Category: Field Gear

Letter Re: American-Made Field Gear

Hola Mr. Rawles, ¿Qué tal? I enjoy your blog, and I appreciate what you are doing. In the latest daily edition I noticed the mention of SpecOps Brand gear as being high quality and American made. It is, and I have been very satisfied with all of the Spec-Ops brand gear I have had over the years. It is good stuff.  Their clearance section is just the icing on the cake. Are you also aware of the Tactical Tailor brand gear?  They are just outside of Fort Lewis, Washington.  It is designed and made in the USA, and it’s extremely …


Letter Re: Ireland Shipwreck Illustrates Some Preparedness Principles

Letter Re: Ireland Shipwreck Illustrates Some Preparedness Principles JWR: This news article: American crew members tell the story of their rescue off West Cork coast illustrates some preparedness principles. There are a lot of lessons in this story: (1) What will you be wearing [or “everyday carrying”] you when you’re tossed into a survival situation? (2) Experienced sailors caught short. Preparedness mindset? [Preparedness oversights] could be fatal. (3) In a group willing to help, but can’t be seen. Flare pens [should be] in an always-worn survival vest. (4) Rescued by Gooferment forces standing by. Who pays for that, and all the other, rescues? …


The Other BOB: The Bugout Bank, by Ron A.

There’s another Bug Out Bag (BOB) in the prepper family that you need to meet. It’s the Bug Out Bank, something that should be an addition to everyone’s G.O.O.D. plan. With the chaos going on in the financial world, and the uncertainty that goes hand-in-hand, the importance of this element of your plan can’t be overlooked. We all realize there’s a bad moon rising. Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture. It’s worse that it appears from up close. The official, underreported unemployment rate is hovering around 10%. The debt ceiling “fix” was done with masking …


Letter Re: Deal Hunting for Preparedness Items on eBay

Jim: The eBay online auction company has been around for many years and up until recently I had not been using it to get the incredible deals I should have been getting for years.  Much of the survival gear that a prepper needs is often highly durable and will last a life time, so buying them second hand on eBay is a wise choice. The first thing to consider is your List of Lists.  Consider what you need from reloading supplies, body armor, tactical gear, weapon accessories, clothing, or surplus goods.  Now make a list of key words that are …


Review of the Grover Rocket Stove, by F.J.B.

If you are a “prepper” in the same vein as I am, you look for equipment that is built to last. When a new product becomes available that looks to be substantially better than the one you have, you closet the old gear and purchase the new. This makes for a lot of closeted gear, but time is short and having gear that will last you a lifetime is a must. I have been using rocket stoves on and off over the last 30 years. On, when I’d have a new stove, and off, when the stove either rusted or …


Jim’s Product Review: Taylor Freelance Pistol Magazine Extensions

One of the drawbacks of owning an HK USP Compact .45 ACP is that the largest standard magazine for it holds just 10 rounds, and to date, none of the magazine makers produce anything larger. This puts the HK at a disadvantage to guns like the Glock Model 30. (Which can of course accept the longer Glock M21 magazines that hold 13 rounds.) Sadly, since they use substantially different frame form factors, the HK USP Compact .45s cannot accept the fatter HK full-size USP .45 ACP magazines, which are made up to 12 round capacity. But now, after a bit …


An Unconventional Training Opportunity: Short-Term Missions, by Nate C.

When it comes to training, there are many good avenues. Some choose (or are drafted) to serve in the military and take advantage of the training there, ranging from basic to advanced. Others get involved in Scouts. Some piece together opportunities like firearms training, wilderness survival and emergency medical courses. Still others learn through travel. There are many types of travel, and each teaches in a different way, if we choose to learn. A cruise with touristy ports-of-call probably isn’t much of an education, except in the gustatory sense, but foreign military service clearly can be. Not all of us …


Jim’s Product Review: 4,000+ Nights in a Wiggy’s Sleeping Bag

It has been nearly six years since I first posted my endorsement of Wiggy’s brand sleeping Bags, so the majority of SurvivalBlog readers have never read it. (As background: SurvivalBlog had only 9,377 unique visitors in August, 2005, but 287,665 last month.) So for the benefit of my newer readers, here is a re-post of that August, 2005 review: I don’t write many product reviews, but I am uniquely qualified to write this one: In November of 1994 I rolled my 1968 Bronco on black ice on a winding stretch of Highway 12 paralleling the Clearwater River in Idaho. In …


