What's the strangest item you have in your survival kit/pack?

BIGSHOVEL said:
These are becoming dinosaurs fast. Side bitting in addition to top bitting in a cylinder is pretty much the norm for any commercial project on the low end of things. Hospitals, schools and most public municipal buildings built beyond 2005ish will be high security cylinders and or mechanical/electric like most new car keys.

A masterkeyed cylinder of anyscale will be hard to defeat with a pick set.

Google Schlage Primus, Corbin Pyramid, Sargent Signature and you will see this tool is worthless in most retail settings.

Residential has come a long ways to defeat this as well. I will elaborate on that if anyone cares to hear it. I have spent twenty plus years working in the commercial hardware business, it changes daily, fast.
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I care to hear it if you want to talk locks.
 
BIGSHOVEL said:
These are becoming dinosaurs fast. Side bitting in addition to top bitting in a cylinder is pretty much the norm for any commercial project on the low end of things. Hospitals, schools and most public municipal buildings built beyond 2005ish will be high security cylinders and or mechanical/electric like most new car keys.
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Luckily for a survivor seeking shelter, they will probably be going into older buildings, etc. Mul-T-Lock is not what it is cracked up to be, just as the older Sargent Keso and Lori Kaba were thought to be the end all of picking.

There is a distinct difference between burglary for profit and what we are talking about in an emergency. The target is different and the survivor seeking shelter, the smart ones, would never choose such high profile structures anyway.

Biometric locks with electric strikes will dinosaur lockpicks before new twists on the pin tumbler lock will.

A masterkeyed cylinder of anyscale will be hard to defeat with a pick set.
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Masterkeying is the inclusion of even more pins which create even more shear lines in the lock to exploit. Masterkeyed systems are easier to manipulate, not harder.

Google Schlage Primus, Corbin Pyramid, Sargent Signature and you will see this tool is worthless in most retail settings.
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Locks like Primus, and Medeco for that matter, are all tougher than regular pin tumbler locks, that's a given. You are also going into high profile targets which the survivor should avoid anyway, as I stated above.

Residential has come a long ways to defeat this as well. I will elaborate on that if anyone cares to hear it. I have spent twenty plus years working in the commercial hardware business, it changes daily, fast.
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Most new building is still using Kwikset. You can see Kwikset on a home that costs a few hundred thousand dollars. Builders are so cheap they usually won't even use Schlage standard pin tumbler locks. Always harder to pick than standard Kwikset because of the precision in manufacturing involved. Which is why builders prefer Kwikset because they are cheaper.

T. Erdelyi said:
Keep somethin' in mind, I've been usin' lock picks since long before computers used fortran for programmin' so I didn't cut my teeth watchin' youtube people who have no real credentials for pickin'.
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I was not really talking about you, I was talking about other people and very fanciful notions of how they are going to perform in the real world when they are cold, etc.

I was a facilities mechanic and a yard mechanic since the late 70s and I apprenticed with a locksmith for awhile.

I wouldn't recommend carryin' or usin' picks unless;

  • You have experience, (this requires 1000s of hours of practice on different kinds of locks.
  • You have a really good reason for havin' 'em as they are considered B&E tools in most states.
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I don't know how long it takes for people because, like you, I have been doing it for a long time now. But I will say this, you basically have to become a lock collector. :D

That said, I was just answerin' the OPs question as to what unusual item I carry, hey some locks can take up to an hour or more...
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That's very true.

...and there's still no guarantee it'll open a lock.
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Again, that's very true. That's why Locksmiths carry cordless drills.

Now there are what they call destructive ways to open locks but that's another forum, also keep in mind what you see on tv is just that, tv and meant for entertainment only.
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That's true as well, this is becoming a pattern with you! :D

That having been said, one of the most important lessons a person can gain about lockpicking in the real world can be viewed in a movie called "Midnight Run" with Robert DeNiro. In the first five minutes of the movie. He makes a little too much noise and someone blows a big, nasty hole through the door where his head was moments before.

Last thought, we are all adults or the majority at least are so make your own descisions, form your own opinions and never trust you're life to something you've only seen on the internet or tv and you've never tried yourself.

Peace all.
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I don't think you understood my post where I mentioned YouTube, etc. I was trying to discourage people who were not willing to take the time.

The legalities of packing them around are always floating around, and rightfully so. I don't know about packing these things around every day of your life. I don't know that I would advise that.

