The Complete Guide to Survival Gear: Part 1

today we will discuss some key features that you should be looking for and some things that you should avoid when shopping for outdoor and survival gear let's get to it in the description there will be timestamps for the different categories of gear that are talked about in this video the purpose of this video is not to showcase any specific brand but examples will be used to demonstrate the key features that you should be looking for now before we talk about that let's look at some important concepts and definitions that you should keep in mind when seeking gear that is gonna meet the needs of your mission it's important to differentiate between products which are marketed as military-grade vs. products which are actually milspec certified military-grade is simply a marketing term used to convey to the general public that the product in question is very robust milspec or military standard on the other hand requires a certification process a lot of people will reference milspec or military standard as being the holy grail of certifications but what does this really mean while military standard as it turns out doesn't mean that something is necessarily indestructible but it means that it meets the bare minimum military standards for it to be used in operations it's simply the most satisfactory gear for operational purposes at the lowest price available to the military military standard does not mean best-in-class it means acceptable the next thing to consider is practical versus tactical oftentimes products will be called tactical either a tactical knife a tactical backpack or even a tactical bandanna tactical gear is meant to be purpose or mission driven in most cases if you don't have a militant mission then you probably won't need it which is not to say that certain tactical features are not useful in other contexts for example some tactical gear involves camouflage there is a value in having the ability to go undetected and to have items that deploy quickly or are modular and the ability for all of your kit to double as some sort of self defense tool but for most people who are trying to put together a bug-out bag or even just are trying to get good outdoor gear it's likely that your situation will be less sensational and instead of hiding from people it's likely that you'll want to be rescued by people tactical isn't always strategic ask yourself whether or not the reasons for wanting camouflage or blacked-out colors is justified it may be that you desire to look cool but you certainly won't look cool spending an hour looking for your stuff after you drop it in the forest there is a very practical benefit to having high visibility gear in that you're far less likely to lose it in the field in addition to that a lot of tactical gear can be much heavier than civilian gear so you may be adding weight that you don't particularly need one of the benefits of tactical gear however is that it is built to last ultralight vers heavy duty gear a friend of mine once told me that you have three options lightweight inexpensive and durable choose two it's very rare that you're gonna find a piece of gear that has all of those three things ultra light is great but it also can be very delicate unless you're willing to spend a lot of money for instance this carbon reflex 10 weighs only 13 ounces but it's also incredibly expensive and beyond the reach of the average consumer most military standard equipment is not built to be ultralight that's why military rocks can go up to 100 pounds the benefit of having heavy-duty gear is that it's built to last a long time a comfortable pack weight for me is up to 60 pounds when designing a gear bag you'll have to determine what is your allowable weight and that is gonna vary from person to person based on your fitness level the needs of your environment your skill level and of course your budget ingress protection most gear has an ingress protection rating this rating will indicate how waterproof or dustproof and item is the first digit in the IP code refers to solid particle protection the second refers to liquid ingress protection unlike military standard there are agencies which conduct testing and provide this sort of certification to products this means that if you see a knife rating on a brand name product you can be confident in the reliability of the tests that we're done for example a product with an ingress protection rating of one will offer very little water resistance whereas a product that is ipx8 has a watertight seal which allows it to be fully immersed under water for long periods of time the same principle applies to dust now let's shift the discussion to talk about some key things to look for among the many classes of outdoor and survival gear remember this video is gonna be broken into two parts so if there's gear that you don't see in this video there's a good chance that we'll be in the next one there are four main ways to make water drinkable you could purify it with chemicals you can filter it with a filter you can use ultraviolet light to disinfect it or you could boil it one thing to note with filters is that they can get clogged it's not recommended to use a filter if you are in murky waters and if you don't have a pre-filter system now this could be as simple as first