Survival gear list

"I imagine the most epic and dire situations would start out with the loss of my pack due to avalanche, precipice, river, theft, or some situation I could not foresee.. If I haven't lost my pack and all its luxuries I would not call that situation 'survival'- I'd call it 'camping'."

I completely agree. While many of the above "kitchen sink" survival kits would definitely up your comfort level (and probably your odds) during a survival situation, I think the size/complexity of the kit would lend it self to be left behind while you wash up or taken off while asleep.

I think the ultimate goal of a survival situation is to stay alive until rescue/escape, not build a small wilderness outpost.

Obviously, knowledge, skill, and will are the most important survival tools. Knowing how to build shelter and fire and find water will keep most people alive for long enough without any gear. That said, a few tools kept on the person, AT ALL TIMES, will lesson the burden. A knife, fire starter, water container/cook pot, emerg. poncho/garbage bag/emerg. blanket combined with the skills above will make the goings much smoother. Throw in a compact compass and signaling devices (whistle and/or mirror (knife blade can work)) and thats all you should need for a true SHTF, keep your ass alive situation.

I keep on my person at all times a knife and photon. When I enter the woods, I add a whistle, a key chain compass and a firesteel to a lanyard with the photon. These items never leave me, even while asleep. A water bottle, a Ti Cup, a warm hat and a emerg. blanket in a small pack stay with me most of the time…Depending on the weather/area, I may add a few things to the pack.

I imagine being woken up in the night by a starving furry monster with big teeth and by the time I have come to my senses and catch my breath, I realize, in a cold november night, I'm far from camp with nothing but what I was sleeping in…disoriented and scared…Did I grab the kitchen sink?

I would recommend everyone stick a large trash or lawn and leaf bag in their pocket. As Jaiden posted previously, it has a dozen uses, weighs a little more than an ounce, fits in your pocket, is cheap, and easy to find. No excuse not to have one. I encouraged all of our Scouts to carry one everywhere on camping trips.

So here is my list of survival things you can do with a trash bag: rain poncho, sleeping bag, vapor barrier, wind jacket, water carrier, rain collector, solar still, shade, sled, rope, ground cloth, bandage, sling, signal flag, pack, and of course trash bag.

Space blankets are great, too, but cost more, are harder to get and tend to be bulkier.

-Mark

Yah never know what might happen. And your pack is packed for the conditions you are likely to encounter. Your survival kit is not. I carry survival gear. I carry a trash bag – actually two, kitchen sized, with drawstring, for a kilt (especially handy on the wet brush trailside of trails maintained by horsepeople, who care less about leg level brush than those of us afoot), and for trash. They are also handy for melting snow in early summer/late spring. I carry a multi tool because my redneck roots keep me from carrying less. I am seekign counseling. I carry two sources of fire. I carry a first aid kit, with certain medications I feel I might need if I get sick. I carry a back up light – s very small clip on led ($4.00 at the hardware store) I always carry a bit of extra food – there's always a stale clif bar and some old starbursts at the bottom of my pack.

And I always make sure that folks know when I am coming out, and where I am.

Bt most important: carry your pack. Maybe not with your pad, and sleeping bag and tent all in it, but carry your pack. It protects against theft both human and animal. And it protects you and yours agianst the unexpected sprained ankle, driving hail and lightning storm or early season snowfall (the latter two encountered by my wife and I on two separate trips last year).

When in the back of beyond, it is your survival kit. Yes, there should be some extras just inc ase, but in packing for your trip, you have packed for the conditions you are likely to encounter. And your survival kit has not.

Lastly, use your head, and learn all you can about survival without the usual things we carry.

And a good knife can't be beat for carving out the hearts of deadfall and splitting those lower branches of deadwood to get at the dry stuff….

It has to fit on my person.
Items shared between small plastic ziplock in pocket and lanyard around neck:
Small ziplock bag.
With 6" of duct tape wound around it.
Folded larger plastic bag inside.
Folded square of foil.
Water purifying tabs.
Fire lighter flint and tinder tab(s).
Some cord (fishing line?).
Small knife or stanley blade.
whistle.
LED light.
Able brain.

This would probably need to be modified +/- to suit climate and location's specific needs.

I guess the survival gear that carry is just another way to catagorize the gear I already carry. Such as Bic Lighter and waterproof matches in one of those orange cases (the lighter stays in my pocket) I guess the real survival gear I carry anymore is some char cloth in a sandwhich bag, a scout firesteel, an emergancy blanket (only in winter, used to refeclt heat of a campfire, which by the way works really well when strung between two trekking poles like a lean-to) a whistle and photon light on my sholder strap, and a good solid knife. Every other aspect of survival gear is an extention of the gear I already carry. Although things like my food bag is bright orange for signialing and If Im going to a place im not fimilar with Ill take an old CD as a signal mirrior.

Now this normally sets my apart from most as I carry the Benchamde RSK MK 1. Its a specail run made for Doug Ritter's, Equipped to Survive foundation. Its a griptillian stlye knife with a S30V steel blade. I want to carry a knife that will hold up under pressure if the worst should befall me (and realy weights a little more than a SAK. ALthought some trips Ill take a bushcraft knife for fun to work on wilderness survival and bushcfrat skills.

What you don't where around your neck could kill you.

Around my neck I carry a fire steel, compass, mini Swiss Army knife, photon light, and wistle.

