Honest, tested buyer's guides and loadouts for every budget.
By the Navigation Team The smartphone in your pocket is one of the most powerful navigation tools ever created, capable of pinpointing your location, mapping a route, and guiding you turn by turn anywhere in the world. Add satellite messengers and specialized apps, and modern technology gives the outdoors traveler capabilities that would have seemed … Read more
By the Navigation Team A dedicated GPS device can be a wonderful navigation tool, pinpointing your location anywhere on earth with remarkable accuracy. It can also lull you into a dangerous dependence, because the moment its batteries die or it fails, a person who relied on it entirely is suddenly lost. The key to using … Read more
By the Navigation Team A GPS is wonderful right up until the battery dies, the signal drops in a canyon, or the device takes a swim in a creek. When that happens, the person who can read a topographic map and shoot a bearing with a compass is found and safe, while the person who … Read more
By the Gear Team A reliable way to cook and boil water is a fundamental survival and preparedness capability, and the range of stove technologies available today means there is a good option for nearly every situation. From tiny backpacking burners to wood-burning stoves that run on twigs, each type has its strengths, its ideal … Read more
By the Field Skills Team Sometimes you do not have hours to build the perfect debris hut. A storm is rolling in, the temperature is dropping, someone is hurt, or darkness is close, and you need to be out of the weather now. The quick emergency shelter is a different discipline from careful shelter building. … Read more
By the Budget Prep Team Preparedness has an expensive reputation, and the gear industry is happy to keep it that way. But a huge share of a solid kit can be assembled secondhand, at thrift stores, garage sales, estate sales, and online marketplaces, for pennies on the dollar. The catch is knowing what to buy … Read more
By the Gear Team In an evacuation, your ability to communicate and to keep your devices powered can matter as much as food or water. Your phone is your map, your news source, your link to family, and your call for help, all in one, and it is useless the moment its battery dies. Meanwhile, … Read more
By the Gear Team When a disaster forces you from your home, the things that prove who you are, what you own, and what you are owed can be as vital to your recovery as any survival supply. People focus on water and food and forget that rebuilding a life after a disaster runs on … Read more
By the Medical Gear Team Of everything in a bug-out bag, the first aid component is the one most likely to be needed and most often packed badly. People either toss in a flimsy handful of adhesive bandages or, at the other extreme, try to cram a full home medical cabinet into a pack that … Read more
By the Gear Team Clothing is the survival gear you are already wearing, and in a bug-out situation it becomes your first and most constant line of defense against the elements. Yet it is the component people put the least thought into, tossing a random t-shirt into the bag as an afterthought. That is a … Read more
By the Go-Bag Desk Food and water in a bug-out bag follow a rule that trips up almost every beginner: weight. It is easy to imagine packing hearty meals and plenty of water, right up until you try to carry it all and discover your bag now weighs as much as a small child. The … Read more
By the Disaster Team A generic disaster checklist is a strange thing. It tells a family in the Arizona desert to prepare for the same threats as a family on the Gulf coast or in the tornado belt, which serves neither well. Real natural disaster preparedness is tailored. It starts with the universal foundation every … Read more
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