Ebony's Pearls

Blueberries
Originally uploaded by nodigio

If you’ve browsed around the survivalist communities very much, you’ve seen the photos of people tricked out in all their pretty, pristine survival gear, usually standing in their living room or in front of their house. Everything’s so shiny. It’s all mint, not a blemish or a scratch on it. Often, it’s top of the line gear, bought from the places that came highly recommended by other internet survivalists and in survival magazine articles and ads.

How sad.

My gear is battered and worn, and I need to re-waterproof my tent this spring because it leaks a bit. That tent has seen years of camping and I could pitch it in the dark, in the rain, all by myself if I have to. My knives are shiny, but that’s because I keep them clean and sharp and free of rust, but their sheaths – those are worn and have been restitched at least once. Some of the knives are on their second or third sheaths because the others wore out. I keep my bug-out stuff where I can immediately grab it, and I keep it up-to-date and as well-maintained as possible – and I use it often. It makes no sense to me to have gear I haven’t a clue how to use, and worse sense to have gear I’ve never tested. Untested gear could be defective and I refuse to trust my life and the lives of those I love to potentially defective gear.

No, it’s not glamorous to scour knives clean, and wait for your tent to dry out, then brush it out and put it away dry (and in my case, filled with herbal sachets to keep it fresh and bug-free), or to scrub and wash and carefully place it all back in order. I replace what got used right away – not even as soon as possible, but immediately. I shop on the way home and pack the new things in among the old so my kit is fully ready minutes after I’ve put it away. Even if it’s still raining, when I get home, that wet tent I packed up at camp is unpacked and put up to dry. Because my house is small, that means setting it up outside in the rain, but I won’t pack away a wet tent – that way leads to mildew and ruined tents and I can’t afford to be buying a new tent each time it rains! If an emergency comes up while my tent is drying, it gets packed wet and set back up in the new location wet, and I just have to deal with it.

There are different levels of maintenance for your gear. There’s Field Maintenance, Routine Maintenance, and Deep Maintenance.

Field Maintenance is what you do out in the field. Patch holes in your tent, dry your feet and put on dry socks, clean your rifle immediately after using it, keeping your camp tidy and put together. You take care of problems immediately as best as you can, and you clean and fix what you can as you pack. You do this all now because you might need it before you pack up and head home, or you might need it on your way home and it needs to be as ready as you can keep it.

Routine Maintenance is what you do on a schedule – seasonal or cyclical checks, repairs, upgrades, and such. Test the handles of your shovels, sharpen the blades on your mower and scythe, deep clean your rifle, unpack your bug-out-bag and refresh it, that sort of thing. You’re not under any pressure so you can take your time making sure everything is done right and well. You can upgrade your equipment, replace what needs replacing, and determine if you need to change what you have – add stuff or remove stuff.

Deep Maintenance is what you do when you get home from the field – put up that wet tent to let it dry out, strip clean your rifle, wash everything, re-waterproof things that are leaking, replace worn and used bits. You pack your kit up and make sure it is ready for immediate use. You want to be able to get out with it fully operational and ready to go at all times – even when you’re in the midst of repairing and packing it all up . That means you leave things packed and take it apart one thing at a time to work on it so you have the least possible amount to pack in a hurry.

In the end, though, it’s not your gear that will save you. It’s you. Your attitude, your personal preparedness. We admire McGyver because he can contrive survival gear out of whatever he happens to have handy (ignore the fact that he has scriptwriters and set technicians to do the real work). We each need to have McGyver’s attitude and resourcefulness – we need to be prepared to work for our survival at any moment with whatever we have available. Sure, it would be nice to have all our nifty gear, but the gear isn’t going to keep us alive. We are.

Don’t let salesmen pressure you into buying some wonder gear thing with the line “how much is your life (your loved one’s life) worth?” Fancy gear, expensive gear, better gear isn’t going to help all that much if you are unprepared in yourself.

I know a lot of people (most of them in person) who are “Rambo-ready” – they can talk a good line. In fact, they talk really tough. They have the gear and man, if an intruder walks through that door, they are so gonna get it! And yet – their rifle is still in its original packaging. Their knife has never been out of its tight new sheath. They’ve never set up their big buff tent. They don’t know how to really maintain their gear and they’re afraid of really using it in case they “ruin” it and it won’t be there if they need it.

First thing you have to do is prepare yourself. Get fit, get healthy, practice survival skills. Once you know what you are capable of doing, you can add gear that will make it easier for you to do what you need to do. Then you can add gear that is less familiar and you can take the time to learn to use it. Then you integrate it all together – you, your skills and knowledge, and your well-used gear. Figure out alternate uses for everything you have. Add that to your planning and allow it to guide what you buy. You’ll find you need a lot less stuff than you thought you did, and maybe even totally different stuff.

You can be a Rambo covered in shiny new fancy state of the art gear or you can be a McGyver, surviving with a stick of gum, a wad of hair, your left shoe, and the battery acid from your watch, and then sit in your nicely well-worn and comfy tent sipping a coffee afterwards, shooting the breeze with your other McGyver-type friends.