Survival Kits in F&S

Cliff Stamp said:
Lack of either will get you killed and one can compensate for the other to a degree but they are not in opposition but actually complementary so improve both.
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If you have the knowledge, you can make the tools, or find them easily (knowing the survival priorities, principles of heat loss/gain, etc.).


Cliff Stamp said:
I would place will to live over either and that is one that is pretty hard to actually train/improve. Lots of people in high stress situations will panic and be unable to make decisions, all the knowledge and gear does nothing then.

-Cliff
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I think, Cliff, you have hit the nail on the head with this. It is right on all the way. I fully agree here.
 
I also think a light is very important! I think a good Petzl LED Headlamp is the way to go! And if you have room something like a Streamlight Scorpion when you need a really bright light. Also if you read Ray Mears Bushcraft he recommends the same set up with lights.
 
Brian Jones said:
If you have the knowledge, you can make the tools, or find them easily (knowing the survival priorities, principles of heat loss/gain, etc.
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That is what I have been trying to say all along. I'am all for gadgets and Hi-tech survival gear, heck we live in 2005, but if you have the knowledge and skill, you can survive with out the luxury items.
 
Brian Jones said:
P.S. Myakka, Skam:

Lighten up, Francises!!!!

I am watching.... :eek: :D
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Brian,
I'm glad your watching, this forum has gone a lenghtly time with little moderator intervention, but lately we seem to need a little help. ;)

Thanks for being around :thumbup:

Ron Medise
 
Brian Jones said:
If you have the knowledge, you can make the tools, or find them easily (knowing the survival priorities, principles of heat loss/gain, etc.).
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Try seeing how long you can stay alive in the open ocean water in the frigid cold in a high sea without the right equipment while you are knocked out. Try to easily improvise the right equipment when all you have to use is water assuming you are even awake. I can swim very well, I also tolerate cold very well, however in such a situation there are very specific tools I would want to survive if the boat I was in went down and without them chances of living even a few minutes would be unlikely, in some places it is next to impossible even for lifelong experienced guys (crab fishermen work in some *really* hostile seas).

There are lots of other enviroments which are just as bad, very high altitudes without the equipment to deal with the low oxygen, very cold temperatures without the ability to deal with the cold. In the extreme cold, any exposed part of your body will start to suffer thermal shock immediately, it doesn't even take minutes, it gets cold enough here that schools can close just due to the temperature with no snowfall because even with full snow gear on you can't risk having people outside. Part of being knowledgable about survival is knowing what tools are necessary.

As a less extreme example enviroment wise, take two people moving from one location due to imediately threat (volcano, tornado), one guy isn't very knowledgable, but has a lot of gear, the other guy is very skilled in most things but has no gear prep. Both have their families in SUV's and are getting out of town, they both take local roads out. Both encouter a large tree across the road which is far too big to move.

The guy who is prepared has any number of options, he can use the load strap to pull the tree, use the planks he has to go over it, take out his axe and or saw and cut it in half. The other guy has none of these because he is confident in his ability to improvise any and all tools he will need. Does this really sound like something to advocate as a survival mindset, of course not.

Or just consider the actual act of fleeing, one guy has spare gas stored for such situations. The other guy doesn't because again he is of the "I can improvise anything I need" mindset. When the warnings for evacuation come on he noticies that he is almost on empty on gas in his SUV as he was planning on getting some that morning, now all the local gas stations are empty with the rush of traffic.

Yes lack of knowledge can get you killed as well, for that matter so can bad luck even with all lots of experience and tools, and so can lack of proper tools and some tools are difficult to improvise depending on the enviroment and some are impossible. Try improvising necessary medication, I have friends that without a daily series of pills they will quickly become nonfunctional and none of them can be improvised.

Knowledge includes gear selection and proper gear selection like knowledge improves your chances of survival. Lack of either can get you killed, and the better you are in both the better your chances of survival. Being able to improvise is a good thing, making this your only option is hardly a plan to advocate.

