Completely Updated and Edited, June 2015. A quality survival kit is one of the critical keys in prevailing during a backcountry emergency. Survival instructor Tony Nester shares what essential gear to carry and how to design a tailor-made kit to fit your specific needs. Drawing upon the past 25 years of teaching fieldcourses, Nester provides a pragmatic look at the crucial elements that should go into a personal survival kit and the steps to help ensure that you don't get lost in the first place.

Tony Nester is the director of the Ancient Pathways Survival School in Flagstaff, Arizona. His company is the primary provider of desert survival training for the military special operations community. Tony has taught fieldcourses for the US Marshals, FAA, NTSB, and served as the technical director for the film, Into the Wild. He is the author of five print books, nine eBooks, and three DVDs on how to survive in both wilderness and urban settings. He and his family live in a passive-solar, strawbale house in Flagstaff, Arizona.