The ESEE Advanced Survival Kit

hey folks i am super excited about today's episode what i've got here is the essie advanced survival kit i've been wanting to pick one of these up for a long time and i finally did and so we're going to check it out right now on kit bash survival all right so as you probably already know the sc advanced survival kit is very expensive the msrp on the se website is just over 700 and by the way don't ever pay full retail price for this kit it's not worth over seven hundred dollars i got this on amazon and i paid just over five hundred dollars for it which was the lowest price i could find at the time and i bought this in august of 2020. so you may want to buy this kit you may not want to buy this kit but everybody wants to know is it worth the money and that's what we're going to try to find out today but you know i already know what's in this kit because i had to open it up to prep for the video and so before we get started i'll say this about the price most off-the-shelf survival kits on the market usually try to strike a balance between affordability and quality the affordability of the kit versus the quality of the kit and the components inside and so oftentimes what you get is a survival kit where the components inside the kit are not super cheap and they're not super fancy they're right there in the middle they're decent quality components and in exchange it makes the kit more affordable well the sa advanced survival kit does not try to strike that balance everything in this kit is high quality a lot of stuff is made in the usa or made in europe or other places where it costs a little more to manufacture the stuff there's a lot of name brands that you know and trust and so what you get is a kit that favors quality over affordability and of course that makes the kit more expensive so anyway what we're going to do is open up the kit and see what's inside then we're going to sort of add everything up and see if the 500 price tag is justified and then finally we're gonna modify this kit by adding some components to it and that'll take it from being a great kit to being an exceptional kit so let's start things off by taking a look at one of the most high quality items in this kit and that of course is the bag itself so rather than using some cheap knockoff bag that's pretending to be something it's not this is the real deal extremely high quality made in the usa built to last there's no reason this bag should not last a lifetime or more if properly cared for the bag features durable thick nylon cordura construction which probably gives it a little bit of water resistance as well the zippers you know oftentimes we don't even think about zippers until something goes wrong but on a survival bag you really want to have high quality zippers because the last thing you need in a survival situation is for your zippers to be binding up and breaking on you and because this bag uses genuine heavy duty ykk zippers and not some cheap knockoffs that's a lot less likely to happen there are fabric loops for connecting gear on both sides and at the top right here then up here there's a thick fabric handle and then we've got the back of the bag which is actually my favorite part for a few reasons first we've got this tag that says azula gear mainly usa then we've got all of this nice molly webbing we've got some really heavy duty stitching going on and then we've got six of these heavy-duty plastic loops and out of the box you'll have this strap attached to these two loops but as you'll see in a minute on the inside of the pack there are two additional straps for use on the outside of the pack and basically what it amounts to is that however you want to carry this pack whether it's over one shoulder or like a sling or like a backpack or what have you you're going to be able to do it and finally behind this there's a thick plastic sheet and that gives this whole area some rigidity and some strength and that way when you're carrying it around it's nice and sturdy it's kind of like a miniature internal frame pack so now let's delve a little deeper into this bag this front section here can be detached it's held on with a bunch of velcro so we'll set the pack aside for a moment and focus on this piece so the primary purpose of this pouch is map storage and of course the reason it detaches from the main pack is so that you can be reading your map and carrying the bag at the same time so to access the main map pouch we open it up like this made in usa and there's the map pouch so you put the map in up here it's got a plastic flap to go over it and you get some nice weather protection pretty cool and then up here they've got two auxiliary pouches they've got one up front that has the see-through window on it right now they've got a survival tips card in there and then there's another pouch right behind that one where you could hide some cash or pens and pencils or something like that and then they've got this loop here i'm not sure what exactly this is for but i would probably put a pen or a pencil in there and then finally we've got this security ring up here the purpose of the security clip or at least one purpose would be to prevent the loss of the map pouch should it be accidentally detached from the velcro on the pack so for example let's say you had your matte pouch here and you were making your way through some thick brush and a big branch comes by and just like that it rips it off the pack and you've lost your map that's a bad day well if you have the pouch clipped to something that's less likely to happen so i suppose you could clip this to