by Cody Lundin
The Kit
This eyeglass-case-sized pouch hotds the majority of my survival-kit components. There’s no excuse not to carry this gear!
My nemesis: A bevy of commercial survival kits.
The whole enchilada!
The bowels of my homemade first-aid kit.
Two mini-kits. Notice the whistle and small LED light.
Fire
A plethora of commercially available matches. Notice the extreme differences in their sizes.
A split, wooden, strike-anywhere kitchen match and a split paper match each provide two chances to light a fire. POWs during WW II split wooden matches up to six times!
Matches (from left to right): new wooden, strike-anywhere kitchen match; the same but with different-colored head; old (several years) strike-anywhere kitchen match (notice that the white tip has noticeably faded when compared to the other); wooden, “strike-on-the-box” kitchen match (notice that the match head is all one color).
Commercial and improvised match safes. The ridiculous. army-green-colored one can be brightly taped as suggested at the bottom. The match safe on the far right sucks big time and should be avoided at all costs. Notice improvised striking surfaces.
Waxed, “strike-anywhere” kitchen matches, loaded and ready to go in a quality, highly visible match safe. Notice the sandpaper striking surface rubber-cemented to the cap.
The painfully obvious difference between an adjustable Lighter and a non-adjustable. Which one would you rather use to make a fire?
The proper way to strike a match. Use your middle finger to support the match head while striking so it won’t break.
The magnesium block with striking insert. The yellow tape and yellow hacksaw blade help with visibility.
The Pink Floyd majesty of burning magnesium, 5,400 degrees strong. Who needs drugs!?
Various types and sizes of metal matches (mish-metal). Check out the massive size of a couple of them when compared to the mish-metal striking insert in the yellow magnesium block.
A pile of magnesium shavings created by using the end of the yellow hacksaw blade to scrape away at the block. Notice shiny area on block from scraping.
The Potency of Homemade Tinder
Tearing open a petroleumjelly saturated cotton ball to expose the inner target area.
Scraping a mish-metal insert into the “dry” target area of the ball.
The all-powerful tinder bundle, in this case made from juniper bark. Left: Virgin juniper bark. Bottom three piles consist of fine, medium, and coarse pieces of bark. The completed tinder bundle is at the top.
Igniting a tinder bundle with a mish-metal striking insert.
Cotton ball has been burning for 15 seconds.
Burning for 2½ minutes.
Burning for more than 4 minutes.
Blowing a tinder bundle into flame with 16 percent exhaled oxygen from my lungs.
Smoldering tinder bundle. A well-made tinder bundle of this size can smolder for half an hour in windless conditions. Want flame? Just blow.
Using a Fresnel Lens
Making a “half circle” of light.
Rotating the lens to create a “full circle” of light.
Backing off the lens from the target to make the full circle of light as pinpoint as possible. Notice wisp of smoke that should appear within seconds.
Using a Fresnel lens to create an ember in a tinder bundle.
Constructing a typical, cone-shaped fire lay. Notice the target area of fine stuff in the center. Your heat or ignition source will be placed under this.
Shelter
Garbage-bag raincoat. Although you’ll look like a giant Hershey’s kiss, putting the face hole in this position keeps rain and wind off the head and neck while the other “corner” allows space to carry and keep dry a small day pack.
Improvised tube tent made from two 55-gallon barrel liners.
Quality, commercial space blankets. Notice the highly visible, bright-orange backing on the larger heavy-duty model.
Homemade corner grommets made from duct tape and safety pins on a regular-sized space blanket.
Water
Gathering water with a freezer bag from a pool in a God-forsaken, mosquito-infested swamp.
Using a drinking tube to gather water from a rock crevice.
A quart- and gallon-sized heavy-duty freezer bag loaded with water. The zipper seal of the gallon-sized bag (right) is supporting more than eight pounds of weight!
Future emergency water containers: Jumbo-size, non-lubricated condoms.
Carrying the goods “hobo style” in an extra bandana.
Nearly a gallon of water in a condom.
Disinfecting, drop by drop, one U.S. quart of water with-your friend and mine-tincture of Iodine 2 percent.
Signaling
A ton of whistles. I prefer the bright orange, pea-less, flat version such as the one with the yellow lanyard. The blue beauty in the upper right-hand corner is made from a strip of aluminum, a Mors Kochanski classic.
