Cody Lundin's Survival Kit

Has anyone else, besides Doug, read Cody Lundin's book? If so, what do you think about it?

Being fairly new to this, I like the book a lot. He does a nice job explaining how important it is to have your wits about you, to keep your body temperature regulated, and he gives a great description of his recommended short-term (72 hrs) survival kit.

Most of the recommended kit items mesh very well with what I've read in ETS and other placed, but ...

One of my bits of confusion is why he has so many different shelter-like components. He includes an emergency space blanket, a heavier duty space blanket, and two 55 gallon trash liners. Initially that seems pretty redundant. I suppose the idea here is similar to that for fire equipment - have at least three redundant methods of shelter??

Also, Cody clearly recommends use of tincture of iodine as a low cost chemical treatment for water, but Doug seems to prefer the chorine based chemical treatments. What are your preferences?? My plan is to swap out the condoms for some resealable Gerber baby bottle liners.

There are several items on Doug's list that are not on Cody's, such as a needle (great for use with the floss), safety pins, fishing gear, survival saw, aluminum foil, and others.

Finally, besides Dougs PSK, where in the heck does one purchase a plastic fresnel lens?????

If you haven't read his list, here is a link to an article that includes the list:

The Wisdom of Abo Dude

As the title of the book suggests, maintaining your body temperature is the highest priority. Shelter is good for preventing both hypo and hyperthermia, thus the redundancy. Personally, I like to spread the redundancy amongst different parts of my packing. I've put disposable ponchos in my fanny pack and my wife's purse, 2 pocket shelters and 2 lightweight space blankets in the small section of my PSK, a tube tent in the big section, and some garbage bags in the first aid kit. If I only get one piece of luggage out of the plane, then I've got some shelter.

I ordered an assortment of fresnel lenses from here:

http://www.3dlens.com/

It's a taiwan company, so shipping is rather slow- I haven't gotten it yet, but it's only been a week. I ordered 2 each of the various thinner sizes. I'll decide which to pack when I get it. One nice thing about fresnel lenses is you can easily cut it down to size if it's too big. I'll cut one to the size of my PSK and put it on the bottom, and another one to the size of my 3x5 signal mirror and store it with that. An extra CC size will go in my wallet. It seems like a lot, but they don't take much space. If it took much space I wouldn't bother with redundancy for a fire-method that sucks when you need it- If it's sunny out, who the heck needs a fire?

Barnes and Noble Book Stores and some Walmarts carry fresnel lenses.

I actually met Cody a year ago during filming of a survival show and he is the real deal. He walks the walk and knows his stuff.

Iodine is getting a bad wrap lately here and elsewhere. Fact is its been used for decades with no problems other than people allergic to it or with health issues it reacts to.

It was never meant to be a long term solution but meant only as a temporary means to purify ie:2 weeks or less. With those guidelines it works fine and is effective.

Redundancy is the name of the game when using semi flimsy and perishable emergency gear. The heavy space blanket will make an excellent shelter roof while you can crawl into the garbage bags underneath. I do not like the space blanket except for first aid as part of a hypothermia wrap system. The space blanket bag is a better idea.

I like the gerber bottle bags and carry them in my bigger kit but they have 2 drawbacks. A) they take up way too much space for my altoids EDC kit B) you need to carry 6 of them to carry and great amount of water.

Because of this I will still keep 3 repackaged and shrink wrapped condoms in my altoids kit and use the gerber bags in my bigger kit only.

Fresnel lenses are a fancy name for a plastic magnifying lense.

You can go to any Staples or Office Depot and find a thin plastic 8.5x11 sheet of magnifying plastic for reading. Look for it in the magnifying glasses and office tools section. It costs about $7-9 and can be cut to any size. I outfitted 6 kits with one sheet and made different sized lenses.

Flip

In a long forgotten Road and Track article, the author graphed the tracks of several F1 drivers through a infamous turn at the Nuerburing (sp). Each one was different, and they all navigated it safely within a miniscule timeframe. Survival instruction,lists and philosophies are much the same. None is exactly the same, all will probably get you through. For specifics, review Doug's article on chemical purification for the pros and cons of Iodine. Cody likes gear that is cheap and compact. I once carried space blankets, garbage bags etc. Then I acquired a single substantial dedicated nylon tarp. One permanent item replaced several disposables. It cost more in the short run, but simplified my carry and meshed with my personal consumer ethics. Again, Cody's list and my junk will both work. Thats the fun part of this, sifting the information and adapting it all to your needs; actual and philosophical. <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> I managed to put my first MGA coupe into a sideways drift on Stunt Road in L.A. after reading that article. Never tried THAT again, but I sure looked good with my Jim Clark driving gloves and first moustache carefully copied from a photo of Graham Hill <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

I bought one of these magnifiers at the pharmacy, near the reading glasses.
The next day, I happened to go to my insurance agent, and they were giving them away.
The free magnifier came in a retractable sleeve, with the agents info printed on the outside. That one stays in the PSK.

