Hiking at Crescent Lake in Oregon

Learn common sense tips throughout this website on how to survive an outdoor wilderness or urban emergency; whether you are hiking, biking, hunting, canoeing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, walking or taking a car trip.

Look for how-to instructions on how to avoid an emergency in the first place throughout the categories on the left hand side of this page.

Staying found when you are lost,  eating to survive, building an emergency shelter, making a fire and other common sense approaches to saving your life in an unexpected emergency.

The site emphasizes always being prepared for what you don’t expect to happen. Written by veteran wilderness enthusiast, Leon Pantenburg.

What is Survival Common Sense? It’s a logical “common sense” approach to every day emergencies or real disasters that give you and your family a fighting chance to survive.

What would you do if you sprained your ankle at dusk, in the middle of a large urban park on a routine evening winter run?  Or when your car slides off a rural, icy road and gets stuck during a frigid blizzard? What about being awakened by fire alarms and the smell of smoke in your totally-dark, fourth-floor hotel room?

Most people never think about the need to survive anything.  But you, the average person, could easily be one slip, fall or crash away from serious trouble.

About Leon Pantenburg

Leon Pantenburg is a wilderness enthusiast, who doesn’t claim expertise as a

Leon Pantenburg

survivalist. As a newpaperman for three decades, covering search and rescue, sheriff’s departments and outdoor emergencies, Leon learned many people died unnecessarily or escaped miraculously from outdoor emergency situations when simple, common sense may have changed the outcome. Leon now teaches common sense survival techniques to the average person in order to avert potential disasters.