-Cliff
 
Well, said, Cliff. You've been batting 1000 lately!

Actually, overall, I think you've arrived at an excellent synthesis of the two worlds. I think we all agree and understand that the best choice is to have the knowledge, but having good gear close by certainly DOES make life easier.

The main reason I, and others here, emphasize KNOWLEDGE first is this: there is always the possibility you may be in a situation where you have no gear available (i.e. bush plane crashes, or your airline crashes, and sinks), so if you are serious about learning real survival skills, you should learn how to do without any pre-manufactured crutches.

I know that we all agree on this, but also agree that a good survival kit when TSHTF is a Godsend.

Cliff, good analysis on choosing the right gear as being part of the "knowledge base". Having the right knowledge will also allow you to manufacture/use what you need from natural materials if no gear is available, so if one has the time and opportunity to take their knowledge that far, they are covered for more scenarios than if not.
 
I think the other thing to bear in mind is in times past when people were surviving with nothing more than a deer skin and a flint knife, a lot of people would have died. If you were left out on your own away from your tribe in winter you would have a fair chance of dying or being eaten.

Although that was accepted back then, its not now. The only reason it isnt accepted now is because with the tools, equipment, social structure etc we have developed we can stop it happening. Put back into a situation where we have nothing more than our primitive ancestors we would have a fair chance of dying (maybe less of a chance of being eaten!)

We dont accept death in our culture, but the only things that make us different from cavemen and other animals where death is a daily (or more) event is the tools and equipment we have/ make, our extra knowledge and our society. In a survival situation almost by definition all or part of the 'society' advantage has been taken away and loss of either of the other two advantages we have over other animals takes us one step closer to the natural world of 'dying and being eaten'
 
We must keep into perspective as well, native peoples are not surviving they are "home" just like you and I are now. Survival by my definition is continuing to breath outside your naturally known habitat.
Native peoples did neither, they just lived day to day in their natural environment. Most things we believe are survival skills "to them" are actually second nature even mundane to them and no different than taking out the trash is to us.
Albeit with much more exposure to risk and a lower life expectancy.

This lends itself to a good survival motto. "When in Rome" is a good place to start at least.

Skam
 
Well said Cliff. This is after all a thread about survival kits, ie: given a choice, what gear do you pack in the event of an emergency? What to do in the event one loses said gear is a topic unto itself.
 
Brian Jones said:
The main reason I, and others here, emphasize KNOWLEDGE first is this: there is always the possibility you may be in a situation where you have no gear available (i.e. bush plane crashes, or your airline crashes, and sinks), so if you are serious about learning real survival skills, you should learn how to do without any pre-manufactured crutches.
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Even in those situations there is no excuse for not being prepared, you can easily carry means of signaling, building a fire, shelter materials and in most cases a knife, or on commercial airlines something which can be turned into a knife very readily. I also think in general these extreme senarios are more "rambo" fantasy than reality.

Yes they do happen, but the vast majority of survivial situations are such that people knew they were going before hand and it only turned into a survivial situation because they were not prepared. People get lost yearly locally because the towns are isolated (many miles apart) and people go on short hikes and get lost. A few simple steps such as :

1) Always let someone sensible (more than one if possible) know where you are going and *when* you are going to be back. Make sure you let them know when you get back and be on time. If you don't do the latter be prepared for them to give you lots of extra time when a real emergency arises.

2) Always take basic means of communication or signaling. Cell phones are cheap now and very reliable, sat phones if you can afford them. A good signal whistle carries a long distance and is much easier to repeat than a yell and also stands out more. Signal flares, a mirror, etc., all work very well and have a multitude of other uses.

These two alone would save a lot of people and they require little money or training, just good habits. Next would be to get into the habit of packing basic tools, a small knife, matches and a space blanket doesn't take up much space and the first two pretty much can be carried no matter what you are wearing. If you own a car/truck, then it should always have a basic kit.

