Urban Survival Equipment - 5.11 Items and Equipment

5.11 Tactical is currently offering Free Shipping on all orders of only $75 or more. We are big fans of their Tactical Pants and the 5.11 Tactical Duty Uniform (TDU) pants. Although we have camouflage uniforms, clothing in solid colors is less likely to project that "para-military" look if you need to avoid it but still have a pastal or earth type colors that are easy to blend into your terrain, be it an urban, suburban or rural environment.

We evaluated the 5.11 Tactical Pants in a previous post, to review this evaluation click here.

We recently had a opportunity to evaluate the new 5.11 Rush 24 and Rush 72 Backpacks, intended for stays of 24 and 72 hours respectively. Both make nice Survival Bug Out Bags. We are showcasing the Rush 24 here. We prefer smaller bags for Bug Out bags and intend to utilize molle compatible add on pouches to store more Survival Items essential to a Bug Out on the outside. We think the Rush 72 is much more than a 72 hour pack, and really an excellent pack for extended operations of up to 6 or 7 days.

Rush 24 Bag

Description of the Rush 24:
20" H x 12" W x 7" D
Water-resistant 1050-denier nylon
Flexible main storage compartments
Internal dividers
Compression straps
Hydration pocket
Fleece lined eyewear pocket
Sternum straps
Molle-compatible webbing on front and sides
Elastic keeper for strap ends
Name tape and flag holder
YKK® zippers
Three colors; Black, Flat Dark Earth and Tac OD

To shop 5.11 Tactical or to look around their product line, click here:

Urban Survival Gear - 5.11 Tactical Pants

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received a comment from T. Jenkins asking for some ideas on what clothing items he and his group can wear, besides jeans, in the urban environment and not stand out but still be useable in the forests.

UrbanMan’s comments:

Jeans are good urban wear, my choice in jeans are Wranglers, and they come in different colors. Tan and Brown would be good colors for urban environments. The disadvantages with jeans are that they are limited in their pockets and are more or less designed for skinny Cowboys.

A great uniform that would not standout in urban or suburban environments would be the 5.11 Tactical Pants. These come in nine different colors: charcoal, black, grey, khaki, coyote brown, olive drab green, tundra (?), fire navy, sage and walnut. You are going to have to visit their site (link to the left) or at the bottom of this post, in order to see the colors. Wearing a common color of 5.11 pants would help attain what you may be looking for in a common survival group uniform item. Shown below are the Black 5.11 Tactical pants, faded from repeated washings.

These are great pants for urban survival wear. Made out of tough and durable 8.5 ounce cotton canvas, they have double thick seat and knees and are knee pad ready, and have 7 pockets. The rear pockets are huge and the leg cargo pockets are well sized. These are the choice of many Federal Law Enforcement agencies as a causal or training uniform.

5.11 also offers a Tactical Duty Uniform (TDU) pants made from 65% polyester and 35% cotton ripstop. We don’t like these pants near as well as the 5.11 Tactical Pants.

5.11 also offers a Tactical Vest called their VTAC (for Viking Tactics) Load Bearing Vest (LBE) Tactical Vest which is a Molle compatible vest that comes in 3 colors: black, flat dark earth and olive drab green. Our choice is the flat dark earth which is an earth brown color. They offer a wide range of pouches as well, from pistol and rifle magazine pouches to first aid kit pouches, to handgun holsters and many more, all which can be configured onto the VTAC LBE Tactical Vest using the Molle system. These are as high as quality a product as you can find, otherwise Viking Tactics would not have put their name on it. If we didn’t have our current decade old tactical rigs, we would be buying several of these.

Additionally, 5.11 offers a TacLite Pro Vest which is a 17 pocket photo journalist style vest, made from 65% poly 35% cotton ripstop that accommodates all sorts of gear like water bottles, binoculars, rifle magazines, etc. This TacLite pro Vest is cut long to conceal a handgun holster to your belt. Most of the members of our survival group have this vest or a similar vest in order to carry equipment in an urban environment without appearing to some militia group.

Visit the 5.11 website, click here, you’ll probably be surprised at the breadth of 5.11 products.