In 2010 adventurer and author Ed Stafford became the first person to walk along the Amazon River from start to end (4,000 miles and over 2 years!), earning him a Guinness World Record. He also had Discovery Channel drop him onto an uninhabited tropical island in the Pacific for 60 days, naked, where he survived by eating raw snails, building a shelter in trees and collecting rainwater with a contraption he made from washed-up debris. If anyone knows about survival it’s Ed Stafford, who writes the engaging foreword to Lonely Planet’s just released “visual guide,” How to Survive Anything.
With bold illustrations and a sense of humor, this survival handbook coaches us out of a broad spectrum of emergency situations, such as: an earthquake, a snakebite, food poisoning, a failed parachute, a nuclear explosion, getting kidnapped, and a free-falling elevator. It also advises us on sticky snags that are pretty funny if they’re not happening to you, such as how to survive: locking yourself out of a hotel room naked, waking up with a new tattoo, a wardrobe malfunction, a spaghetti supper without the splatters, a foot-in-mouth situation, a toddler’s tantrum, and a blind date.
The book is a light read, more fun than in-depth, but I did learn a lot of good survival tips, such as using nail polish remover if you superglue your skin to a mug or countertop, staying in one spot if you’re lost in the wild without GPS, and putting shaving cream on a jellyfish sting – if only I’d known this many years ago when I was in Costa Rica, my sting may have not spread up my ankle! I’m a sucker for books with fun nuggets of information, and this is one I quickly read from cover to cover.
See sample pages from this book at Wink.
