Preparing Your Survival Equipment

Preparing your survival kit is essential to ensure that you can cope with a disaster or emergency. The first thing to do is to assess your current situation. Consider the challenges you may face during a disaster, as well as your personal preferences. This information will help you decide which gears to include in your survival kit.

A good quality plastic whistle is an essential piece of survival equipment. It should be worn around your neck on a string. You should know the universal distress signal, which is three of anything. Based on the Morse Code’s SOS, this signal means to blow the whistle three times in a row. The best way to do this is to use a short, five-second blast. Repeat this every fifteen minutes, or more, until help arrives.

Another piece of survival equipment is a life raft. It is important to choose a life raft that is self-righting, as it will be essential in an emergency. Once inflated, a life raft can be used to save an individual. Inflating the raft allows a person to jump overboard and get into the raft. Some small life rafts do not have this feature, but they are capable of being pulled upright with a strap attached to it.

A PLB is another piece of survival equipment that can be a great investment.PLBs are smaller land-based cousins of Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs) used by boaters.A PLB will help you stay alive if you are in a crash, but it does not have an accelerometer to trigger it. Because of this, it can only be effective in survivable crashes and you must be aware to activate it.