I’ve been carrying the Gerber Decree for the last few months and have formed some strong opinions after keeping in easy reach for so long. It has been in my pocket on work days, the weekends and some trips outdoors. Although it is not an absolutely perfect knife, it is a lot of knife for the money and seems to have been designed with emergency preparedness in mind.
Denatured alcohol has seen a growth in popularity in recent years as a stove fuel for a reason. It is available all over the country at most every store that has a paint or automotive section, such as Wal-Mart, Lowe’s and Home Depot. It is not prohibitively expensive, evaporates quickly when spilled and stores well. Stoves that run on it, like the White Box Alcohol Stove, are sturdy, easy to pack or store away, have...
Summary: If you’ve ever wanted to have the sharpest blade around, one that impresses and maybe slightly scares your buddy who asks to borrow your knife, then The Razor Edge Book of Sharpening is worth a read. It covers folding knives, sheath knives, axes, arrowheads, fishhooks and other cutting tools, with each category getting its own chapter that focuses in on specific sharpening concerns, based on the intended use of an edge.
If you were to ask almost any crowd of folks “Hey, what is the best flashlight out there?” someone would chime in “The one you actually have with you when it is dark.” That is the perfect niche for little keychain lights like the Thrunite Ti. They aren’t the brightest or the most full featured lights, but they are the most likely to be in your pocket when you have to walk across a dark...
With snow in Washington DC piling up at a rate of an inch an hour today, it is a good time to check your vehicle’s emergency kit or start making one. If a blizzard dumped ten inches of snow on the roads while you were at work, what options do you have right now? How bad would it be if you had to spend a night or two in your vehicle or at the office?
In an emergency situation, a good flashlight can be the difference between standing around in the dark and getting work done or moving to safety. The Nitecore P12 has a feature set that almost seems to have been designed with emergency preparedness in mind.
We’ve touched on different pieces of this recently, but with this podcast, we’re going to pull all of those pieces together into a unified plan. Now, I know that this is not the most glamorous topic imaginable, but maybe that is one of the reasons that it so often gets overlooked when people are getting prepared for emergency situations. No one wants to think about the toilets not working, piles of dirty laundry on the...
In this podcast we’ll go over some tips and tricks on how to get the most out of the sleeping bag that you already have, as well as what to look for when shopping for a new bag… Specific topics include: Temperature Rating Systems Down vs. Synthetic Fill Features to Look For Styles of Sleeping Bag How to Evaluate a Bag Before Purchase Tricks to Staying Warm Getting the Most Out of Your Sleeping Bag...
Ultimate Survival is well known for for emergency fire starting products like the BlastMatch Fire Starter and Wet Fire Tinder. I recently picked up their Sparkie Mini Fire Starter to test out as a possible addition to a survival kit.
A waterproof hard case is one of the easiest ways to make sure items like maps, important papers and small electronics survive accidents and are available when you need really need them. Store bought maps like USGS Topographical Quads can be pretty durable, but last a lot longer with proper care. Home printed maps are less expensive, but are also fragile if printed on plain paper with an inkjet printer. Also, as modern electronics get...