Out in the Cold - Using the body's heat generation

In the last blog post I talked about the most important ingredient needed to survive and not only to survive but to enjoy the cold, and that is an attitude of hope. This is made possible by preparation, which engenders confidence. Today I want to talk further about the body and it's reaction to cold, and how to use what we know about the body to preserve it.

There are things that happen as the body functions that are important to know about. One of these is that the body generates heat as a by-product of metabolism or work. Since there is a narrow band of acceptable body temperatures (96 deg F to 101 deg F), excess heat must be removed to prevent overheating. 

In  conditions where air temperature is below 77 deg F the body must conserve part of the heat to prevent excessive cooling (hypothermia). The idea then, where temperatures are low, is to capture and retain as much of this body heat as possible. If enough heat cannot be retained, then outside heat, such as fire, must be applied to prevent hypothermia, It is best to rely on heat generated by the body, it is more dependable than a fire or stove. Fires and stoves are not practical in blizzards.

It is best to make gear to insulate effectively and use body heat to create a micro-climate inside this protective clothing. We use the term thermal self-sufficiency to describe the idea of using the body's heat generating capacity to maintain it's core temperature at an appropriate level. Only with properly constructed clothing can this be done. Thus clothing becomes one of the most significant survival items one can possess. 

In upcoming blog posts I will talk about, A) retaining body generated heat, B) how to keep the "furnace" stoked up, and C) other uses of the heat generated by the body. In all we seek to utilize all heat energy, trying not to waste any of it if possible.

Meanwhile keep an eye on our videos on YouTube for further information, WI videos

Introduction to Winter Clothing Series

We have started the series on Winter Camping and Survival on YouTube with several introductory videos, showing the use of the foam hat and mittens even when soaked in ice water. The series will continue showing all the elements of clothing and sleeping gear and it's proper use. We will also show how to manufacture the items. In addition there will be training on food, water, and psychological preparation.

What follows here is an overview of our cold weather system, Part 1 Introduction.

Man, to survive, must provide for himself, a few essentials. An area immediately around the body must be maintained within certain limits, a micro climate, if you will.

Animals, unlike man, are very well suited for survival in a wide variety of circumstances. Seals can swim in very cold water. Caribou are able to withstand severe winter conditions. In contrast, man, naked, can become hypothermic at temperatures lower than 77 deg F. The advantage that man possesses, intelligence and reason, can more than make up for the physical deficiences.

Perhaps the ingredient most important in survival, would be an attitude of hope. The ability to think clearly, coupled with confidence, provide the best opportunity to successfully resolve most difficulties.

The Survival System for Adverse Weather that we talk about is designed to meet the above conditions. When a person has made a System and then begins to use it, a confidence begins to build, in the ability to deal with conditions that may arise.

When a person has made, with his own hands, the articles of the System, a feeling of accomplishment develops. This feeling gives an assurance of being better able to withstand, or even to enjoy, occurrences of foul weather. The primary reason for this System being successful, is that it works!

The Off Road Survival Kit

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

The Off Road Survival Kit

View more presentations from Wilderness Innovation.

Off-Road Kit Item Veiw

(Click here to see a larger view)

The featured picture here is a posterized view of the kit in it's and photos of each piece. The kit bag is heavy duty cordura with D rings and velcro straps for attachment. A highlight of the contents going clockwise starting at upper left:

Victorinoix Swiss Army Knife Camper/Hiker series - 11 features, including 2 blades, wood saw, drill/reamer/awl, can opener, and tweezers. Has a lifetime warranty.

GSI stainless steel cup - with folding handles, 16 oz, tough enough to take much abuse. Start a small fire and slide it right into the fire or onto the coals, works great.

The Wilderness Innovation FireStarter Kit - We have described this in detail in earlier posts, but briefly it is a Doan magesium fire starter bar with integrated ferrocerium spark rod, attached to the bar is a stretch lanyard (our exclusive) holding the striker blade, 20 feet of wax paper for scraping the shavings into, wax cord for extending burn time, and all contained in a cordura case with 2 pockets, belt loop and D ring.

LED light - compact flat design, bright, 16 - 20 hour burn time

550 Parachute Cord - Military spec, nylon jacket, 7 strands inside that are removable for other uses, 25 foot. Use for making shelter, lures, snares, lashings

Tabs - 4 tabs with see through stretch fabric containing all the small items in the kit in an organized manner, first aid kit, bandages, gauze, antibiotic ointments, pain relievers, cleansers, itch relief, moleskin, sewing kit, pins, etc. The tabs make it easy to retrieve and store the small items.

Lip Balm - avoid cracked bleeding lips, ears, and nose

Plastic sheet - for making a solar still, or a catch basin for rainwater, or extracting moisture from leaves and other green matter.

Duck tape - 8 feet of this versatile material, its uses limited only by your imagination. Use for reinforcing or repairing tarp, poncho or clothing, shoes etc.

