Google Video about building your own survival kit
Wilderness Survival: Building and using a wilderness survival kit

The speaker (Robert Nielsen) is pretty entertaining and gives a few good tips but due to lack of time (and of lack of focus) he didn't really go into a lot of detail on survival kits or explain the methods. Presumably he is a search and rescue tech. /w wilderness EMT training.

There were few parts that stuck out in my mind:
1) When using a signal device like a chem-stick make it more effective by making it larger - whirling it in a large circle. Yes it makes common sense but no it wasn't an immediate idea that came to my mind. We usually think about chem-sticks as just providing a little light but enlarging the focus by whirling it (or a small flashlight) makes your signal a much larger and more obvious target.
2) I am left eye dominant and right handed (really screwy looking when I try to shoot a bow and arrow!) so when mirror signalling I should hold my right hand out and use the mirror with my left eye to aim for the best accuracy.
3) Don't keep food/sweets in a survival kit in bear country because you may forget about having it but the bear may be able to pick of the scent.
4) Some good thoughts about "don't expect to sleep" in a survival situation and how people create their own "fears".
5) "What makes a good survival personality" discussion was interesting - I don't KNOW if that it is true. An in-depth analysis would really interesting.
6) His perspective on the usefulness of having matches in a PSK was surprising - his advice may be relevant for a non-survival expert who doesn't know much about making fires in the first place.
7) His ideas about epi-pens. "Carry min. 2 and 4 is realistic." I don't know about your area but locally they are about $96 ea. where I come from and since they have a 1-year expiration, keeping that many epi-pens is not cheap! (Perhaps buy 2 epi-pens every 6 months and rotate them out as the expire? Use the freshest ones first during an emergency.)
8) Mature snakes have better control over the amount of venom they want to inject. Small/immature snakes may give you more venom than a adult rattlesnake.
9) His defensive tactics against cougars MAY help but realistically IMHO if you actually SEE a cougar you are just a half second away from being attacked.
10) I was about ready to call him wrong on the urban legend of avoiding bears by running downhill but then I realized he was turning it into a joke and running from bears is a bad thing period.
11) Using a family secret phrase that kids will remember that might help in doing a search & rescue the little ones. I'm not a parent but I can see how that would assist in creating confidence in a scared kid and allow them to be found from their hiding places.
12) He had a number of good hints about not getting lost.
13) He turned the rule of 3s into a rule of 4s. How useful is that - not really.

HINT: You can download the video and Google's video player to watch it at a later date. The image/sound is much better as it runs in full speed and is not dependent on your ISP connection speed. I have 5 Mb download and even still the downloaded video is much better.

Just watched it. Highly reccomended. He's obviously a professional ( and a wilderness EMT) with a lot of knowledge. I learned at least a dozen new things.

Teacher

PS Does anyone know how to get ahold of him?

He also demonstrated the use of the AMK Heatsheet. The suggested pouch for his idea of a PSK
looks like the pouch of the Pocket Survival Pak.

I liked the chemlight part where he attaches it to a piece of paracord and swings it above his head to make the signal appear larger from a distance (for signaling aircraft, for example).

Personally, I don't use matches so I agree with him to lose the matches, however I don't understand why he says not to bother building a fire? He says that if you can't get the fire to light up, the disapointment of not being successful with it will make your morale worse. HUH? I don't understand how this guy can be an experienced wilderness EMT and a SAR volunteer and say that.

He didn't recommend anything after saying "don't bother with matches"... I would've teached them about the Spark-lite, a BIC lighter, a firesteel with something to strike it, but hey.

How can he tell people to give up on building a fire?

He was good but it could have been better. The fire thing was one. He said the brain runs on glycogen, which isn't true. It runs on glucose...from whatever source it can get it...including carbs, fats, protein.

His presentation seems to be really random, really stream of consciousness. He clearly knows quite a bit but would be more effective in transfering that knowledge if his presentation were a little more organized.

I dunno if I like the concept of carving off your own chlorine from a chunk. Doesn't seem very idiot proof even in the best of conditions. A bottle of iodine tablets, while not as good as Katadyn, is still very inexpensive and there's less of a chance of over/under dose, although you still might have to think about it if your water container is not a quart/liter.

I'm not trying to sound critical, I enjoyed watching it.

sorry this is a test post. I've been having trouble posting.
Wow I can post again.