Letter Re: AR-7 Type .22 LR Survival Rifles

The debate on firearms manufacturers and caliber are endless, so each person must in the final assessment decide what works for them and theirs, having over 50 years of shooting, gunsmithing experience, and having taught firearms safety, I would like to offer a insight on a wonderful .22 rimfire rifle that is available from Henry Arms Company.  It is called the U.S. Survival Rifle .22. (A very appropriate name, for current conditions in this world).   I first owned a variant of this little rifle back in the 1980s when it was called the AR-7 and enjoyed the unique shooting and storage …


Letter Re: The Will to Act: Your Ultimate Bug-Out Kit

James Wesley: In follow-up to the mention of lights and headlamps in The Will to Act: Your Ultimate Bug-out Kit by R.B., I just thought I’d add that Fenix makes an excellent head mounting system for 1″ lights. It is a quality item, very good indeed.  What plastic headlamp is going to keep up with a 200 lumen light (or two), such as their equally excellent and very stout 2xAA-powered LD20? I have a handful of high-end Petzl headlamps, and while they’re very nice items, they fall rather short in output, durability, water resistance, and ultimately versatility to this setup.  …


Acquiring Hand Tools, by Calvinist Cadet in Washington

Primitive tasks require primitive tools.  When endeavoring to prepare for an extended grid-down or without rule of law scenario one would do well to have on hand a ready mix of equipment and supplies which can meet the challenges requisite to providing for basic needs.  Would-be survivalists often point to hypothetical situations when which they would gather water from some nearby source and make fire within there hastily crafted shelter beside their tilled, loamy garden bed, while butchering game, harvested casually in some illusionary, post-apocalyptic, Shangri-la. Without primitive or pioneer type tools, basic human functions can become impossible.  A simple …


The Will to Act: Your Ultimate Bug-out Kit by R.B.

Section One The Bug-Out Bag is an icon of the preparedness movement. The principle is well known and agreed upon: we may indeed have to pack-up and take flight to a more orderly, less hostile environment, intelligently. This would be either in anticipation of a great upheaval of social order or in its aftermath. How we will face the situation and deal with it is our part to play. Bug-out is an emergency measure, supplying us with a three-day margin for action: decisive action, evasive action, survivalist action or other salutary maneuvering. You must make an informed plan for your …


TEOTWAWKI Planning From the Perspective of a Former SF Operator, by SAV

When starting the process of preparation for TEOTWAWKI we must first plan for the most likely scenario that will cause the survival situation you are prepping for. When contemplating the TEOTWAWKI scenarios, one is confronted by a plethora of daunting challenges and theories from Magnetic pole reversal, getting hit by a rouge asteroid (don’t worry about this one Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis will save us) to solar flares knocking out technology, and the list continues.  My fear is that the end will not come from a major event but from a minor event that triggers a chain reaction of …


OPSEC When Traveling Abroad, by Picaro Actual

After reading Some Safety Advice for the U.S. Military (an Atlantic article linked from Odds ‘n Sods in the July 22, 2011 SurvivalBlog posts), I was compelled to finish part of something that I’ve written on for some time. While Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece specifically addresses military personnel and contractors, personal OPSEC is an absolute must for civilian travel abroad as well. On that note, I would also draw attention to Survival Blog reader O.P.’s SurvivalBlog article “Emergency Prep for Travelers” from June 27, 2011.  In brief, I’ve lived and worked outside the US for the past six years in several …


Bicycles for Bug Out Drayage, by Light Dragoon

There have been plenty of essays written on the art of “Bugging Out”, many of them concerning the various vehicles which the authors are fond of for every specific condition which one might face.  In particular, there are several good essays on the use of bicycles as “bug out” vehicles.  This note is going to be a bit different, for I’m not going to even consider the use of a bike as a mode of personal transportation, but rather as a “mule” for transporting one’s kit instead. There are plenty of bike options out there, and plenty of experts more …