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Making a survival kit, part three
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With the first two articles in this series we’ve created the bare essentials for a survival kit: basic wound care (i.e., duct tape) and hypothermia prevention with a survival blanket and a fire. That addresses the first two of our four Rules of Three.
Before we move on there’s one more thing to put in the kit to help with fire starting, though: tinder. Rather than relying on finding natural tinder it’s best to have something to take that first spark or guttering flame and nurture it for a while.
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The kind of tinder you carry is up to you. Commercial tinders range from compressed wood to fuel tablets. You can make equally-effective tinder at home though, with materials like dryer lint, cotton balls, wax, and petroleum jelly. An easy (and venerable) homemade tinder is cotton balls glopped with petroleum jelly and stored in a film canister. People have been carrying this one ever since they invented cotton balls, petroleum jelly, and film canisters, and for good reason: it works. Plus you have a ready source of petroleum jelly to treat chapped skin and rashes.
Don’t make the mistake of counting tinder as one of your three fire starting methods (“I have three fire starters because I have a lighter, matches, and cotton balls”). Tinder can’t start a fire. Without some sort of ignition source it isn’t very helpful. This is another vote for the magnesium stick, by the way, since the magnesium is actually tinder; the fire starting part is the flint.
Chemical water purifiers
Now that hypothermia is held at bay you can worry about rule number three: Three days without water. You should have some form of purifying and carrying water in your survival kit.
Purification choices are many: liquid iodine or iodine tablets, chlorine dioxide tablets, straw-sized filters, battery-powered UV purifiers, and so on. For purposes of a survival kit it’s best to have something small and maintenance-free, meaning chemicals. Take your pick; iodine generally works faster but doesn’t kill cryptosporidium or viruses.
Same capacity!
For carrying water an unlubricated condom is the classic survival-kit method: they’re voluminous and tougher than you’d think. But that said, they puncture easily when they’re full, they can be awkward to manage and there’s no way to tell how much water you have. An alternative is a one-liter plastic bladder which, while not as compressible as the condom, is easier to use and more durable. A benefit of the bladder is that water-purification tablets are designed for use with a quart of water (a quart is 32 ounces, a liter is 33), and measurement is important to ensure your purification method is effective. It’s hard to eyeball a quart of water in a condom.
Another method of purifying water is boiling. With a foot-square piece of heavy foil in your survival kit you can construct a container you can boil water in (put near a small fire or drop hot rocks into it). It’s a handy backup that adds almost no weight or bulk to your kit.
Next: The single most important item in your survival kit
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