The “front” side of commercial and homemade signal mirrors. The 3 x 5 glass sweetheart in the upper lefthand corner is my baby.
The back side of the same mirrors. Notice that the mirror I carry is only reflective on one side.
Using a sightable signal mirror.
Colored surveyor’s tape used as a cross-country flag. A permanent marker can be used to write a note to your rescuers on the tape.
The tin-foil tip-off manifest. All it needs now, if you are in a group of people, is your name written in the corner.
Other Goodies
Cutting Down a Small
Willow with My Knife
Starting the blade at 45-degree angle while slightly bending the tree.
Finishing the cut by bending the tree and pushing down hard on the knife while rocking the blade back and forth.
Total time: Three seconds. Yee-ha! The cut willow can be used in dozens of wilderness applications, from making shelter, to spears, to quickie bows, and more.
Test for hypothermia and dexterity. If you can’t easily touch your little finger to your thumb, stop what you’re doing and get warm!
The difference between true, seven-strand parachute cord (left) and the imposter called “paracord.”
Removing a little bit of heaven-duct tape! Notice the super-handy parachute-cord loop.
Variety of Conditions
For optimal adaptation in the field, your kit should meet a wide variety of conditions. Focusing on the basics allows for carrying less while improving options. Options are empowering as they provide choices. Choices allow you to pursue the best plan available at the time. Specialized gear, although it has its place, limits options for the survivor. You may find that a specialty item might perform one thing so well that it’s worth carting along—the choice is yours.
Multiple-Use Components
Quality, multiple-use components are worth their weight in gold. Don’t pack anything that has less than two uses and hopefully more. There are two master, multiuse components with which civilizations were built. Either one in the hands of a competent user can produce tremendous benefits, but either one in the hands of a loser can cause unprecedented pain, injury, and death. Can you guess what two goodies I’m talking about? They are a cutting edge and fire. Both have been around since time began and are each the epitomes of multiuse magic, accomplishing a plethora of tasks but taking up a minimal amount of space and weight.
Desperate gear manufacturers have gone overboard trying to impress the population with a multitude of gidgets and gadgets. I’ve seen several multi-tools on the market and remain unimpressed. Some sprout so many contraptions that they are virtually functionless. Others have elements that refuse to work in the aisle of the discount store, let alone in the backcountry. If you need help extracting an emergency hangnail or getting a closer look at phone numbers in your little black book, they may be of some service. Don’t let your quest for sound, multiple-use gear lead you into a land of cheesy, mad
e-in-Hong Kong trash.
Calorie-Conserving Concepts
The energy stored within your body is one of the most sacred commodities you have in the backcountry. How much juice you have at the time of impending doom is determined by your physical fitness and attitude, prior activity level, environmental temperature extremes and clothing choices, the amount and type of food last eaten, your hydration level, and your level of fatigue. Energy can be intelligently conserved to last several days or be ignorantly wasted in a few hours depending on your state of mind, body shelter, and activity level.
Your body is like a battery as it stores only so much energy (calories) before it needs refueling. The chance that your “battery” will be full at the start of a survival scenario is about as likely as an honest politician working for the common good of all people—possible but not likely. Anything done to slow down calorie consumption, or achieve better efficiency from the ones you do burn, can increase your overall survival time. Calmly using the glucose in your brain by carefully thinking out plans and actions before you move your body saves a considerable amount of energy. Prioritize your situation to determine the most important actions necessary to get you rescued as quickly as possible. Spending extra energy traveling to a sheltered location or improvising protective shelter from the environment can save an enormous amount of calories and water that your body would have otherwise spent trying to keep warm (shivering) or cool (sweating). Your ultimate challenge and dilemma, using the tips from the right, is deciding how calories will be spent in order to get the greatest bang for your buck.
1. Stay comfortable. Regulating body temperature from the start by adding or subtracting layers when needed is one of the easiest and most effective methods to conserve energy. Critical body areas to protect are the core and head and neck.
2. Slow down. Working at 60 percent of your maximum output allows the body to burn stored fat instead of limited carbohydrate reserves.
3. Prioritize and plan tasks in your mind. It requires a lot less energy to think about doing something than it does to do it.
