Survival gear essentials [guide]

The following guide will show you how you get your own set of survival gear essentials. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as buying a ready made kit and then being able to survive everything everywhere.

But, well thought out ready made survival kits have the advantage of getting you balanced starter sets usually for a better price than buying every item on its own. They will spare you searching different brand portfolios for matching items, too. So, you can take them as a starter and then build upon them.

Here are a few things to consider:

• Build your kit in multiple tiers. Have the bare essentials with you as often as possible. But have some extra stuff to make your life better when you have the capacity to transport some “luxury” items.
• Make sure you know your kit. The worst approach is buying stuff and believing you’re prepared now. If you don’t know how to use an item, you don’t need to carry it. Starting to learn how to use something when you actually need it is a dangerous illusion.
• Not all environments are the same. While there are items you will need everywhere others won’t be as important in one environment as they are somewhere else.
• Don’t take “survival” completely literally. While your life may really depend on your skills sometimes it’s more often than not about getting out of a difficult situations unharmed and maybe even not traumatized. And of course you can use and train your skills in more harmless situations to have a good time.

This and other blogs on the topic have lots of posts about how to train survival skills. The following will focus on gear you might want for training and for real situations.

Priorities when choosing gear

When thinking of survival gear most people think of ways to gather food. In fact, food is one of the last things you need to bother about. While energy is essential to keep you active and being able to fulfill tasks it’s quite unlikely that you die of starvation compared to other dangers.

To help you decide which item has which priority there’s the rule of 3. While the numbers are to be taken with a huge grain of salt, they show priorities very clearly. It goes like this:

“You can survive 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food.”

We won’t cover oxygen, that’s beyond the scope of this post. Shelter might not be much of an issue in central European forests in summer. But almost everywhere else it’s essential. Cold and windy can kill you just like burning heat and sun.

Food is your last priority. That is the reason why I won’t add items like fishing hooks or wire for traps and snares. Given, they take up just a little space but still, see them as something to add when everything else is covered.

Think of possible scenarios you might get into and prepare for that. It’s not very likely that you will end up on a lonely tropical island. Getting stuck with you car on a lonely road in the backcountry is something to look at. What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t focus on week long survival in exotic environments. Better go for 1-2 days in heavy weather first. When that’s covered you can always think of something else.

The bare survival gear essentials

What’s really essential depends on your skills and the environment you’re in. A friend of mine once said: “With a knife alone I can improvise everything. Everything else will safe time and and energy. And in some situations it’s essential to safe both.” So, yes, a simple knife might be enough but your chances will improve by a lot if you carry a bit more.

Here’s a list of survival gear essentials that will work wherever you go:

• A reliable knife. Like the ANV Z100BB or the Morakniv Companion Heavy Duty.
• An easy to use fire steel. If you have the space, use a huge one like the Origin Outdoors Goliath. It really makes a difference.
• A flashlight. Like the ReFlash ECO or the Fenix PD36r. Flashlights are so important, we have a very thorough flashlight guide in our blog.
• A simple lighter. Like the Clawgear MkII storm pocket lighter. While a fire steel is more reliable and will last longer, a simple lighter can be easier to use and will light some materials a firesteel can’t.
• Some Paracord. Learn some essential knots before you need them!
• A poncho. Yes this is essential even in environments with close to no rain. There’s a dedicated poncho post in this blog.
• A compass. At least take a better-than-nothing one like the Helikon button compass. Better yet get a very decent one like the Suunto MC-2 Global. If you have the latter combined with a map and you know how to use it, it’s almost impossible to get lost.
• Signaling equipment like a mirror and a whistle. Remember, you can blow a whistle for a far longer time than you can shout for help.
• A decent first aid kit. Building one is beyond the scope of this post.
• Something to take notes or leave messages. Modestone paper will work in the rain and will stay write- and readable even after long times under water or in your bag. With it goes a pen that will write everywhere and everytime. The only drawback in a survival situation is that the paper will not burn. Read more about it in our Modestone post.
• If you still have some spare space, a multitool can be handy in many situations. If you really want to save some space, it can even replace your knife. One that’s focused on use as a survival tool is the Leatherman Signal. A more classical approach is the Leatherman Surge.
• Roll some Duct-Tape or Gaffer-Tape on something you carry with you. Either use something the size of a credit card or roll it onto your lighter. Remember, most duct tapes burn quite well, so you can use them as emergency tinder.
• Some extra tinder. I like to have a combination of different kinds of tinder to be prepared for different situations. Like tampons and ranger bands. Tampons, especially when drenched in petroleum jelly, are extremely helpful as tinder for fire steel. “Ranger bands” help with mounting gear, building stuff and work as tinder, too. Just ask your next bicycle repair shop for broken tubes, cut them in different lengths and there you go. They work as tinder when lit with a lighter but not with a firesteel.
• A bottle of water. I replace its contents once every few days if I don’t use it. I just like to have a chance to be hydrated on the go. And, yes, I already did use mine to put out a fire in a building, too.
• Some energy bar. Skip the sugar free, low fat variant but use something that will really push you in hard times.
• At least one space blanket. It will keep you warm in harsh environments. But it’s also extremely versatile. You can build anything from a tiny shelter to an improvised stretcher with it.

