"Blast from the Past": How to Build a Survival Fire Kit

[Music] fire is the most critical survival skill it has applications for shelter for water for food for signal and for improvised tools and because fire is so critical whenever you're building your kit you want it to be as diverse as possible as redundant as possible and as efficient as possible this will give you several different options so that you can have success no matter what the conditions are this also allow you to choose the most efficient method to start your fire so that you can save your resources for another day at the heart of every good fire kit is a good knife now it doesn't have to be an expensive knife these Moors have done everything that I've ever asked them to do and they're fairly inexpensive now this isn't meant to be a full-blown tool discussion but me personally I prefer an uncoded high carbon steel blade the reason is is if I'm down to nothing but this knife on my belt and have lost or gotten separated from the rest of my equipment I can find a piece of Flint or a piece of quartz anywhere on the ground and I can still use the spine of that knife to strike a spark there are some cases where i'll choose the stainless steel knife anyplace that i'm at that that's high humidity that i'm really worried about corrosion i may choose to use the stainless steel nice if i do choose the stainless knife because i don't have the ability to strike natural flint with that i'm going to make sure that's one that has a ferrocerium rod either integrated into the handle like this one or one that's integrated into the sheet now just a quick word on layering I don't like to keep all my eggs in one basket so normally i have survival gear in three different places layered on my body when i'm out i have what's in my pocket I have what's on my belt and I have some survival gear that's obviously going to go on my backpack the reason I do that is because I don't know when disasters going to strike I may have set my backpack down in camp I may be out checking traps I could be just going to refill water and all of a sudden i become lost or injured and and my situation just got worse I don't want to be stranded somewhere without the ability to make a fire so I layer it so no matter what happens there's a pretty good chance that i'm going to have at least some way of making a fire let's take a look at what's inside inside inside this charm can I have what I consider my modern ignition sources this includes my my primary my backup for my right now fire ignition sources I will carry the most cm mesh bag and I keep it carabiner on that so I can clip it onto my belt and I can gather natural tenders I'm going from place to place even though i know that i can find dry natural tinder there are some instances i can think of where i might not have time to do that so i do like to carry some man-made tender for when I need a fire right now and even though i would never plan on doing this in an emergency i still like to have the option of doing primitive fires so the last thing that I put in my fire kit is what I call my primitive fire kit now the modern ignition sources that I use on a regular basis i'd like to have four different ones and they kind of break down into three different categories you've got your open flame which is your lighter and your matches then you've got your ferrocerium rod and last but certainly not least solar now for open flame ignition sources if i'm using an open flame it's because it's an actual emergency and i need a fire right now so of course if i met an emergency if I'm hypothermic if I'm about to die my primary is going to be a lighter and there are some problems with lighters so they're definitely susceptible to cold and wet conditions they don't work well in the wind they can break and of course it can run out of fuel but I can still expect to get anywhere from 1500 to 3000 one and a half second lights off of one lighter so what I do is I put mine in a case that way I can tie it down to keep from losing it helps keep it from breaking it actually floats and it keeps it waterproof and since open flame is my go-to right now emergency fire starter I like to back that up if for some reason my my lighter was out of fuel or I lost it or it got broken or didn't work I don't want that to be the one thing that makes me start having to use more primitive techniques so I back it up with windproof waterproof stormproof survival matches now granted I'm limited to the number i can carry this particular case has 15 in it but that's 15 fires that I can count on in conditions where my lighter might fail and another open flame ignition source that I carry is what I call a super match this gives me my ignition source my tender and then it also has the paraffin which makes it burn slower all in one small package this is what I'm going to use in a life-or-death emergency when I need a fire right now so again these are my right now fire sources that I'm going to use in an actual emergency these are not necessarily the most efficient let's lighter like I said I've got 1500 to 3000 one and a half second lights I can expect to get about 15 fires out of this but this case of matches and this super match is a one-time thing so even though I can get a fire with these right now they're still not the most efficient there are some cases when conditions are right that I can use the more efficient means as an ignition source so if the sun is out the most efficient method of ignition is using solar because I can use this over and over again it doesn't take anything out of my kit this is an indefinite resource as long as the sun's out so you can see for today this wouldn't be an option which brings me to the second most efficient non emergency fire ignition system which is the Ferro rod I can expect to get 12,000 strikes out of this and it doesn't matter if it's wet doesn't matter if its cold doesn't matter if it's windy out of course I could lose it like I could anything else but it doesn't have any moving parts to break and it's never going to run out of fuel it will however run out of strikes so those are my go-to modern ignition sources open flame spark and solar they keep everything inside a charming 10 that helps protect it but also when I get my first fire I can put natural tender inside here throw this on the fire and I can char material for my next fire my next fire my next fire after that now as soon as I get into the woods i'm going to take this out of my kit and i'm going to hang it off my belt what going to do with this I'm going to fill it up with dry natural material that i can use for tinder when I need to get my first fire and this