Originally Posted By: Blast
.... Plan first, then buy gear based on YOUR likely situations, not the situations some magazine writer a thousand miles away.....
-Blast



Blast my brother, This sums it all up in a nutshell. No matter how hard you try you can’t be ready for EVERY survival situation. Usually it is best to prepare for the biggest threats that you yourself will face and allow enough flexibility in your planning to change a plan if need be. In the army we call it a threat assessment. Some people try too hard to find the ultimate kit to fit every situation and then get discouraged when they find out everything isn’t always so black and white. In the end they get overwhelmed by it all. My biggest threat is the cold so my gear gets packed accordingly. I was on an advanced survival course some time back where an instructor tried to tell me that I should carry clear plastic bags in my kit in order to make a solar still (IN CANADA) I was so taken aback by this I couldn’t believe he was serious. I can blind fold myself and walk for 5 minutes in ANY direction here and most likely will fall into water of some sort. In those RARE places in Canada where it is dry there are certainly methods a hell of a lot easier to get to water than a stupid solar still. I tried making them in Afghanistan outside my tent in my spare time just to see if they were worth the hype in the popular survival books(non survival situation, just to test them out) It would take at least 5 of these stupid things to be even worth your time in the best of conditions. Now imagine trying to use one here where a really hot day is 25-30 deg cel. Because my instructor read about it in the SAS survival guide about solar stills he figured that you MUST have the ability to make one no matter where you are. Granted I can find a lot of uses for clear plastic in the field, this is not one of them. I promptly walked out of his lesson………..

Anyway, now I am rambling. My bad
Good reading blast, I always look forward to the things you post.