Mykel Hawke - Hawkes Green Beret survival manual: essential strategies for shelter and water, food and fire, tools and medicine, navigation and signaling, survival psychology and getting out alive!

ESSENTIAL STRATEGIES FOR:
Shelter and Water, Food and Fire,
Tools and Medicine, Navigation and Signaling,
Survival Psychology and Getting Out Alive!

BY MYKEL HAWKE

Captain in the U.S. Army Special Forces and Director of Spec Ops Inc.

RUNNING PRESS

PHILADELPHIA LONDON

2009 by Mykel Hawke

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008926946

ISBN 978-0-7624-3358-2

Cover design and interior design by Matt Goodman

Cover illustration by Ted Wright

Interior illustrations by Dale Hodgkinson

Edited by Greg Jones

Typography: Whitney, and Mercury

Running Press Book Publishers

2300 Chestnut Street

Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371

Visit us on the web:

www.runningpress.com

Visit Hawke on the web:

www.specops.com

Publishers Notice: The information in this book is provided with the caveat that the reader exercise extreme caution when applying the knowledge and techniques presented herein. Note that some activities related to wilderness survival can be dangerous. Also, some information and techniques describedincluding but not limited to trapping, fire activities, and moreare illegal outside of true survival situations. Please apply common sense and use your own discretion. The publisher will not be responsible for any injuries or action resulting from the use of this book.

Id like to dedicate this book to:

The Past: My Fathers Earl, Pete and the Others no longer with us, who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

The Present: My wife Ruth; brothers Jon, Jay, Steve, Russ, and Zach; and those family and friends who stick by through thick and thin.

The Future: My sons Anthony, Nicholas, and Gabriel, and the youth who will carry the torch when our flame has gone out.

My Mother, Patricia, a true survivor. My sisters Naomi and Michelle and their families: loyal survivors. My in-laws: Tom (for his personal editing) and Elaine, Joe and Georgiagenerous and sharing, they survive through lifes troubles. Mamasan, Papasan, Mama Hoo, Papa Hoo, and Yedidia the Teacher. The men with whom I served, who risked much, gave much, and asked little. The Great Spirit, who guided me in the dark times and blessed me, even when I didnt know it.

Other thanks along the Survival Trail:

My PopsEulie of Alaska, Kenneth of Oklahoma, Beth the Mother, Karl of Aikido, Jim the Author, Mike the Commander, Jake the Recruiter, OB of Africa, Ranger Ryan, General Davis, and Greg of Books.

If you think about it, and you wont have to think for very long, youll see that the term survival situation is redundant. If youre in a situation its a survival situation.

One thing Ive run into a lot lately, particularly among women, is a quest for the feeling of safety. To me the feeling of safety is an illusion of safety, but in actuality the only place safety exists is in the grave. If youre dead, nothing worse is going to happen. Life is tough for everybody, but its deadly for the complacent.

Americans live in comparative safety. I live in Southern California, where we have a much better chance of surviving an earthquake than people in Guatemala. In the area where I live were surrounded by woods, and the place could go up in an hour, starting from any time at all. So, we might be isolated by an earthquake or roasted by a forest fire. Am I afraid? No. Am I concerned? You betcha. We have a first aid kit, thirty gallons of water, enough gas in the car to get out of Dodge, and a bunch of other sensible stuff.

Do I feel safe? No. Are we safe? No. Are we relatively safe, and are we prepared. Uh huh.

A.G. Hawke has written a really valuable book here, not because its packed with surefire survival techniques. It has some of those, but mostly its about attitude, and I believe that attitude is necessary for all of life, not just extreme situations. What its about is awareness, preparedness, and being ready to take every aspect of your situation back to zero, to look at everything around you for threats and tools. Its about being calm when all about you are losing their minds. Its about looking at things as they are, and not how you wish they were or how you fear they are.

A few years back I was getting ready for a flight to Texas from Kennedy in New York. The flight was delayed for an hour. My companion, who was a real dish, and moreover in the movie business, stomped her little foot and said, This is unacceptable!

Imagine, humanity longs to be able to fly for the entire 5,000 year history of our civilization and this one hour delay is unacceptable. This is not the attitude to take into a survival situation.

Actually my companion was just playing the role of Cherokee American Princess. She could ride and she could shoot. Other than the fact that shed probably be wearing heels and an Armani suit, theres no one Id rather be thrown into a real survival situation with.

But I digress.

Point is, you need the survival attitude for every aspect of life. Theyre all survival situations to one degree or another. What we call survival situations are sudden, unexpected survival situations, being downed in the arctic or the desert, having your safari overtaken by a civil war in some third-world hellhole.

But your home is a survival situation, your car, your job, a day in the park. Every one of those has potential threats that youd be better off to be aware of and prepared for, better off to keep a cool head and an open mind.

Thats what my friend Hawke is about. Read this book carefully. The journey will be fun on one level, and instructive on another. If it makes you one-tenth more aware it may well have been the best investment you ever made.

Jim Morris

A bit of background before we begin....

I was born a po boy in Kentucky. My Pa was a soldier and my Maw was a waitress and we didnt have squat. Thats it.

We lived like lots of soldiers families in the 1960s, especially the young ones like my folks: very, very poor. We literally had outhouses and well water. But hey, it wasnt bad. And like a lot of families during the 60s when the free-love and war-time mentalities separated the nation, my folks split up when I was young. So most of my childhood was spent living all over the Southeast with many different friends and relatives, whoever could take me in for a while.

What this meant was a lot of poverty and lot of hardship for my family, and a lot of time for me to try to escape all of that and explore the world away from all the troubles at home, whether it was in the country woods or the city areas not safe for the general public, let alone a child.

Now, much of the time, Id be with my mother, back and forth in between spells with relatives, boyfriends, neighbors, sitters, and other friends or co-workers. My mother and father were both good-hearted people, but both had a rough childhood themselves and so, as very young parents, there were a lot of things they couldve done better.