Chatting with Cody Lundin About Self-Reliance & Survival

"Survival situations suck. Do all that you can to prevent them from happening in the first place."

-Cody Lundin

Cody Lundin, AKA AboDude has been a survival instructor extraordinaire for over 32 years and was hand-picked to star in Discovery Channel's hit survival show, Dual Survival for 4 seasons. Backpacker magazine published an article about Cody's survival skills and philosophies, making him the third person in history to grace the cover. In addition, countless TV and news networks have sought him out for his exceptional skills and specialized survival knowledge. Despite his busy schedule and the fact that he is off the grid quite a bit, I was able to chat with him recently about self-reliance, survival, and how we can utilize those types of skills as pandemics, natural disasters, and more extreme weather become the new normal.

You are a resident of my hometown in Arizona, and I’ve followed your work for a lot of years—but for our readers who don’t know, when did you first become interested in survival?  

I have been interested in doing more with less since I was in high school. I spent a lot of time in the mountains experimenting with less gear in nature and seeing what I could get away with. Example: let’s leave the fishing pole and reel at home and just bring a hook and line and use a stick to catch brook trout. This interest slowly came into greater focus soon thereafter, where my fascination with how native peoples “lived out there” turned into more formal training.  

What was the turning point for you where you realized that you wanted to teach these skills to others, and how did you start out?  

My turning point was being broke, looking like a freak where I was not going to readily be hired at a conventional job, and wanting to be self-employed and make my living doing something that I love that offered real value to people and the planet.

What types of survival do you teach?  

At my Aboriginal Living Skills School, we teach modern outdoor survival skills, primitive living skills (bushcrafting) and urban preparedness. They are all very different skill sets, and yet get confused all the time by crap TV shows, social media and other elements of our junk culture. Confusing these different contexts of self-reliance is dangerously common, even with many survival instructors. Context defines content, especially in a profession that deals directly with human safety.   

From what I’ve seen, you're more of a minimalist when it comes to “outdoor gear”, even shoes. I think that’s awesome (and also much more useful). There most likely won’t be an REI or a Wal-Mart around when you’re in a survival emergency. Of the things that you think are important to have in a survival situation, which do you think is most important? And on a different note, which skill do you think is most important in that same type of situation?  

It depends on the “survival situation”. Content (what gear should I carry) is always defined by context (what is the threat(s) to my life). All survival situations are a scary blend of human nature under extreme stress, and Mother Nature dishing out Her worst. These two things, human nature under stress (fear) and Mother Nature have the most variables of anything that I can think of. Variables make it impossible to answer black and white questions. Example: what’s the best survival knife? This is why training with a reputable survival instructor is so important. Field experience is essential to someone who will be telling others what to do in a future survival situation due to the fear involved and the limitless variables at hand, and what’s at stake – the person’s life. That said, in general, the two biggest causes of death from people recreating in the outdoors are hypothermia and hyperthermia. Hypothermia is a drop in core body temperature (cold weather survival) and hyperthermia is a raise in core body temperature, (hot weather survival.) With our many mountains and deserts – thus temperature variations - Arizona has vast opportunities for someone to lose their life in the outdoors. 

If you could go back in time to before the COVID pandemic hit and supply chains got stopped up, how would you tell your students to prepare for a situation like that? What was your experience in those first 6 months or so?  

I warned about pandemics in my book When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes in 2007. The information for being more self-reliant in an urban emergency is largely the same as it’s based upon human physiology, psychology, and the physics of heat loss and gain. The “needs” for people have been the same for centuries. The “wants” have only gotten more complicated, and will screw you in an emergency situation. Diseases are scary. It doesn’t matter how tough someone thinks they are or how much gear they have buried in their backyard. Anyone can be brought to their knees by a pathogen. The Covid pandemic was very interesting to watch from the context of a survival instructor. Apparently, the most important thing was what we were wiping our ass with. This tells you volumes about the average person’s disconnect with what is important in an emergency scenario.  

“Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.”

—Cody Lundin, from When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes

You are very well known not just for survival, but for desert survival. As the world is getting hotter and drier, what desert survival skills do you think people living in all types of climates should learn?  

This is a huge question and based upon many variables. Understanding and mitigating hyperthermia is key. Accessing water and understanding dehydration is key.  

Do you grow your own food? If so, what do you grow (considering your hot, dry climate), and how?  

I used to have a big garden years ago where I grew some conventional stuff - tomatoes, beans, and squash - and some southwestern native stuff – gourds, devil’s claw, and native corn. At this time, I am too mobile to be able to support a garden.  

You are in great shape physically, and you probably have to be to do what you do. What type of exercise do you do, and what do you recommend people do to get in shape in a way that would help them to be ready physically to deal with many types of survival situations?  

Strength and endurance are helpful in daily life, let alone a life-threatening situation. People should start where they're at and be reasonable about what goals they have. Basic resistance training (weight training) and some form of cardio training, (walking, running or biking) are great choices for gaining better physical fitness.  

For many of us, the response to any emergency is to freeze, go into denial, or just to get lost in our fear. How can we push past that and quickly adapt to whatever is happening, from something that might be temporary like a water shortage to something more intense, like an earthquake or a pandemic?  

Training. Repetition. Understanding our needs from our wants. Realizing that emergency scenarios can happen to anyone. Coming to terms with your limits, physically and otherwise. 

If anyone is interested in learning any type of survival skills, whether they live in your town or not, where do you recommend they start?  

Everyone should train with a reputable instructor. Building a crappy foundation in survival training from an unqualified survival instructor is clearly very stupid and could cost that person their life. I have a “choosing the right instructor” link on my website that goes into details about what to look for in a reputable survival instructor. 

What is your philosophy when it comes to survival?  

Survival situations suck. Do all that you can to prevent them from happening in the first place.  

What would you say is your philosophy of life?  

Make the world a better place, follow your heart, empower others who have just intentions, and don’t be a jerk.  

Cody Lundin lives in in a self-designed, self-reliant, passive solar earth home in the high-desert wilderness of Northern Arizona in which he catches rain, composts wastes, and pays nothing for heating and cooling. Cody has a permit from Arizona Game and Fish to collect road kill. He is the only person in Arizona with a license to catch fish with his hands. To enroll in one of his courses or find out more, visit his site at https://www.codylundin.com/. You can check out full episodes of Dual Survival on the Discovery Channel's YouTube Channel.