Tree Root Survival Shelter - Fast Build, Minimal Tools

Description

When in a Survival situation it is important to use your Bushcraft knowledge and utilise the natural resources surrounding you. This video shows you how I build a fast survival shelter for emergency situations where time and elements are against you. Thank you for watching the video.

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Video Transcription

welcome to ta outdoors and this is short video really about making a survival shelter next to a fallen-down tree so near the way the tree roots are often obviously if you're in a survival situation not really gonna have too much time to build a shelter and you have to use basically the all the resources that are around you be it deadfall beer already natural materials that are there but you have to kind of open up your senses open up your eyes and look around you and think what do I need that can help me to survive over here in the UK we don't really have any predators

the only real problems that we would have is actually other humans and so I'm not too worried about bears wolves things like that there's none of that over here we do get snakes what you can see behind me here is a tree that's fallen over its blown over by the wind and what's happened is it's got this kind of buttress root here where the roots are pulled out it's already going to provide me from shelter from one side already without me having to do anything you can see just from the look of it it's probably about waist-high maybe a little bit lower but again this is a survival shelter so I won't really need to have anything super-high I'd rather keep it a low profile that way over the rim if the winds do pick up and they are strong I'm going to be much more protected than a higher shelter which might be more likely to fall over when you're building a survival shelter find out which direction the wind is coming from first if you are in a situation where it's very windy it's raining it's stormy you need to get your shelter up quite quickly protect yourself from the wind side first then worry about the rest of the shelter so first things first I'm going to get a wall up here only about waist high because at the end of the day survival shelter you're gonna be in it to be lying down not standing up it's not a long-term shelter it's a short-term one let's get this wall done so I've got myself for about meter and a half lengths yeah sticks a couple inches couple inches in diameter all I'm going to do now is just with my hatchet it's just do what's called limbing them taking off the these parts here and then I'm going to make a point at the end of them ready to drive into the ground get this one done so I'm going to do now got the points on the stake and here's the back of the axe make sure the sheath or mask is on the front of the covering the blade just to avoid injury

I haven't beveled the edges of these you can't bevel them with a knife just to stop it mushroom in but with survival situations that's going to take time so I'm just going to knock four steaks in here and then go and collect some logs to make that barrier okay so I've got my four support sticks in place all I do now is collect some logs but I'm not going to saw these looks to size really that takes time so I'm just going to get logs doesn't matter if they're too long and just stack them up to about waist high

okay now got the rest of the logs in place all you need them you can use any size logs as long as you make sure that they're just a bit wider than your support sticks but before you put the logs in its best to tie some cordage at the top otherwise you end up putting a load of logs down here and it widens all these support means you end up putting more and more logs on so you always tied your cordage at the top you can use cordage from natural troop from actual pine tree roots as natural cordage you can use nettle cordage there are a lot of natural materials out there that you can use as cottage but for sake this video I've just brought along some garden twine this is a roll was a roll of about 100 meters and it was 50 P not gonna be the strongest stuff but again survival shelters you want to travel like this is very very light it's very inexpensive and you can put in your backpack and obviously at last it will fray after a while but if you're doing a survival shelter you're just doing it overnight so that's a pull that actually that's pinched really well so now it's just a case of lashing these together not too tight but get your correct with burn in my survival situations you're not going to work on perfect lashings getting your lashing perfect because you're trying to get out of these bad weather okay so got this side of the wall done basically built it to just above my knee really because there is actually a hollow where that tree root used to be so I don't need to build it up too high all I need to do now is the same the other side just slightly higher so that when I do put a roof to it it's got a bit of elevation to get that rain running off dead easy to do all dead wood you can see it's completely rotten it's what's out there guys that's where you've got to use in a survival situation

so I've built this wall here again all rotten wood barely had to saw anything don't worry about the overlapping bits there if anything they're going to help protect me from more wind so I don't have to tidy any of that up tied the twine at the top there this side is slightly higher than that side so that when I get the long logs in a minute they're going to angle slightly down towards that way any rain that comes down will then drain off that way all these tree roots here I need to trim off and that gave me much much more coverage down there and that's actually a nice dip nice hollow in between there so I should have some Headroom as well what's interesting is as I'm soaring these roots off here I can really smell the resin coming out of the tree obviously roots in the trees hold a lot of resin and you're going to see it's almost like fatwood they're really really dark nice color and it has a really strong smell of resin so I could actually process that further I won't throw this away in a survival situation I could process that further make some fine shavings from it with the back of my knife and if I've got a pharisee and brought to me or a match put a match to the dust pile and that should go out really well and help me to start a fire obviously building a shelter requires a lot of physical effort physical exertion it's always important really to carry with you plenty of water if anything in a survival situation water's going to be your primary thing you cannot live you know you can leave a couple of weeks without food you cannot live very long without water maybe just a few days depending on what area and climate you're in and the state of your body so always have fresh fluids and don't drink loads drink little and often problem is with drinking loads that you get bloated you don't work as well your muscles don't work as well it's much easier to drink little and often keep yourself hydrated even in cold conditions you won't realize you're sweating you are sweating the way your body works when you're doing physical exertion you are sweating even though you don't show it so even you're losing fluids to your clothes a lot of the base layers and your clothes are sapping up that moisture always important to have water with you I'm just about to do the roof on the shelter but before I do I'll just show you the tools that I'm using very very basic and actually you don't need all of these tools so this is all the tools that I have on me today pair of gloves really important especially when it's damp makes you work a lot quicker saves your getting cuts on your hand if you get cuts on your hand you're spending more time with your first aid kit patching yourself up get a pair of cheap gloves these are spec up spec ops vipers they're really not that expensive good value for money quite Hardware II they do get wet but at the end of the day it's more for protection for me water I just spoke about that very very important you can have it in different types of canteen folding saw this is just a barcode Laplander folding saw it's had a hell of a lot of use if he watched my bushcraft cam videos this is probably be my most used tool in my bushcraft equipment this is definitely the most used tool in the bushcraft arsenal as such I do need to replace the blade on it but very very handy you can get the silky saws and better saws but for me it's very lightweight does the job axe this is a hell cowork Black Forest that's 600 gram head I'd usually have my Husqvarna hatchet hobby which has a pound head which is much easier for making steaks with this is more for small stakes and kind of carving work but it does the job it's about 14 inches overall I think 14 inch handle but very handy as you can see I've made the stakes with that that's all the tools I'm using you don't actually necessarily need the axe you can make the stakes with the saw it just takes it all the time or you can use a knife but for me this is all the minimal tools that I'm using today and now all I need to do is just get that roof on top of the shelter okay so roofs pretty much done I've now got to find some stuff to proof it a bit more from the water so you got a later dry Bracken here obviously it's not very good