Whistle/compass/magnifier - the first one of these I had was from Silva, now they are marketed under many names. durable sturdy design, loud whistle.

Nalgene bottle - 32 oz HDPE, tough design I have some of these bottles from the early 80's still working fine.

Poncho - light weight, reasonable for protecting against rain soaking you. can be slit open to use in waterproofing a roof, can be used as a catch basin.

Space Blanket - reasonably sturdy for use reflecting body heat back into you, also can be used as a tarp by reinforcing attachment points with Duck Tape, also makes a great heat reflector for a fire.

Fish hooks with leader - use is obvious for fishing, attach to inner strand of Para Cord to make longer line. can also be baited and used to snare ground animals or fowl.

Poster Draft Copy

---Rough Draft poster----

I'm working on poster style page that will highlight the ways the Off-Road Kit can be carried, which is one of the nice features of that kit. The photo illustrates what I am working towards, but I need some additional pictures showing it in use, and with other people besides me. I want to show the kit attached to various things with carabiners, strapped to things such as snowmobile, ATV, dirt bike; personal carry with shoulder strap; and perhaps some kind of creative other idea, I'm open to suggestions....

Jacob and Angie are in Guatamala on a humanitarian aid trip and will have some photos of the kit when they return. Jen has volunteered, as soon as I get her a kit, she has a proto 1 of the RealSurvival Kit currently.

I have to learn how to do photoshop type stuff to illustrate all I want to on these kits, I'm not too saavy with that currently, I just want to go, click, click, click and it's done, haha, but that's not the way it works!! I did this poster with Picassa Collage, saved that as a photo, then used Paintshop Pro to add arrows and text, kinda crude now, but I'll learn it :)

More fun in the works...

I'm getting ready to start teaching survival classes soon, I will have several different classes, and not just wilderness type survival, but urban. Also I am going to incorporate Emergency Preparedness into training, since that is something there is a lot of interest in. I'm soon going to be teaching a class on that in Springville.

More Info on the Off-Road Survival Kit

Well after about 6 weeks of crazyness, vacations, family reunions, marriage and all, we're getting back into the groove and getting ready for marketing the kit. I'm working on some brochures and a good way to easily see what's in the kit and compare that with recommendations from such places as the military, and other survival experts.

I think we are going to market the kit and other accessories on our own website with a paypal checkout. This way we have more control over how the site is structured. I want to be able to provide lots of information about the products, and most of the canned sites are limited in this regard. There is also another survival website interested in carrying the kits, where we will drop ship for them.

In the long term scheme of things the Off-Road Survival Kit, the RealSurvival Kit, the FireStarter Kit are just the beginning of our efforts, these are all part of layer 1 in a 3 layer survival kit. Layer 1 is what you carry on your person or with you in or on your vehicle, ie. Car, truck, boat, airplane, snowmobile, ATV, mountain bike, dirt bike, etc. Layer 2 is an expansion of Layer 1, adding more First Aid components, some additional tools such as a folding saw, a heavy duty fixed blade knife. Layer 3 adds even more capability in added First Aid, tarp, food and water gathering, etc. Layer 1 is the lighter weight personal items that are considered essential, the RealSurvival Kit contains these items, the Off-Road Kit adds a little bit more to this with the cooking cup and water bottle.

Off-Road RealSurvival Kit for Mountain Bikes

Here are some photos of the new Off-Road RealSurvival Kit mounted on a mountain bike. This works very well, it's out of the way and very secure. I really like this mount as I don't have to pile more stuff in my Camelbak, also if I'm just going up the trail for a scouting ride I can just take a water bottle and I have my survival kit already in place.

Another nice thing about this kit that works well for me is I often will ride the mountain bike up a trail a good ways to get farther back in quickly, and then I will dismount and hike up through the brush scouting out an area. We decided to keep the original handle and D-ring attachment points on the bag so that we can use the shoulder carry strap still. So now when I get off the bike I just grab the Kit and attach the shoulder staps and sling it over my shoulder and take off into the brush.

What's cool is I can take a packet of hot chocolate mix and lay it in the stainless steel cup, then slide the bottle in and I've always got a ready cup of chocolate. If you like tea or cider you could do the same with that; I've done it, it's nice, you want to take a 30 minute breather, just stop make a quick small fire fill the cup with water and shove it right into the side of the fire. It doesn't take much fire or time to heat it up in this way.

We have the Kit in the following Cordura Nylon (pack cloth) colors logo'd and ready; Black and Red as shown above, also Forest Green, and Digital Camo, we'll probably pick a couple of additional colors as well.

I'm getting close to a decision on the online store, I'm favoring an Amazon storefront at the moment, I like the layout and options they have.

Well that's it for now, I'm up camping for the third night this week, and have to break camp in the morning, so it's off to bed now.

