If you can master the skill of making a small fire right outside your shelter, you’ll keep
the heat inside with you. It makes your survival experience not only more comfortable,
but also comforting.their fire right outside their shelter, then crawl into the shelter to sleep (only
to wake up to a cold or rain-doused pile of ashes the next morning).
All of the same rules of site selection apply when making a fire
inside your shelter, but there are additional considerations. Oxygen
supply is one. You defeat the purpose of having a fire inside if you have
to keep your shelter open to the chilly air in order to feed the fire the
oxygen it needs.
Be careful not to make your fire in a shelter built against a rock
with a big overhang. On one survival course, a young couple did just
that. The fire heated the rock to the point that a Volkswagen-sized chunk
cracked off. Had they been in the shelter at the time, they would have
been crushed. I couldn’t stop thinking about this story when I was sur-
viving in the Utah Canyonlands inside a tiny cave, fire by my head and
thousands of tons of canyon rock above me. If you find yourself in a
similar situation, make sure that there is at least 4 feet (1.2 m) of distance
between the top of your flames and the rock overhead.
Fire | 101