prepping

The MSR Pocket Rocket | Your little camp dragon

Everyone has their preference when it comes to camp cooking. Some are completely kosher with an MRE; freeze dried food or some sort of protein and granola bars. Others take solace in the process of making a good, warm meal on the trail, out in the wild enjoying Mother Nature. There’s something to be said about hiking 12 miles a day and sitting down with your boots off while cooking some fajitas in your camp kitchen kit. Luckily there is someone to help you with that fine meal at the end of a long trek; the MSR Pocket Rocket.

This past week I spent 5 days out in the gorgeous Arizona desert overlooking Roosevelt lake with 3 of my very best friends from the Army. During the day we were off-roading in my buddies jeep till sunset so there was very little time in the morning to cook a proper breakfast. Well I’m not the one to skip breakfast out in the field, so out came the MSR Pocket Rocket and my stove-top kit from Winterial.

Preparing for these types of meals before you head out to the field is crucial to making your life easier. For breakfast I dice up some raw bacon or breakfast sausage with some potatoes, onions, peppers and keep them in a sandwich bag for each day. This way you can just dump the contents inside the small skillet and sauté away. Turning on the MSR Pocket Rocket reminded me of a fighter jets after burners being engaged at an air show. The burner puts out some serious heat that nearly causes you to worry that you’ll melt the pot over the burner. The new addition of the push-start Piezo Igniter worked the first time and every time thereafter. Flawless operating gives you the peace of mind when out in the field and builds the confidence you need in your gear.

MSR boasts’ that the Pocket Rocket can boil 1 liter of water in 3.3 minutes, and they’re not wrong. I think if you have a Titanium cook set it works faster due to the thinner alloy allowing the water to heat drastically faster. Regardless, I was incredibly impressed with how easy making French Press coffee became in the morning. Coming in at just 2.9oz, you can easily stuff this in a pocket or hang it off a belt loop and you would never notice the weight. It’s actually quite impressive to see the immense abilities of this petite device. Crazy to think that 20 years ago Coleman was making the massive propane burners with far less heat capabilities and minimal thought to packability.

A plate carrier for the big boys: AR500’s Testudo Gen 2 is a good pick for large frames

Plate carriers are among the most fiercely debated pieces of kit on the market today and it’s easy to see why. With so many options and prices that can range from thirty bucks to three hundred, just about everybody has an opinion on what you need for your purposes. Like most things, it’s been my experience that neither the cheapest nor the most expensive options on the market are right for most users, and what really matters is finding the kit that works best for you, rather than the one that’ll score you the most cool-guy points in the Tacticool subreddits.

AR500 offers a number of different kinds of plate carriers meant to meet various needs and budgets. I opted to review the Testudo Gen 2 because it can support both standard 10″ by 12″ ballistic plates as well as the larger 11″ by 14″ plates reserved for those of us that shop at Big and Tall outlets. I’m not as skinny as I was on active duty, so the Testudo also offers the added benefit of not making me look like a gorilla in a tank top.

I ran this carrier with plates provided to me by ShotStop that are among the lightest on the market, which when combined with the 3d webbing AR500 uses on most of the interior of this plate carrier, made running and gunning in the Georgia woods survivable even in June when the humidity is just north of what you’ll find in the Amazon rain forest. The combination of light weight and breathability made my range session not only tolerable, but as pleasant as Georgia summers can get.

At $160, this probably isn’t the right plate carrier for preppers that like to stockpile their gear but rarely run and gun in their kit. If, however, you’re a bigger dude that wears your plate carrier for work, the 3D webbing and good quality stitching make this an excellent choice. That same 3D webbing, however, can be pretty abrasive if you’re wearing a thin undershirt. I’d imagine that gets better over time, but at least so far, I’ve stuck to thick tee shirts and had no trouble.

You can get your own Testudo Gen 2 Plate Carrier from AR500 Armor here.

And you can get your own ShotStop Ballistic plates here.

