With a survival school lineage going back to 1968, BOSS puts a total emphasis on living in the wilderness with a minimum amount of modern technology; i.e., making a fire using a sticks and tinder; sleeping on the ground. BOSS instructs students how to adapt methods of older cultures (the Anasazi and Fremont) when living on arid lands for extended periods of time is the only choice. Most students must pass minimal physical requirements. The 28-day survival course in the Utah wilderness will push you beyond your known limits in the desert (you'll probably cry a few times, too), but you'll be a changed person when you make it.

For more information: BOSS

With its training area in the George Washington National Forest, near Lynchburg, Va., Mountain Shepherd has taught wilderness survival to everyone from housewives to corporate managers to FBI agents. The four full-time instructors here have all passed the infamous military Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) course, but don't bring that kind of severity to their teaching methods. The escape-and-evasion course makes use of "aggressor force" (the guys you're staying away from) and "partisan network" (local friends).

For more information: Mountain Shepherd

The 15 instructors have combined resumes that read like a history of backcountry exploration and first-ascents (including numerous American Avalanche Association certifications). If you ski, snowboard, snowshoe or winter-trek in mountainous areas, you might want to spend some time with these guys. Operating with special-use permits in the Bridger-Teton and Wasatch-Cache National Forests, the Institute offers three levels of instruction, including a mountain-guide course for certified jobs as ski- and mountain-guides. The majority of coursework is in the backcountry, enough so that a snow shovel and avalanche beacon are required equipment.

For more information: American Avalanche Institute

Registered Maine Guides are a breed apart who keep alive with their backwoods know-how handed down through generations. The instructors at Jack Mountain Bushcraft can teach you everything from how to live happily in the woods with nothing but a knife, to proper snow-shoeing techniques, to the art of tracking (because tracking leads to eating). There are multiple course offerings, including several 10-week sessions that amount to a year-long immersion course. "Survival trips" into Maine's north country are not instructional but intended to test everything you've already learned in the program.

For more information: Jack Mountain

The Northwest School of Survival covers the essentials—from navigation to mountain survival to primitive skills through introductory and advanced courses. The training is a healthy combination of modern technology (rescue beacons, GPS, knot-making and lashings) and methods of living off the land. Extended backcountry and desert survival courses involve multiple days in the sticks. The wilderness survival program includes a helicopter-drop survival course (six days, five nights) along the Oregon Coast that leaves you no choice but to find your way out with your team.

For more information: The Northwest School of Survival

Headed by Ian Craddock, an ex-British army and Special Forces officer, and with a number of native Makushi people serving as guides, Bushmasters offers a thorough immersion in jungle survival in the forests of Guyana. Airplanes and canoes take you deep into the wilderness, where your survival instructors will teach you how to find drinkable water, how to get a fire going with no match or lighter, which bugs are best to eat and how to hunt with a bow and arrow. The trip ends with you and a team partner surviving for 48 hours on your own before the guides locate you. The "Raw Survival" package provides the jungle survival course on a budget, dispensing with the aircraft delivery and post-jungle luxury spots of the standard package.

For more information: Bushmasters

Expeditions to Borneo (jungle), Namibia (arid brush land), Norway (Arctic wilderness) and Thailand (sub-tropical bamboo forest) are highly coordinated—with daily itineraries and regular briefings—but they are no walkabouts. While there are moments of luxury on these expeditions—Norwegian saunas and Thai restaurants, for instance—all call for a measure of physical fitness and lots of walking, or, in Norway, the willingness to drive a dog sled. There's an emphasis on immersion in survival skills of long-thriving cultures: the Iban people (Borneo), the San Bushmen (Namibia), the Sami people (Norway) and Sino-Tibetan hill peoples (Thailand).

For more information: Bushcraft Expeditions

If big, mountainous forest is your thing, you might want to aim for the wilderness survival certification offered by the Boreal Wilderness Institute. Instructors approach survival techniques with a mix of modern technology (they'll teach you to work a GPS) and more primitive approaches for dire situations; they'll also instruct students in the features of the boreal forest (how to identify plants, trees, and slope conditions) to aid in survival. "The Hundred K Survival Challenge" calls upon the student of survival to cover a serious distance through the Canadian Rockies with nothing more than can fit in a day pack. Completion of the Challenge is the final step to the Wilderness Mastery Certification.

For more information: Boreal Wilderness Institute

Tom Brown Jr.'s Tracker School is well-known from Brown's involvement with Hollywood, and it's still the place for the student of survival not just looking for the skills but a whole philosophy of wilderness living. Brown's course work is intended to steadily build up bushcraft skills, plus both wilderness- and self-awareness, before major survival tests are undertaken. His teaching are based on everything he learned from Stalking Wolf, a shaman and scout from a band of Lipan Apache who was born in 1870 and spent 63 years wandering the West, learning the ways of survival of numerous Indian bands.

For more information: Tom Brown Jr.'s Tracker School

The non-profit National Outdoor Leadership School is more of a college of all-encompassing outdoor skills courses—rock climbing, kayaking, mountaineering, and others—than a school wholly dedicated to survival techniques. But the idea here is that knowing all the right skills from the start teaches students how to manage risks, enjoy the wilderness, and prevent emergencies, although you’ll learn how to make and use a survival kit in a number of situations. Additionally, the NOLS wilderness-medicine courses are top-notch, and the NOLS also offers wilderness EMT courses within its highly regarded Wilderness Medicine Institute. Specific courses in wilderness risk-management training and leadership skills also build on the methodology of surviving without succumbing to hazards. Cool factor: Courses are taught in a number of excellent locations, from Oregon to the Amazon Basin to Norway to Western Australia.

For more information: National Outdoor Leadership School

Learn to Return started in 1986 with the intention of training industrial, state and military workers for the considerable physical hazards of outdoors labor and landscapes in Alaska, but a number of current LTR courses, in particular the aviation "land-and-water survival" and "bear awareness and defense" courses, can be the perfect education for the wilderness trekker, hunter or wildlife watcher who wants to spend some time in one of the last great American wildernesses. If you're thinking about living in Alaska, take a course with these guys. You'll learn how to handle yourself in a load of bad situations such as crashed helicopters, building collapses, wilderness navigation and Arctic land survival.

For more information: Learn to Return Survival Training