves in their clothing. After the game is over, ask them if they got hot. ("Yes!") Then tell them that if they ever get lost, this is what they should do. No lost child need ever die of hypothermia.

Choose an area for your shelter than isn't susceptible to flooding or could be in the middle of a runoff area during a rainstorm. Make sure there are no dead dry branches above you that could fall on you in the middle of the night. Also, be sure you're not constructing your survival shelter on top of an ant hill or a ground-dwelling wasp nest. Don't ask me how I know this.

Building a Survival Shelter: Step 1

First, prop or tie a pole as long as your body is, plus at least another arm length (7 to 8 ft. long) to a rock or tree (see picture). This long pole will be your ridgepole, the back bone of your shelter. Let it slant from what will be the door (where your head will go) down to where your feet will be. Keep the higher, door end of the pole no higher than what you can barely step over (at about groin height). Your survival shelter's ridgepole should not be at a high angle, looking like you're going to launch a rocket from it. You will lose a lot of heat that way.

Building a Survival Shelter: Step 2

Lay sticks along either side of the ridgepole (see picture), forming an inverted "V" or pup-tent shape (with the back end of your survival shelter on or near the ground). Don't think you have to cover every single inch of your pup-tent-shaped shelter with sticks. You're not making a Swiss watch. You don't need to pay that much attention to detail when making the sides of the shelter. The insulation you put on in the next two steps will fill in any gaps in the vertical sticks or "ribs".

Building a Survival Shelter: Step 3

Pile dead, dry leaves, pine boughs, or any other dry, dead material on your survival shelter until it reaches a depth of 3 to 4 feet. It should be thick enough so that if you reach your hand in through the pile of debris and touch the framework or "ribs" of the shelter, the top of the debris will at least reach your armpit. The thicker this outside layer is, the warmer your survival shelter will be.

Note: This is where most beginners fail. It takes a lot of effort to get a 3 - 4 feet layer of leaves and sticks on the framework of your survival shelter. So most beginners get "tired" (boo hoo), slack off, and toss 6" - 12" worth of leaves on their survival shelter.

Do that in inclement weather, and you're likely to wake up in a cold puddle of rain water. If you make this survival shelter right, it will work in both keeping out the weather and keeping you dry and warm. There is no room for slacking off in a survival situation. Do it right. Better tired than dead. Always practice as if the situation is for real.

Building a Survival Shelter: Step 4

Stuff the inside with the driest material you can find - this is a critical point for staying warm. Stuff it doubly or triply or even octuply more than you think is enough, because your body will tamp down a lot of the material inside your shelter.

Building a Survival Shelter: Step 5

Make some sort of door for your survival shelter, or stack a pile of leaves by the door to pull in after yourself. A door helps tremendously in keeping the heat inside the shelter.

Note: if all you have is wet material, use it. It isn't ideal, but what you are striving for is dead air space. Think of a thick sleeping bag. A sleeping bag is really just dead air space that traps the heat from your body. Wet material can do that as well as dry, but you will need to make your survival shelter's layers of leaves and debris thicker to keep the same amount of warmth in.

Enter the shelter feet first on your belly. If you enter on your back, debris could fall into your eyes. Close the door or pull debris in behind you. If you have done everything right, your survival shelter should be waterproof, super strong, very quiet, and able to warm with just your own body heat. Two people will, of course, heat a survival shelter interior much faster. I have known people who have built their shelter so well that they actually get too hot inside (this, in below freezing weather) and have had to open the door to cool the shelter down a bit.

Since that week of living in a survival shelter (also called a debris hut), I have continued to hone my skills and have learned various other ways to make shelters. There are countless varieties of "primitive" shelters, but in a survival situation the debris hut would be the first shelter I would build . It doesn't take hours and hours to build (or it shouldn't), and built right, it will keep you warm down to 20º F. (-6º C.) or less - without a fire.

Some advice: if you think you might ever need this kind of survival shelter, don't wait until you're in a dire survival situation to build your first one. That would be tantamount to reading about flying an airplane, climbing into one and flying, without ever having had a flying lesson.

Sources:

¹ Tom Brown, Jr. (http://www.trackerschool.com) teaches a number of different courses in wilderness survival and Native American philosophy. He is the author of several books on tracking, wilderness survival, and nature awareness.

Personal experience