Stanford Outdoor Supply’s B.O.S.S. Survival Kits are basically everything you could need in a bad situation and more

I’ve always had a love and hate relationship with all-in-one kits geared toward survival. One the one hand, I love the convenience of having a curated collection of gear assembled in one place for one easy purchase, but on the other hand, I’m really particular about exactly what it is that I like to carry when I’m in the field. Because most all-in-one kits are designed to cram as much cheap gear as possible into a small, marketable package, they tend to have a disposable feel to them… as though what you’re really purchasing is a mix of novelty and peace of mind, but not necessarily something you could really count on in a bind.

That why I was so interested in putting some of Stanford Outdoor Supply’s kits through their paces. There’s a B.O.S.S. kit for just about any situation you might find yourself in, meaning Stanford Outdoor Supply doesn’t expect you to buy into the idea that they can give you one little pouch that’ll solve all of your survival woes as other companies are often so eager to promise. Instead, each pouch comes with a specifically selected collection of tools and equipment aimed directly at a specific task or situation. In the world of survival, “one size fits all” really only counts for snow caps and shoe laces.

With so many options to choose from, you really don’t have to worry about being stuck with gear you don’t need.

I was impressed at the variety of kits Stanford Outdoor Supply offered, so I reached out to them directly. To my delight, I soon found myself interacting directly with Alan Stanford, who loaded the whole B.O.S.S. product line in a crate and sent it my way for me to spend some time banging through the gear and getting a sense of just how useful these kits can be.

For a few months now, I’ve been incorporating these kits into hikes, road trips, and the sorts of general outdoor trouble I manage to get myself into through the course of other gear reviews. To my delight, the gear included in these kits is easy to access and pretty resilient to abuse. Of course, many of these products aren’t intended to serve as your EDC for the next couple of decades — they’re meant to be convenient sources of the stuff you’d need in a bad situation. So far, I haven’t had any of the gear I’ve tried out feel flimsy or break through use.

It’s not all just useful gear. The land navigation kit includes everything you’d need — including a U.S. Army handbook on how to use the stuff, just in case you’ve never had the pleasure of going through combat training.

One of the best things about these kits are the resealable bags that they come in — and I’m as surprised as anyone to say that. Initially, I thought the bags would be nothing but a cumbersome bit of decoration I’d need to hack through in order to get what I needed. Instead, I’ve found that they’re malleable enough to be crammed into most packs with ease. On the occasion that I only want to grab a few pieces of gear out of a kit, they pop open just like a zip lock bag and close again just easily — allowing me to maintain a semblance of organization amid my ever-growing library of gear I’ve collected over the years.

Many of the kits also have clear backs so you can see what’s in them before you pop them open.

I’m also really pleased with the variety of kits offered — many of which are kits I haven’t seen marketed by many other suppliers. The 22-piece shelter building kit, for instance, has everything you need to build a luxury home in woods (at least compared to how I usually camp) and stowed easily in my 3-day pack despite my concerns about how tight that pack is starting to get.

It includes:

84×84″ OD Green waterproof tarp
6 Aluminum Guyline Tensioners
50′ 550 Paracord
6 Aluminum Tent Stakes
1 Mylar Emergency Blanket
1 Plastic Ground Cover
8 8″ zip ties
1 folding saw

The included saw is surprisingly rugged and made short work of dry wood for a fire.

Despite owning a plethora of IFAKs, first aid kits, trauma kits, and old surgical kits, their 12-piece Break and Sprain Kit doesn’t take up a ton of space and offers a number of first aid essentials my collection of other kits leave out. Things like a 24″ padded aluminum splint and finger splints would have come in handy over the years, as many of my most common field and shop injuries have included breaking my fingers and, on more than one occasion, a wrist.

Then there are the smaller, and I’d contend handier, kits like the Pocket Runner’s Aid Kit that’s got everything you need to make your trip back from the halfway point a bit more tolerable. Anti-chafing gel may not be something you often think of as a necessity, but chafing is not only a great way to make a hike or run miserable, it can become a serious concern in a survival situation – both in terms of limiting mobility and the threat of infection.

With first aid kits of varying sizes, you can easily stash them in your day pack or even diaper bag.

