Well, backpacking gear IS survival gear.

My impression of the original target of the ETS site is someone like the day hiker that doesn’t remotely consider the possibility that he might need to spend the night in the woods. Or the pilot flying over snow-covered mountains in shirt-sleeves because, hey, that’s what the cabin heater is for.

Now, a backpacker can be just as unprepared as a day hiker if what he carries is only sufficient if everything goes exactly as planned. Does he have a compass in case he gets off the trail? N days worth of extra food? Enough water in case the next source listed in the trail guide is no longer there? Clothing appropriate for extremes in weather?

There seems to be an unwritten rule for survival kits: The gear must never be designed exactly for its intended purpose. You’ll never find a tent in a survival kit, you’ll find a tarp so you can “improvise a tent”. You’ll find a “space blanket” instead of a sleeping bag or a wool blanket. Instead of a metal cup or cookpot for boiling water, you have tin foil or a shallow tin. Instead of a box of 50 matches good for 50 fires, you’ll get a sparker which is good for thousands of fires but only a couple pieces of prepared tinder.

Ok, I admit I’m being facetious here because most of the time a survival kit must be a compromise based on size, weight and cost. I’m just hoping to get us out of the rut of the way we think of survival gear. Or survival in general. Life IS survival.