running your water through something like a shirt or a bandana and you can get filters which are back flushable to resolve this issue but just keep that in mind that a lot of these cheap water filters on the market will get clogged with repeated use even in water which isn't that murky if you don't thoroughly pre-filter the water if the water has a thick coloring to it there's a good chance there's a lot of sediment in there and that sediment will clog cheap water filters relatively quickly many people like chemical water filtration for its convenience but it can have a pretty nasty aftertaste for most backcountry environments bacteria or hollow fiber water filter will be sufficient however for an urban backpacking system you'll want to consider a water cleaning method which gets rid of viruses you can achieve this by boiling ultraviolet light purification and even some water filters on the market will now claim to remove viruses however it's unlikely these filters will protect against all viruses because some viruses are simply too small to be blocked by a filter in terms of cordage the main cordage of choice for Preppers and survivalists is of course 550 paracord most people have now migrated to a product called titan survivor cord make sure that your paracord has the following certifications it should exceed type 3 military specification if you don't see mill c 54 th on the paracord that means that it's probably not actually certified it's also important to note the difference between dynamic and Static strength most non climbing cordage is measured in terms of its static strength that means that paracord can technically hold 550 pounds but only if there is no moving force or bouncing load or dynamic force upon it paracord loses almost 70 percent of its strength went on a bouncing load that means if you are a hundred pounds and you tried to bungee jump with paracord you could pretty much kiss your butt goodbye not that you would anyways because it has very little elasticity it's important to note that paracord is not for climbing theoretically you could use multiple strands together which would increase its overall tensile strength but if that weight isn't easily distributed you could have independent strands brake and paracord is not meant to be as abrasion resistant as climbing cordage azar now in terms of carabiners if you're gonna carry a carabiner you might as well carry one which can actually carry you the strength of a carabiner is measured in kilonewtons one kilonewton equals 225 pounds of force this carabiner here for instance is 31 kilonewtons that means that this one little piece of metal can hold up the 6000 pounds sounds pretty safe to me this is one of the strongest aluminum carabiners in the world carabiners are great for securing gear to your backpack and can be useful in creating shelters at a campsite there are two general types locking and unlocking blocking carabiners tend to be stronger but the unlocked ones are easier to deploy in a pinch in terms of optics the biggest thing you're gonna want to pay attention to here is the field of view when you buy a pair of binoculars or a monocular you're gonna see two numbers the first number is with regards to magnification that is how far is going to let you see the second number indicates the wideness of the field of view the smaller this number is the harder it is going to be for you to see and you're likely going to need a tripod usually the more magnification your optic has the smaller the field of view necessarily will be therefore it's important that you find a good balance you may have a optic which claims to have 30 times magnification but how big is the field of view and how steady of a hand will you have to have in order for it to be effectively used at that range what tends to happen is that the field of view becomes so small that without an incredibly steady hand it becomes very difficult to not only focus but keep the device steady enough to actually see what's going on if you want to step your optics up a notch you can fork out some more dough you can get ones that come with a lot more features products like this one showing here which have a built in rangefinder a speedometer and generation 0 night vision this form of night vision requires the projection of infrared onto the environment and relies on the ambient light available to provide you with an image now you may consider stepping it up to real night vision or thermal vision this is when things get really expensive in my personal opinion though thermal imaging has way more advantages over night vision thermal imagers measure heat signatures to put in perspective camouflage is still quite effective up against night vision but nine times out of ten your camouflage is not going to mask your heat signature significantly enough that you will defeat night vision technically speaking if you used a heat reflective blanket you may be able to mask your heat signature at least for a short period of time but ultimately camouflage is not going to be able to conceal your body's heat signature enough that will go undetected by a high resolution thermal in I've done an extensive video on thermal imaging that you can go and see here in terms of multi-tools I can only speak from personal experience but the primary items I want on a multi-tool are a