Other kits, like the 127-piece fishing and hunting kit, has so much function that I’ve yet to really see all of what it can do. To be frank, there’s so much great gear to be found in these kits, this is really just the first of a number of pieces you’ll see featured on this site discussing the various ways Stanford Outdoor Supply can make you better prepared for whatever you may find yourself facing.

Even the fire starting kits are jam packed with enough gear to make starting a fire in just about any condition a breeze.

These B.O.S.S. kits really do address both of my primary concerns regarding the “one stop shop” kits many other vendors peddle. Because they’re resealable and easy to pack, I can be just as picky as ever about what gear I carry with me, and I can even come home from the trails and sort whatever I’ve picked out back into the appropriate kits for easy organization. Further, because Stanford Outdoor Supply offers such a variety of specialized kits, you don’t need to break the bank to get exactly what you need for the types of situations you run into. Whether you’re looking for a little peace of mind while out for a jog, you’re in the market for an all-encompassing trunk of survival gear, or anywhere in between — Stanford Outdoor Supply has a kit that’ll do just what you need.

You can find their kits on Stanford Outdoor Supply’s website at prices starting at just a couple of bucks.

The Seventy2 Survival Pack: Real World Experience

All you have to do is watch the news for a few minutes to be reminded that disaster and chaos can happen anywhere and at anytime. Most experts say that the first 72 hours after the event are the most critical, where food, water and shelter will be in high demand and short supply. The team at The Uncharted Supply Company took this to heart when they designed their Seventy2 Survival System Backpack. This 48-liter pack holds all a person needs to survive the 72 hours.

The fact I’m writing this just 24 hours after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake rocked my home here in Alaska, I put the Seventy2 pack to use immediately let me know very quickly that this pack is no joke when it comes to a 72-hour essentials pack. We always get to test the gear we get but it’s not usually during what would become a federally declared natural disaster.

What the Pack is and What it Isn’t

Defining emergency packs can be a tricky business, and a lot of that comes with expectation management. So we thought the best thing would be to start out with trying to define what this pack is intended for and what it is not intended for. This pack is not a pack that you would use for 72 hours in a combat zone or a World War Z style pandemic. It’s not meant to be a molle filled ramboesque pack for sentry duty or defense contractors. This pack is almost ideally suited to be kept in your office or in your car as a part of a get home bag.

The team at Uncharted Supply Company really looked into building this pack and wanted to make sure it was full of gear that would work and for the most part they really got it right. Let’s take a closer look at what they did right and what I think they can put a little more work into.

Good Points:

The 48-liter shell is waterproof and blends well into urban settings.
Seams glued and won’t leak anytime in the near future
Supply insert containing eight pouches worth of gear works very well
Instructions and tips are color coded and broke into four easy to comprehend areas: Shelter, Medical, Food, and Other Useful Info
Everything fits easily into well-labeled pouches
Gear that actually works in the real world. The gloves, hat, water filtration by Sawyer and weather radio are all excellent quality
Simple Design

Points for Improvement:

Straps on 48L shell good use some beefing up
Entrenching tool isn’t up to moderate use. This is the only piece of the kit that I thought should be replaced.

Detailed List of Contents of The Uncharted Supply Company Seventy 2:

Electronics:

Weather Radio
LED Flashlight

Air & Vision:

Safety Goggles
RZ M5 Filtration Mask

Food & Water:

Datrex Rations
Sawyer Water Filter with 2 Liter Pouch
44 oz Nalgene Water Bottle

Illumination:

LED Flashlight
Waterproof Matches
Glowsticks
Magnesium Fire Starter

First Aid:

First Aid Kit
Splint
Sunscreen
Anti bacterial Wipes

Tools:

Multitool
Duct Tape
Paracord -100 Ft
Entrenching Tool
Fixed Blade Knife

Warmth:

Lined Latex Gloves (Hi Viz Yellow)
Knit Hat
Hand Warmers
Mylar Space Blanket
Mylar Survival Tent

Real World Performance 30 November 2018

8:29 AM Alaska Time I found myself being thrown around my garage and my house by a solid 7.2 magnitude earthquake with a series of 5.0-5.9 aftershocks in the first hour I was awake. One of the first things I grabbed after my latern and a rifle was this pack. I dropped it on the kitchen table and told my wife to crack it open and see what was in it. That was my baptism of fire with The Uncharted Supply Company and their products. So how did it work?

