If you've become interested in survival-prepping procedures, chances are you have repeatedly seen the same things taught in typical consumer survival guides. These lessons are not wrong, but they focus on convenience and preliminary preparations.
Often, people stock up on supplies for their homes and then find themselves in a situation where they either have to evacuate and not have access to them, or they are washed away in floods or some other type of disaster.
Civilian survival guides are meant to give you peace of mind by comforting you to know that your needs will be met because you have purchased the right gear—from food with a 25-year shelf life to solar panels and more.
On the other hand, military survival tactics have a different focus that can help if you are caught in a survival situation without all of the modern conveniences, such as a roof over your head, pre-bought survival supplies, etc.
Soldiers are taught to be efficient with what they can find, adaptable to any circumstance, and stealthy in everything they do. This gives them the upper hand whenever there is any threat to their well-being.
For a soldier and possibly an ordinary citizen in a SHTF event, it's not about the choice or preference between one flavor of MRE and another. Instead, it's based on the skills that go beyond simple survival, where you have to decide how to sustain your energy when your rations are limited or construct a shelter that will hide you from others who may have hostile intentions.
Even with the best preparations, citizens can still panic when things are unplanned. At the same time, soldiers have learned discipline to stay calm and assess the situation before making the best decision possible.
This is often known as SERE, which stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. Any modern interruption to daily life, such as the grid going down for three days, can make ordinary consumers uncomfortable and worried.
Soldiers are trained for the unimaginable, which means they know how to prepare for long-term events or the first conditions that cause extreme duress. You want to stock up on survival gear and have that peace of mind that you crave – but you also want to educate yourself about military survival training so that if and when you are met with the most unforgiving conditions, you'll be ready for anything.
There's something you have in common with the average soldier. Neither of you has a say in whether you will end up in a survival situation. This is not like a retreat meant to test your endurance skills.
Like you, soldiers often don't have the luxury of packing a bug-out bag ahead of time. They may have one back at their base, but they could find themselves without readily available resources.
It's wise to be prepared for both a controlled setting, where your homestead is filled with supplies just in case, and an uncontrolled setting, where you must evacuate and leave all your preparations behind rapidly.
The difference between you and a military soldier is that they are trained to adapt to anything, while you may find yourself frozen in fear and faced with a lack of knowledge about what you should do in this type of situation.
Often, survival depends on speed. Even a split second can be too long when you are forced to make a decision that could save your life. If you are in harsh conditions, you will find your energy levels dwindling faster than if you are hunkered down at home.
Instead of grabbing a water bottle and a dehydrated meal, you have to build shelter, find and purify water, and forage for something to eat. Sometimes, you must do that on the go to continue evading hostile threats.
If you must bug out without much gear, you want to embrace the military mindset. That means avoiding detection, keeping your footprint low, and using minimal resources to get by.
Now is not the time to build an elaborate shelter and cook meals that will attract animals and other humans. You don't want to waste all of your physical energy and mental power on doing things that could be stripped from you in an instant.
You never know what type of survival event you will go through. If it's a flood, you might endure the loss of your belongings and the depression of what has happened.
But what if it's an invasion or civil unrest that not only forces you to deal with an evacuation or physical threats but also possible capture, confrontations, and psychological harm?
This is where military training comes in handy because soldiers are taught to embrace a gray man theory where they can navigate without being targeted. They are capable of blending into their surroundings and escaping without allowing mental trauma to get in the way.
What the Military Prioritizes in Survival Training
Let's discuss how you can alter your priorities to train for survival like a soldier. Not every situation a soldier encounters is in harsh conditions. Sometimes, it's simply a matter of evaluating your choices and determining which is a non-essential task and which will take care of you immediately.
Civilians often have a survival focus on long-term sustainability. They envision a year without access to grocery stores. Soldiers are going to think about and efficiently prioritize necessities.
The Marine Corps uses the rule of threes to organize command structures. Some people use this more generally to manage their survival training efforts. The concept says you can survive 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 hours without shelter in extreme weather, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food.
A hierarchy for survival like this lets you know what to prioritize for your immediate needs. Some people focus most on food and water, but that depends on the weather you’re in and whether it poses a more immediate threat.
So, if you’re following this line of military training, you’ll want to know how to clear airways and treat injuries first, then have shelter (if needed). After that, you’ll find and purify water and your foraging efforts.
