While you do not want anyone in your survival or camping team glued to their phone constantly, smart phones are great survival resources.

Here are a few apps and tools you can download and use in a survival setting.

Military Smartphone Apps: Army Survival Guide

Hesitant to go out in the wilderness because of lack of knowledge? Well, the 1,400-page US Army Survival Guide app will tell you what you need to know and learn. This app will show you how to navigate if you get lost, build shelter, and treat an injury. Just make sure you have enough0 battery to go a long way.

Must-have Smartphone Apps: American Red Cross First Aid

Getting injured in the wild is no laughing matter. It could be a matter of life and death. The American Red Cross’s First Aid app gives the user an extensive collection of first aid procedures that can be looked up using your phone. This will give you first aid knowledge such as burns, fevers, heart attacks, and broken bones.

BootPrint Pocket Survival: The Signal Finder of Smartphone Apps

With this app, you wouldn’t have to worry about climbing a tree or move around in search of a signal. It will show you the exact location where your phone had last got a signal. You can even use a compass on your phone so you wouldn’t have to search through the map.

Smartphone Apps for Foraging: Wild Edibles App

The Wild Edibles app provides as much as 8 various images of over 200 wild plants you can locate, identify, harvest, and prepare so you wouldn’t end up killing yourself or getting sick.

Prepper Smartphone Apps: The SAS Survival Guide

With 400 pages on survival basics such as where you can find water or how to start a fire to identifying animal tracks and stalking them.

Smartphone Apps for Monitoring: Emergency Radio

In an emergency situation, it pays to be updated in whatever disaster or emergency your area is in. A bush fire, a hurricane, a police pursuit in the highway you’re driving in, and even traffic. This way you get to prepare and anticipate your next move by listening to the emergency radio app.

The Homing Device of Smartphone Apps: Guardly Mobile Safety App

In the event you can’t make a call, this app can relay your real-time GPS location and send them to the police or to pre-listed people you want to notify in case of a dire emergency. The app can also send out an extremely loud whistle to determine your location should they be in the area. You will need an internet connection though in order for this app to work. Still, it will keep trying to do so until it gets a connection.

Some general notes: With most of these apps, you must have at least a basic cell phone signal to download them in any functional format. Also, some of these come at a cost although in almost every case there was a no cost alternative.

There is no easy way to say this to the wilderness purist: If you have the technology available and it can help you out of a survival situation, you are a fool’s fool not to use it.

You do not have to use it until you need it, but if you do need it, it can save your life or make your survival ordeal easier to navigate.

To learn more smart phone survival aides, check out Survival Life.