Ideally you spend enough time so that you gather the necessary skills to minimize what you need and develop the ability to improvise tools, however to be frank not everyone has the time to do so, or the inclination, or even the physical ability. I know some people who due to severe physical disability would find it near impossible to start a friction fire as they could simply not turn the drill fast enough even with a bow.

In general I am very opposed to hard and fast rules, even well known ones like shelter before food, in some situations this is the wrong way, though usually it is the right one and usually it is extremely important that you do it this way but it can be the wrong way. The most important rule is : figure out what you need to survive, consider the tools you have available, make a plan to achieve what you need with what you have.

The other reason I don't like saying knowledge is more important than tools, or the reverse is that they are not in competition with each other, and such a line of thinking often leads people to put one over the other obviously and can lead to not improving one which is a bad situation, being really lopsided is never a good idea.

-Cliff
 
I think that the act of preperation not only gives you the knowledge, skills, and tools needed to survive, but also significantly reduces the chance that you'll find yourself in a situation where you need to use them! Telling people where you're going to be, when you expect to be back, avoiding situations that can put you at risk, and so forth. You still carry the stuff just in case of course, but an ounce of prevention...
 
Pretty much, many situations are avoid with just a bit of forethought and a few basic rules, people will often for example wander in a random manner which makes it very difficult for a search party to find them, especially when they leave no markers.

Back to equipment, one thing that should be mentioned is that the actual enhancement that better gear makes is usually fairly small. With even a moderate amount of experience, the differences among blades is usually small, as in a percentage, not many times to one.

I usually recommend lower end blades to start for a few reasons, first off all it gives you a cheap place to experiment and learn what you can and can't do. One the blade eventually gives out (during practice) you can then figure out what you need/want for the real thing.

Even when you get your ideal blade, keep using other ones, even the ones that are less than optimal as you can never tell when you may be forced to rely on it. It isn't like you can always simply say "No, I don't want that machete, please give me a nice double bitted felling axe, medium density grind."

You may have to cut wood with a normal machete some day, so it is a good idea to figure out how to do so, you can't use the same technique you would with a bolo or golok, as you are likely to either break the machete, cause yourself excess discomfort and fatigure which will increase your chances of injury and breaking the machete.

As a basic starting kit I would recommend :

Martindale Golok
#511

http://www.ragweedforge.com/511.jpg
http://www.cutsforthknives.com/images/pics/2.gif

This will handle a very wide range of tasks. Once you want to move up to handling heavier wood, I would get a good saw, I like this one :

http://www.tashirohardware.com/pocketbh.jpg

I would recommend strongly though, before you attempt to fell serious wood, do so reading on felling and if all possible talk with someone who has done it, it is very easy to kill yourself cutting down large wood, and usually there is no need to do so anyway. If you start with an axe this is critical, ask specifically about felling leaners and how to deal with widowmakers
[*].

Once you have a basic skill set you upgrade the equipment using your experience to guide you on what is better, what did you find lacking in regards for the ability of the tools to match your abilites and the needs demanded by the enviroment - ask around and find out what can address these issues.

-Cliff

[*] the answer is easy, you don't cut them down, the problem is mainly realizing this and to identify them.
 
Cliff Stamp said:
Even in those situations there is no excuse for not being prepared, you can easily carry means of signaling, building a fire, shelter materials and in most cases a knife, or on commercial airlines something which can be turned into a knife very readily. I also think in general these extreme senarios are more "rambo" fantasy than reality. And the rest of Cliff's long post....
-Cliff
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This is getting into nitpicking at this point -- nobody really disagrees, and the conversation is just getting to be intellectuallizing-for-intellectuallizing's-sake now.

