FAS

Army Field Manual on Survival

11.01.07 | 1 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

“All of us were born kicking and fighting to live, but we have become used to the soft life…. What happens when we are faced with a survival situation with its stresses, inconveniences, and discomforts?”

That question is posed in a 2002 U.S. Army Field Manual (large pdf) on survival strategies and techniques in emergency situations.

Almost all of the contents will be familiar to students of wilderness medicine and first aid. (Except maybe “Prepare yourself to survive in a nuclear environment.”) Nevertheless, U.S. Army web sites do not permit public access to the document, which says that distribution is limited to government agencies and contractors. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.

See “Survival,” U.S. Army Field Manual FM 3-05.70, May 2002 (676 pages in a large 20 MB PDF file).