The U.S. Navy SEAL Survival Handbook: Learn the Survival Techniques and Strategies of America's Elite Warriors

INTRODUCTION

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most

intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

—Charles Darwin

U.S. service members participating in a Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) course march to their first field training evolution at a training site in Warner Springs, Calif. Personnel attending the SERE course are trained in evading capture, survival skills and the military Code of Conduct.

Rangely, Maine—A student at the Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school crosses a frozen creek.

Life can change in an instant. One moment you’re trekking along a mountain ridge, and then you’re suddenly struck by a rattlesnake. One minute you’re skiing down a mountain, the next you’re facing an oncoming avalanche.

As Navy SEALS, we are trained to face dangerous situations all over the world—at sea, in the air, and on land. We understand that every time we launch a mission, unforeseen circumstances—flash floods, aircraft crashes, poisonous insect, animal or marine life bites—can cause us to be trapped in an unfriendly environment, cut off from communication to outside support. With every tick of the clock, our situation can become more desperate. We are trained to deal with these emergencies. We learn how to survive in the harshest of environments without food and water.

But what if, God forbid, something like that happens to you? Will you know how to treat yourself if you’re bitten by a poisonous snake? Will you know what plants you can extract water from if trapped in the desert? Or how to protect yourself and your teammates from freezing to death in the mountains? The answer to all these questions should be yes.

This handbook is all about developing the SEAL survival mind-set, and arming yourself with the appropriate survival techniques for numerous potentially fatal scenarios.

We live in a dangerous world. It’s your responsibility to be prepared.

—Don Mann

U.S. sailors undergoing the third and final phase of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training use a rope to guide themselves down the side of a cliff and into the ocean during a field training exercise at San Clemente Island, Calif. The third phase of the training provides the students with skills in small arms weapons, demolitions, and tactics, which culminate in the planning and execution of various missions as an independent platoon.

SEAL/SERE TRAINING

Return with honor.

—SERE school motto

U.S. Navy SEALs

I’ve spent my adult life as a Navy SEAL, preparing for and dealing with the most dangerous situations imaginable.

From 1962, when the first SEAL teams were commissioned, to the present, SEALs have distinguished themselves as being individually reliable, collectively disciplined, and highly skilled. Because of the dangers inherent in what we do, prospective SEALs go through what is considered by military experts to be the toughest training in the world—Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL Training (BUD/S).

BUD/S is a six-month SEAL training course held at the Naval Special Warfare Training Center in Coronado, California, which starts with five weeks of indoctrination and pre-Training. Following that, all trainees go through three phases of BUD/S. The first phase is by far the toughest and consists of eight weeks of basic conditioning, with a grueling hell week in the middle—which is five days and nights of continuous training on a maximum of four hours of sleep.

Hell week is a test of physical endurance, mental tenacity, and team-work. As many of two-thirds of the class are likely to ring the bell and call it quits during this phase. Those who grit it out to the finish get to hear the instructors yell, hell week is secured! The trainees continue on with a new sense of pride, achievement, and self-confidence to second phase (eight weeks of diving) and third phase (nine weeks of land warfare).

U.S. Navy SEAL candidates from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/s) Class 288 participate in log physical training (log PT) during the first phase of training at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, Calif.

Coronado, Calif. A student in Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) class 270 navigates his way through the chaos of smoke and explosions in one of the final evaluations of hell week. On average, students are allowed only four hours of sleep during hell week, and those who complete it have about a 95 percent chance of graduating BUD/S.

Basic Underwater Demolition/ SEAL (BUDs) students participate in Surf Passage at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado.

After BUD/S is completed, all trainees go through three weeks of basic parachute training, followed by eight weeks of SEAL qualification training in mission planning, operations, and tactic, techniques, and procedures.

BUD/S ends with the formal BUD/S class graduation. It was a very proud day for me to stand with my classmates in our dress navy uniforms and listen to our SEAL officers talk about the special group we were about to enter, and the great honor it is to serve as a U.S. Navy SEAL.

BUD/S Phases

Phase 1—Physical Conditioning (eight weeks)

Soft sand runs

Swimming—up to two miles with/fins in the ocean

Calisthenics Timed obstacle course

Four-mile timed runs in boots Small boat seamanship

Hydrographic surveys and creating charts

Hell week—week 4 of phase 1—five and one-half days of continuous training on little to no sleep

Phase 2—Diving (eight weeks)

Step up intensity of the physical training

Focus on combat diving

Open-circuit (compressed air) SCUBA

Closed-circuit (100% oxygen) SCUBA

Long-distance navigation dives

Mission-focused combat swimming and diving techniques

Phase 3—Land Warfare (nine weeks)

Increasingly strenuous physical training

Weapons training

Demolitions (military explosives)

Small unit tactics

Patrolling techniques

Rappelling and fast rope operations

Marksmanship

As an instructor monitors a training evolution, Basic Underwater Demolition/ SEAL (BUDS) Class 244 receives instructions on their next exercise while they lay in the surf.

