Recent comments in SurvivalBlog provided excellent advice on using the public
library. You can gain lots of knowledge with no expense, then purchase only
those books you want to keep on hand for personal reference. Also, many colleges
and universities loan to local residents, so you can use them too, even if
you aren't a student.
If your local libraries participate, a great resource is Worldcat. It lets you search for books from home, then go check them out, or get them through interlibrary loan.
The Smithsonian
Institution is another great resource. They have digitized many older
books, maps, and documents in their collection.
Wikisource has
a nice collection of free eBooks.
One way to search for books no longer in copyright is to use Google
Book Search. Check "full view." If it comes up in the search,
it can be downloaded as a PDF file.
A good alternative to Google is the Internet Archive which includes books,
images, audio, and more. The Internet Archive also hosts the Wayback Machine,
which archives copies of an incredible 85 billion pages from the internet of
years past.
Over 100,000 free eBooks can be accessed through Digital Book Index
2020ok is a directory of
free online books and free eBooks
The British Columbia Digital Library has an impressive Collection, including
dictionaries, encyclopedias, and most importantly, the Holy Bible. It also has a Guide to other digital libraries.
Scribd is an online document
library of free research articles, eBooks, and other content.
A great resource for home schoolers is the Internet's largest
directory of free audio & video learning resources maintained by LearnOutLoud.com.
Check out the postings of Home Schooling
On-line Resources on the The Mental Militia Forums, as well as the topic.
More than 3,200 pages related to the U. S. Constitution can
be downloaded from The Founders' Constitution
Firearms For any
firearm you own or plan to own, you should have a drawing of its Exploded View,
which will help identify parts and how they fit together. One of the most comprehensive
collections of Exploded Views is the paper edition of the Numrich Arms Catalog, which
in itself is a gold mine of information and very inexpensive for a volume of
over 1200 pages.
But if you only need certain Exploded Views, there are many places on the internet where you can download them for free:
Gunuts is a good place
to start with hundreds of drawings. Another source is The Okie Gunsmith Shop, which
is apparently no longer operating, but you can still download drawings and
parts lists from its web site.Big Bear Gun Works has
another good list. For pre-WWII firearms, check out Gunsworld. For examples of specific
firearms manufacturers, see Remington, Browning, and SKB Shotguns
The book, The Defensive Use Of Firearms by
Shane C. Henry is available as a download from rec.guns. An enormous amount
of additional gun information is available on the rec.guns web site.
There are several good sources for Military Publications: GlobalSecurity.org has a huge collection of Military manuals.
Try Integrated Publishing for access to millions of pages of engineering manuals and documents.
The U.S. Army Materiel Command maintains the LOGSA web site for access to thousands of Army technical manuals.
The U.S. Air Force maintains the Air Force e-Publishing web site.
As mentioned recently, The Small Wars Journal has a Reference Library of downloadable military documents.
The Brooke Clarke
web site has a good guide to accessing military field manuals
Surviving War and Nuclear
Attack For a basic guide, download How
To Survive A Chemical Or Biological Attack.
Nuclear War Survival
Skills, along with some other very interesting books, can be found on
the Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine web site. This book includes plans
for the Kearny Fallout Radiation Meter (KFM). If you have not bought a radiation
meter, you should at least download the book for future reference. You can
also get the Free
Plans from The Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Nuclear War Survival Skills is also available on the KI4U web site as an online
book, but not as a download.
The Equipped To Survive web site
has some free ebooks, as well as books for sale: Survival,
Evasion, and Recovery and U.S. Army Survival Manual FM 21-76.
The Volunteer Center of Marin County,
Medical Resources The Disease
Net has a library of downloadable manuals on survival, weapons, emergency
medicine, and less serious subjects.
Virtual Naval Hospital is
a digital library of naval, military, and humanitarian medicine
The very important field manual, First Aid For Soldiers FM 21-11 can be downloaded here.
One of the best medical handbooks available is the
A newer version of the Medical
Handbook, plus more great material can be downloaded from NH-TEMS
(New Hampshire Tactical Emergency medical support).
The
American Red Cross has some of their disaster guides online for download.
For most of their material, you have to go to the local office. Some of it
can be copied from the Earth
Changes Media Survival Tips page.
The Red Cross Book, First
Aid in Armed Conflicts and Other Situations of Violence
The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency book, The
Ship Captain's Medical Guide
Hesperian makes
available free downloads of its books for medical treatment in primitive conditions.
Two highly respected guides it publishes are Where There Is No Doctor and Where
There Is No Dentist.
Here is a direct link to the must-have book Survival and
Austere Medicine: An introduction. Australian Survivalist Online
has several additional Files
for downloading.
The Department of Agriculture has
a treasure trove of information for free download. This agency maintains The
National Agricultural Library, a collection of free information on Agriculture,
Food and Nutrition, and other related subjects.
Another USDA web site is the Cooperative Extension
Service. Click on the map to navigate to various Extension offices around
the country. Don't limit your search to just your own state. Many of them
have invaluable information on animals, crops, construction, food preparation
and much more for free download.
The
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) offers downloads about preventing plant and animal diseases,
among other topics.
The USDA Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) offers Fact
Sheets about food handling and preparation, and emergency preparedness.
Other Important Reference
Resources The classic outdoor guides, The 10
Bushcraft Books by Richard Graves are available on the Chris Molloy web
site. Free manuals for electronic equipment can be downloaded from eServiceInfo.com. Another source is UsersManualGuide.com. For Ham Radio
and Test Equipment Manuals, the KO4BB web site has Free Downloads, as well as LINKS to many other web sites with free downloads. A few examples
of repair information for outdoor equipment are Penn Reel Schematics,
and Mercury outboard
parts.
Paid Services In
the unlikely event that you can't find free information on the Net to fix that
generator or whatever you need to repair, there are web sites that charge for
information. As a last resort, you can check Sam's PHOTOFACT service manuals,
or RepairManual.com. Hopefully,
that won't be necessary.
The foregoing just begins to scratch the surface. Some of these free downloads are also available as books or CDs from eBay, Amazon or from some of the survivalist web sites. That is fine. Sometimes it is easier to just pay the money and buy the book. But nobody can afford it all, and downloading gives you access to millions of pages - much more knowledge than you could acquire through any other method.