This is going to sound silly, but I had the same thing happen to me so I did a few tests. I had ordered a couple of cases of similar space blankets to put into PSKs to give as gifts to friends and family members and had a number left over to mess around with.

Anyway...

I would open up the original pack, unfolded the blanket, refolded it, and found out that on most occasions the final size was about twice the thickness that it had been...

NOTE. I must admit that I didn't try to hit the original factory fold lines that were crinkled into the blankets, but rather folded the blanket in half so that the opposing corners met, and continued in the same manner until I had a size that appeared to be close to that of the blanket in an unopened package.

After a bit of thought, and a few tests to test the theory, here's what I came up with. (I could be wrong though... I'm no physicist <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> ):

I don't know if the company that produced these worked out the optimal number of times to fold a emergency blanket to get an acceptable size by trial and error and set their machines at that number, or whether there's a formula (there probably is), but either way, if you fold your emergency blanket one more time than they did originally... Blam, twice the final thickness. In some instances it may actually seem that the blanket is both the same length and width, but due to irregular fold sizes, it may zigzag to be near the same dimensions in those two dimensions... Or it could even be larger.

Also, If you unfold one, and find that there is no center fold, but rather two folds, one that falls on either side of the center, they didn't fold the emergency blankets in the "Half by half, by half" method.

In any case, had I been in a survival situation, it would have been nutz trying to get any kind of accurate folds. <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Finally, it looked as if every one of these survival blankets were near the same size before the package was opened, so it's obvious that the folding isn't willy-nilly. LOL

And remember, I'm no physicist, Mathematician, scientist or anything, so I could have screwed up these tests completely and some how come up with similar results in most of the cases. HAHAHA