Kodiak, Alaska—Navy SEALs perform advanced cold weather training to experience the physical stress of the environment and how their equipment will operate, or even sound, in adverse conditions. Navy SEALs are maritime special operations forces that strike from the sea, air, and land. They operate in small numbers, infiltrating their objective areas by fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, navy surface ships, combatant craft and submarines. SEALs have the ability to conduct a variety of high-risk missions, utilizing unconventional warfare, direct action, special reconnaissance, combat search and rescue, diversionary attacks and precision strikes.

All BUD/S graduates then fly out to Kodiak Island, Alaska, for a twenty-eight day winter warfare course, during which they train in snow and freezing wind while often carrying half their body weight in weapons and gear. The course includes cross-country skiing, snow shoe travel, building shelters, procuring food and water, fire building, using specialized survival gear to plot courses in the mountainous and snow-covered terrain, and conducting ice-cold ocean swims, river crossings, and long-range navigation through the mountain wilderness to infiltrate and establish covert surveillance of target sites.

BUD/S and winter warfare training prepares SEAL trainees to become combat-ready warriors. But they don’t learn the nitty gritty of survival until they complete SERE School.

Kodiak, Alaska—A SEAL qualification training candidate looks out from a two-man tent during a re-warming exercise in which he spent five minutes in near freezing water.

Kodiak, Alaska—A SEAL qualification training candidate checks the gear of another member of his squad during a long-range land navigation exercise. The candidates will spend forty-eight hours in the Alaskan mountains learning how to navigate through the rugged terrain and survive the frigid conditions. The twenty-eight-day cold weather training course, taught in Kodiak, is part of a year long process to become a U.S. Navy SEAL.

SERE Training

As a young Navy SEAL recently graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition School (BUD/S), I was told by a Vietnam-era SEAL that if I were captured during wartime, there was a good chance I’d be beheaded or skinned alive. I immediately volunteered to attend the Navy Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) course conducted at Warner Springs, California.

Since I knew that as a SEAL I would likely be deployed overseas behind enemy lines, I took my survival training seriously.

Most of the twenty members in my SERE class were navy pilots and aircrew personnel considered to be at high risk of capture. I was the only SEAL.

The course started with basic lessons in land navigation, poisonous plants, animals and insects, water procurement, fire making, shelter building, and evasion and escape techniques. Then, the twenty of us were dropped off in the desert without food or water and ordered to find our way to a safe area while trying to avoid contact with the enemy.

We were thirsty and hungry. We drank from the prickly pear cactus and looked for edible plants to eat. I happened to see a small rabbit running under a bush, threw my KA-BAR knife at it, and to my surprise, pinned the rabbit’s neck into the ground. I skinned it and made rabbit stew for the team by mixing the rabbit with edible plants. But one little rabbit was hardly enough to feed twenty hungry men.

Eventually, all of us were captured. I was plastic-tie tied, blindfolded, and thrown into a Jeep. The instructors, outfitted in realistic communist-style clothing, played their parts, screaming, barking orders, trying their best to intimidate us.

I played it for real, too. When my captor stepped out of the Jeep, I managed to wrestle my bound hands in front of me, grab his PRC-77 radio, and throw it under the vehicle. I also hid a knife and lighter in my boots.

I was driven to a fenced POW training camp. There I saw enemy guards interrogating other prisoners, slamming them into walls, humiliating them by having them stand naked while being drilled with questions and slapped in the face.

They started working on us immediately, trying to get us to break. There were hard cell interrogations with guards shouting questions and slapping you, and soft cell sessions, where you were called into a warm office where a pretty woman or friendly guard would offer you coffee, snacks, and warm clothing.

U.S. Air Force Airmen of the 336th Training Group head out for a six-mile road march while wearing sixty-pound packs during the first ever Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) Challenge held at Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash. Thirty SERE members are participating in the challenge, which includes an obstacle course, three-mile run, six-mile road march, and a variety of other events that test the strength and stamina of the participants.

What is SERE Training?