one of these zippers but here's what i would do if this was my pack and it just happens to be my pack i've got a molle clip here so i'm gonna install it right here on this webbing [Music] okay so i've got this clip installed and now i'll take one half of this security clip and connect it to this ring it's a d-ring a molle d-ring and now i'll reconnect it like that and there we go so now if i'm going through that same brush and that same big branch comes by it rips it off the velcro but not off the pack pretty cool so now let's check out the first and smallest of the two zippered compartments in this pack and the first one is located right behind the map pouch so we'll go ahead and undo that security clip that i just put on and open up this first pouch there's only one item in here and it's really the only serious first aid item in this entire kit you can probably guess what it is it's a combat dressing i always call this an israeli bandage if you want to find out more just google israeli bandage and you can read all about it but you know if you're only going to have one first aid item in your kit and you've got the room this is a really good thing to have because you know it's not the small cuts and scrapes that are gonna get you it's the serious wounds like a gunshot wound or a laceration or something like that and if you've got an israeli bandage on hand it'll go a long way towards stabilizing you until you can get proper medical attention so it's an h combat dressing it's vacuum sealed made in the usa very high quality and you know you might think something like this would cost 50 cents but no these are fairly expensive they're about eight bucks all right now we come to the main event which of course is the main zippered compartment so let's go ahead and open it up and there we go man that's sexy so let's rotate this around and we'll start with these top pouches there's two pouches up here we got a small webbed pouch up front and there's only one thing in there and that is a pack of three aaa batteries and the purpose of these will be clear in just a moment then we've got some stuff back here so we've got an endur emergency survival blanket a space blanket 48 inches by 84 inches [Music] then we've got a second space blanket pretty cool and again it's not a no-name brand it's indoor which is a known brand it makes pretty good stuff then we've got some fire starting gel and you've seen these before so this is a fire starting gel they got directions you open it up you squirt it out and you light it pretty cool and there's two of those and then lastly we've got a stash of world pack water bags [Music] so let's see how many bags there are so there's four whirlpack stand up water bags and each bag holds a quart of water okay now let's check out this side starting with this awesome survival knife now one thing i like is that they've got the sheath connected to the bag itself via one of those security clips and that lessens the chance of you losing the knife on accident so let me go ahead and detach the security clip and here we go so what we've got here is an se 4p with orange micarta scales it's a full flat grind 1095 steel lifetime warranty this is an excellent knife and a great choice for this kit because this is sort of a mid-sized knife from sc it's not too big it's not too small it's not too thick it's not too thin it's just right nice four and a half inch blade just a fantastic knife overall and it's got this high quality sheath locks in there nice and sturdy and you've got a metal belt clip on the back very cool and then over here we've got those two extra carrying straps that i told you about earlier and with these you're pretty much going to be able to carry this bag in whatever configuration you want up next we've got a headlamp and just like a lot of other stuff in this kit this is not a no-name knockoff this is a name brand it's a petzl petzl is known for making high quality headlamps this model is the takina now to be sure the takina is not the top of the line for petzl it's an entry-level headlamp runs about 20 bucks but it's still a pencil and it's still going to be a good reliable product as you might have guessed the headlamp is powered by these three aaa batteries so go ahead and load these up into the headlamp and we'll give it a try and it's a very basic headlamp it's got three brightness levels pretty good light not bad at all then we've got this big orange thing this is a 60 inch by 60 inch tarp and it can be used as a tarp as a signaling panel as a bag and in the video where essie demonstrates this kit the guy even uses it as a round cloth to sleep on which is pretty cool so 60 inches by 60 inches it's got little buttons on it and loops at the corners and so forth it's made out of that rip stop nylon stuff so yeah this is a pretty darn good tarp for a survival kit oh and by the way nice rip stop nylon tarps like this are more expensive than you think but we'll get to that later below that we've got a 45 gallon yellow trash bag i'm not going to open this up but these have a bunch of uses you can use it as a poncho to make a primitive shelter to collect water all sorts of stuff this is a really good thing to have you can probably see this blue rope around the perimeter so let's go ahead and get that out this is climbing grade rope so you could actually make an ascent or descent using this rope which is pretty cool it's eight millimeter rope and from what i've read this has around 4 200 pounds of tensile strength so this is high quality climbing grade rope 25 feet of it and of course if you're going to have climbing rope you should probably