Everything in military survival training is meant to conserve your energy. So you don’t want to hike 10 miles if you can find water closer, like extracting it from plants or digging for water underground. While you may begin feeling weak as your body has to deal with starvation, you have more time before it will be a fatal event.
Other things that military soldiers prioritize in their training are situational awareness and risk assessment so that they can make informed decisions about what to do next.
Most active or retired soldiers routinely scan their surroundings to identify potential threats. They look for the nearest escape route that will not draw their attention. They know how to assess someone's body language and anticipate every move so that they can avoid confrontation and harm.
While civilians are typically reactive to unfolding events, soldiers think three steps ahead and react before something happens. It's all about working smarter, not harder and making every decision count.
How Soldiers Are Taught to Shelter in Survival Situations
Let's go back to the focus on shelters since it can be one of the most important things to prioritize in a survival event, depending on the elements. It's not just about the weather you are in.
Sometimes, shelters you build can protect you from enemies or other harsh conditions besides weather. When civilians think about creating a shelter, they often focus on creature comforts, such as warmth or keeping bugs out.
For a soldier, it's about assessing the terrain on which it is constructed and staying undetected. Of course, it also helps protect them from extreme elements.
The first thing you want to learn is how to evaluate the terrain. You don't want to make an effort and waste your energy building a shelter on a spot that will not be good.
To avoid detection, you should consider what someone might see while walking on the ground and from an aerial standpoint. You should evaluate your potential escape routes and not box yourself in so you have nowhere to go.
When it comes to choosing between high or low ground, there are pros and cons to both. A high location gives you an advantage for approaching enemies but also makes you more vulnerable to being detected by aerial surveillance.
The low ground can protect you from that and give you additional shelter from wind, but it also puts you at risk for things like floods if there is not good drainage in that area. Plus, it puts you in a position where approaching enemies or threats can get access to you more easily.
When you study survival prepping and learn how to build shelters, you'll often find videos of people building comfortable shelters with chimneys and benches or tables.
Military soldiers don't waste time on unnecessary activities. Every movement they make is designed to achieve efficiency and structural integrity with the least effort possible.
If they can find any type of natural shelter, such as a cave or cluster of rocks and trees, they will use them when building their shelter because it saves them physical expenditures and time.
They're not trying to construct a perfect framework that looks impressive for a YouTube video. Instead, they're using any type of material they can find, such as vines, leaves, or branches, and putting together a shelter that will insulate and protect them with a camouflage strategy in mere minutes.
Military Methods for Meeting Basic Food and Water Needs
Survival preppers stock up on buckets of dehydrated foods with a 25-year shelf life. They also pack bug-out bags filled with convenient, lightweight snacks. They even have a water purification straw or tabs to ensure plenty of safe water to hydrate.
But they're often caught off guard if they are forced to leave without anything. Conversely, a soldier can find food and water in any situation—and they’re not picky about it.
Their goal is to save energy, which gives them fuel to survive. They learn how to do this in the desert, jungle, and Arctic, wherever needed. They are taught to focus on the water first.
This is because dehydration will not only cause you to feel weak but can also lead you to be confused and eventually kill you. Most civilian preppers know to look for natural water sources like lakes or rivers.
But soldiers understand that water isn't always visible on top of the terrain. Sometimes, they have to look for signs of water beneath the surface or in vegetation and dig for drinkable water they can purify with the least effort.
They know how to trap condensation by digging a simple hole and putting a container inside it before covering it with something so they can collect moisture from the ground. They also know not to simply eat snow or ice but instead warm it up so they can drink it first.
They know how to use the sun to work to their advantage or use water they collect from cacti in an otherwise harsh desert-like area. And while boiling water is the most effective, it's not always an option for soldiers to rely on.
Sometimes, they don't even have chemical purification options. In that case, you have to learn how to filter water naturally by pouring it through different layers of materials such as sand, fabric, and charcoal. This removes most debris, even if it doesn't kill the bacteria 100%.
This is for the most desperate survival situation. It's important to know that you can limit your intake of contaminated water so that you're not putting yourself at risk of death by dehydration—even if you might suffer from some sickness and drink unpurified water.
Civilians often learn how to hunt and fish for food sources. Military survival is more focused on minimal effort and preparation on the go. Finding, killing, and preparing an animal to eat takes a lot of effort.
Soldiers can gather insects that give them protein and energy, yet they don't take a lot of effort to catch and prepare. They eat them raw or slightly roasted as a nutrient-dense source.
