I just bought 100 feet of Orange Blaze paracord. I'm going to make lanyards for everything in my BoB because I'm tired of losing everything the moment I put it down in dim light.
Excellent idea. Let me add one more though.
Years ago I attended the school for Army Special Forces. One of the things they had us do is tie lanyards to everything... canteen, flashlight, knife, everything we could. The lanyards were then attached to our webgear. It wasn't just a long tail to make it more easy to see the equipment. We did this partially to ensure that we did not leave anything behind for counterintel. During an actual operation our gear would likely be different than guerrilla forces with which we had linked up. It would be best if the enemy didn't know we were around if possible. It was also to ensure we had mission critical gear with us. When you are operating far from re-supply and often behind enemy lines, you don't want to lose your gear.
We typically would put the lanyard through the drain holes in the bottom of ALICE gear (compass pouch, canteen pouch, flashlight pouch etc) and put a large knot in it to hold it. Then we'd stuff the excess paracord inside the pouch so nothing was hanging out. Don't want your plethora of lanyards catching on every piece of foliage. I hope that explanation makes sense. It would be easier to show you a photo.
It was a hassle if you wanted to hand a piece of equipment to someone. Typically, I'd just remove the item case and all and hand the whole thing to them.
I don't know if the guys still do this. I think their gear is far superior to what we had. Our snaps and pouch closures failed pretty regularly. (We often used paracord to backup those metal Alice attachment things that held the pouces to the belt or pack). Anyway, you can do the same thing with your gear.
