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5/27/11

Tip of the Day: Ragnar's Rule of Threes

Prolific survival author Ragnar Benson often talks about his Golden Rule of Survival, the Rule of Threes. Depending on the book, he attributes it to Russian folk proverbs, the Nez Pierce Indians or both. The take-away is the same. When you really need to have something done, make sure that you have at least three ways of doing it.

According to Ragnar, this rule helped the Nez Pierce to become one of the few tribes who did not routinely starve every winter, because they had thought out their survival plan beforehand and built redundancy into that plan.

I find Ragnar's Rule of Threes to be a pretty common sense, foolproof way to getting preparations in order. For every survival essential - shelter, fire/warmth, water, food, and so on - have three different ways of meeting that need. For a simple example, for food, this could be food storage, a backyard garden and fishing/trapping. If one fails, you have two backups in place, ready to pick up the slack.