[meetups323]

> They didn't even teach building an emergency shelter.

This is now a requirement. I don't remember the exact merit badge, but one of them had me and a friend huddled up between two logs surrounded by pine boughs for a summer night somewhere in the sierras.

It was cold, but manageable. What got me was a bug of some sort fell into my ear and I spent the whole night alternating between trying to pick out out with my finger, shaking my head wildly in attempt to make it fall out, or just lying there listening to it scurry back and forth in my ear canal.

[nemo44x]

When I was a kid the badge was called “wilderness survival”. I took it every summer camp because it was so much fun to be sent off into the woods with a bit of food, matches, knife, and rope.

[meetups323]

Thats the one! Relevant action item:

> Improvise a natural shelter. For the purpose of this demonstration, use techniques that have little negative impact on the environment. Spend a night in your shelter.

[nemo44x]

Yeah that was the best. I usually found a tree that was bent over dead and laid fallen branches across each side to form the shelter and then cover in leaves.