The reality is, Murphy's Law is alive and kicking, and for those who go into weird situations for work, anything can, and does, happen. Just look at how many kidnap-for-ransom cases happen in Colombia alone. Are you saying that an employee of an oil company (or the like), who manages to escape with nothing on him (he's been searched and stripped of everything but the clothes on his back), has no excuse for not having gear on him and being prepared?

Knowledge is always with you when your equipment can't be...but having the right equipment available is ALWAYS the smartest thing. We all agree here.

Knowledge is just like gear: better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

Plus, if you lose your gear, you can't lose your knowledge. If you lose your mind, your gear ain't gonna help you in any kind of situation.
 
Brian Jones said:
This is getting into nitpicking at this point -- nobody really disagrees, and the conversation is just getting to be intellectuallizing-for-intellectuallizing's-sake now.

The reality is, Murphy's Law is alive and kicking, and for those who go into weird situations for work, anything can, and does, happen. Just look at how many kinap-for-ransom cases happen in Colombia alone. Are you saying that an employee of an oil company (or the like), who manages to escape with nothing on him (he's been searched and stripped of everything but the clothes on his back), has no excuse for not having gear on him and being prepared?

Knowledge is always with you when your equipment can't be...but having the right equipment available is ALWAYS the smartest thing. We all agree here.

Knowledge is just like gear: better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

Plus, if you lose your gear, you can't lose your knowledge. If you lose your mind, your gear ain't gonna help you in any kind of situation.
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Brain, That has been my point all along. :thumbup:

It is amazing how some other people on this forum can not except other peoples ideas. :( And they have to take over all the time :(
 
To answer the retoricle question I carry a knife and fire at all times. That is my kit.
With my knife I can build a boat,make weapons,put together shelter,prosses food, make traps and snares to get the food,and start a fire if my Bic fails.
 
ok now back to the topic. Any body want to share what kind of kit they carry on them daily?
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Was that the topic? I thought it was about the relative importance of tools and knowledge sets :rolleyes: First, in my pocket I've got a Mission Wallet which holds a Gerber Infinity Ultra and a CRK Mnandi. Inside the wallet is a credit card I don't use, a couple $20's and a small ferrocerium rod. There's also a small change purse that has a BM Benchmite wrapped in small bills. There is a another knife clipped in my other pocket and a Photon Freedom is on my keychain. Cellphone sits on my belt.

I replied once before in this thread but that was specifically about whether or not to carry a light. I went on to say, "My EDC backpack has three lights, a UK4AAeLED is primary and it will run approx 20 hours before needing new batteries. Then there are two 2AAA LED lights and the Photon Freedom on my keychain. I carry one spare set (4) of AA batteries and one set of AAA. The GPS in my pack also runs on AAA and that's the only reason I carry the spare AAA's." From that you can surmise that I carry a few lights and a GPS, but there is also a small nylon bag in the bottom of the backpack which contains 2x20' of 550 paracord, and a Doug Ritter's Pocket Survival Pak and a Adventure Medical Wound Closure Kit (have you noticed how most "First Aid" kits are set-up for non-emergencies?). In the rear compartment next to the UK4AAeLED is a Doug Ritter Mini-RSK Mk1 Folding Knife and a Leatherman multi-tool. Behind the Garmin Geko 301 GPS is a small base plate compass and behind that are the spare batteries I mentioned earlier. A 2AAA mini-maglite with an LED mod sits in a pen slot and a UK2AAAeLED is tied to the pack. There's a liter of water on the outside of the pack and depending on my plan for the day I may have lunch, a sweater, gym gear etc in the main compartment. That is my EDC backpack. It goes with me anytime I leave home and is never very far away. As I type it's across the room, ready to leave.

Next level up from that kit is the one in the back of my truck. Big first aid kit, food for a few days, water, blankets, an axe, camp stove, fuel, 5 gal of gas, my formal BOB (Maxpedition Condor) with space blanket, tarp, fire making gear, et al.

I fall into the "best to have it and not need it" camp. ;)
 
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