NOTHING BUT GEAR WEEK???

how about a entire week of nothing but gear--
no Monday morning quarter backs--"he shoud'a had a .."
"they did not".."i would have"..and so on--
i suggest we start Friday and run nothing but gear--wants--
have--could be made better or not at all...untill next Friday.
that gives us a few day to finish venting on running subjects
and think about hardware..start new posts with "just gear"
and let us get into that--more photos of what you have and
use would be great..---having the mental displine to get on
and stay on a goal would be part of Gear Week..

That sounds boring. Gear is just inanimate stuff, not survival. You buy, someone makes a profit. Pffffft! (as my cat says)

Stuff is nice to have, but your brain is the real survival tool. People have died surrounded by gear.

Let's stick to the usual, if you don't mind. Start a Nothing But Gear topic, fine, but if ALL the topics are nothing but gear, that means I can't come back for a week because there won't be anything interesting to read. And THAT means I will have to use the time for .... ugh..... housework. BLECH!!!

DON'T DO THAT TO ME! PLEASE!

Sue

I would rather focus on skills. Gear is good but IMO many seem to rely very heavily on gear and kits.
I would rather have skill and knowledge over gear.
As they say "the more you know the less you need".

Besides, the Monday morning QBing is actually an analysis of the scenario and what went right and wrong. This is very informative to new folks coming to ETS to learn about being prepared and safe in the outdoors and such.
Bill

With as many forum members as we have here, there are sure to be lots of areas of interest.

I agree that the brain is the most important survival tool, and that skills (and the ability to adapt them) are of the utmost importance.

Maybe a single thread dedicated to the topic would better serve everyone, but I don't think as a whole we can discount the idea just because it may not be a priority interest area for us.

To me, gear is one of the fun parts of what we do! I enjoy window shopping for it, I love planning on what I'm going to save up for next, and I have fun deciding on new combinations of things to try out.

In recent memory, we haven't tried anything like this here. Why not give it a shot? Sue...there's nothing that says you HAVE to do housework

Maybe not a thread, but what we call here a separate Forum? Like "Around The Campfire", "Lending Library","Long-Term Preparedness"... We can ask for a new one - "Gear".

I like gear related discussions, not because of consumer kleptomania, but because I believe that from studying how this gear works, how it's different from another piece of gear (or from lack of this piece) for the same task, and how to use it effectively in different conditions, one can learn the skills (improvisation is the most important one) much deeper than having some basics read out of a book.

For example, I love alcohol stoves. I saw zillions of constructions, tried some from REI and of eBay, made several myself. I'm clearly understand the principles now. And I'm sure I can improvise such a thing out of anything at hands (not necessarily from a beer can, and not only for alcohol based fuel) with just a multitool or even without it.

A fun thing. There is a similar forum in Russia, which I'm visiting sometimes. Discussion of the most efficient EDC kit started with something like DR Kit, was finished in one week with common decision to carry only a single good knife. By the way, they have near 30 different Sub forums on a different matters of survival.

X2, many of the other forums I frequent have several different sections making organization much easier. You can find posts faster, if you don't want to hear about a certain topic it is easier to skip over, and things just seem less cluttered. The general topic of survival seems to be far to large of a subject to all be thrown into a single category.

My $0.02,
Rio

Since several people want to keep the technique discussions going, perhaps those wanting to focus on gear talk can preface the subject line with "GEAR:" followed by the type of gear to be discussed.

I feel though even gear discussions will eventually evolve into technique discussions, which is cool too.

If you want to sink your teeth into a "gear" subject, how about life raft survival gear. I manage the U.S. Navy life raft program and I'm going to be tweaking the survival equipment.

If forum members are interested, I'll list what we have now, what we are considering putting in there, and let the group hammer away.

I have already received invaluable information from this forum and its founder, I'm willing to put our gear on the table in the interest of improving a piece of life-saving equipment used on Navy, Army, and USCG ships.

Any takers?

Regards,

Tom A.

Um, HELL YES!

-Blast

Yea, what he said!
I was just yesterday trying to look up contents lists of military fishing kits and life rafe supplies. Still looking in fact.