The New Offroad Survival Kit

Well things are moving along as always and we are introducing a new survival kit called the "Offroad." This one is designed originally for use on mountain bikes and ATV's, but with a couple minor variations is now adapted to be mounted on roll bars, like in a Jeep. I had wanted to add a couple of features also, and this was accomplished as well. We added  a 32 oz Nalgene bottle ( Made in USA, by the way) as the container of the kit and it nests in a 12 oz stainless steel cup. Everything is housed in a heavy duty Cordura bag with D rings and multiple mounting strap options.

I camped the last few days and played around with the kit, I am very pleased with it, I believe it exceeded my expectations.

We hope to have an online store soon, to begin selling the items we are developing.

Hey we're still here

I know its been a while since the last post, which is never a good thing. A lot has happened since then. We have added some production capabilities in some new equipment and another sewing machine, its very nice and heavy duty, we can sew anything we need on this one.

We have been doing some testing on products and designs, we have refined and upgraded the original RealSuvival Kit, adding additional colors like Universal digital camo, features like 2 D rings on top of the bag and 1 on the bottom to add flexibility in use. Now you can carry it like a messenger bag with an added optional shoulder strap or use caribiners to clip it to a pack or other item. The fire starter kit bag has been improved a bit with the addition of a D ring providing other options for carrying and securing it.

We have added to the line a product we call "The Scavenger" which is a bag that is used for gathering such things as bark strips, punk wood, and dry fungus for tinder used in fire starting; also the bag can be used to collect food items such as berries, roots, herbs, etc. This makes a nice addition to your camping equipment as it adds lots of convenience. The bags has multiple D rings for attaching a shoulder strap or clipping to a backpack. We will have more on this later. There is a video posted on our YouTube channel.

We have just completed work on a new Enhanced RealSurvival Kit, which has everything the original kit had with the addition of a stainless steel cup and a 32 oz. Nalgene bottle that stores all the kit items. This whole system is carried in a new bag designed just for this purpose. It has D rings for multiple carrying/packing configurations as in the items above. One of the cool things is the solution to a problem that always bothered me about "Bottle style" survival kits, and that was accessibility of retrieving and storing items in the bottle, it was a pain!! We have solved that problem by using "Tabs" which items are contained in and they simply slide in and out of the center of the bottle, very nice. There is a video on this on YouTube as well. As with all the other items this is all top quality dependable stuff.

We also have a nice location, for conducting training, testing products and producing videos. It is up in the canyons near here, and is convenient yet away from people so as to be undisturbed. We look forward to many exciting things coming from there.

We have some other exciting news coming up, so keep watching, thanks!!

Continuing Kit Development

We have been continuing to refine the RealSurvival Kit adding a few things, 8 feet of duct tape, a "D" ring for securing the Kit, a StretchLanyard for the Swiss Army Knife, a 1 quart and a 1 gallon Ziplock bag, and some additional colors. Next week the stock of about 60 bags will go to Merlene at Diamond Designs for lettering. At that point we will begin sales of the Kits. In showing the Kit bags around I have received a good bit of support for the Camo Bag, we'll just see what the response is on colors to determine what combinations remain. Meanwhile we will keep on trying new colors and combinations.

The redesign of the FireStarter Kit is essentially complete, I am quite happy with how it has turned out. I made a number of them in different configurations before settling on this one. I like it because it holds the Mag Stick well and the kindling packs, with everything easy to get in and out. The bag is light weight and features 2 internal pockets, velcro flap closure, a 2" belt loop, a "D" ring for securing to a lanyard or for securing the Swiss Army knife. The kit is also remarkably thin in profile, which is nice because I hate bulky things on my belt. I am contemplating supplying a neck lanyard with the FireStarter Kit. Also I made the BIG decision to make this the configuration that goes in the RealSurvival Kit instead of the ripstop bag that was originally supplied.

I have perfected the StretchLanyard for the Swiss Army Knife, it will be for sale as a separate item as well as being included in the kits from now on. It will retro into existing kits.

Another change I have made is on the Magnesium Fire Starter I have thrown away the ball chain lanyard and made a special size StretchLanyard which I like much better, this will be supplied in all future kits, and unfortunately it is not upgradable on existing kits.

As the above listed items have been refined I am next working on a method of mass producing the waxed rope, which will now be called FireStix. I am in the process of purchasing hemp cord to use and a special beeswax mix that will make them burn hotter and a bit longer as well as a higher melting temperature.

We have made some great strides in our productivity, as things are refined and standardized I have made many templates and jigs, produced my own butane powered hot knife for cutting fabric, cord and webbing. I have made a spool dispenser for webbing and cordage, that has a measuring capability. So hey we are coming right along here in our "factory" in Springville.

Also late word, we have a serious investor we are talking to, if that works out the process will be able to speed up, so we'll see what happens with that.

Until next time, take care, and be sure to enjoy the outdoors.