If by "5 water bottles" you mean 5 bottles of store bought water, I'd be careful. That's probably a decent amount of water to carry, but the bottles themselves tend to be very flimsy. They might leak if squashed. Their skinny mouth makes them difficult to refill. You might want to carry an empty 1 liter Nalgene bottle. You can always put "stuff" in it to save space.

You can survive for a long while without supplemental vitamins. I'd ditch the vitamin C and the multi vitamin. Probably the fish oil, too. I'd repackage the other meds in smaller containers than the bottles and boxes they come in.

In a survival situation you probably don't care what color thread you do repairs with. I'd pick one. Actually, I'd carry dental floss and a large needle. You can repair large things as well as small things, plus dental floss is all-around useful.

As little as it saves, I'd sub a heavy duty polycarbonate spoon for the metal one.

I like the bug repellant that comes in little squeeze bottles over the spray cans. Something with a fair amount of DEET. A little bit goes a long way, and it takes up a lot less room. Look at all those pics from Vietnam with the soldiers and their bug juice bottles in their helmet bands.

I'd sub a modern, lightweight LED flashlight for the Mini Mag. The flashlight itself is smaller, lighter, and probably brighter. The batteries will last much, much longer. And you don't have to carry spare bulbs.

I know you love them, but I'd put all your knives, multitools and wrenches on the scale and pick at least one to leave behind. A survival knife, Buck 110, combo knife (SAK?) and Leatherman weigh a lot and overlap a lot. You probably don't need to carry both a SAK and a P38. You probably don't need both a SAK and a Leatherman, either.

When I was serious about this I weighed everything and punched it into an Excel spreadsheet. It was eye-opening. I took the Sierra Club Mountaineering course, and they're big on being prepared. Well, that and navigation. But you also learn to make things do double duty, and you realize you can't travel very far if you're overloaded.

This is a fun exercise. It's made me go back over my own checklists with a critical eye.

Kevin B.