Most any book store will have Fresnel lense magnifiers. I know for sure that Waldenbooks has the "pocket" sized ones. Also, try Target, in the office supplies.

Troy

First off, Cody likes tincture of iodine because it is the least expensive form of Iodine water treatment available to the average person. If that is high on your list of priorities, go for it, but for iodine I prefer either Potable Aqua or Polar Pure. More expensive, but less potential mess, weight and more convenient, IMHO. Not exactly. I prefer Katadyn's Micropur MP1 because it will kill nasties, such as cryptosporidium, that iodine won't It is a chlorine dioxide treatment, which really isn't chlorine in the conventional sense, which is unfortunately confusing for anyone not a chemist. I prefer iodine over conventional chlorine treatments.

The one I'd like to know about (ref: the magazine article) is the one he wears around his neck. It looks remarkably like the Boker picnic set, but probably has all sorts of useful items.

Nowhere in the article is there a description-just a notation by the author that that is what it is.
(sigh)

#1) I generally just read the posts on this site... Good info since I moved from the Beer Capital (Milwaukee) to the 3rd worst traffic pattern in the USA (Washington DC area) and it's occasional bouts with hurricanes (last year).

#2) Fresnel Lenses can be gotten at most any book store, but I know of a great place for picking up "unusual" stuff back in Milwaukee. It's called American Science & Surplus (www.sciplus.com) and they got all kinds of fun stuff there, and quite a few items that would be really good in a PSK,

The OGRE

If you need a place to get a Fresnel lense magnifier online, REI has them.

On water purification I exclusively use the Katadyn's Micropur MP1 (or boiling of course) for my water purification needs when hiking and for my car kits as well as my EDC. About every other weekend I go on a long hike in extremely hot weather (this time of year) where carrying the amount of water I need is simply not possible. I have had great success with the Katadyn's Micropur MP1 tabs. I have had to use them on some very questionable water and have yet to get sick (knocking on wood). What I do in when hiking to avoid the long wait time associated with the Katadyn's Micropur MP1 tabs is use them in conjunction with an (chemical-free) activated charcol filter water bottle. The filter immediatly removes the bacteria-based nasties and then the Katadyn's Micropur MP1 tabs are left only with the job of killing the viruses, which they do rather quickly. The way I understand it they only take about 15 min to kill viruses. I give it 30 min just to be safe <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />. I keep one of these bottle filters in my car kit as well. For EDC I only carry the tabs (6 of them). Another side note on the Katadyn's Micropur MP1 tabs... I have had success cutting them in half right through the foil packaging (requires a razor sharp blade) with out having them come in contact with my skin. This is handy when I only have smaller containers to work with. I know you can use the tabs with less than a liter of water but I can't see any reason to injest more chemicals than is necessary in any situation. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Brian,

In North america its not generally viruses you have to worry about but rather bacteria and protozoa. The water temps in this part of the world does not support virus growth. I would wait the full 3-4 hrs before consuming as its the bacteria and protozoa you are wanting to kill and it takes longer for them.

My opinion of course.

Flip

Bacteria, Virii and other nasties can be interesting to live thorugh... Having been in Milwaukee several years ago during a certian Crypto outbreak...

One of my packs has a sealed fish tank filter and AquaPur in a gallon zippy bag. I use the fish filter to strain the gross(as in big bits) out of the water, the charchol gets some chemicals and the rest gets taken kare of with either boiling or the aquapure.

It actually works! One of the two times I used it, I was at a campsite that had signs that the water was not potable out of the pump for one and used a pot to boil things after straining. The other time, it was a rainy day and we realised that some dork haddn't dug a hole and that the pond was not as clean as we thought. I think it was a mental tummy ache after that one...

