SAS Survival Handbook

The book is an older, more robust and serious version of the popular The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. Written by John Wiseman, a 26 year veteran of the British Special Air Service (hence the title), it covers survival in almost any circumstances you can imagine. For someone like me, who is always wondering what I would do if I somehow did manage to end up marooned on a deserted island, this book is fodder for my wildest fantasies.

I was planning to type in the table of contents, but then realized I'd be here all night. Suffice to say it covers more than any one person (with the clear exception of a SAS lifer) will ever need. It covers (among many many other things) survival at sea, in the desert, in a tropical rainforest, in the arctic, after a plane crash, during a car crash, natural disasters, toxic chemical leaks, snake bites, gunshot wounds, and nuclear radiation.

This is a serious book, and it doesn't have the sense of humor that pervades Worst Case Scenario, but for the truly paranoid among us it is much more useful. It covers many things I didn't expect to find in a survival handbook (e.g. Put tea bags in your survival kit: it makes found water much more palateable, keeps people calm and restores morale.), and almost every section includes special instructions on how to care for infants, the elderly, and disabled or injured people in dire situations.