Sure...

Tom,
I think we would all love to scrutinize and examine what the Navy is using for survival. Any help you need you are in the right place.


Alex,
If you love gear maybe get a part time job at REI. In a short time you will be an expert if you want to learn. I worked for REI for several years and they are quite serious abot product knowledge and training. REI also has handouts (called PIGs; product information guides) for each product category (tents, stove etc.) with a ton of info including weights and such.
Don't get me wrong I love gear but as I age I appreciate knowledge and skill a bit more.

Bill

Thanks for advice. Many children are dreaming of working at Toys'R'us But I'm afraid that commercial side of such an "institution" might limit my choices of gear to study. They call it corporate ethics I doubt they will sell anything what's not immediately profitable...

I'm really envy to TomApple's job

I'm on the fence with this one. I like the gear discussions to get feedback from those members who have actually used the stuff my wife won't let me put in the cart at Campmor. Although you can't really "learn" skills on the internet, this forum is great for giving me my ideas of what to practice when I do get out.

I think Alex has the best idea. More forums and subforums (sorry admins).

I must disagree on this point folks. I, like a few of the usual suspects here, enjoy hanging out on EDCF as well as here. My issue there is that there are SO MANY subs that I actually find it quite difficult to find what I'm interested in. I know, doesn't sound like it makes much sense, but here, with just a few forums, I scan subject lines and open the threads that sound interesting, instead of scanning 30 subs, and seeing what looks interesting today...oh wait, I already opened this sub...now, did I skip one?

I like the format ETS has now.

I agree. I know of to many forums that have 15+ subforums and it's virtually impossible to keep track of all of them. To bad..

It's 'Equipped to Survive' so the primairy focus of this site is gear and gear-review.

JIM, Ors? Have you ever tried the "View newest messages", "View messages for the past XX hours", "View unread messages from your last visit", "View new answers to your messages" buttons on those forums with many Forum categories? That's MUCH more convenient than browsing the categories manually. The primary benefit of the multiple-themed forums is automatic information sorting and categorization, so it's easier to find something from the past discussions, it's more organizing for the posters of new subjects, and also allows to ignore some sorts of discussions one may dislike.

Just imagine that you came to your local Grocery store and found that all of their goodies are now in one (Ok, two sided) huge 300 feet long pile, and sorted only by the expiration date

That's probably depends on your Preferences. I'm clearly see [new] icon against every new message in the thread (I'm using "Flat Mode" for topic Display in my Preferences).

Alex,

I guess it's just a personal preference, but I just seem to like a single or a few forums for all topics. That also sorts out the problem of 'where should I post this, in the gear-categorie or personal experiences.'

Since I come to this and other forums daily, I don't use any view-specific options(just flat-threaded). I just look at all the forums, and then it's much easier if you only have 3 forums (ETS) in stead of 30 (....)

Again, just a personal preference.

Well, on "civilized" forums people usually quote the text they are replying to, or at least call their opponent by his/her nickname, in case their answer is not immediately following the message they are replying to. It's that simple! Just click "Quote" instead of "Reply", an delete the irrelevant or excessive quotation to concentrate on what you're going to say. So there is no anything like "threaded vs flat mode" discussions or arguing happens ever.

By the way, one needs just 2 mouse clicks to switch from/to threaded/flat mode: "Topic Options" menu near the top of this page.
(Just tried that... Oh no! I'm lost. I'd better keep it flat

That's why we have a little link just next to the title of the topic, wich brings you to the message that it replied to.

That's entirely up to you! Chose what you want to highlight in your shiny new subject, that could attract more similarly minded people


I'm doing almost exactly the same. But my bookmark opens the "Active Topics" + "Past 24 hours". So I'll never see those 30 forums titles anyway, unless I need to find something specific what I can't find simply searching.

Another convincing thought for Administrators: The search function will be much easier and faster on the server in case the search will be conducted within a sub-Forum...
(The Quick Search on the right column should do that within current category too).

Also, I think, people need something like "The Survival Forum Survival" sub-forum