have a carabiner and they thought of that and here's a carabiner and this is not a cheap 50 cent decorative carabiner it is a climbing rated carabiner 24 kilonewtons which is not the strongest carabiner in the world but it's perfectly fine for recreational climbing and stuff you might be doing in a survival situation so yeah with this kit you can make an accent or a descent with this climbing grade rope and a climbing carabiner now of course i am not an expert in climbing so don't quote me on any of this and if you're gonna use any of this climbing gear you would probably want to take a course or two before you did that because if you start climbing without knowing what you're doing you could easily injure or kill yourself very quickly but it's really cool that they've got some climbing gear in this kit and of course you don't have to use this for climbing you could use it for anything else but if you had to climb with it you could all right we're getting toward the home stretch so let's go ahead and open up this little compartment and it's got a few things first they've got some informational material there's some instructions for the compass which we haven't seen yet instructions for the knife and then they've got all these information cards and anybody who's ever owned an esee survival kit of any kind should be pretty familiar with these they put these in just about everything up next we've got the se mini survival tin now when i first saw this i thought it was going to be a complete sc mini survival tin and i've actually already reviewed one of these on my channel in a previous video i'll put a link to it in this video but when i opened it up there was nothing in there except the instructions for the headlamp and at first i thought that was kind of lame but then after i thought about it i thought you know that's probably a good thing because most of the stuff in fact almost all the stuff that would be in the se mini survival tin is already in the mess kit survival tin that's right here so having it in both places would be a bit redundant and by having it empty it allows you to customize it and put whatever you want in there which in the end i think is a better idea and then at the bottom we've got our last item which is the best glide asc survival fishing kit basic version now i'm not going to open this up because i've already reviewed this exact same kit on my channel so if you want to see what's inside check out that video there should be a link to it in the top right hand corner of the video and in the video description finally we come to the piester resistance the se mess tin survival kit which is in this pouch down here there it is but before we take a look inside i want to take a better look at the interior of this bag this is so well designed you know they've got pouches for the tins and so forth they've got loops and webbing and a lot of these loops are unused and so that means you've got extra configuration options other than just how it comes right out of the box and then they've got two pouches here there's one with a see-through window and then there's one behind it as well really cool all right so let's open up the mess tin survival kit now i've actually already reviewed the standalone semester survival kit on this channel and i'll put a link to that review in this video but i wanted to check out this one as well because there are some differences between the two and most of those differences involve gear that's included in the standalone kit that's not included in this version but they had good reasons for that so for example in the standalone version of the mess 10 survival kit there's the best glide asc basic fishing kit but of course we've already got that kit located elsewhere in this advanced survival kit and so there's no reason to also have it in the tin also the standalone kit has some water bags inside but as you saw we have four water bags located elsewhere in the kit so they don't need to be in here and then finally the standalone kit includes the se azula knife but because we've got the se4p located elsewhere in the kit the azula doesn't have to be in here but between you and me i was kind of hoping they would have the azula in here that would have been really cool now the fact that they've left some stuff out of this version of the kit compared to the standalone version is actually a good thing in my opinion because it avoids pointless duplication of gear while at the same time freeing up space for us to add custom gear of our own and that's what we'll be doing in just a few minutes anyway so we've got a right in the rain waterproof notepad this is actually larger than the one that's in the standalone kit pretty nice then we've got a signal mirror an endure signal mirror another name brand we've got a whole mess of brass wire so you could use this for a snare or for gear repair or pretty much anything else you can think of it's a really generous amount of brass wire we've got a blue ranger band like the one that was on the outside of the kit we've got a wire saw seems to be pretty good quality [Music] we've got 10 pieces of cotton tinder not bad then we've got a sewing kit we've got some fabric and a couple sewing needles let's see there's anything else inside here yeah so we've got a piece of fabric for doing patchwork we've got two sewing needles and there's some sewing thread like material later on in the kit we've got a whistle an acme whistle [Music] that is shrill made in england then we've got some kevlar survival cord 75 feet 80 pound test made in the usa and you could probably use this to sew with with those needles