Plamen Penev

Plamen Penev, founder of the “ПЛЕМЕ” Survival School, was born in Bulgaria in 1978, in the city of Shumen. During his school years, he spent all his weekends and holidays in the mountains with his grandmother and grandfather, where he gained his first survival skills in the wild. As a child, he experienced his first extreme trials.

 

“When I was a student, I had two serious accidents. They left a great mark in my life. There was a fall from a rock. The height was 20 meters, and I had no equipment. I fell 3 meters down, where I managed to grab the grass and hang on it. After gathering strength, I was able to go up. The second accident was falling under the ice in the winter, from which I also managed to get out, but then I had to walk 8 km home in wet frozen clothes. In both cases, I was alone. Of course, I was hurt and scared, but I knew that no one would help and I had to do it myself to survive. I fought fear and panic. I was persistent in my desire to live and I succeeded.”

 

Thanks to his experience and knowledge, Plamen is able to cope with the most difficult challenges. As an adult, he had survived avalanches twice, thanks to his incredible willpower and self-control. How to survive in an extreme situation? What is the most important skill?

 

“First of all, stop panic and pull yourself together. Focus on the situation by analyzing it. Assess problems and ways to solve them at the moment. When an unprepared person gets into difficult situations, he, very often, gives up to fear, begins to behave recklessly, makes a lot of mistakes and very often this leads to death. In my lessons I would like not only to teach basic survival skills, but to teach how to keep your head cool, analyze situation and make right decisions.”

 

After graduation from school, Plamen enrolled in the Military School, then studied History, Archaeology and Pedagogy at the Open University of  Varna and Shumensky University "Bishop Konstantin Preslavsky". Higher education gave him even more skills and knowledge. Subsequently, his organizational skills and discipline allowed him to organize a school for children in Sofia, as well as organize large-scale sports team building for major events. Currently, Plamen is engaged in a new project “ПЛЕМЕ”. When did you come up with the idea of creating a school?

 

“The idea of creating a survival school emerged recently. I have accumulated a lot of experience and knowledge over the years, and today I am willing to share them with people."

 

Why does modern man need a survival school?

 

“People in cities live like in a matrix. They created their artificial habitat, guaranteeing a safe and comfortable existence. But I think it’s nothing but an illusion that made them weak and lazy. The world created by humans is actually fragile and very dependent on nature and its resources. Contact with nature are inevitable and no one is insured from extreme situations that can hit you at the most unexpected moment. Being very dependent on the fruits of technological progress, modern man perceives wildlife as hostile. In my courses I show how important it is not to be afraid, but to love nature. I show man how to be in harmony with nature and learn from it, because it is an inexhaustible source of knowledge and experience. Knowledge and skills are way more valuable than any equipment.

 

In recent years, the topic of survival has become very popular. Through television and a number of popular science shows, as well as through some Bushcraft bloggers. Knowledge about how to survive in an extreme situation is available. Now it is a trend. There are people who almost never leave their apartments, but claim that they have knowledge and information about survival in extreme situations. The term “sofa survivors from social networks” has emerged, what do you think about it?

 

“All these TV and Internet shows are interesting to watch, but they can’t prepare a person for a real situation. Watching TV shows cannot form practical and solid knowledge and skills. Survival skills are most methodically and systematically described in the survival guides of elite military units around the world. Fortunately for us, most of this information is available to us, these guides are textbooks for practical lessons, and in addition to reading, a lot of fieldwork is required.”

 

What is the “ПЛЕМЕ” Project?

 

With the “ПЛЕМЕ” Project, I want to start practical wildlife survival courses, where participants will be able to gain practical skills and knowledge in real-world environments. Only in a real situation or close to the real you will be able to learn the techniques and will be sure that you can apply them in practice if necessary. Classes will be mostly practical, accompanied by some theory, they will be held in the mountain or other terrain, depending on the modules studied.

For the correct and methodical knowledge, the course of survival is divided into three levels of difficulty. Each subsequent level will become more difficult and we will learn to handle hard situations with fewer equipment and more sophisticated techniques in harsh conditions.

Over the last few decades, survival has evolved into a complex system of knowledge that encompasses a variety of skills. We can easily list climbing, geography, meteorology, chemistry, physics, psychology, military labor, hunting, fishing, fitness and sports among them and this is just the beginning of the list. Entering the world of survival is a continuous process of self-improvement and psychological and physical stability.

 

Additional courses “Military Training”, “Survival in Disasters and Accidents in the Urban Environment” are being prepared.