Urban Survival Tools - Knives re-visited

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received the following comment: "Anonymous said.....Hey Urban Survival Skills. Thanks for the education. Do you have a Survival Knife recommendation? If so you can write about it on this web site?"

I have written an earlier post on tactical folding knives, you can see it here. In that post I favor the Columbia River Knife and Tool products, because they are both well made and inexpensive. I own several of them. I own one Benchmade tactical folder as well.

However, the knives I mostly carry each and every day are fixed blade knives. The advantage of fixed blades knifes are they are usually stronger, available for one handed use, and you eliminate the opening the blade sequence which often leads to sliced fingers. Sliced fingers in a Survival environment may mean infection which most of us could not afford with reduced available medical services and anti-biotics.

I carry a couple of custom fixed blades. For off the shelf fixed blades knives, I would recommend two types: one with a small, say 2.5 to 3 inch blade used primarily as a utility knife and a longer 5 to 7.5 inch blade to be used as a field knive.

Ontario Knives, makes a RAT-3 knife, 3 inch fixed blade, full tang, micarta handles with suits my needs. Another choice would be the Gerber LMF-II Infantry fixed blade. I have seen the Gerber LMF-II but have never used one.

For the larger knife I have both a SOG Specialty Knives SEAL Pup Elite, with a 4.85 inch blade, which is just a hair too short as a primary field knife especially when you carry a smaller fixed blade. My primary field knife is the excellent SOG Specialty Knives Agency Hardcase, which is designed like a Randall Model 1 Fighting Knife and has a 7.5 inch blade. Both SOG knives use AUS8 Stainless steel for the blades.

You can see these knives by clicking here

Wilderness Survival Task List

I have a couple of people who routinely talk to me, face to face, about Survival Preparation. Sometimes the discussion becomes one of training and skill sets, rather than Survival Gear and Equipment procurement, that would be necessary to survive in really decayed circumstances. Think The Road scenario.

Aside from having some Survival Reference material like the excellent US Army Survival Field Manual or John Wiseman’s SAS Survival books, the prepared Survivor needs to have some practical skills learned through hands on training.

In order to be able to survive various environments without the advantage of a prepared Survival location, stockpiled food and such, the prepared Survivalists should consider the below tasks list as a template on what field Survival skills would give him or her the best chance of surviving a decayed environment or wilderness type survival scenario.

These are what I think of as the Wilderness Survival Skills Tasks List:

* Build a field expedient shelter
* Procure/produce potable water
* Construct a water filter device
* Build a fire using matches, butane lighter
* Identify edible plants and prepare for food
* Identify poisonous plants
* Identify poisonous animal life
* Build a trap or snare
* Prepare an animal (field clean and quarter) and cook over a fire
* Build and employ field expedient fishing means
* Build a fire using matches, butane lighter
* Construct field expedient hunting/food procurement tools
* Utilize camouflage and concealment methods to minimize compromise/capture
* Use field expedient methods to determine direction; stick and sun shadow and watch method
* Define Terrain Features
* Determine position on a map using terrain association
* Read map margin information
* Determine magnetic azimuths using a compass
* Determine grid azimuths on a map
* Utilize G-M angle and convert grid azimuths to magnetic azimuths and vice versa
* Determine distances on a Map

I would be interested to hearing from my readers about what skills they think I forgot or what skills are important to them.

Uurban Survival - General Douglas McArthur Speaks To Us From The Grave

General Douglas MacArthur of World War II Philippines and later Korean War fame was a very insightful man. Here are just a couple of quotes from him. I know what they mean to me.....what do they mean to you?

“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within."

“The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself."

"The history of failure (of war) can almost be summed up in two words:......... ......too late....
Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy,
Too late in realizing mortal danger,
Too late in preparedness,
Too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance,
and,
Too late in standing with one's friends."

Don't be what Gen MacArthur warned us about,...too late in preparedness.

The Day of the Collapse - What do you buy with a $1000

With my respects to www.nobullshitsurvival.com, I am re-creating a question posed on one of it's threads.

Here is the scenario: You are who are you, with all the survival preps, survival gear and equipment that you really have right at this moment.

It's Friday afternoon and you are coming back from you linear income producing day job. Your pull into the gas station to get fuel and notice a line of cars waiting to fill up. Tempers are blaring, horns are honking, and people seemed pretty stressed out.

You park off to the side and go inside the convenience store part of the gas station where you hear customers in arguments with the clerks. "Whadda you mean you can't take a credit card?", "Sir, my boss said no more credit cards - inflation is so high by tomorrow he'll be losing money on the transaction",....... "How come you won't take a check?", "Sorry sir, my boss said no checks, only cash."...."But your ATM here is broken and won't give out cash." "Hey, that's odd, both the ATM's I checked on my way home from work were not working either."

You get spooked and head home, on the way the radio states that that the Federal Government ordered banks not to open on Monday, and when they do open, people will be limited to a $200 withdrawal per week, until runaway inflation can be curbed.

You are now thinking, this is it. This is what I have prepared for, hoping it will not happen, but being prudent enough to prepare. Your neighbor is waiting for you as you pull into your drive way. He knows that you are one of those "Survival Preppers." You tell him that you think that it will only be a short amount of time until cash loses it's value and/or commodities will become scare. Your neighbor tells you that he has $1000 in cash and wants your suggestions on what he should buy. He pulls out a notebook and pencil,.....what do you tell him to buy with that $1000?

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com will be giving away a piece of survival kit, haven't decided yet, but it will be either a Camel-Bak H2O Bag or a Maxpedition Pack to the $1000 purchase list we like the best. Send an e-mail, with your version of the $1000 shopping list you would recommend to your neighbor, to me at urbanman@urbansurvivalskills.com
. Put your list in the text body of the e-mail and not as an attachment. You can also post your list as a comment under this post. Closing date for lists is midnight, Central Time, 30 June 2010. I'll post the winner, on this site, on 4 July 2010.

This is what I would tell my neighbor to buy with the $1000:

Fill up your vehicle and all empty fuel cans you have. Cost $80

Buy 200 lbs of wheat bran ($40) at the local Animal Feed Store and pick up two 50ml bottles of injectible Penicillin ($40); and, needles/syringes ($20);

100 lbs of rice ($125?); 100 lbs of pinto beans ($150?); Salt, Bullion Cubes, Garlic ($60);

more vegetable Seeds - Squash, Beans, Onions, Corn, Beets, Egg Plants, Cucumber ($80);

Bottled, water, preferably in the cheaper one gallon bottles ($40);

Clothing - jeans, socks, shirts ($100); hand tools - shovel and ax ($30);

flashlights, lanterns, re-charger and batteries ($100);

Duct tape, Alcohol, gauze pads, bandages, aspirin, bar soap and butane lighters ($100);

then probably $35 worth of Macaroni and Cheese:} Seriously, you can sometimes buy 5 boxes of Mac and Cheese for $1 - $35 would buy 175 boxes.

My reasoning is that my neighbor, for better or worse, will most likely become part of my survival group. With maybe one or two days left of "out in the open procurement", I want him to primarily procure some non-durable items, such as foods, so he won't become a burden on my Survival Stocks. If I need to I can outfit him with a rifle and ammunition, and even train him, if need be, to be asset for our security and defense.