Because of the violent nature of the world we live in, all U.S. military and other government personnel, and even civilians traveling overseas, run the risk of kidnapping, captivity, and exploitation by governmental and non-governmental organizations (including terrorist groups) that ignore the Geneva Convention and/or other human rights conventions. If you travel overseas frequently, especially to areas of conflict, you need to know how to avoid danger, evade capture, and, if captured, survive while waiting for extraction.

NATO countries provide basic level Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training to all their deployable forces.

SERE Training Levels

Level A is initial entry-level training that all military personnel— enlisted and officers—receive upon entering the service. It provides a minimum level of understanding of the code of conduct.

Getting the attention of four A-10 Thunderbolt II pilots by using a mirror during Combat Search And Rescue (CSAR) training near Osan Air Base, South Korea. Annual CSAR training is conducted by Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) instructors and is designed to reacquaint aircrew members with CSAR procedures and techniques.

A soldier waits for an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter to extract him from a simulated hostile area during a Survive, Evade, Resist and Escape (SERE) exercise in support of Red Flag-Alaska (RF-A) near Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. Feeman is role-playing a downed pilot who was shot down behind enemy lines. RF-A is a Pacific Air Forces-directed field training exercise for U.S. and coalition forces flown under simulated air-combat conditions.

As seen under night vision photography, U.S. sailors assigned to Basic Underwater Demolition/ SEAL class 281 carry an inflatable boat toward the surf during a first phase navigation training exercise in San Diego, Calif. First phase is an eight-week course that trains, prepares, and selects SEAL candidates based on physical conditioning, water competency; mental tenacity and teamwork.

Level B is designed for personnel whose jobs, specialties or assignments entail moderate risk of capture and exploitation. Department of Defense Policy No. 1300.21 lists as examples members of ground combat units, security forces for high threat targets and anyone in the immediate vicinity of the forward edge of the battle area or the forward line of troops.

Current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that practically everyone deployed in theater falls under this category. Consequently, the demand for Level-B training has proliferated exponentially and has become mandatory for most deploying forces. Level B is conducted at the unit level through the use of training/support packets containing a series of standardized lesson plans and videos.

Level C is designed for personnel whose jobs, specialties or assignments entail a significant or high risk of capture and exploitation. According to military directive AR 350-30, As a minimum, the following categories of personnel shall receive formal Level-C training at least once in their careers: combat aircrews, special operations forces (e.g., navy special warfare combat swimmers and special boat units—i.e., SEALs, Army Special Forces and Rangers, Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance units, Air Force special tactics teams, and psychological operations units) and military attaché.

SERE C-Level Training

The course spans three weeks with three phases of instruction.

Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) students aboard a life raft prepare to perform a twenty-man egress during water survival training at Langley Air Force Base, Va. The training, conducted by SERE specialists, teaches students how to survive if they egress over water. The course also covers proper signaling, desalinating water, finding sustenance, and how to properly release from a parachute drag. 

Students in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) carry partners to obtain a 1,000-meter pace count during land navigation in the survival portion course at a training site in Warner Springs, Calif. The SERE course provided training in evading capture, survival skills and the Code of the U.S. Fighting Force.

Phase One consists of approximately ten days of academic instruction on the code of conduct and in SERE techniques that incorporate both classroom learning and hands-on field craft.

Phase Two is a five-day field training exercise in which the students practice their survival and evasion skills by procuring food and water, constructing fires and shelters, and evading tracker dogs and aggressor forces for long distances.

Phase Three takes place in the resistance-training laboratory, a mock prisoner-of-war camp, where students are tested on their individual and collective abilities to resist interrogation and exploitation and to properly apply the six articles of the code of conduct in a realistic captivity scenario. The course culminates with a day of debriefings in which the students receive individual and group feedback from the instructors. These critiques help students process everything they have been through to solidify the skills they applied properly and to correct areas that need adjustment.

SERE Training Objectives

Within SERE training, every student is taught to understand and practice techniques in the following procedures:

Rangely, Maine—A student at the Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school repacks his gear after a lesson.

U.S. Navy SERE training is conducted at the navy’s remote training site in Warner Springs, California, and in the mountains of Bath, Maine.

Besides teaching survival, SERE is also an advanced code of conduct course. All military personnel get their initial code of conduct instruction during basic training, where they’re taught an American service member’s legal responsibilities regarding capture by enemy forces. But SERE training goes far beyond that. Because the school is a combination of courses designed for personnel with jobs that entail greater-than-normal risks of being stranded behind enemy lines or captured by enemy forces, students get a deeper insight into the philosophies behind the code.

Article I

•    I am an American fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

Article II

•    I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.

Article III

•    If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.

Article IV

•    If I become a prisoner of war I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me, and will back them up in every way.