The pack works very well for the right user group, a group I would say that has little to no experience with preparedness in general terms. The few shortcomings that I listed above would not stop me from recommending a person who is just looking for a grab and go survival bag. A person who wants a level of preparedness but is unwilling or incapable of wanting to put much time into the process.

This bag has a little bit of everything in it and the components, for the most part, are high quality and will satisfy most users needs. I would recommend replacing the entrenching tool and replacing it with a better model or perhaps leave it out and add another piece of gear. Not everyone will need to dig a defensive fighting position or a cat hole so the E-Tool isn’t a necessity for most users. A flashlight upgrade might also be something to consider, I prefer a little larger flashlight than what comes with the Seventy 2 kit.

The Seventy2 Survival Kit is currently on sale for $275.00 on The Unchartered Supply Company website. This price has recently been marked down from the regular retail price of $349.99. The company’s website also includes a listing to replacement components and other gear that the company offers allowing you to customize your own pack if you get the urge. Check out this video to get a better idea of what the Seventy 2 can do for your preparedness needs.

How to Survive Anything: Be prepared for an inbound hurricane

Hurricane season on the Atlantic coast usually runs from the beginning of June to the end of November. So far this season, we’ve been fortunate to only see on full scale hurricane and a hand full of tropical storms meander their way toward shore. However, as history has shown, it only takes one serious storm to cripple an entire region of the nation.

If you find yourself in a hurricane’s path, there are a few things you can do around the house to help minimize your risks while you wait out the storm, as well as to help better position you for success once the storm is over… But remember, the best thing you can do to prepare for a hurricane is to get clear of the storm well before it makes landfall.

Stock up on non-perishable foods well ahead of time
Cover windows with plywood (use wood screws, not nails)
Store loose gear indoors or tie it down
Survey your property for trees or tree limbs that look like they could come down. If possible, deal with them ahead of time. If not, avoid rooms in the house near those threats.
Make sure you know how to turn off the gas, electricity, and water in your home.
Put together some water storage
Shelter in an interior room, away from any windows.

My disaster preparedness secret weapon: Hydrogen Peroxide

When putting together a disaster plan, it’s important to prioritize human needs in the way that you prepare. To put together a solid short-term survival plan, you need only to address the most basic of human necessities: water, shelter, food, and security, but as short-term survival transitions into “well I guess this is what’s left of the world now,” it’s important to have a plan in place that can help you get by a bit longer than just the first few days after a disaster.

While ensuring you have adequate food and water will prevent death from hunger or dehydration, it’s important to remember that those are often the very easiest forms of death to avoid. We worry about supply lines drying up after the collapse of our infrastructure for good reason, but humans have been surviving without grocery stores and running faucets for millennia… what tends to kill us in such situations often isn’t a lack of food, but rather a lack of hygiene.

Enter my favorite survival item: hydrogen peroxide. Most of us are familiar with the brown bottle of bubbling goodness from our childhoods, when our mothers would pour a bit of the elixir onto our scraped knees to disinfect it before armoring the wound with a Batman band-aid and providing an emergency booboo-kiss for pain relief. While wound care is certainly one of the things hydrogen peroxide is good to have around for, it’s far from the only thing.

In order to discuss some of the other important uses for the magic brown bottle, I’m going to have to delve into some of the health issues that may impact a person in an extended survival scenario; some of which are likely to sound gross, but it’s important to plan for potential health hazards other than gunshot wounds and zombie bites, because dying of an infection all by yourself will leave you just as dead as the sexier alternatives we see on TV.

Hydrogen Peroxide for Mouth Care

I’m not normally one to close my eyes during a rough scene in a movie – but watching Tom Hanks remove an infected tooth with an ice skate in “Cast Away” was tough for me. I don’t like going to the dentist, let alone the idea of serving as my own using bits of trash I found on a beach, but I have to credit the movie for including an element of survival that is often ignored in movies and television: dental hygiene.