and that patch then we've got a ferro rod and striker made by endur i like these enduro ferro rods they're really thick they're very well made we've got a striker too and then we've got a section of orange signal tape if you need to get somebody's attention we've got a pretty nice compass this is a sunto i believe it's an a10 compass let's find out yeah it's a sunto a10 made in finland pretty cool then we've got a victorinox swiss army knife this is the hiker it's a nice thing to have it's got a screwdriver a punch a large blade a small blade then you got the bottle opener and the flat head screwdriver and the wire stripper there's the can opener and the flathead screwdriver and then in the middle there's a saw and the victorinox saws are actually very good i like them a lot and then we've got the toothpick over here and a pair of tweezers over here not bad we've got a pencil to go with that right in the rain waterproof pad we've got a length of cordage looks like thin paracord it's pretty cool there it is it's pretty good quality paracord we've got a few feet of duct tape oh it's a good thing to have we've got another one of those signal cards where they've got the ground to air distress signals and conversions and so forth then we've got a fresnel lens a little magnification lens helps to start a fire or to magnify something then we've got two of these lights these bright strike lights so they're green lights and they have a peel-off sticky back so you can stick them on something and when you turn them on flash is green then there's a slower flash and then there's a steady green and they give you two of these [Music] pretty cool and the green light is good to have at night because it allows you to see things without destroying your night vision then we've got some water purification tablets to go with those water bags we saw earlier potable aqua and i believe this is 50 tablets if i'm not mistaken yeah 50 tablets and then finally we've got some ender safety matches wind and waterproof and then we've got the tin itself which of course can be used to boil water or drink out of or cook food and what have you all right so here's all the stuff from the sc advanced survival kit and as i said earlier the big question is whether or not the price is justified now as i said earlier i don't think the msrp of 730 dollars is justified although we'll find out but i paid 515 dollars for this kit on amazon so i want to know if that price was a good deal so what i'm going to do is add up the price of each of these individual items and we'll see what it comes to you and for each item i'm going to use the consumer level price because i'm sure if you went out and bought a thousand of these israeli bandages for example you could get the unit price down to 50 cents or something but for the average consumer who just buys one of these you're gonna pay eight bucks so we'll start with the mess tin survival kit now as i already said i've already reviewed the standalone version of this kit in a previous video and in that video i did the exact same thing i totaled up the price of the individual items in the kit to see if it was worth the price that i paid and in that video i determined that if you were going to build the kit on your own it would cost 218 dollars but of course this version of the mess 10 survival kit is missing a few of those items the fishing kit the water bag and the azula knife the fishing kits right here so we'll go ahead and add it in then we'll subtract the azula knife and the water bag and we get a price of 161.50 which i'll round down to 160 bucks next we've got the bag and the bag actually consists of two components there's the bag itself and then the map case so the price of the bag on its own is one hundred and thirty dollars and the price of the map case is thirty five dollars then we've got the se4p survival knife the price on amazon for this is right at 100 up next is the orange tarp and this is not some cheap blue tarp that you buy at home depot or lowe's these kinds of tarps are actually more expensive than you think if you want to buy this orange tarp on its own it'll cost you 52 dollars then we've got the petzl taking a headlamp which runs about 20 dollars the 25 foot length of climbing rope is about 20 dollars the se carabiner is 13 and then the two ender survival blankets are four dollars a piece for a total of eight dollars the israeli bandage as i said before runs about eight dollars the water bags are a dollar fifty a piece there's four of them so that's six dollars and then the fuel gel packets there's two of them they're three dollars a piece so that's six dollars the survival cards here are actually included in the standalone mess 10 survival kit so i'll give you a zero for those and then just to throw a bone to the naysayers out there i'll even give you a zero for the empty mini survival tin and a zero for the yellow trash bag so if we add all that up the grand total comes to surprise surprise 558 dollars now of course prices can and will change over time but as of the time i'm filming this video september 2020 is this kit worth the msrp of almost 730 dollars no is it worth the actual price i paid on amazon of 515 dollars yes now with that being said is it possible to build a kit similar to this on your own for less than 515 dollars absolutely but in order to do so you would most likely have to compromise on the quality of some of the components and as i said before this kit does not compromise it's about quality not affordability and if you want to have quality components in your survival kit you're going to have to pay a premium for that