Personally I like to have the most crucial survival gear essentials in a redundant fashion. I have a very small kit with small but reliable variants which I always carry in a pocket of my pants. I have that with me all the time, even when I just plan to walk our dog around the block. Additionally I have bigger, easier to use variants that I put in my backpack. Everything that’s too big for pants pockets (water, poncho etc. also goes into the backpack.

With these items you can easily build a shelter that will help with protecting you from the environment. Look at our post about simple tarp setup to learn what you can build with the poncho and the cordage. Also consider our posts about learning survival skills and regular training like with #afireaday. In the list above there’s enough to start a fire for signaling and to keep you warm.

Going beyond survival gear essentials

The bare essentials we’ve talked about so far are small enough to have them with you always. But if you are going somewhere where you can expect that you might need some of your equipment, there’s a lot more you can bring to make your life better. Think beyond mere survival. When you have the option to bring more gear and go on an adventure there’s a diffuse line between survival and camping. Of course you can always go all out glamping and live like in a hotel. But then there’s the more adventurous approach where you hone your survival skills in a non critical situation and have fun just being outdoors. Just never forget to restock items you used!

Here are some items beyond survival gear essentials to consider:

• Get a bigger knife! A big, fixed blade like the ANV M200HT will be a big boost for everything you want to achieve when being outdoors.
• A foldable saw can make a huge difference when it comes to building something beyond a simple tarp setup. It will also help a lot with gathering wood as fuel. A perfect example of a small but very versatile folding saw is the Silky Pocketboy, preferably in the Outback edition. Even when this article is not about full blown pruning saws, our post about how to choose a pruning saw will give you some insight why Silky might be the brand of your choice in the future.
• If you don’t care about material to build something but just want help with gathering wood for fuel there’s a lighter option. Consider a pocket chainsaw. Most people are sceptical when they hear about it (as was I) but these small things really work. And not just somehow, they really work well. You just need to get a hang of how to hold and move it.
• A woobie will be useful in a lot of different situations. You can go for a classical poncho liner or a more sophisticated approach like the Helikon-Tex swagman roll. Just remember to get a model that works with your poncho (i.e. buy from the same brand). You can get more details from our blog post on woobies.
• Get a water purification filter that will work in your environment. Filters have different methods of purification and will work against different stuff in your drinking water.
• An outdoor stove will make cooking a lot easier and more efficient. You will have to gather way less fuel for a stove to work than for a whole camp fire. One of my personal favorites is the Kelly Kettle with the stove add-on. Or better yet the whole Kelly Kettle scout kit. Ok, the whole kit is big and heavy. But if you have the space, e.g. when traveling by car, it will give you everything from easy cooking to heating water for a soup or tea in no time. There’s a pan and a pot in the scout kit but if you take an extra pan with you then you’re all set up for sophisticated outdoor kitchen.
• When you bring a saw, you can also bring an axe. If you have the space, bring one that’s a bit bigger, like the Hultafors Ekelund. Otherwise you might have something that’s just an extra redundancy for your knife.
• Speaking of bigger tools, you might also want to have a folding shovel with you. It helps with setting up camp, making a place for a camp fire or just dig a latrine.
• While you can bring a camping towel to keep things clean and dry, I personally prefer to carry a Shemagh. Of course I’m a bit more careful than with a towel but in the end you can just wash it after your trip so don’t be afraid of getting it dirty.
• If you do have the space, a sleeping bag is a good idea to have with you in case you have to stay the night when you didn’t plan to. When you’re on foot it’s very unlikely that you carry a sleeping bag just in case. But in a car it can really help if you’re stuck or in an endless traffic jam in winter. Get a model that has a temperature rating fitting to your environment. This usually means you will have at least two: One warmer and one colder bag. Usually it’s better to have a warmer one than you need because you can always open it. If your sleeping bag is still too cold, wrap yourself in the space blanket or the whole bag in the woobie.
• When staying outside a hut or a car a sleeping bag isn’t much worth without a sleeping pad. Since I’m still trying to write about survival gear essentials, a folding foam sleeping pad that is not inflatable is smaller and won’t let you down (literally, I mean by escaping air). Personally I sleep a lot better on an inflatable version, though. So I have a non-inflating one for emergencies and an inflatable one for planned trips.
• Absolutely not life saving but essential in my world: An inflatable pillow won’t take a lot of space but it will improve your sleep by a lot!
• If you have everything else, there’s the crown to your kit: A bivvy bag or bivouac combined with a sleeping pad and a sleeping bag will make sure you can weather through most harsh situations in a breeze. You can’t be much better protected from the environment. You can stay dry and warm without a lot of work to do and that is almost priceless.
• A tarp can be just a bigger and more comfortable option for a shelter than what a poncho can give you. Even when you have a bivvy bag or a poncho a tarp can always help with setting up a camp you can work in or an abundance of other situations.