Rothco Water Bottle Survival Kit - Review and Mod

[Music] hi there I'm Eric Siegel and today we're going to be checking out the water bottle survival kit made by Rothko so the kit comes in this plastic water bottle and there is a carabiner attached to it so we'll go ahead and take that off [Music] and we'll go ahead and cut the tag off too and we'll go ahead and cut the tag off too all right so we've got a plastic water bottle here thousand milliliters or one liter and it's bpa-free and the bottle seems to be pretty good construction and you know on the surface that seems to be a pretty good idea you know you're gonna need water storage when you're in a survival situation and on the surface it seems like a pretty smart idea but we'll see how the contents are they're not very good we can always replace them with some stuff that is good so first up see if we can pull some of this stuff out [Music] all right we've got some cordage [Music] and looks like pretty good quality paracord I'm not sure what reading it is on the tag it says it's approximately 33 feet in length so we'll go with that I'm not going to undo this just to measure it but it looks like pretty good standard paracord [Music] then we've got one of these things and I've seen these before pretty cheap little things but you've got a compass in the top and let's see if the compass is accurate it is then there's a little fire steel right here you got a lanyard a whistle that's pretty good there's a ball in the whistle to give it some real real sound and then this thing opens up and it is supposed to be watertight with a little rubber seal around there and there's nothing inside now what you would do is put some matches in here so we'll do that before the end of this video but as is doesn't have anything inside and then it's got a mirror in the cap so not too bad you got a compass you got a mirror for signaling a whistle for signaling a little fire steel right here and then a waterproof container for some matches or what happy and a little lanyard with some extra cordage it doesn't hurt [Music] then we've got another carabiner I'm not sure why they put this in here and another compass so this seems a little bit redundant now it does have a flashlight right here and probably has a spacer in usually when you get these things new there's a little plastic spacer to keep the battery from being exhausted wallets and storage so there goes and it's got a little LED light it's not bad it's actually not too bad so the light is good but the carabiner and the compass are sort of redundant because we've already got those over here I mean it doesn't hurt to have it but you can certainly put better stuff in place of it more useful stuff since you've already got those two things then we've got a little bacon Swiss Army knife and I've shown you these in another video there's a knife nail file and no what is this yeah pair of scissors very cheap these fake Swiss Army knives are art are just not very good I mean it's better than nothing I'll give it that but you know I'm gonna look at that this thing's this thing's so cheap you'd be better off just going to the store and spending 10 or 15 bucks on a real Swiss Army knife classic and putting that in here instead all right then we've got this is gonna be hard to get out we got an emergency blanket see if we can get out [Music] see they do they oh good god that was hard so we got an emergency blanket and it's your basic Mylar blanket not bad then we've got a compressed towel these are the kind you just add some water to and they blow up into a towel we've got a sewing kit just your basic sewing kit and then we've got a couple band-aids that came out that's not bad those are always handy and here's something else that's gonna be difficult to get out the emergency poncho here we go again okay that one came out a little easier so then we've got an emergency poncho hooded rain poncho polyethylene white wait easy to carry convenient one size fits all reusable and it measures 50 inches 50 to 52 inches by 80 inches and this is really funny look at this picture on here it's like they took a picture of two models wearing this poncho but they didn't want to I don't know if they didn't want to pay for the picture or something so they sort of photoshopped these faces on here it's really bizarre or maybe they were Chinese people that they photoshopped on an American face I don't know but it's pretty funny but yeah it's just your basic basic poncho so overall this kit is pretty lacking I mean there are some good items in the kit but there are also some big we've got the water bottle which is fantastic but there's no way to purify water we've got the waterproof match container but there are no matches or any other way to get a fire going and then we've gotten this knockoff Swiss Army knife which is going to last about five minutes and end up being pretty worthless good news however is that there appeared to be plenty of extra room in the water bottle so what we're going to do now is add and replace some items in this kit and hopefully it will take this from being fairly mediocre to being something that might actually be useful in a survival situation okay so the first thing we'll deal with is the multi-tool situation as I say this thing is pretty much worthless so we'll go ahead and toss this I'm gonna replace it with two items actually first up we've got a real Victoria Knox classic this is what that other thing tries to emulate very badly I might add so it's got a good pair of scissors a good little knife and then a nail file with a screwdriver and it's also got tweezers and the toothpick so this is a good quality Victoria Knox knife and these cost about 15 bucks no big deal and then I'm also gonna add a real knife and what I've chosen is this this is a buck 284 phantom I chose this because it's a good