This book is the best book to buy for about everything survival. Everyone I’ve seen and read about recommended this book as an essential tool for an emergency situation. Google Play has an app with this book fully accessible and easy to access to subjects and chapters of information. But in case you lose. Your phone breaks in an emergency bug-out situation or falls in the water and everything is damaged or broken from falling or crossing rivers, etc. Having a tangible book or books in waterproof bags or dry bags in your bub out bag Is Indispensable. Relying solely on electronics is really dumb in case of an emo or its basic fragility. Books that are put in w/proof bags will be insurance far better than a phone or tablet.

If you’ve been reading books on Survival for very long you are sure to have come across John “Lofty” Wiseman’s “SAS Survival Handbook, The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere: Third Edition (William Morrow Paperbacks)”. This book is a favorite of many people.

Although we like the “SAS Survival Handbook” we actually have found another book by Wiseman to be a better reference source for our purposes; the “SAS Survival Guide For any climate, for any situation: 2nd Edition (Collins Gem)”. Even though this book is only 384 pages long, we prefer it because it is actually a book that we can take with us into the outback since it measures only 3¼ x 1 x 4 5/8 inches and only weighs 7 ounces. The more common “SAS Survival Handbook” has 672 pages, measures 5¼ x 1 1/8 x 8¼ inches and weighs almost 2 pounds. So, although the smaller “SAS Survival Guide” only has 57% of the number of pages (and a lot smaller print), we have found it more useful since we can carry it with us when we need it.

The book has sections on:
Essentials
Climate and Terrain
Food
Camp Craft
Reading the Signs
On the Move
Survival at Sea
Rescue
Health
Disaster Strategies

Unfortunately, the pocket sized “SAS Survival Guide“ was last printed in 2010 so it is becoming harder to find – especially at a rational price. Since each book contains information that the other doesn’t you might consider buying both – the small one for active use on the trail and the larger one for research at home.

This book is small and compact and great on the go, but they’re some things that doesn’t go much in to detail such as sharpening a knife or showing much illustration of skinning different types of animals or what is their nature towards people also some things are kinda scrambled such as the suturing knot is in the knot section instead of the medical section (that would of been helpful.) and not much illustration on the suturing part either. Also this book is U.K English, not U.S English, so try to learn on some U.K vocab if you’re don’t know the definition of “torch” in their type of English. The bashing a rock on a knife to split wood is a bad idea.

Enough about the cons here are the pros. This book does contain a lot of useful content to being prepared on what situation you’re in. This book also tells you on things that are necessary on what situation and on what type of climate. it’s also easy to read (recommend to get reading glasses if you have trouble reading small print) and has some pretty interesting illustration. I do recommend this book to beginner’s to survival or “bushcraft” and goes the same to experts.

Nice guide, seems to cover quite a bit of ground on lots of survival topics, and also seems quite practical and to the point as opposed to philosophical or purely “prepper” oriented. Feels like it aims a “just enough” information about a wide variety of topics, enough to get you by, and not exhaustively detailed. It does have pictures, some of them B&W drawings and others colored and detailed (e.g. plants to avoid or eat, so you don’t get them confused!).

Great thing about this book, and the reason I got it in the first place, is it is small, easily stowable in a small bag or backpack or in a glove box. It is part of the “Collins gem” series of miniature books. If you have poor vision, you might want to get a smal Fresnel lends bookmark to keep in this just in case. This is not to say this book is short – it has a lot of pages (384) – but the pages and font are shrunk down to an easily portable size, particularly useful if you actually have a situation where you need to carry it with you. Fits in the palm of your hand. Roughly 4.5″x3.25″x.8″.

If you spring for the 3rd edition of this book, it is NOT a “Collins gem”, and actually is quite large, like the oversize paperback novels you find at Costco, and probably at least twice the dimensions of the 2nd edition. I did pick up the 3rd edition as well, partly because it is easier to read (yeah, I plan to read it for fun instead of waiting until I’m dehydrated and bleeding in the desert with mutant raiders chasing me while I fend off bears and mosquitoes in the middle of an earthquake 😉 but also because it has 200 extra pages about natural disasters and urban survival.

I suspect I will purchase a couple more of the 2nd edition gems, one for each car and and keep this one in the backpacking/camping gear. BTW, I picked this book based on a reading a comparison of various guides in a magazine. They reviewed like 10 of them, and this one was one of the top two IIRC. Cheers, and happy surviving!