As we often point out at the Sensible Survivalists, one of the most important preparations a survivalist can make is to learn and practice new survival skills. This selection of the best survival books of 2020 contains vital information which could save your life in a real survival situation.

These are all books we have read and learned from. They are written by the best, for the best, to add survival knowledge and wisdom to your bookshelf and backpack.

They are in no particular order, but I have personally read and used each of these books and consider them to be useful sources of survival knowledge.

I’d highly recommend checking at least some of them out (they make excellent gifts for survivalists!). Take a look at them and see which you think could add value to your own survival abilities. If you’re wanting to give the book to someone else, I’ve included a brief overview on who each book would appeal to – eg teens, adventure nuts, gardeners and homesteaders, or survival experts.

Clicking on the pictures will take you to the book’s page on Amazon so you can check it out for yourself.

Dave Canterbury is obviously an absolute legend of the survival community. He has managed what few survival authors have: to maintain incredibly high quality writing despite his prolific output.

This series on bush craft is specific to outdoor survival. Get it if you are interested in surviving in the wild. It covers all of the basics, from packing to foraging, as well as more complex concepts such as making your own tools.

Dave writes in a clear, concise manner, which is especially great if you are a beginner to prepping and survival. He explains each project in careful step-to-step detail.

Get this set of all the Dave Canterbury bushcraft survival books here on Amazon.

The Ultimate Survival Manual is by Rich Johnson, a former paratrooper and US Special Forces officer. It’s an exciting read, peppered with interesting facts and anecdotes. I don’t personally use it very much because I prefer my survival manuals to be information-dense even if that makes them boring, but I have still got great value out of this book. Because it’s so exciting, I have been able to use it to get friends and family into prepping and survival. If you know somebody who is not yet well prepared but who you know loves adventure and excitement, this is in my opinion one of the best survival books to get them into prepping.

Focusing on extreme scenarios, it details hundreds of survival skills, including such unusual skills as crossing a fast-moving river or jumping from a moving train, or surviving a bushfire. It includes illustrations, photographs and diagrammes.

Whilst this book is a little more ‘tacticool’ and flashy than the other survival books on this list, I have included it because it is genuinely fascinating to read, and because the writer knows his stuff. As I’ve mentioned, it’s a great one for getting adventurous adrenaline-seekers into prepping.

You can get it here.

Now this is the survival book even most non-survivalists have heard of. It details the correct courses of action in increasingly complex and intense survival scenarios, peppered with advice and skills you should learn.

My main reason for including this particular survival book is that the newer editions include a very useful chapter on urban survival. Few of the older and more traditional books do. With the majority of the world’s citizens now living in urban cities, urban survival skills are going to be increasingly useful to any prepper. I’ve drawn a good deal from that section in my urban prepping.

You can get the SAS Survival Handbook here.

Most of the survival books on this list focus on immediate, short-term survival during an emergency situation or SHTF scenario. This book, the Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide, goes several steps further and gives you information you’ll need to survive long-term.

It includes guides on finding and growing food, building and defending your home, and even some interesting thoughts on re-building society in the long run. I found this part particularly a thought-provoking read and would recommend to any curious survivalists. Whilst I don’t agree with some of the conclusions the author makes on how to re-build society after SHTF – I believe people are more complicated than this books makes out – there are some excellent insights. I drew several points in my own long-term thinking on this website from this book.

You can buy it here.

This is a fun survival book by a former Navy SEAL, Clint Emerson. It’s a pretty simple read and a fairly small, short book, so I would recommend it to beginners. If you have older kids or teenagers who are interested in survival, this is a decent easy-read book for them. It’s also well-illustrated, which keeps the interest up.

It covers the usual territory for survival books of this nature, discussing general wilderness survival and then preparedness for other, more specific scenarios. The 100 Skills format is interesting. I learned a few skills (particularly in self-defence) from this book which I didn’t come across in the others.

You can get it here.

Unlike the other survival books on this list written by ex-military and ex-forces servicemen, which are mostly single-author, this detailed guide is the result of a collaboration between authors who served with a variety of different special forces units from different countries.

The wider-ranging content reflects this. What I like though is that it is still easy to read and use, with clear language and careful instructions. This book includes basic information on starting fires in the wild, navigating in the woods and tying survival knots, which other books of this type leave out. It’s written in more of a manual style rather than an exciting one. I personally like that. I’d particularly recommend this one to preppers who already have some experience and want to build up their knowledge in more depth.

You can get this book here.

The Survival Handbook is good on the basics. It’s not especially tacticool or exciting, but it covers the basic survival skills that you’ll need in actual everyday outdoors adventures. It’s great for skills like finding water, finding and catching food and basic first aid information.

There’s a particularly good section on navigating in the wild. I would recommend this to beginners for being sensible, clear and, in my opinion, a good deal more useful than the more exciting books out there.

You can get the Survival Handbook here.

When Technology Fails is a long-term SHTF prepper’s book. Covering a range of different possible SHTF scenarios, this book goes into detail on how we might be able to live in the long-run after various SHTF possibilities have come about.

It covers interesting ground in its discussions on economic and societal breakdowns, and on pandemics. I’d recommend this book for anybody interested in the ‘bigger picture’ of prepping. I like to think of this as the philosophy of survivalism.

You can get this book here.

This book on Edible Wild Plants is, as the title suggests, specific to finding and eating North American wild plants.

Whilst you may not consider this to be a survival book per se, I’m including this on the list. So few of the other books go into much detail on which plants in the wild you can actually eat. Most survival enthusiasts probably couldn’t tell you more than a half-dozen local edible plants. This book gives detailed descriptions and illustrations for hundreds.

It may look like a flowery garden manual, but don’t knock it. One of the leading causes of death in hikers and survival adventurers, other than exposure or dehydration, is lack of knowledge on edible plants leading them to either starve or eat something poisonous by mistake.

I’d particularly recommend this book for anyone already interested in gardening or homesteading. It might help encourage them to think about survival in wider terms.

Edit

I have had emails asking for similar books to this one but for other geographic locations than North America. As I don’t have much experience of other places, I’d like to open this one up to my readers. Please drop a comment below if you know of a decent edible food survival guide for other continents.

You can get this book here.

Hawke’s Green Beret Survival Manual is a classic of the genre. It’s rightly on most lists of the best survival books. I’ve left it until last because it’s my personal absolute favourite of all time. Hawke goes into incredibly useful detail on the very basics of survival. He doesn’t bother with unlikely scenarios. He focuses on every-day survival skills in which members of the armed forces are trained.

There’s a particularly good section on the psychology of survival, which many other books neglect. Hawke explains the necessity of keeping mental fortitude in a life-or-death situation. This is incredibly difficult in lengthy survival scenarios when all hope seems lost. He gives practical advice on overcoming the mental blocks that can occur in emergency situations.

You can get this book here.

Finally:

Here’s a reason for reading these survival books which I haven’t yet mentioned. In a post-SHTF world, they’ll be highly valuable! In fact, I have a stockpile of the best survival books in my bartering kit. I figure that when SHTF, they’re going to be worth their weight in gold.

You’ve got recommendations for books I haven’t got on this list? Put them in the comments and I’ll check them out.

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