Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There's no question that there's a ton of useful information in this very big book, but there are also commonly-accepted but erroneous myths that the author hasn't personally verified. And you the reader probably can't tell which is which without a scientific background. It's really bad for a survival book to make and perpetuate that sort of mistake. Essentially any time the author talks about magnetism, electricity, static, and their phenomena, he's wrong. One example is the author's instruction to magnetize a ferrous wire by rubbing silk against it in one direction only, so that it can be used as a compass needle. He is obviously confusing electrostatic and electromagnetic phenomena. The author does mention that the effect of silk is weak and that if you rub it with a magnet it will work better, but doesn't seem to realize that the magnetizing effect of silk (and static electricity in general) is non-existent and that if the wire works as a compass at all, it's because it is already slightly magnetized. People who have performed the experiment of magnetizing by rubbing silk say it doesn't work, and that's what physics would predict as well. Yes, I know that many books and thousands of web pages perpetuate the same myth. The reality is that most ferrous objects get magnetized naturally simply by being in the Earth's magnetic field. One experimenter found that 75% of needles he purchased in stores would work as a compass without any effort to magnetize them. But rubbing silk (or hair, or anything else you can expect to produce a static electric field), doesn't change them. Another example is the author's statement that wet matches are dried by placing them in your hair, because of the static electricity in your hair. Static electricity doesn't dry things, your hair absorbs the water or wicks it away. It's almost as if someone with a scientific background told these yarns to poorly-educated survivalists just to play a trick on them.