I went to the rifle range yesterday with my son. It was 94 degrees, and there's no shade at the range. I left my water bottles at the truck - 300 yards from where we were shooting. No problem, right?

I put 75 rounds through the shotgun for some trap shooting (and wondered why I did so very poorly - I had the Cylinder choke in!) , and then we did some target shooting with rifles at the 50 and 100 yeard positions.

I was HOT hot hot. Sweating heavily and all. We'd been out in the sun for less than 2 hours when I realized that I had stopped sweating, I was a bit dizzy and my chest hurt. Dehydration had set in - and so quick! We high-tailed it back to the truck and we both downed a half a liter of water in a moment, and then sat sipping water for a while. I was glad I was able to re-fill my water bottles from a hose spigot at the fieldhouse, because I needed almost 2 liters of water to get my brain back in gear. Now this was just standing around in the sun shooting stuff - not like I was lifitng rocks or anything. Water, water water. It's the key, and I've displaced much of the so-called "essential" stuff I used to carry arround in my kit bag (like a flare gun) in exchange for a supply of water that's ready to drink and my sweetwater purification device. The survival kit is now, by weight, 75% water and 25% everything else.