The Kit
The first thing I ever learned from The Wolf was how to make an Altoids Tin Survival Kit.
You can buy special tins to make Kits now, with all sorts of neat bells and whistles, done up to look like an Altoids tin; there are even websites and outdoor stores that sell pre-prepared Kits ready-made and shrink-wrapped. I learned to make them myself, though, twenty years ago, and there’s value in knowing how to do it.
Stripped down to its essence, an Altoids Tin Kit is a sheet-metal container that holds your life. With what’s in a well-thought-out kit, you can absolutely survive a night or two out in the woods with minimal gear, assuming you know how to use the tools you’ve stuffed into 2.24” x 3.36” x 0.83” of space.
The Wolf held that at minimum, a Kit should contain fire, steel, cordage, and light. Fire is self-explanatory, matches, a lighter, or a lens (or all three); steel is something sharp, usually a razor blade and a micro Swiss Army Knife; cordage could be 550 cord, or it could be fishline (or even dental floss); and light was almost always a Photon II micro light (which The Wolf preferred to the Photon III because it had a switch you could use to turn it all the way off and keep it there; a dead battery in a lifesaving flashlight es no bueno). You wrap the kit in duct tape to waterproof it, and you use enough tape so that you can use that to repair a hole in your jacket or cover a blister or hold small screws so they don’t get lost while you’re repairing your eyeglasses.
Not so fast! Don’t seal that up yet! There’s a lot of room left in that tin. Enough for a wire saw and a whistle and a couple of Pepto-Bismol tablets; maybe a second source of fire and a button compass, too (and a little vial of PurTabs or iodine crystals to clean up that gross water in the stream so you can have something to drink). You could fit a few cotton balls dipped in Vaseline for making a fire in there, too. A P-38 can opener will make your life much more bearable if the shit hits the fan, and they’re thin and flat; throw one of those in there, along with a couple of upholstery needles (which are thick and have big eyes for cordage) for repairing your clothes or your tent.
Why don’t you cut down a set of lockpicks, or cut your own custom mini pick and tension wrench out of a hacksaw blade with a Dremel rotary tool, and slip those in there? A storage shed is likely dryer and more secure than a homemade lean-to once you get the padlock off it; it’s certainly better than shivering outdoors, where four-legged or two-legged predators prowl. Along the same skullduggerous lines, a micro SD card with a photo of your ID and a credit card number, and a list of your passwords? That might come in handy, as might a couple of tightly rolled twenty-dollar bills (or if you’re really fancy and have some money to burn, gold ingots, which are thinner than folded twenties and more valuable; you can buy them online).
The Kit is a way of thinking about the world.
In order to use any tool, be it conceptual or physical, you have to know how to use it. The tools in an Altoids Tin Kit are less useful to you in an emergency if you have not practiced using them; emergencies shut down the creative portion of your mind, and practice will make you competent. Confidence comes from competence, so learn how to use the tools you’ve packed in a Kit in a conventional way when you are not under stress. That way muscle memory will be on your side, and you’ll have room to think about unconventional ways to deploy them.
You have to have your tools with you in order to be able to use them when required, so it is good to be in the habit of carrying the essentials with you so you will have them in an emergency situation. But clanking when you walk is not a recipe for social success in everyday life, so make the tools in a Kit as portable and unobtrusive as possible. And if you're at home, you don't need to dig out your Kit to solve problems; that's what the full-sized tools in your toolbox are for.
Speaking of full-sized tools: The tools in a Kit are miniaturized, so they're both more fragile and less ideal for everyday use. Seal them up so you don’t lose them, and don’t pull them out to show them off or you’re going to have to repack them and seal them up again; a Kit is packed tightly by design, which means it’s a chore to repack, and duct tape gets less sticky each time you unstick it and reseal it
.An Altoids Tin can hold many kinds of Kit. Once you’ve learned to make a Kit dedicated to wilderness survival, you can apply the concepts to other kinds of Kit. How about a more refined Kit with dental floss picks, toothpaste, a mini toothbrush, and condoms, for an unplanned overnight trip with your girlfriend? Or a Kit focused entirely on one or another aspect of a conventional Kit; an Altoids Tin Fishing Kit, or an Altoids Tin Firemaking Kit? You can use the same concepts to make an entirely situational survival Kit; a performer could build a magic Kit with sponge-rubber balls and gimmicked coins for impromptu entertaining.
It’s a damp, quiet morning; I have four bucks and the day to myself, and there’s a CVS down the street. I’m going to take a stroll down there and spend a rainy day coming up with a Kit, just for fun.
This goes for conceptual tools, too; a discussion that requires utilitarian consequentialism to do moral calculus will require exploring and explaining, which means you'll have to unpack your entire utilitarianism kit. Kits have lots of little bits and bobs that tend to get lost under couch cushions; pulling one out to show everybody at a party or in someone’s living room means you’re going to have to repack all those little doohickeys by yourself once the conversation shifts to some other topic, so you might consider keeping it sealed tightly in its tin unless it’s a genuine survival situation, when the use of a Survival Kit is warranted.
I haven't thought about this much since I was an admin at the Doomstead Diner. We had plans for bugout tins, bugout packs, a full-on doomstead, the founder RE had a bugout winnebago (and a .50 cal rifle). One of our contributors had a full on doomstead compound, fenced with razor wire, with a mount in a plate steel elevated shelter for his .50 cal, with another mount on the jeep.
There is a fine line between being prepared for trouble, and being totally obsessed with fast-collapse apocalypse. I quit the diner after awhile, because I couldn't sustain the constant threat of doom. Now of course we are in a constant threat-state of doom, perpetrated by gov and media to keep us in a constant state of fear, to make us more easily controlled. That isn't healthy.
But as you say, there is confidence in being prepared for anything. Such confidence can be a bulwark against unnecessary and unhealthy paranoia.
Nice article. Everyone needs moderate level of preparation. I don't really like the prepper do anything to survive mentality but it adds a lot of piece of mind to able to handle a long term power outage without any major disruptions. I keep a kit in the truck so I have the basics anywhere I am.