After reading a lot of interesting posts here and on similar boards I started to think about an universal bob/edc setup.

The challenge is to create a small package with the tools and necessities to survive for 72 hours in as wide a range of environments and situations as possible.

Small means about half an average daypack of equipment, not including water.

The equipment has to be both for urban and wilderness area's, usable in cold and warm weather, at sea, in the mountains, dessert and (tropical) forests.

One of my favorite expressions and some keywords;

Keep it simple!
• Durable
• Lightweight!
• Compact
• Water/weather proof
• Hard to improvise
• Multi function

Regards,

B.

That's a pretty broad range. You definitely want shelter, water, water purification, some sort of way to cook, knife, multi-tool, saw, warm clothing, means to signal, communication gear, navigation gear, first aid, light, fire-building, etc.

I think comparing it to a load someone would go backpacking with over a weekend would work well. You're already carrying a sleeping bag, tent, ground pad, warm clothes, food, water, stove, clothing, and emergency equipment.

Cedfire, thanks for your imput.

The small size/broad range is what makes it challenging.

I agree that a weekend backpacking load would be an excellent choice but it probably would be over the size limit.

The question would be how to downsize while still keeping most of the functionality.

Regards,

B.

I don't get the "Hard to improvise" one.

You want it to be able to fit into something like this (15" x 13" x 10", 854 cu. in.)?
Include food and a means to carry/purify water, or ignore food/water?
Assume you'll be wearing proper clothing for night time temp/season conditions in whatever environment you'll be droped in, or assume you'll be useing foliage?

I think if you start with the presumption of having clothing appropriate for the season you could add a tarp and/or bivvy sack for shelter, 50' of para cord, Katadyn MP-1 tabs for water and a canteen with cup and canteen stove, a GI spoon, some trioxane fuel tabs, 4 dehydrated meals, several high-energy bars, a Doug Ritter Personal Survival Kit, a had crank AM/FM/Shortwave palm sized radio, a Freedom II Photon flashlight, a survival knife of choice, a multi tool of choice, a wire saw, a good compass with map of area, and a decent Small sized FAK and you'd be back three or four days from now.

Some other things might be nice if space allowed: a better flashlight, extra batteries, more food, a Gerber folding shovel, and the list goes on ........

Re: massacre
With "hard to improvise" I meant trying to include items which are hard to improvise in challenging situations like lights and knives.

Re: Excomantia
Spot on for size! <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Clothing appropriate for the expected conditions, but I would ask myself if the space taken by food could not be better used for harder to improvise gear.

Re: bassnbear
This seems like a good basic setup. I'm just wondering why one of your choices(more space allowing) would be a folding shovel. Is this not something that can be improvised more easily? No criticism, just curious about the motivation.

Regards,

B.

Tmpx - it was just a thought that hit me at that moment for "an extra" - probably because I'm trying to buy one right now. Certainly there are other more important items and YES, you're right, it is something that's easily improvised.

When I teach wilderness survival I always start by asking students (and discussing with them) what some early woodsmen carried. I use the pioneers and Indigenous Peoples as examples. Native peoples generally carried a cutting tool, means for fire, tinder, supplemental food and weapons. Clothing appropriate to the climate and weather expectations. Pretty simple, right? But they had extensive KNOWLEDGE!! Trained from childhood. In other words knowledge can reduce the load!

Pioneers: carried firearms and ammunition, firemaking equipment, tinder, supplemental food, a cloth tarp, fixed blade knife and ax. A saw was a luxury item. They conquered the NA continent without much else. The steel tools were the biggest improvement over the Native equipment. Note: these were the first items that Natives tried to acquire from Europeans! Smart! Note also that in both cases hunting tools substituted for more food. Today - not the case.

So, there's my input to solving your problem - think like a Native or a pioneer - add what you can from the thousand modern choices - then gain knowledge - then reduce the load!

Cheers!

You can fit everything you need in a tactical vest. So easy to carry that you don't need to carry it - you wear it.