This is a book on wilderness survival, with a twist. The author fancies himself a lively, exuberant, postive spirit, breaking wearisome conventions and avoiding the routine content of other survival manuals. What he is, too often, is sophomoric and verbose. The book could have been half the length without a loss of the valuable information it contains. The cartoons are here as in his later book, which I reviewed earlier, but this time around I found them irritating. Lundin's flippant clownishness creates some considerable noise in parts of the text; but in spite of this, the book is probably worth reading for some.

The author's serious focus is on what it takes to survive for three days and how survival and body temperature are interlinked. "[T]he average survival scenario lasts for 72 hours, or three days. Statistically speaking, this is the amount of time that passes before searchers find you dead or alive - as long as you have someone searching for you." (p 22) So he's decided he not going to tell you how to build a shelter, how to trap or track, how to find North or read a map, how to care for injuries or illness, how to make cordage or skin a rabbit. What he is going to tell you is why body temperature and hydration must be monitored and regulated in order to survive. After that he's interested in cataloging in a chatty, long-winded way the contents of an portable survival kit and advising you on the good sense of leaving an itinerary well-placed in case you don't return as planned. That's pretty much all there is to this book. That and a lot of space-filling drawings, loud cartoons and brightly-colored photos.

The physiological information Lundin gives is given with more authority, in more detail, and in the context of real survival in Kenneth Kamler's Surviving the Extremes: What Happens to the Body and Mind at the Limits of Human Endurance, reviewed earlier.

The book is smaller in number of pages than your military type survival manual. Lots of topics that are just repeated in diffrents ways. Book is not clear and to the point. Really is a waste of money, should go with a book that has been proven for survival again most true military manuals are you best bet for the money.