One of the most important rules of outdoors exploring: never be unprepared. Things can go wrong quickly when you are out camping, hiking, or even rafting. To avoid disaster, you need to know how to build one of these simple survival shelters.
Make sure to always carry these essential emergency supplies in your pack:
You can use these materials to quickly construct any of the following simple survival shelters:
Tarp Shelter
Tarp shelters are one of the easiest simple survival shelters to make on the go. All you need is a common tarp and a few stakes – which are easy enough to carry with you. If you don’t have stakes available, rocks and sticks will make do.
Depending on the prevailing elements, tarps can be fashion into make shift tents, ground covers, and blankets.
Debris Shelter
If you are in an area after a natural disaster (or other type of traumatic event), you should use the materials available to you to build a temporary shelter. You can prop up slabs of concrete for walls or can secure bits of wooden fence with bungee cords to fashion a roof.
Often, people will call shelters made from natural materials “debris shelters,” but that’s a bit of a misnomer.
Natural Bed
If you find that the ground is frozen or damp, one of the best things you can do is build a “mattress” out of natural supplies. For example, a good way to start is by placing two logs side by side, about three feet apart.
You should then fill the space between the two logs with as many leaves, small sticks, and dry bits of grass as you can find. Fill the space until there is about six inches of covering. Then, place your tarp on top of your new mattress so you can rest without becoming wet or cold.
Spider Shelter
A spider shelter is on of the best simple survival shelters because you can make it using only supplies foraged from your surroundings. Essentially, a spider shelter is a Teepee-esque shelter made of interlocking sticks. The outside is covered with mud and grass for insulation.
If you have trouble keeping the sticks together, you can bind the roof with bungee cords. It’s also a good idea to use a tarp for the ground covering. Spider Shelters and the like take a lot of effort to construct and should only be used if you plan to stay put for more than few nights.
Lean-to Shelter
A lean-to is possibly one of the simplest shelters to create, making it easy for people with little to no survival experience to quickly set up. A lean-to shelter’s structure is given away by it’s name: it is when you take something (a tarp, long sticks, a stone, etc.) and lean it against something else (usually a larger tree or stone) to create shelter.