natural tinder is also i'm going to use to put inside my charring t'en to char material for my second fire and that dry natural material is what i'm going to use when i have time in the situation permits but for emergency situations when I don't have time to gather natural tender where I need a fire right now I like to bring some man-made tender sources that I can use for those emergencies the first thing is going to bring our fire tabs these are tender quickfire tabs but ust also has a kind that's called light meat tender basically what it is is its treated cotton that's really compact and woven into these little tabs and because these are treated they do really well in wet environments another thing that I like about these is that got one to two-minute burn time I only need about 30 seconds to a minute for each fire so I can pull these apart and get two fires out of one tab in addition to fire tabs I like to also bring some fuel cubes these are wet fire tender from ust when i like most about these cubes is it only takes a little bit for each fire so i can put it back in this foil wrapper and save it for my next fire and whereas the the fire tab works well in wet conditions these actually burn longer when they're wet I also like to carry beeswax birthday candles the reason for that is these are great for when you have tender that's marginal its moist or stamp these have a lot of burn time each one of these will burn for 23 minutes that's about one thousand three hundred and eighty seconds so i like to use these as lighter extenders so what I'll do is they'll take my lighter and I'll light the candle and I'll use the candle to light my tender and then I can blow that out and put it back in my kit and what that does is save the fuel in my lighter as you can see i'm here in coastal carolina so right now I'm standing in what's called a pine savannah I can't walk ten steps without tripping over some fat wood or what they call down here in the south light or not but when I was up in the Northeast that wasn't the case it would take me sometimes I can go out into the woods for for several days and never find any fat would but what we did have up there was birch and then of course down here I don't have any birch anywhere every load asian has some sort of natural tender that works well when it's wet so it's a great idea to find out what that is in your area and then when you find some throw a couple pieces of it in your fire kit this is kind of an extra but I like to keep this particular one in my kid but this is a pencil sharpener this particular one is made out of magnesium I wouldn't particularly carry the plastic ones because they'll break and they're not as useful as a magnesium the reason i like to magnesium is because it's more durable and i can also in a pinch if I had to I can shave off that magnesium and use that as a tender source as well but like I said it's kind of an extra there's nothing that I can do with this other than the magnesium there's nothing that I can do with this that I can't do with a good knife now if I'm in an actual emergency situation I'm going to use a modern technique to start my fire I'm going to try to use natural tender but if i can't i'm going to use man-made tender that I've brought with me the point is is to get a fire when you need to most now having said that there are still situations based on efficiency and based on the emergency where you could find yourself using a primitive technique if it's not life or death if I'm not calorie start or if I want to save my resources for a day when I'm not doing so well those are just some of the reasons that I carry a primitive fire kit so if i'm down to primitive fires i set myself up for success now my two favorite types of primitive fire our traditional flint and steel and the bow drill so let's take a look at what's inside the primitive fire kit and then we'll talk about everything on the outside I've got wrapped 10 feet of titan survivor cord and i like to survive record better than regular paracord because it not only has the outer sheets and the seven strands but it's also got some some monofilament fishing line some copper wire and my favorite part about it is it has a wax jute twine that runs down it as well so i can use that for a tender so this is my favorite type of cordage I'd like to have it everywhere in my kit but at a minimum I wanted in my fire kit because of that that wax you tender that I can use then I've got my survival tin this particular 10 is from randalls adventure & Training School Survival this is from see and the reason I had this and use this as my storage tin is because that's what the SE fire steel comes in this is one of my favorite things that is in my fire kit and the reason why is not only can I use this as a traditional flint and steel striker I can also use it to spark a Ferro rod and it has a bow drill divot in there anybody that's done a bow drill in the wild knows that the two most difficult things to recreate is the bearing block and the cordage so that's why I like to carry these two things just to make it that much easier having said that I can still do it with all natural materials but these things are multi-purpose so why not carry those so these are the things that are going to use for my bow drill and then also inside the tin is what I store my chart material in i also have a piece of Flint that I've found that's for my traditional flint and steel and of course right now I've got charred cloth and I've got some jute when i'm back at my house and everything's fine in the conditions are right that's what i'll make my char cloth and i'll bring that out to the woods once i'm out in the woods i'm not going to find cotton in the wild so i start using dry natural plant fibers to make my chart tender rather than char cloth to replenish my supply so that is my primitive fire kit 10 feet of titan survivor accord SE fire steel which i can use for my bow drill i can use for traditional flint and steel and i can also use this to strike a Ferro rod and of course charred cloth charred material and some viewed twine all that in a storage tin i'll put links to everything that i showed you in the video today so that you can research the products a little bit more maybe get one for yourself or your kit and of course if you got something out of this video please like please subscribe and please share it with your friends thanks again for watching

Channel: The Gray Bearded Green Beret

Views: 40,466

Rating: 4.9782176 out of 5

Keywords: Survival, Bushcraft, Preparedness, Prepper, Fire, Light My Fire, UCO

Id: Tz6WLvRb8Ow

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 23 2017