Have you ever wondered how you’d fare living out in the wild? It’s been a while since we lived in caves during the Stone Age (around 2.5 million years ago, to be exact), and it’s safe to say that humans have become accustomed to their fair share of luxuries since then.
But there are some people in today’s modern world who just want to get as far from society as possible.
Being at one with nature can feel peaceful, mood-boosting, and even empowering – but could you live off-the-grid full-time?
Athos is an outdoor prospector who grew up surrounded by nature as a child.
Now, he spends much of his time living in the woods, building shelters, and eating off the land.
It sounds almost child-like in the description, but Athos’ wood shelters are not your basic temporary piles of wood.
His survival earth lodge, which took him a matter of days to make, is really quite special.
In a video shared on YouTube, Athos shows the entire process of building the lodge from start to finish.
The video has since been watched nearly 10 million times, proving that there are a lot of people out there who would love to follow in Athos’ footsteps.
The video begins with Athos clearing a space in the forest, removing any large tree branches.
He then uses a pick, a trowel, and a few other tools to dig out his home’s foundations.
It’s busywork, and at one point, Athos stops to snack on a raw onion.
Rather him than us.
Once he’s suitably energized, he’s back at it, using various parts of the forest to create the walls of his shelter and knock them into the ground.
Sourcing the branches, cutting them to size, and attaching them to the supporting branches on the four corners of the shelter must have taken some serious time.
Clearly, he has a vision and it’s about to pay off big time.
Thanks to the power of video editing, we’re able to watch a much faster process, and the next minute Athos is assembling a roof.
For the sake of blending in and stopping rain from getting in, he adds leaves and twigs, to the roof.
He seals the edges with a tarp, then packs a good layer of soil and dirt on top for good measure.
Once the major work is done, he’s left with a fully-fledged shelter, most of which is underground, with a little square entrance that’s just big enough for him to climb through.
This truly is the sort of fort you’d dream of as a kid, but Athos’ skills are way beyond the skills of a child.
Next up, Athos makes a fire pit out of lumps of earth and a metal grill.
You just can’t ignore some of the more modern inventions when they’re so handy, after all.
His pit even comes with its own chimney, which might just be the coolest part.
You’d think that was it, but Athos is clearly a perfectionist, as he continues to add to the shelter for the remainder of the video.
In the end, the finished result is incredible and proof that we humans really could still survive in the wild if we had to today. Or, at least, people like Athos could.
See the process and finished product of Athos’s build in the video below!
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