4. Don’t sweat. Unless the weather is hot, sweating is your body’s way of saying that you’re doing too much too fast. Sweating is the body’s response to burning huge amounts of metabolic calories and further dehydrates the body.
5. Stay dry in cold weather. Wet clothing robs the body of precious heat energy.
6. Don’t freak out. Panicked and fearful people compromise their survival in several ways, including spending energy running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
7. Take rest breaks. Resting reduces your energy output, increases morale, breaks up periods of boredom, allows muscles to rid themselves of lactic acid build up from exertion, and helps the body recover from fatigue. Don’t forget the benefits of the all-powerful catnap talked about earlier.
8. Graze. Eating small amounts of food throughout the day, especially simple carbohydrates, provides energy while allowing the body to access fat reserves for metabolism.
9. Stay hydrated. If possible, drink warmed fluid in cold weather and cool fluids in hot weather to hydrate the body without sacrificing calories to heat up or cool down the water internally.
Calorie-Conserving Components
Every time you move, you’re accelerating the loss of calories and water, two very precious commodities in the backcountry. Packing and using calorie-conserving components gets the job done with a minimum of athletics. Guys love hearing this, but you want to be as lazy as possible in your emergency situation while still getting your needs met. If your compromising event becomes long-term, you’ll be glad you conserved all the energy you could from the onset. History is full of survival scenarios in which those involved took for granted they would be rescued right away and willfully pissed away all of their supplies in the beginning. Some of them lived to tell the story, others ... well, you get the picture.
Panic Proofed
Since accidents comprise a large percentage of how a person gets screwed, kit components should be panic-proofed and contain components that can be utilized if you are injured. Injuries are extremely common. The bummed-up knee, the sprained ankle, the nasty wound—all can be major bummers and severely restrict the ability to operate gear. Could you use your knife left-handed if your right gets mashed between rocks? Can you construct a shelter from emergency gear with a strained ligament? The fewer bells and whistles gear has, the easier it’ll be to use under the strain and stress of painful injuries. Again, sticking to basics helps increase your odds for success.
Panic greatly reduces your chances for survival. It also renders fine and complex motor skills useless. Striking the match in your backyard was easy, but when you are consumed with fear, the task becomes monumental. Packing gear that involves fine- or complex-motor-skill movements is a big mistake. I’m not saying don’t pack matches, but have a gross-motor movement alternative just in case, such as a road flare or magnesium block with striking insert. Simple, gross-motor functions are far easier to perform under stress than fine- and complex-motor functions. This has been proven in combat situations for decades. Keep gear and how you use it simple.
Easily Purchased or Made
Some particulars need to be changed or rotated for maximal effectiveness as they rust, wear out, become frayed, brittle, or outdated. Using components that can be easily purchased or made allows for acquiring new items with less hassle. I have received several notes from people offering suggestions regarding what I carry. Many are good ideas but involve specialty-shop items that are hard to come by for the average person. Pack simple yet effective gear that is widely available. Replacing the bulb in your specialty flashlight is a pain in the neck if you’re not near the store you bought it from. Add in human nature and procrastination and you might realize that you forgot to score that new bulb when it’s dusk and you’re 10 miles down a trail with a torn tendon.
The advantage of being able to make items yourself from everyday materials is a major plus. Creating gear yourself gives you an intimate, up-close perspective on what you’ll be carrying. This allows you to modify certain traits of the item at will, thereby better serving your needs. Best of all, it’s hard to imagine a homemade piece of gear that its creator doesn’t know how to use well. If you’re into specialty gear, that’s fine, but order a couple extras so you won’t have to hassle with restocking for a while.
Affordable Yet Effective
Quality components that meet the majority of your needs don’t have to drive you into the poorhouse but can be affordable yet effective. I’ve been called cheap by more than one person. It’s such a harsh word. I prefer thrifty. But I must admit, if there is an alternative that’s less expensive, I’ve explored it. I don’t mind paying good money for righteous gear, but you’ll find you don’t need to spend an arm and a leg for an effective kit, unless you’re hanging out deep within the Amazon jungle. Another advantage of compiling your own kit is the luxury of price shopping. The advantages of homemade components speak for themselves when it comes to saving money. Cost aside, spend what you need to, as it’s a life-insurance plan that will pay for itself handsomely if you have to collect on the policy.