They are also heavily trained to identify the correct plants, berries, and nuts that can be eaten as a food source that won't cause harm. Even some tree bark, like the inner bark of a pine tree, can be boiled and eaten as a source of carbs.
When they need to catch small games at slower times, they don't waste a lot of effort on complex traps. Instead, they use simple snares or deadfall traps, utilizing every bit of the animal so that nothing goes to waste.
For cooking purposes, a soldier knows that any smoke and smell will attract attention, whether from other humans with hostile intentions or dangerous animals.
So they are taught alternative cooking methods such as cooking food by burying it under hot coals or eating foods raw whenever possible and safe to do so. They also don't cook big meals all at once. Instead, they spread out tiny bits of food throughout the day to keep their energy levels high.
How Soldiers Maintain a Stealth Approach to Navigating and Communication
Civilian survival preppers often go to great lengths to have communication devices and navigational tools to help them in a grid-down situation. However, military soldiers understand that they can't always rely on technology.
They learn how to navigate if their gear is not working or in a way that makes them less easy to track. That means knowing the land and natural guidance tools such as stars or the sun to find your way.
They know that communication can attract attention, so they know how to communicate quietly or undetectably. They don't move or talk noisily.
They are trained with the simple knowledge of the sun rising in the east and setting in the West so that they know their direction during the day. But they can read the stars at night using constellations like the Big Dipper and Orion to navigate between North and South.
When it comes to the terrain, they know that rivers flow downhill to a larger body of water, so they can follow it to navigate to where they want to go. Vegetation also gives them indications about direction because moss grows on the north side of a tree in certain regions.
When they move about, it’s not in an open area where they’re visible. They don’t walk in the ground that leaves tracks to alert hostile enemies of where they’re headed. They move with speed, stealthily.
They make sure their belongings don’t make noise—even their clothing is modified to stay silent. Their movements are measured and deliberate, not in a panicked rush from one area to another.
They know how to watch for situations where they’re being stalked or tracked, and they know how to double back and avoid detection to throw off any enemies. If they’re with others, they know hand signals for communication.
Even moving around at night is done carefully. They don’t have a high-lumen flashlight. They cover it with something and only use a tiny sliver of light when needed to find their way around.
A Prepper’s Guide to Military Combat and Self-Defense Strategies
Survival preppers are sometimes well-versed in self-defense measures. Whether using martial arts or non-lethal weapons, they take time to understand how to protect themselves and their family.
But there are still things you can learn from military survival training. Soldiers are taught, first and foremost, how to avoid capture. They know to fight whenever necessary but focus on maintaining their physical strength and mental prowess to survive.
Civilian preppers sometimes have a “stand your ground” mindset, where a soldier is focused on getting away, staying alive, and neutralizing threats to their life without having to waste any energy or time.
While you may not want to escape and evade a home intruder instead of confronting them with protective weaponry, you still need to understand how to embrace a combat survival mindset if you are forced to leave your home.
This may mean learning how to camouflage yourself and stay undetectable. Most civilians try to run fast from a threat, which draws more attention than it would if they knew how to blend into the environment and conceal themselves at that moment.
If they are forced to fight, a soldier knows which body's weakest points to target. This will work well for a small or weaker civilian who needs to disable an attacker by focusing on their eyes, throat, or groin.
Another thing you can learn from military survival training is how to improvise weapons that can protect you. This might include a stick that has been sharpened, a rock, or even vigorous vines that can tie up a threat.
A good way to think about it and train for it is to view your natural surroundings as a toolbox. What could you use if you were in the wilderness and were under attack? You might throw dirt in their eyes, use a broken branch as a weapon, and so on.
It's not just physical strength that will help you in a survival event that is considered harsh, but also mental resilience, which allows you to stay calm and make split-second decisions that can save your life.
Soldiers know how to control their breathing and heart rate. They assess threats in other people and learn how to attack them. They also train for physical and mental endurance, not simply lifting weights in the gym.
They practice climbing and carrying heavy loads and even force themselves to train during exhaustion to see how much they are capable of in the worst conditions. Again, it's not always about how much you can do but how much energy you can conserve and how efficient you can be to compete against the enemy.
For civilian preppers, training with a military mindset is an elevated level of survival. You want to plan for the long-term creature comforts that most survival guides teach.
But if you leave out real-world survival threats that most people are not equipped to handle, you may be unable to escape or defend yourself, and you'll regret not taking your training to the next level when the SHTF.
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