I had this idea to have the kids make useful survival kits (that is of course if they ever really needed them). Those Johnny Rambo kits with the fishing hooks and the other misc they will never use just did not make sense. I wanted something as light weight as possible they could easily and always slip into their day pack and know they are hiking safely. Everything they needed to survive 48 hours in the woods and help themselves in getting un-lost.

I was contempting some type of orienteering scavenger hunt with a bit of wilderness survival MB work worked in as part of the building process. The troop committee decided they would rather have the adults assemble and give to the kids for Christmas, which we ended up doing. I’m hoping the troop continues to give out to the new scouts as soon as they make a meaningful achievement – such as the first good white mountain hike.

Logisitically, to do it right, it consumes quite a lot of material for a large troop (we made 45 in the first batch) – and there is cost involved – $16 each, and scouts had to put their own spare knife in (this was a very good discount price and well worth it, thanks to the Natick Outdoor Store for support). We had a very nice Christmas get-together and just worked for a few hours putting these together.  I wanted  a nice velco sleeve that went around the plastic bag holding all the material. I purchased some digital brown camo material cut it, sewed it including the velco, sewed the troop numeral on it, and had ready for this meeting. It took weeks. I don’t think anyone realized how much effort went into these. I hope the kids value and keep for a long time.

You have to do this right or what’s the point. I started with this vision of a small Altoid’s mint tin, but you can’t get anything inside that. I wanted the scouts to have a really useful kit. I did want the cost, weight, and size to be minimized as much as possible.

The survival kit comes up in the Wilderness Survival MB requirements. I have not taught this again since, but hope to work it all in.

Here are two card I made up to include in the kit as well as the supply list -

survival-card.ppt

still-need-to-include.ppt

survival-kit-supplies.xls

If you still want to try to do this in an altoid tin, here are instructions: altoid-survival-tin.doc