good pair of pliers some screwdrivers a knife and a serrated edge my personal favorite has always been the Leatherman brand for its balanced weight and durability they also have a long history of making high quality products I also like these items to have a locking feature this is just for safety purposes the last thing you want is to be using your multi-tool knife and forward too unexpectedly close on your hand and end up cutting you multi tools like the Swiss champ are great because they have so many different features however I don't like the fact that many of these tools don't lock so I personally prefer a Leatherman / Victoria Knox Swiss Army knives but it really comes down to personal preference whatever you do don't rely on a cheap no-name multi-tool for something that will likely be on you all the time you'll want to make sure that it's built strong enough to handle a lot of abuse now in terms of lighting fires you have three methods lighter matches or fire steels there's a variety of other tools and techniques that you can use to start fires like using a magnifying glass or a friction fire or even a flint and steel but these three are the most common technology and the most readily available products that you can use to do so most bush crafters and survivalists opt for fire Steel's because they are more reliable and they last a lot longer even though they require more skill to use than a lighter there's two main types of fire Steel's you have your ferrocerium rods and then you have your magnesium Ferro rod combos now some people would argue that with the magnesium rod it's a little bit easier because you can scrape off a lot of magnesium first and it's easier to light fires I would generally agree with this unfortunately with most magnesium strikers you get a very small Ferro rod which is subject to breaking or being damaged this mag striker product in my opinion is probably one of the best because it combines the best of both world's you get a sizable Ferro rod and a nice big chunk of magnesium that you can scrape off to help you create a fire easier and faster oftentimes the inexpensive ferrocerium rods that you find on Amazon are not gonna throw good Sparks I'll post a link in the description for fair rods that are guaranteed to have good striking capabilities in terms of matches there's a variety to choose from from waterproof matches to hurricane to storm proof to Titan matches to behemoth matches a variety of matches of all shapes and sizes that should enable you to make a fire in almost any condition at the end of the day though probably the easiest way to light a fire is with a lighter the only drawback to these is that they gradually do leak fuel and because there are moving parts there is a risk of it breaking on you in the field now this problem is easily mitigated by simply carrying more lighters but there are some advantages to matches over lighters many storm proof matches just like emergency flares will light even when they're wet whereas a wet lighter will require that you dry it off before you can use it there are some other drawbacks to lighters for example a lighter at least a non Zippo lighter requires you to hold on to it while lighting the fire however there may be a situation where you want your ignition source to function independently of your having to hold a button to be honest if you're intent on putting a lighter in your bug out bag put a barbecue lighter in there this will give you the length from the flame that you need to light a fire in almost any configuration if you want more information on campfire setup check out my video I did on the topic here there's also a new class of lighter on the market that uses electricity the benefit to this is that so long as you have a renewable energy source like a solar panel you could potentially have an unlimited ignition source because unlike a lighter or a match it doesn't rely on a non-renewable combustible fuel source the main drawback of this is a sophisticated technology like it can fail thus if you plan on putting one of these in your bug out bag you'll probably want to bring a ferrocerium rod just in case in part 2 of this video we will explore the following types of survival gear sleep systems include cots tents and sleeping bags radio communications portable power supplies and off-grid renewable energy sources backpacking systems navigation cookware and cooking systems knives saws and first-aid equipment insect repellents and survival literature so stay tuned for that video coming next Sunday thanks for watching don't forget to Like comment subscribe if you enjoyed the video Canadian prepper Oh the best way to support this channel is to support yourself by gearing up at Canadian preparedness com your one-stop shop for premium high-quality brand-name products that have been tried and tested by myself and other youtube gear reviewers my subscribers save 10% off by using the coupon code survival prepper all one word in all caps

Channel: Canadian Prepper

Views: 210,906

Rating: 4.937222 out of 5

Keywords: doomsday preppers, bug out bag, prepper, preppers, preparedness, survival, SHTF, grid down, end of the world TEOTWAKI, zombie apocalypse, survivalism, survivor, post-apocalypse, survival gear, camping

Id: dYpQi9qBKyI

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 21 2020