Survival Lilly

Lilly is a popular outdoorswoman, survivalist, and YouTuber.

She has more than 1.1M subscribers on her YouTube channel, ‘Survival Lilly.’

Introduction-

Elisabeth Puntigam (Lilly) was born on 22 September 1984.

She hails from Austria; Europe and her mother tongue is German.

Lilly has brothers.

Love for bushcraft & nature-

As a kid, Lilly loved playing in the woods and grew up near a village adjoining forest.

Every day, after completing school, she along with her brothers, cousins and other school kids used to build shelters and play in the woods and search for wild edible plants especially, magic mushrooms and blueberries.

Also, Lilly’s mother used to take her into the woods for mushrooms and blueberries.

Her father is a hunter and he used to take her with him while hunting and so, she grew up watching her father hunt and after growing up, she too started hunting.

Thanks to all these, Lilly got connected to mother nature at a very young age.

Later, she started practising bushcraft and survival skills on her cousin’s land in Austria.

Getting influenced by survival books-

At 8, Lilly got her hands on a German survival comic book titled- Survival Für Abenteurer (which translates to ‘Survival For Adventurers’).

This was the first ever survival book that she owned, and she was very impressed by the survival information contained in this book. This book is no longer sold.

Later, Lilly read many survival books which greatly influenced her and those are as follows-

• Bushcraft: Outdoor Skills and Wilderness Survival (she considers this as a true bushcrafting book).
• Survive!: Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere – Alive (Lilly considers this as the best survival book).
• Epic Survival
• The SAS Survival Handbook
• Ultimate Guide to Wilderness Living
• Deerskins into Buckskins.

Her first survival rucksack & inspiration to work on YouTube-

Once, Lilly read about survival rucksacks in a book and at 10, she put together her first survival rucksack containing the 5 Cs of survival (cutting tool, combustion device, cover, container, and cordage) along with a lot of stuff but she didn’t practice survival skills.

In 2010, she stumbled upon a few survival and bushcraft YouTube channels and as she was impressed by them, she decided to start her own YouTube channel.

At that time, Lilly watched the videos of Mike of ‘survivalmike’ YouTube channel and learnt many things from it.

On 15 January 2011, she started her YouTube channel by the name Survival Lilly.

Quitting her job for bushcraft-

Lilly used to work as an accountant in an accountancy office.

She didn’t like her job as it confined her for long hours in the office whereas her heart lied in spending time outdoors bushcrafting.

So, Lilly quit her job to bushcraft and to share her journey on YouTube.

She learnt bushcrafting by trial and error and by reading books and following other bushcraft YouTubers.

Initially, while starting with bushcraft and survival, Lilly hurt herself a couple of times while being stressed out and she accidentally cut herself with knives and saws and as the injuries were severe, she had to be treated at the hospital.

A successful YouTuber-

In 2014, she visited Sweden and filmed a video there and as this video became viral, it greatly helped in the growth of her YouTube channel.

Thanks to this viral video, Lilly started producing more videos regularly and improved the quality of her videos which furthered the growth of her channel.

As of November 2023, she has 1.12M subscribers on her YouTube channel, ‘Survival Lilly.’

She earns from a variety of sources like advertisements on her YouTube videos, affiliate marketing, receiving sponsorships, selling merchandise and she also accepts donations on Patreon.

Lilly also sells knives and firesteel through her shop.

She designed a survival knife, ‘APO-1S Survival Lilly Knife.’

In a few of her interviews on YouTube, Lilly stated that one of the reasons for the success of her YouTube channel is that she doesn’t have much competition on YouTube as there aren’t many female survivalists on YouTube.

In November 2017, Lilly won the Austrian Video Award in the category “Travel & Food”.

She uses an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III camera with a couple of Zuiko lenses and uses a DJI Mavic Mini drone.

Shawn James of My Self Reliance is her favourite YouTuber.

She is a survivalist in season 15, episode 1 of ‘Naked and Afraid’ TV show.

Lilly has three other YouTube channels namely, Gardening with Lilly, Survival Lilly – Deutsch and Survival Lilly Restricted.

Computer games & minimalism-

Lilly plays games on her PlayStation as it helps her to train and manage her stress levels which transcends to better managing real-world stressful survival situations.

Even though she has a lot of survival gear, she prefers minimal gear because as she is thin, she couldn’t carry much weight in her backpack and so, she chooses the lightest gear and crafts the other required gear from nature.

Canada is one of Lilly’s favourite countries and she also camped in Canada.

Her favourite survival tool is a knife, and she is also interested in gardening and permaculture.

Personal life-

Lilly was born Christian but later she became an atheist.

In 2012, she was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease and in one of her videos, she stated that consuming a gluten and dairy free diet helped her better manage the disease.

In one of Lilly’s December 2022 videos, she stated that she is suffering from prediabetes and would follow a ketogenic diet to combat it.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Lilly?

Share with me in the comment section below.