so although in my opinion this kit is excellent right out of the box because there is a little bit of extra room in the kit i'd like to try to add some extra gear just to make it that much better now i don't know how much gear we'll be able to add because there's not that much extra space but we'll see what we can get away with so the first thing i'd like to do is beef up the first aid side of the kit because aside from the israeli bandage and possibly the needle and thread really isn't much in the way of first aid in this kit so what i'm gonna do is use the empty sc mini survival kit tin as my primary first aid kit so into this little tin i'd like to put four band-aids then a large band-aid some aspirin a mini med bag that i made that has four benadryls and four ibuprofens two imodiums just in case you get diarrhea a small gauze pad two things of hand sanitizer and the nice thing about this is that this can double as a fuel source in an emergency an antiseptic wipe two packets of antibiotic ointment two alcohol prep pads and then one mini pack towel and these are the kinds of towels where you add a little bit of water and they blow up into a full-size towel and these ones although they're minis when you put water on them they get to be like this towel right here and then the final thing i'd like to try to get into this mini survival tin is a derma safe razor knife there it is there's two additional first aid items that i'd like to add but i know they won't fit in this mini survival tin and those are a swat tea tourniquet if there's room and then a little roll of gauze that i will probably try to get into the survival tan and by the way this gauze can also double as some tinder in an emergency and speaking of tinder on the fire side of things although this kid has pretty good fire making abilities right out of the box there are two items i'd like to add so i'm gonna add a couple pieces of fat wood to help build a fire and i'll also add a mini big lighter on the water side of things i'd like to add two molita coffee filters to help filter out sediment before purification and i'd also like to add one of these mini water straws this is an aquamira frontier water straw that's capable of filtering up to 30 gallons of water then we come to the lighting department so the first thing i'll add is a trick birthday candle although i guess this could probably be classified as a fire item as well and then i'm also going to add a green glow stick if there's room i'd like to add a little bit of toilet paper and a little thing of tissues i'd also like to add two of these full-sized pack towels as opposed to the little one that's in the first aid kit in the cooking slash water boiling slash hot beverage department i like to add an emergency stove so i'm going to add this little s bit emergency stove now we've already got these two fuel packets over here and this comes with three additional fuel pellets but if i get tight on space i might eliminate these and keep these i know we've got the yellow trash bag which can be used as a poncho but i'm going to try to add an actual poncho to this bag so that we can use the yellow trash bag for other stuff if needed and on the subject of keeping things dry i'd like to try to add this small 4 liter dry bag we'll see if there's room for that and then finally i'd like to add this little food and beverage bag so in here i've got two packs of instant coffee one pack of mre beverage based lemonade two packs of creamer two packs of sugar three malted milk tablets three jolly ranchers a pack of mre tissues and then i've also got two little tooth floss devices just for cleaning junk out of my teeth if i need to so i have no idea if all this gear is gonna fit i wouldn't be surprised if i had to leave one or two things out but we'll see what happens i'm gonna start with the mini survival tin and packing that full of first aid gear [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] well we got it all in there except for the poncho and the extra fuel tabs for the esbit stove so i'd say we did pretty good now of course i could have hung some gear off the webbing on the outside of the pack i also could have put a map in there but i didn't do that for now i'm gonna leave it as it is and maybe i'll come back to it later and make some changes you know as with all my survival kits this is not etched in stone it can and will evolve over time and get better anyway this has been the sc advanced survival kit an excellent survival kit made even better with the addition of some extra gear so i hope you enjoyed this video let me know what you think in the comments below for now that's it i'm eric siegel this is kit bashed survival thanks for watching and i'll see you next time all right so let's go ahead and unbox this thing i ordered this on amazon and it was shipped from michigan sports up in michigan obviously this kit runs just over 500 dollars oh yeah wanted one of these for so long oh yeah that's awesome

Channel: Kitbashed Survival

Views: 117,477

Rating: 4.8253012 out of 5

Keywords: Eric Siegel, Survival Kits, Survival, Outdoors, Bushcraft, First-Aid, Preparedness, Emergency, Prepper, Kitbashed Surival, Kitbashed, ESEE, Advanced, Advanced Survival Kit, Randall's, Izula, ESEE 4P, Knife, Mess Tin, Best Glide ASE, Fishing Kit, Mini Survival Tin, Petzl, Tikkina, Water, Fuel, Rope, Climbing, NDUR, space blanket, survival blanket, Combat Dressing, Israeli Bandagage, Straps, Backpack, Sling, Tarp, Paracord, Survival Cards, Light, SE survival kit, ESY

Id: 99NR-gu8Zqo

Length: 32min 31sec (1951 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020