Bear Grylls' Ultimate Wilderness Survival Tips | Bear Grylls: Escape From Hell

I'm Bear Grylls, and I've been exploring incredible real-life survival stories in the world's most hostile terrains. And now I'm sharing my own ultimate survival tips that could one day help you escape from hell. To stay alive in the wild, you'll soon need one crucial element of protection, as Sebastian Boucher discovered in the snow-covered mountains of Canada. I'm cold, I'm wet, I need to start something. I gotta make a fire here, I'm freezing. Start trying rubbing wood together to start a spark or something. Not even a spark or nothing was going on. And all too often in survival situations, people fail in their attempt to light the fire. There's so much that fire can give you. You cook food on it, boil your water, make tools to deter predators. For 19-year-old Sam Woodhead, facing his first night alone in the Australian outback, a fire would have made all the difference. I had absolutely no form of light. I didn't have a lighter, I didn't have a torch. It was pitch black. I heard noises crossed between a bark and a howl. It was a big animal. I could tell by the sound of the bush move. They were dingoes. Sam did the right thing, though. He stood up, he shouted at the animal. It made itself dominant, so it backed down. Chances are, with a fire, the predators would never have approached in the first place. But none of our survivors, without matches or lighters, were able to start one. There's everything I need in my survival kit to make fire. Just use a fire steel to get the spark going. And this is often better than a lighter because it's going to work even if it's wet. Lighter's soft and break, and then you're in trouble. This, though, will always create a reliable spark. These cotton balls soaked in Vaseline make great tinder. You've got to have all your wood ready, tinder, kindling, and then the bigger stuff as well. Also important to remember the fire triangle. Find these three things, heat, fuel, and oxygen. Just like us as humans. If you're starved of one, the fire's going to die. If you're successful, like lost Italian marathon runner Mauro Prosperi, who had a lighter, fire can be used in an inventive way. Steadily the heat is going to come through and heat your coal. The important bit to keep warm is just this bit. With a shelter built and a fire made, you've got good protection from the elements. The fire gives you much more than just heat. It also gives you good morale. And that, in the wild, is vital. And you'll need to be mentally strong to tackle the next phase of survival. Priorities of survival are protection, rescue, water, and food. Please remember what's first. So after you've made yourself safe, whether it's from the elements or the terrain, your next priority is rescue. It means you've got to set yourself up to be seen. It's no good being safe if no one's going to find you. One of the best ways to alert rescuers to your position is to light a signal fire. After 16 days isolated in the Amazon rainforest, Loic Pilloir and Guillaume Naral had to be ready to light one at a moment's notice. HE SPEAKS FRENCH But a fire just wasn't big enough to create enough smoke to punch through the canopy. There may have been a way to boost the signal fire, using items often found as something they had with them. And what they had was a first-aid kit. Grab the bandage, smear this and the Vaseline, and then the mosquito repellent that's flammable, just to help get that initial fire really racing. Big bunch of leaves on top. You want smoke and you want it fast. That helicopter's not going to hang around. And once you've done all you can, pray. If you haven't been spotted by rescuers, you'll eventually be faced with a tough decision. Almost invariably, in a survival situation, the best thing to do is to make camp, make yourself safe and stay put, wait for rescue to come to you. But there are some times where you just know the rescue's never coming. And at that point, the only way you're going to get out is to self-rescue. You're going to have to strike out on your own. The last thing to do before you set out, just to leave some sort of marker that indicates the direction that you're travelling in, just in case somebody does find your camp. After surviving an incredible 35 days waiting for rescue, Loic and Guillaume abandoned their jungle camp, hoping to walk their way to civilisation. All of our survivors took on big natural obstacles, gambling with their lives. Now on the move, they would have to try and navigate their way to safety. Before you go charging off in any direction, it's worth coming up with a really solid plan and then double-checking it. And one way of doing that is to get up to a high point, a vantage point, and get a really good lie of the land and then deciding which way you're going to go. And that's exactly what Dan Stevens did in Canada. And I thought, hey, that's the tree I need to climb to get a vantage point. If you've ever climbed up a big pine tree before, there are branches that look completely healthy that are not. That's solid. That one isn't. You grab a branch, it breaks, and then you fall and die. I went down, reached the top, and got that view. He orientated himself, remembered the direction, and started heading down.