Billvann:

I think introducing your scouts to these ideas and this gear is great. What bogged me down at the beginning was that I had no coherent scheme or frame of reference on which to hang all the information. I discovered the Rule of Threes on Ron Hood's site, and that gave me a solid starting point.

From that, I expanded "air, shelter, water, and food" into my present seven categories: medical, shelter, fire, signals, water, food, and tools.

I think one can use almost any set of categories, provided they're few enough to memorize easily.

On the other hand, you could just plunge them headfirst into the wonderful world of being equipped. That's probably fun, too.

Bear