Article V

•    When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

Article VI

•    I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.

Warner Springs, Calif. U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) instructors teach members of Boy Scout Troop 806 of Coronado, Calif. how to trap food to survive in the wilderness. Sailors from the Naval Air Station North Island SERE detachment volunteered to train the Boy Scouts.

The instruction starts with classroom work and then focuses on real-world applications of the code of conduct. Following the classroom part of the course, students begin to learn methods of avoiding capture by the enemy. Eventually, they are captured and enter resistance and escape training.

The SERE field instructors are highly motivated, well trained, and possess an immense knowledge of the subject. As instructors, they’re part naturalist, part guide, part psychologist, and part mentor. Their expertise includes techniques for surviving in the arctic, desert, open ocean, jungle, and mountain regions, in combat and in captivity.

Much of the training at SERE School contains lessons learned by service members who made it back across enemy lines or spent time as prisoners of war. Their experience makes them highly valued advisors.

During the field phase of the course, students are introduced to specific methods of navigation through hostile territory. The rule regarding navigating is twofold. First, you need to figure out how to get where you’re going without being spotted. Second, you have to reach specific locations on schedule. With the clock ticking, caution sometimes has to be sacrificed for speed, which can result in close calls.

Survival lessons are interspersed. These include: fire building, trapping, creating shelters, and finding edible plants.

The SERE School Experience

The following are the impressions of an army soldier who completed SERE training.

Most of the modesty the students brought with them disappears very quickly. When they sleep, they huddle together to stay warm as the temperature dips into the twenties and frost coats their packs. When they’re hiking, they know that everyone else is just as hungry and thirsty as they are. Not knowing what is coming next also bonds them. When surprises occur, they must act as a team. There is a chain of command for each group, as well as the entire class. The leaders are doubly challenged, as they are responsible for ensuring their team acts properly, no matter what comes up. When there are lapses in leadership and issues could have been avoided or resolved in the chain of command, the instructors take the group leaders aside later to advise them on appropriate responses.

In his book, In the Company of Heroes, retired 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment pilot CW4 Mike Durant reflected on the SERE training he received at Camp Mackall in the winter of 1988 and the strength it gave him during his eleven-day captivity in Somalia in October 1993: I came away (from SERE) with tools that I never believed I would ever really need, but even in those first seconds of capture at the crash site in Mogadishu, those lessons would come rushing back at me. Throughout my captivity, I would summon them nearly every hour . . . I thanked Nick Rowe [Colonel Rowe developed the rigorous Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training program] silently every day, for the lessons I learned in SERE training. I asked that God bless him, as I tried to plan my next move. (Nick Rowe died in 1989.)

Why Do Some Handle Stress Better Than Others?

Even though SERE School was a theoretical setting, it taught me that some people are better at dealing with the stresses and strains of life than others. Why?

Dr. Andy Morgan of Yale Medical School set out to find a real-world laboratory where he could watch people under incredible stress in reasonably controlled conditions. He found one in southeastern North Carolina at Fort Bragg, home of the Army’s elite Airborne and Special Forces. This is where the Army’s renowned survival school (their version of Navy SERE school) is located. It’s also where they practice something called stress inoculation. Based on the concept of vaccines, soldiers are exposed to pressure and suffering in training in order to build up their immunity. It’s a form of psychological conditioning: the more shocks to your system, the more you’re able to withstand.

While soldiers are frightened and worn down with sleep deprivation and lack of food, they’re also interrogating them using enemy techniques used during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. The sessions are known to be extremely tough.

For Morgan, POW school was the perfect place to study survival under acute stress. Even though the soldiers understood that they were in training, and, therefore, not in serious danger, Morgan’s findings were revealing. During mock interrogations, prisoners’ heart rates skyrocketed to more than 170 beats per minute for more than half an hour, even though they weren’t engaged in any physical activity. Meanwhile, their bodies pumped more stress hormones than the amounts measured in aviators landing on aircraft carriers, troops awaiting ambushes in Vietnam, skydivers taking the plunge, or patients awaiting major surgery. The levels of stress hormones measured were sufficient to turn off the immune system and produce a catabolic state, in which the body starts to break down and feed on itself.

Morgan’s research (which was the first of its kind) produced some fascinating findings in terms of what types of soldiers most successfully resisted the interrogators and stayed focused. Morgan examined two different groups going throughout this training: regular army troops and elite special forces soldiers, who are known to be especially stress hardy or cool under pressure. At the start, the two groups were essentially the same. But once the stress began, he saw significant differences. Specifically, the two groups released very different amounts of a chemical in the brain called neuropeptide Y