how about a entire week of nothing but gear--
no Monday morning quarter backs--"he shoud'a had a .."
"they did not".."i would have"..and so on--
i suggest we start Friday and run nothing but gear--wants--
have--could be made better or not at all...untill next Friday.
that gives us a few day to finish venting on running subjects
and think about hardware..start new posts with "just gear"
and let us get into that--more photos of what you have and
use would be great..---having the mental displine to get on
and stay on a goal would be part of Gear Week..

That sounds boring. Gear is just inanimate stuff, not survival. You buy, someone makes a profit. Pffffft! (as my cat says)

Stuff is nice to have, but your brain is the real survival tool. People have died surrounded by gear.

Let's stick to the usual, if you don't mind. Start a Nothing But Gear topic, fine, but if ALL the topics are nothing but gear, that means I can't come back for a week because there won't be anything interesting to read. And THAT means I will have to use the time for .... ugh..... housework. BLECH!!!

DON'T DO THAT TO ME! PLEASE!

Sue

I would rather focus on skills. Gear is good but IMO many seem to rely very heavily on gear and kits.
I would rather have skill and knowledge over gear.
As they say "the more you know the less you need".

Besides, the Monday morning QBing is actually an analysis of the scenario and what went right and wrong. This is very informative to new folks coming to ETS to learn about being prepared and safe in the outdoors and such.
Bill

With as many forum members as we have here, there are sure to be lots of areas of interest.

I agree that the brain is the most important survival tool, and that skills (and the ability to adapt them) are of the utmost importance.

Maybe a single thread dedicated to the topic would better serve everyone, but I don't think as a whole we can discount the idea just because it may not be a priority interest area for us.

To me, gear is one of the fun parts of what we do! I enjoy window shopping for it, I love planning on what I'm going to save up for next, and I have fun deciding on new combinations of things to try out.

In recent memory, we haven't tried anything like this here. Why not give it a shot? Sue...there's nothing that says you HAVE to do housework

Maybe not a thread, but what we call here a separate Forum? Like "Around The Campfire", "Lending Library","Long-Term Preparedness"... We can ask for a new one - "Gear".

I like gear related discussions, not because of consumer kleptomania, but because I believe that from studying how this gear works, how it's different from another piece of gear (or from lack of this piece) for the same task, and how to use it effectively in different conditions, one can learn the skills (improvisation is the most important one) much deeper than having some basics read out of a book.

For example, I love alcohol stoves. I saw zillions of constructions, tried some from REI and of eBay, made several myself. I'm clearly understand the principles now. And I'm sure I can improvise such a thing out of anything at hands (not necessarily from a beer can, and not only for alcohol based fuel) with just a multitool or even without it.

A fun thing. There is a similar forum in Russia, which I'm visiting sometimes. Discussion of the most efficient EDC kit started with something like DR Kit, was finished in one week with common decision to carry only a single good knife. By the way, they have near 30 different Sub forums on a different matters of survival.

X2, many of the other forums I frequent have several different sections making organization much easier. You can find posts faster, if you don't want to hear about a certain topic it is easier to skip over, and things just seem less cluttered. The general topic of survival seems to be far to large of a subject to all be thrown into a single category.

My $0.02,
Rio

Since several people want to keep the technique discussions going, perhaps those wanting to focus on gear talk can preface the subject line with "GEAR:" followed by the type of gear to be discussed.

I feel though even gear discussions will eventually evolve into technique discussions, which is cool too.

If you want to sink your teeth into a "gear" subject, how about life raft survival gear. I manage the U.S. Navy life raft program and I'm going to be tweaking the survival equipment.

If forum members are interested, I'll list what we have now, what we are considering putting in there, and let the group hammer away.

I have already received invaluable information from this forum and its founder, I'm willing to put our gear on the table in the interest of improving a piece of life-saving equipment used on Navy, Army, and USCG ships.

Any takers?

Regards,

Tom A.

Um, HELL YES!

-Blast

Yea, what he said!
I was just yesterday trying to look up contents lists of military fishing kits and life rafe supplies. Still looking in fact.

Sure...