I do need I've have got moss around and I will use a bit of moss if I've got the time but I'm losing light another reason to wear the gloves Bracken cuts your hands much easier quicker to pull it off less time stitching up your hands you

you

well guys apologies for the darkness but as you can see there are very few gaps in this shelter there's a bit over there but actually even underneath looking at the sky there's a couple of gaps most of that is really really well sealed so I'm really chuffed with that very pleased I've put quite a few layers of bracket on the top and it's all holding up really well but this took me probably about an hour yeah right about an hour it took and can take longer depending on the tools that you use and whether you use tools around the side this is a side angle side profile of the shelter very narrow as you can see but looks very very cozy in there and actually plenty of room to do any woodwork or fire work if I need to out there the main thing for this is it's a survival shelter this is the back end of the shelter as you can see that's where I've been chopping up the stakes this is the fallen tree because all the way along there that's the fallen tree that's where the route was and still is but I've now built around that and my structure is pretty secure now a lot of people do say that it can be bad to build under tree roots like this which it can be so as a disclaimer in a warning I'm not telling you to go out there and do this it has is it is at your own risk as they say but generally the it's the monster trees that are very very big that have roots coming up over head height that are dangerous they can flap down like that and it usually happens with Lumberjacks and when they're chopping down trees tree surgeons when they chainsaw this area here that bit then releases all the pressure because it's at the moment that's being held together by this long trunk of the tree here but once you cut here or you'd change all their like they do that releases all this pressure and that flips up really fast and it can act as like a death trap really so be aware of that if you are building a shelter like this this is just an emergency survival shelter realistically I would only ever do one night in this maybe two depending on the survival situation that you are in plenty of Bracken I don't mind that overhang there in fact that overhang if I put Bracken over it could actually act as a log store and any chop blocks that I need to I can put in that gap there or even my backpack and things like that to keep dry however I would probably keep my backpack in here so there's the Bears the base of the tree root as you can see and under there that's the roof pretty well secure there's very few gaps in it you can see some gaps over here again most of it is we're very well covered there's the hollow it's very hard to see maybe if I put the camera low you can see that dip now down there and you can move this dirt soil here and push it out over there so I'm going to use my finger there you can push this soil here over there to make a flat surface otherwise you're going to end up rolling down towards that root plenty of room for there in there for me to lie down I've already tested it I'm quite short so it's quite lucky I can easily get in that although it's ten feet when I've measured it with my with my feet it's over ten feet so I don't know many people that are 10 feet tall but don't worry guys those tall tall guys out there he will be able to stay in this one as well and the roof if you might be able to see this but the roof goes on a taper so it's starting higher up here tapering down to lower over there so I would have my head down here and that way any rain that falls should fall and run off down that side obviously the other thing I do have a lot around me is moss and what I could do the way the bracken works although it doesn't cover holes very easily unless you've got lots of it

it will help bind the moss if I put moss on top of it it will help bind that moss together and it will all compress down and if I put moss on it I would almost definitely cover pretty much all of the gaps in this roof here if you wanted to build a raised bed in here again you could depending on how much time you've got for your survival situation well guys I hope you enjoyed that video I've run out of light now unfortunately and there were other things I was going to do to the shelter which I may still add on and come back to the shelter if you subscribe to the channel I may well actually do an overnighter in this tree root shelter here so please keep an eye out for that thank you very much that everyone who's commented and subscribe over the last few months the channels are absolutely growing hugely say a massive thank you to you all please keep commenting if you guys have any other ideas

for survival shelters ping me a comment in the comment section and I'll have a look and see what I can do maybe try and build one I do have plenty of resources are very lucky I'm in a private woodland where I do have permission so far away with your suggestions guys thank you very much for watching give the video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and I'll see you next time on ta outdoors you

Written on 06 January 2017.

About the Author

TA Outdoors

Bushcraft, Wild Camping, Wilderness Hiking Trips, Solo Overnight Camps, Shooting, Hunting and Backpacking. My dog joins me on some of the trips. His name is Jaxx.

My name is Mike. And I'm addicted to adventure...

Check out our other YouTube Channel TAFishing: https://www.youtube.com/user/TAFishing

Tree Root Survival Shelter - Fast Build, Minimal Tools

Description

Victorinox Forester Wood

Victorinox Ranger Wood

Enzo Trapper 95

Mora Heavy duty

Fallkniven F1

ESEE-4

Mora Bushcraft Black

Kellam PR5 Puukko

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