In my pocket I carry trail food. Usually a couple of high calorie bars. Never just one.

In my cargo pocket I carry a collapsible water basin, a 1/2 liter platypus bottle, and a 4 mil plastic sheet to use as a ground sheet that is double sized so I can wrap it around me as I sleep in bad weather.

I have recently thought about going back to using a BDU jacket and set it up like I use to. All of the pocets had a 4ft peice of parachute cord knotted into the bottom of the pockets. I had grommet holes (the stiched kind), 2 each, put in the bottoms of each of the bellows pockets. This allowed me to tie essential gear into each of the pockets and use it as needed. It was a very useful technique as I always had a compass, mirror, snack food, wistle, mag light, leatherman and whatever else i deemed neccesary available. Sadly I smoked occasionally back then so I had a waterproof bag fixed up by the seamstress for the lighter, cigarettes, and Apple Jack Chew I use to carry.

It was kind of a joke with the team at first. But as we went to classes or field tests where they would tell us some gear was optional and to just show up, I was always prepared wthe the essentials.

Why carry them in a survival kit? If the goal is to survive until help arrives or you can get to help, skip the tabs and drink the water. I just read through this thread from my last post. I carry what I might need in my pockets – always a fire source if not two, and always a knife. Otherwise, I stick to my carry your pack philosophy, adn should I get separated from it, I have heat and a knife. These are the two most important things I need, it seems to me as the most likely scenario for me getting separated from the entire content of my pack (absent human theft) is a water crossing – which would also mean I'd be wet, and in need of a fire – hence the lighter.

There is an old old story from Ernest Thomas Seton about an Indian squaw who got separated from her tribe at the onset of the winter in the Rockies. ALL she had for the snows of the winter was her clothing and her (steel) knife.
Come spring she was found and rescued by an explorer (whose name I forget). She was healthy and not underweight, but her knife was a bit worn down.

~ Short trips ~
Cough drops – sugar ones
Ibuprofen x 20
Immodium x 2
Antihistamine x 6
Gas-x x 2
Duct tape x 10 feet
Epi pens if needed – I don't

~ For Longer trips add ~
Mole foam
Foot antifungal
Sterile pad
Rubber Gloves
Pencil nub wrapped with more tape
SOAP note or paper
Iodine – Polar Pure
Maybe a mini-mask
Bit of electrical tape

~ Longer trips – Not strictly first aid ~

I often take a slit cork with a needle and thread in it, but consider that part of the repair kit. (Homemade pack)
Some cordage is nice.

A survivalist buddy of mine recently gave me this Wilderness Survival Card 2.0 from Readyman. Looks pretty cool. Made of stainless steel. Weighs .42 oz  (12 gm) and measures 2″ X 3.5″. Fits into a wallet.

It contains 9 fish hooks, 2 arrows, a frog/fish gig, 4 snare loops, 2 needles, 2 saw blades (metal & wood), and tweezers (right end piece).

It’s basically the Mountaineers 10 essentials. I admit to keeping a “Survival Kit” but all it really is, is simply all the little bits inside a bum bag I can wear on short trips away from the camp and this  kit swaps into whatever rucksack I have for the time and place I am going. It does however also contain 2 big plastic garden bags in bright orange because it might not be you that needs them one day. I have used my “Survival” garden bags to help other poorly dressed people on 3 occasions that I can remember and as core temperature savers nothing else comes close in terms of value for money or weight carried. The bum bag has a big wide belt that can carry other pouches along side and is MOLLE compatible also, handy if I want to add a water bottle or a Mini-Mi pouch full of lunch. My compass & plastic whistle hang on a lanyard around my neck when not in the bumbag and there is a small airline pouch here that has my Swiss army knife [ the real one, German issue] and a magnesium bar and ferro-rod and a drinking straw filter.

10 metres of 4.5mm Spectra cord with an eye at each end and a krab attached and a 100m hank of 100 kg brickies cord, my headlamp, toilet paper and wet wipes because you never know, A S2S water bag live there when empty, with the sterilising drops or tablets as does my mesh fly net and a LW giggle hat or running cap if I’m not wearing it, my spare car key tightly wired in. 2 ten dollar notes in waterproof plastic, a night rated road workers vest. My new smart phone in a case and whatever first-aid kit I happen to be using as well as few hundred calories in easy to eat form

OK I winter I  add extra batteries or a smaller and cheaper back-up headlamp

I guess the only “Real” survival item in there is a spare BIC lighter and a proper firelighter, because if I ever really, really need to light a fire it is going to be wet and cold and possible snowing, there will be no dry tinder and possibly no dry firewood until I make some and I am a good enough bushman to know my limitations and when I need help. My firelighter is a toilet roll inner, stuffed full of Nitrated paper and fatwood which is then saturated in wax wrapped in a nitrated waxed wick of frayed jute twine, if I can’t light a fire with that I’m dead, and this is assuming I have got myself into some sort of shelter from the wind etc

For those interested my bumbag is an old Lowe Alpine “Mojave”  runners waist bag which I have modified over the last 30 years or so, it is 8 litres in capacity masses around 1200 grams when full of all this “Stuff” but I’m a winter skier and I use a winter headlamp, it could be 300 grams lighter in summer if I ever walk in summer by taking out the big Black Diamond Icon