I agree. He was a little disjointed. It may have been his first presentation though as well. AS far as the chlorine tabs go; I dont see that as being a cheap alternative. If one purifies 1000 gallons of water, and you have a jug containig, say, 200 of them, thats about enough to purify your own water for quite a while. When a bottle of tincture of iodine costs $3 or so, you get a MUCH better deal on that.

Mors Kochanski teaches how to survive about a week without fire in the cold weather of Canada by focusing on clothing. I don't have much experience actually in survival and wilderness living but there must be a point here, in that fire is important but maybe not to the extent that we may think.

Frankie

He is quite right about not being able to get a fire going. Ray Mears was interviewed by Gentleman's Quarterly (G.Q.) a year or so ago. He mentioned that there was one night when he couldn't get a fire going. He was very clear on how dispiriting it was.
I think that the point being made is that if you cannot get a fire going by the 2nd or 3rd attempt, you should stop and seek other means of keeping yourself warm. Otherwise you will wind up expending all you fire making tools for no result.
It also emphasises the need to carry artificial accelerants like Spark-Lite tinder or the Couglans wax tinder as part of your fire making kit. Being able to apply a sustained flame to your tinder makes a drastic difference to your chances of success.

Here's a slightly different survival video:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1707073744

I started to open that, and my McAfee protection said SPAM, so I didn't. Just for info...

Now, THAT was hilarious!

That... was AWESOME.

"If I could pick up one of these sticks I would hit you with it."

Hilarious.
J

Yup, got a chuckle out of that one.

One thing that the presenter said was "Don't wear cotton".....actually he said it several times. Do you agree with this advice? I personally like natural fibers like cotton for layering and nylon for its lightness and water repellancy. A fabric with too high polyester content makes me sweat too much. My body tends to run on the warm side. I'm going on a mini wilderness hike next month. So I would be interested in your opinions whether you agree with him or not.

Santacafe
Urban Newbie
Oakland, CA

Cotton is good in the hot weather, absorbs sweat, then cools you a bit. Does the same thing in cold weather, a bad thing. In cold weather you want anything but cotton...

Thanks for the info! I'm definitely going to look at the Capilene you recommend.


Santacafe

People, I have made this sticky for a few days to point out the issue of copyright. No harm done, because I do have some skill at diplomacy in spite of rumours to the contrary. NightHiker, your punishment is to stand in a cold shower wearing cotton and email Mara an apology.

I dropped hilarious from my vocabulary after learning it's meaning in relation to the god Hilarium. <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

All is well and you can return to the family hearth.

Just downloaded the video, not watched it all the way through, but when I got to the part about signalling, the guy said that SOS doesn't actually mean anything. I've always been told that it was short for Save Our Souls.

Does anyone else think this?

Here is the history of SOS. It orginates in Germany so that phrase is much later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sos

Ok. I have "Googled" and "Asked" Hilarium. Any references you can provide?

Like you I have always thought that if you provide a link you were ok to quote from an article. I have done it many times. I know that many sites expressly allow you to reproduce their material as long as you include proper attribution. Obviously some do not. So what are the rules if express permission is lacking? Is it best to simply provide the link to an article without quoting from it? If you provide just a link without quoting, is it then ok to comment on the content? What about paraphrasing? It sounds as though there is an extremely fine line to watch out for. <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Here's a recursive example of "fair use":


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

We have to consider every intellectual property 'hands off' except for links unless given prior permisssion. Whats acceptable by law or common practise may still be unacceptable to some folks. I'll toss this to Doug. Until then, please just link .

Interesting Presentation for those of us that don't play in the woods allot. Some good pointers concerning kid safety also. He did waste too much time on trying to find things, and bouncing between his props and notes, that could have been used for further subject discussions. Overall some very good pointers! With his knowledge base I would like to see more specific subjects presented.

Oh-bee-kay-bee, what the moderator says, goes.

I have no doubt the speaker is very knowledgable about search and rescue and short-term survival techniques. And some useful information was conveyed. It is just a shame he was so disorganized and ill-prepared. He bounced all over the place, couldn't find anything, got way off track, and ended up failing to cover his stated subject. Although he gave some useful tips, we still don't know all the items he packs in his survival kit or how to effectively use them.

Glycogen is the storage form of glucose that's needed by the central nervous system as fuel. Your brain turns burns glucose for energy, excess is converted to glycogen which fuels you through the day, and amounts ingested in excess of that are converted to fat. So he was wrong to say that the foods contained glycogen, but correct to say your brain burns it.

I dropped hilarious from my vocabulary after learning it's meaning in relation to the god Hilarium. - CK

I'm still trying to get a handle on this one.