An infected tooth is a serious issue. If left unchecked, and infection can spread throughout your body, possibly even killing you without antibiotic treatment. Beyond that, an infected tooth can make eating an excruciating endeavor and can serve as a serious distraction when you need to keep your wits about you. If at all possible, one should avoid having to do their own oral surgery, and hydrogen peroxide can help.

That same brown bottle you use on cuts and scrapes is also a FDA approved mouth wash. Pouring a mix of hydrogen peroxide and water into your mouth and swishing it around once in a while may not give you the same fresh breath you’d get from a tooth-brush and a new tube of Crest Whitening, but it could keep the bacteria in your mouth from going rogue and rotting you from the inside out. Keeping your teeth intact will keep you eating, and hydrogen peroxide can help stave off infections and even cavities.

Hydrogen Peroxide to Fight Fungus

Athlete’s foot and other fungal infections of the hands and feet can be serious trouble for the long-term survivor. The reduction in available means of hygiene that may come after a disaster could leave you more vulnerable to this sort of ailment, and yet again, hydrogen peroxide can help kill the fungus causing itching and burning on your extremities.

Perhaps more important though, is hydrogen peroxide’s ability to combat yeast infections. While we tend to think of such things as a uniquely female issue, and in today’s world, we even see it as more of an inconvenience than a matter of life and death, developing a yeast infection in a survival setting is bad news and must be addressed.

Hydrogen Peroxide is safe to be used as a douche for women suffering from a yeast infection after the stores have long stopped stocking Monistat, and can be used externally for men suffering from the same ailment. Didn’t know men could get yeast infections? They absolutely can – and the resulting itching, burning and open sores could lead to any number of further infections, or simply leave you too distracted to handle your day-to-day survival needs with the level of focus they require. Hydrogen peroxide will not work as well as traditional anti-fungal medications, but as a multi-use tool, it’s good to know that you can keep the swamp-rot off your fingers and toes as well as out of your underoos with the same bottle you keep around for wound care and oral hygiene. I’d just recommend cleaning the spout before switching between uses (just kidding, do not put the spout inside any part of you, use a different means of application).

Hydrogen Peroxide for Cleaning (everything)

If you wear contact lenses, hydrogen peroxide and water can be used to clean them between uses – extending the life of your contacts and possibly your ability to see if you don’t have access to your glasses. It can also be used to clean food containers and utensils, water carriers, or even cooking surfaces to kill things like salmonella.

You can also use a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water to clean and disinfect your clothes. A clean pair of undies may not sound like the most important thing after the end of the world, but remember, we haven’t evolved to prefer the smell and touch of clean things for no reason. Cleaning your clothes will help prevent skin irritations and even infections. In fact, using hydrogen peroxide to clean your underwear could prevent you from having to using hydrogen peroxide to treat a yeast infection in the first place.

Hydrogen Peroxide for Farming

In a long-term survival situation, cultivating your own food may be a necessity, but if you weren’t blessed with a green thumb, you’ll likely need all the help you can get in order to turn your little garden into something that’ll feed your family. Believe it or not, hydrogen peroxide can also help you start to grow your own food.

Adding a small bit of hydrogen peroxide to the water you pour on your plants can help fertilize the soil, prevent mold and mildew from developing, and even help an ailing plant regain its health. Soaking seeds in water that contains a small amount of hydrogen peroxide will even make them germinate faster. It’s important to use the correct amount of hydrogen peroxide however, otherwise it could kill your plants before they have a chance to grow. Check out this chart to help you determine how much peroxide you should mix with water for various agricultural needs.

These handy uses for the old brown bottle in your medicine cabinet are far from all of the ways hydrogen peroxide can benefit a disaster victim attempting to transition from short-term to long-term survival. I highly recommend doing some research and attempting to use hydrogen peroxide for things like oral hygiene once or twice before the world comes crashing down on you.

And maybe grab an extra bottle or two of the stuff the next time you go shopping. Just in case.