The Green Beret Bushcrafting Guide

Become an expert at finding food, water, shelter, security, establishing communication, maintaining your health, navigating, and making fire.

Many survival and emergency preparedness experts today use the pyramid approach to survival prioritization, putting food, water, shelter, and security in the largest block at the base of the pyramid and then community, sustainability, and higher needs in smaller brackets at the top of the pyramid. Decorated combat veteran Brian M. Morris takes a different and linear approach to survival using an eight-pillar system, developed over decades of serving as a Green Beret in the US Army Special Forces. 

The foundation for Morris's methodology is KISS, which stands for “keep it simple, stupid,” an acronym widely used by the military to remind soldiers that the best solutions are often the simplest. In his eight-pillar system, it is up to the survivor to assess their situation and then choose the pillar that is needed most to survive the situation at hand. Much like a rifle pop-up target range where a shooter is expected to hit the closer (more dangerous) 50-meter target first before engaging the 300-meter target, the survivor needs to choose the pillar that is most urgent and necessary to save their life under the circumstances.

Brian M. Morris is a retired US Army Special Forces Master Sergeant. Serving on active duty for twenty-five years, the majority of his time was spent in the Green Berets. He is a decorated combat veteran and has served all over the world. Morris has taught Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) School and wrote the SERE doctrine for the Army Special Forces. Additionally, he is an expert in anti-terrorism and personal security techniques, tactics, and procedures. After retiring from the Army in 2012, he spent a year in Afghanistan working as a counterinsurgency advisor to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Commander. He currently works as a SERE and personal security senior analyst for the Army as a contract civilian.