Read 'n' Seed 2: First Quarter of "Man vs. Wild"

1. In the first quarter of the book I read the first 64 pages. 
2. Some of the main topics in the first quarter were:

• The Priorities of Survival: Protection, Rescue, Water, and Food
• The Psychology of Survival
• Fire: Gift of the Gods
• The Preparation of Food
• Navigation and Weather
• Knots, Snares, and Tools
• Survival Medicine

     3.  I learned a lot of significant things from this book thus far and could write a novel discussing everything that I read so I'll keep it to a few things. The difference between life and death often boils down to a matter of choice. The "reality" of your situation will be what you believe it to be. If you decide that the odds are so heavily stacked against you that you have no chance of survival, the battle is already as good as lost. If, on the other hand, you choose to be inspired by the stories of those who have survived with no wilderness skills to fall back on, you will know that the seemingly impossible is indeed possible. No one is more likely to survive than those who can convince themselves they can. The following are the four priorities of survival:

• Protection: Priority number one in a survival situation is the protection of yourself-whether from extreme conditions, dangerous animals, or an airplane about to explode. You must protect yourself first-there is no point getting water but becoming hypothermic in the process!
• Rescue: The next priority is to set yourself up to be rescued-lay out objects, stones, or whatever material is at hand, in a large SOS near your shelter. Rescue services will start their search as soon as they know you are in trouble, so don't miss those early opportunities to be saved; be prepared. As long as it is safe to do so, you should wait where you are. Stay put. If you are in a vehicle, don't stray from it. Stay nearby. Be smart; make yourself safe, make yourself visible, and then wait to be rescued.
• Water: Once you are protected from the elements, and prepared for rescue, you must stay alive long enough for rescue to come! Water now becomes your top priority. Think in 3s: you can live three hours without decent protection from extreme heat or cold; three days without water; but you can survive for three weeks without food. Get your priorities straight. You must find water!
• Food: Energy is needed even more so if your plan involves self-rescue. But remember, you can survive much longer without food than than without water, and your body has plenty of reserves of both muscle and fat to work through. If water is in short supply, restrict your eating, especially of too much protein, which requires more water to digest. Learn to scavenge as early man did. Find berries, maggots, or grubs before you chase the big game! This is how you really stay alive. The acronym for these priorities is: Please Remember What's First!

          Fire is another important aspect to keep in mind when battling the elements and is best known as the gift of the God's. Location is vital, choose the site for your fire carefully. Wind and its relative proximity to your shelter are probably the most important aspect to consider. There are three distinct ingredients that your fire will need if it is not to die before it has even started. These are tinder (cotton material or dry grass, dry moss, or pine needles), kindling (softwoods such as pine cut into small pieces), and fuel (softwoods such as cedar, spruce, and pine and hardwoods such as hickory, beech , and oak). It's important that when gathering fuel, look for sources above the ground. When looking for food it's better to hunt smaller game, like rabbits, snakes, lizards, and birds. Whenever possible, make sure you keep all your food out of smelling distance of insects and predatory animals. Soft fruit and berries will be best preserved wrapped in leaves or moss and if you're on the coast, keep seafood moist by wrapping it in seaweed. Also, NEVER store food in your shelter or your camp area as it will attract unwanted guests who may not distinguish between you and the food they're after.

       4. What I would like people to take away from this initial quarter of reading is that we as a society take technology for granted whether we admit it or not. What happens when technology is suddenly and unexpectedly stripped away? When suddenly we have no means to communicate. When we find ourselves alone in a strange new world. Our growing dependence on technologies of all forms is a double-edged sword. The fact that our modern world has, at least on the face of it, become increasingly reliable and plain clever has, paradoxically, made us more and more vulnerable. People are no longer able to cope for more than a very short time when these "systems" fail and when technology does fail, at even the most basic level, we often feel peculiarly helpless. This book is a "how-to" book on how to survive when the lights go out......and stay out. I want to show people by the information in this book that it's not impossible to survive in this world when put in an extreme situation or without technology for that matter.