But, if everything really did fall all around us, it wouldn't matter then anyway, would it? A lot of us cannot pack a gun around and certainly not a tricked out AR-15 and walk down the street without that resulting in a SWAT Call Out, right? Yet we see thread after thread after thread about them and that is linked to "survival." It's really the same thing. The concept that you will be detained and arrested for a set of tools but you are going to have magazines strapped all over your chest and an AR-15 (And God only knows what else) hanging on a three point sling and they're just going to wave you through a roadblock or something is fantasy.

Someone earlier mentioned a Sillcock Key. They are for obtaining water. Some people carry them in whatever their Bug Out Bag is. I watched one thread over a year ago on another forum basically devolve into, "If you use that key to get so much as a cup of water, that's theft and I have a right to shoot you."

I read the same comments over and over again about picking locks or whatever else was "unpopular" by the self-appointed Regulators of the planet.

After well over a decade of reading this stuff I am convinced that if society ever collapses to the point where you can openly tote the types of weapons people think they are going to be toting, there are going to be a whole lot of massacres. People are going to be ready, willing and able to "settle the score" of half a century of anger and real or perceived criminality. So, there is going to be a whole lot of justifiable homicide going on and about twenty times that in murder.

The smart man, especially those with wife and child(ren), if they are forced to evacuate, will avoid people like the plague because any perceived "criminality" is going to be dealt with by gunfire, quickly. As soon as they get a chance, they will cut from the herd and go off on their own in the woods. The whole "run and gun" scenarios will be for people that carry Quick-Clot, and they're going to need it and it will be pointless then because there won't be a trauma surgeon around to help them even though they prolonged the inevitable.

This is just my no bullshit assessment of what people are preparing for...or not preparing for.
 
Don I agree with everything ya said, especially the last part. :)

Don Rearic said:
The smart man, especially those with wife and child(ren), if they are forced to evacuate, will avoid people like the plague because any perceived "criminality" is going to be dealt with by gunfire, quickly. As soon as they get a chance, they will cut from the herd and go off on their own in the woods. The whole "run and gun" scenarios will be for people that carry Quick-Clot, and they're going to need it and it will be pointless then because there won't be a trauma surgeon around to help them even though they prolonged the inevitable.
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micro Ti darts.

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T. Erdelyi said:
Don I agree with everything ya said, especially the last part. :)
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Me too!

I teach the same principles to anyone who will listen. But there are too many that watch too many movies and TV shows and belive that they know what to do if...

It's really sad sometimes.
 
There is a romanticism involved in all of this stuff. That romanticism ends when you get gutshot and it takes you a week to die of sepsis or whatever else gets you. It's an agonizing way to die, to say the least.

In some type of Katrina event, all of the first aid training and gear is a great thing to have and I'm not condemning that at all. But if there is a total collapse, only a total idiot would choose to get into a gunfight. That would be something you would have to do or you would die, not choose to do. One of the biggest reasons why no one should want to bring that on, and this is going to piss some people off...I don't care how good you are or how many shooting schools you have attended...the fact of the matter is, there is something called "bad luck."

Now, if that reality can be accepted, the next logical conclusion the thinking man would come to is, avoid people like the plague. If the problem comes to you and you are being peaceful, well, then you have to do what you have to do. But to go into that type of event with the badass attitude that many people display, well, I hope they keep one round for themselves if they need it.
 
ESEERATFAN said:
What item(s) do you carry in your survival kit/pack that you don't typically see listed as a survival kit item?

For me it's probably hand sanitizer. I've had great success using it to start fires and it keeps my hands clean.

I also have a pocket sized version of the US Constitution in my kit.
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Awsome idea on the hand sanitizer, a very undervalued item to have on your person in such a situation. Getting sick or contaminated from poor hand hygene could lead to something like MRSA, C-Diff or VRE(an axample)could really complicate your situation being around other people without any kind of micro bio knowledge and the certain terrible conditions for disease transmission.
 
Anti monkey butt is pure gold! I took 4 or 5 bottles with me on my deployments.

Gloves, ones to keep my falanges in tact in the cold, and heavy leather to protect them from sharp or heavy objects.

Dr. Bronners peppermint soap and a tooth brush
 
akula83 said:
Awsome idea on the hand sanitizer, a very undervalued item to have on your person in such a situation. Getting sick or contaminated from poor hand hygene could lead to something like MRSA, C-Diff or VRE(an axample)could really complicate your situation being around other people without any kind of micro bio knowledge and the certain terrible conditions for disease transmission.
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I wrote this a long time ago and then I rediscovered it or someone sent me a copy of what I had wrote after a computer crashed, I can't remember which. Anyway, this was part of a funny series I wrote. I tried to make it funny, anyway.

Urban Survival Primer Part Four.
 
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