Rena

There is a pass around copy of Cody's book in the Lending Library. There are a few scattered comments from the readers there.

http://www.equipped.org/ubbthreads/showf...amp;amp;fpart=1

Flipper


You can go to any Staples or Office Depot and find a thin plastic 8.5x11 sheet of magnifying plastic for reading. Look for it in the magnifying glasses and office tools section. It costs about $7-9 and can be cut to any size. [color:"red"] I outfitted 6 kits with one sheet and made different sized lenses.
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Flipper , you may want to try those lenses out before you take a chance on them
its my understanding that for the lens to work right it needs to have the concentric rings of the center
a lens not cut out from the center of the larger sheet wont focus properly
Regards
Yukon

You are correct.

The center piece works best but because they are flexible I stated fire with all of them by slightly bending them to focus the beam correctly.

Just takes some practice.

Hound

First, I think it's a great book. Partly because it's a book, and partly because he simply seems to want to hammer the core body temp point into your head, he goes into great depth on what goes wrong when you're "out there", how it goes wrong and why it goes wrong. That shows up on this site, but it's not delved into as deeply. Take matches for instance, Lundin describes how hard it can be to operate a match in freezing cold weather with your gloves off. I tended to carry matches in all my kits, but not flint starters which are much easier to use when your hands are basically frozen. The same message comes from here and Lundin's book (and other books), but it was Lundin's description that finally made it seem important to me to have multiple dissimilar methods of fire creation. I think my point is that I learned a lot on this site, and I learned a lot from his book. Having multiple sources fills in gaps that one source would have.

Also, I think Lundin's book is written to a very different audience. As a backpacker, I felt some of his kit ideas were a lot more applicable to me than something coming from a pilot. Pilots may think they are weight-conscious about gear, but backpackers turn it into entertainment, going through each others gear to point out where they could shave half an ounce. You take a different view of things when you're going to schlep it on your person for 5 double digit mile days in a row than when you're stowing it in a plane. I'm going out into the wilderness on purpose, not ending up there by accident. On the other hand I think a lot of backpackers (due to the gear-weight mania) neglect backups of important items.

I think the cost-consciousness has a benefit. ETS tends to the high-end, and Lundin's book tends to the low-end. Somewhere in the middle lies the path most of us will take. The benefit of the cost-conscious version is that for a few bucks you can have pretty much what you need, and then fill it in over time with more expensive stuff when the first stuff wears out or you decided to make another kit for another purpose, rather than spending a bunch and still feeling like you aren't quite prepared. Like you've never had a kit "accident" that ruined something inside? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

This might be horrifying to some, but on recent backpacking trips I ended up delving into the emergency kits for some day-to-day stuff. Stuff that either wasn't used up in the process, or that I had backups of backups of. The iodine bottle was one such item. One day we "slack-packed" (someone drives your heavy pack from trailhead-to-trailhead and you walk with a lighter set of essentials). We carry a filter with us every time we hike, but since I was slacking with a fanny pack in early April, I didn't have room for such a bulky item. Having a backup of tincture of iodine allowed me to leave the filter, but still be able to treat water inexpensively and practically. Opening the iodine tablets carries that risk they'll get damp and useless, but the liquid tincture is pretty much made for repeated opening and use. And completely off-topic, we made lunch for the day, but left it in the hostel fridge. Oops. We were prepared enough with other snacks, Clif bars etc that we were kind of comfortable even without lunch. My wife used to think I was a bit nuts with all the preparedness, that's until little things go wrong and we rely on what I've made sure we have with us. Nothing makes you look like you're not a nutcase than actual stuff going wrong. Even if it's just not going without lunch until you hit the trailhead and can grab some dinner.

Nutcase? Who? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> My personal kits have always been...well... personal and usually directly integrated in to everyday EDC, spread out over pockets, etc so it appears to the PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. (and even my wife) that rather than being prepared for disaster, I'm jus a guy carrying a lot of gadgets (although the ferocerium rod is a bit hard to explain <img src="/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" />). Anyway, I remeber when I first put together and started carrying a large backpack-sized kit in my car and my wife's car she (although she didnt come right out and say it) thought I might be a bit of a nutcase. Ah but those days are long gone. Whether it's baby diapers, a screwdriver on her SOG paratool or the allergy meds in the FAK, she LOVES our car kits now. Any time she uses even the smallest item from the kit she lets me know so I can restock it or she restocks it herself. I have even caught her adding little useful things to the kit in her car. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Yeah, my PSK is pretty much just a very comprehensive, things gone wrong oriented, EDC. I have no compunction about raiding it on a daily basis as long as it gets restocked. There is the miniscule chance of things not being present when needed but I feel that my better familiartity with the stuff I carry more than offsets this. I realise that this is purely personal preference though and probably slao stems from coming at emergency preparedness from the backpacking point of view/background rather than something like a pilot.