An unexpected and dangerous situation can happen to you and your family at any time, on any day, and despite the need to use common sense, most people panic and are completely unprepared. Most people never think about the need to survive anything. But you, the average person, could easily be one slip, journey, natural disaster or crash away from real trouble.

This website, written by Leon Pantenburg, is about proven common sense survival techniques that any of us should know whether we live in a large or recreate in a rural area or near a wilderness. Use your common sense to survive any unexpected calamity and turn a potentially dangerous situation into a mere inconvenience. Pack the right tools with the confidence to know how to use them and you and your family will survive any emergency.

In an instant, the backpacking trip in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains turned from an idyllic family outing to every parent’s nightmare. One moment, my son Daniel, 16 months old at the time, was playing around the campsite. In the next, despite the supervision of four adults, he had vanished.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter A 68-year-old man died in a sleeping bag in his truck after he got stuck in the snow while camping in February and kept a log of nearly 70 days spent apparently stranded in east Linn County’s high country, authorities said today. To read the complete story, click here. [...]

Your GPS is as reliable as the batteries in it! Make the best choices for consistent power!

if you’re lost, the best advice is to stay put! But if you absolutely must move, land navigation expert Blake Miller explains the skills to practice before attempting to navigate wilderness areas in the dark.

The retired couple was just going out on a drive to try out a new camera, then got stuck on an isolated road in the snow. Nobody knew they had gone anywhere. When they were discovered missing, nobody had any idea where they might be. Navigation expert Blake Miller posted this AP wire story Sunday [...]

What better family activity is there than getting everybody together, packing up the daypacks and heading out on some outdoor adventure?

A topographic map is your road map to the outdoors. It provides you detailed information at a scale that is meaningful and detailed. Here is how to read the most commonly-used topo maps.

Too many waypoints on your GPS is like heaping your office files in a pile – it will be hard to find something when you need it! In the office, that can be annoying. In the wilderness that can be deadly! In this story GPS expert Blake Miller shows you how to make the best use of your waypoints

Monday night I was interviewed for an hour on the James T. Stevens “Doctor Prepper Talk Show,” on BlogTalk Radio. You can listen to the interview here.