← Survival Curiosity gear

Field school — how to use the kit

Gear only counts if you've used it before the day you need it. Six short skills, one per piece of kit — practice each in the backyard first. Educational only: in a real emergency, call for rescue first, improvise second.

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Fire
Fire

Ferro rod: it's the angle, not the effort

How to actually get a spark to catch
  1. Prep first, spark last. A thumb-sized nest of dry, fluffy tinder — shredded bark, cotton ball, feather stick curls. The spark is 5,500 °F for a fraction of a second; it needs something that catches instantly.
  2. Scrape at ~45°, slow and hard. Press the striker into the rod and push down its full length. One deliberate scrape beats ten fast ones.
  3. Hold the rod an inch above the tinder and pull the rod back against the striker instead of pushing the striker forward — your hand won't smash the nest.
  4. Feed the flame like it's shy: pencil-lead twigs, then pencils, then thumbs. Jumping sizes is how fires die.

Practice on a driveway on a calm day before it's cold, wet, and mandatory.

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Water
Water

Make wild water safe

Filter, boil, or tablets — when to use which
  1. Filter (Sawyer-style): squeeze through, drink. Handles bacteria and protozoa. Backflush it at home, and never let a wet filter freeze — ice cracks the fibres invisibly and it stops protecting you.
  2. Boil: one minute at a rolling boil (three above ~2,000 m) deals with everything biological. Costs fuel, works when gear fails.
  3. Tablets: follow the packet wait time — usually 30 minutes, up to 4 hours for cold, murky water. Slowest, lightest, never breaks.
  4. Source matters: moving beats still, clear beats cloudy, upstream of camps and livestock beats downstream. Treatment reduces risk — it doesn't excuse a bad source.

None of these remove chemical contamination — skip water near mines, farms, and roads.

Get the Sawyer Mini → Shop tablets →
Navigation
Navigation

Compass basics that get you home

The one skill: follow a bearing back
  1. Before you walk in, take a back-bearing: face the road or trail you came from, point the direction-of-travel arrow at it, twist the bezel until the needle sits in the orienting arrow. That number is your way out.
  2. To follow it later: hold the compass flat at your chest, turn your whole body until the red needle sits back in the arrow ("red in the shed"), and walk where the direction arrow points.
  3. Walk object to object — sight a distinctive tree on your bearing, walk to it, sight the next. Detours around deadfall stop mattering.
  4. Trust the needle over your gut. Lost people feel certain and are wrong; the magnet has no opinion and is right.

Keep the compass away from your phone and anything magnetic while you sight.

Get the compass →
Signal
Signal

Whistle code: three of anything

Fox 40 & the international distress signal
  1. Three blasts = help needed. Three of anything — whistle blasts, light flashes, fires — is the international distress signal. One blast reads as noise; three, a pause, three again reads as a person.
  2. Blast hard, about three seconds each, then stop and listen for a full minute. Rescuers answer; echoes don't.
  3. Save your voice. A pealess whistle carries roughly a kilometre and works for hours; shouting is gone in twenty minutes.
  4. Stay put once you signal. A stationary target is found many times faster than a moving one.

Teach kids: three blasts, then stay where you are. It's the cheapest rescue plan there is.

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Shelter
Shelter

The bivvy goes around you, not over you

Emergency bivvy & blanket, done right
  1. Get off the ground first — boughs, a pack, a rope coil, anything. The ground takes heat faster than the air does.
  2. Climb inside the bivvy, don't drape it. It works by trapping a layer of your own warmed air and reflecting radiant heat — a loose sheet flapping in wind does neither.
  3. Seal it to your neck, keep your mouth outside — breathing inside soaks the layer with condensation, and wet kills the insulation.
  4. Add calories if you have them. The bivvy only keeps heat you make; food is the furnace.

These are one-use items in practice — tears and stretched foil are fine, that's what it was for. Replace it after.

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Wildlife
Wildlife

Bear horn: early, not close

Using noise before it's an encounter
  1. The horn's real job is prevention: a blast when entering dense brush, berry patches, or noisy-creek sections announces you — most encounters end before they start because the bear left first.
  2. If you see a bear that hasn't seen you: don't use it. Back away quietly the way you came.
  3. If it has seen you: group up, talk low and calm, back away slowly. Short horn blasts if it keeps approaching. Never run — running flips the chase switch.
  4. Carry bear spray too where legal — it's the proven charge-stopper; the horn is the keep-your-distance tool. (Sold locally, not on Amazon.ca.)

Food storage beats every gadget: cook away from camp, hang or canister everything scented.

Get the bear horn →