little knife but it's not expensive it's about twenty bucks and it also opens one-handed which might come in handy in a survival situation it's about plastic scales but it's a good little knife that doesn't cost much you know when it comes to putting multi tools and knives and survival kits if it's a kit that you're never gonna use unless you absolutely have to you you know you don't want to put something super expensive in there it'd be easy to put something like a Leatherman Wave in this kit but that's a waste of money for something that you're probably never going to use or hopefully you're never going to use so you kind of have to balance price and quality and how often you intend to use it and so that's why I've chosen these things they're not that expensive but they've got good quality so if you have to use them they'll work well but they're not so expensive or valuable that you're ever going to miss them while they're in the kit next we'll take on the waterproof container so I'm going to add some stuff to the interior first [Music] so the first thing I'll add is ten strike-anywhere matches there now I don't always trust strike-anywhere matches they're nice to have but it's always nice to have a striker as well so I'm gonna add a match striker surface in here as well yep I'm also gonna add a Ferro rod it's something that's nicer than what's on the side here because I don't trust that one very much so I have this little Ferro rod here and then I'm gonna add a little piece of fat wood which is always good for starting a fire stick that if we can fit it should fit right so that takes care of the interior now Tommy outside on this lanyard here I'm gonna add something else I'll undo the lanyard in just a moment and I'm gonna add this this is a Ferro rod striker so we've got that nicer a Ferro rod on the inside and then we've got a nice striker on the outside now you could probably use the Victoria Knox classic or the buck to strike the Ferro rod but I like to have a separate Ferro rod striking as well that way you've gotten multiple options and we'll tie this lanyard back and there we go so now this thing's pretty good we've got the whistle we've got the compass we've got a Ferro rod striker and a lanyard we've got the mirror on the inside 10 strike anywhere matches a nice Ferro rod on the inside a match striker pan and then a little piece of fat wood so now this thing is looking pretty good and we've got a pretty good way to get a fire going you can signal and we can get directions with the compass how bad next let's deal with the water situation as I said we've got this great bottle but there's no way to purify the water so I'm gonna add six of these aqua tabs and each tab will purify one liter of water so that means we can purify 6 bottles of water since this holds one liter put that right there and then I'm gonna add a fairly luxurious item I'm gonna add three of these Malita coffee filters and these can be used to filter the water before you purify it so when you gather the water in the bottle you put it through the filter filters out any dirt and grime and so forth and then the Aqua tabs will make it safe to drink so we'll put these over here the next thing I'll add is this little spool of duct tape which can be used for all sorts of stuff including medical stuff and that's the last thing we'll tackle is the first-aid medical situation because we've only got two band-aids so first I'm gonna add two more regular band-aids and then I'll add two of these really large band-aids then I'll add if there's room when we put it in the bottle hopefully two gauze pads and then lastly is this mini med kit that has two imodium x' two benadryl six ibuprofens and two acetaminophen or Tylenol and then the final thing I'll add is this little ziplock bag and into the ziplock bag I'm gonna put the first-aid stuff the medicines the sewing kit and the water purification tablets and that way it'll be nice and compartmentalized in that ziplock bag all right now comes the moment of truth can I fit all this stuff back into the bottle let's find out so you're the low-hanging fruit first get the Hashem in there [Music] you know as I'm packing this up I decided that I would add two more items into the baggie I'm gonna add two little zip ties those won't take up much space and then what I'm going to do is close up the baggie get all the air out of it [Music] and then I'm gonna put a ranger band around it a ranger bands just a really thick rubber band and these come in handy for all sorts of stuff so we'll put it around the Ziploc baggie and that way it'll keep everything nice and tight to go into the bottle [Music] alright seems like we have some room to spare Wow so with this extra space up here I could probably add a few more items to this kit still but I think for the time being I'm just gonna leave it as is and maybe I'll come back to it later but yeah this was the rothko water bottle survival kit and on the screen you can see a list of what was in the kit originally and what's in the kit now and I think you'll agree it's a much better kit now and it's something that could actually be useful in a survival situation but let me know what you think is there something that I shouldn't have put in there or something different or maybe I left something out completely let me know in the comments below I'd be interested in hearing what you think but for now that's it this has been kit bash survival I'm Eric seagull thanks for watching and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Kitbashed Survival

Views: 19,536

Rating: 4.9196291 out of 5

Keywords: Eric Siegel, Survival Kits, Survival, Outdoors, Bushcraft, First-Aid, Preparedness, Emergency, Prepper, Rothco, Water Bottle, Survival Kit, Modification, Improvement

Id: 7iUS49VPTS0

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2020