757 | Top Survival Tips for Anglers and Adventurers with Brett Stoffel of Outdoor Safe

Dave (2s): You hear the stories, but never think it can happen to you. Maybe you’re dropping into a steep section of river, you slip on a rock, slide down and hear it break, and now what do you do? And it’s cold, it’s wet, and it’s getting dark. There are a few key pieces of gear that could save your life. And by the end of this episode, you will know which three items are a key to have on you at all times, and what common myth you should be avoiding about these. This is the wet fly swing podcast where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip And what you can do to give back to the fish species we all love. Brett Stoffel, outdoor survival master and search and rescue teacher is gonna give us his six steps to building a survival kit and staying safe out there. Dave (45s): You’re gonna hear about the top miss, including why the survival blanket doesn’t work and what you should be using instead, how to start a fire, even if it’s pouring down rain. We’re gonna talk about how to get us fire started in any conditions and how to signal aircraft overhead, even if they’re at 20,000 feet. We’re gonna talk about all this today, so you’re gonna have to not worry at all about getting in trouble while you’re out there. Plus he’s gonna share and tell us what we need to know about treating water and some of the other common myths around this and what you should be avoiding. I can honestly say this one might save your life. Here he is, Brett Stoffel from outdoorsafe.com. How you doing Brett? Brett (1m 25s): Doing well, thanks for having me. Dave (1m 26s): Yeah, yeah. This is gonna be a real fun one. I think. You know, we talk a lot about fly fishing and outdoors. We haven’t done a ton of outdoor survive, although I know we’ve had at least a few episodes out there. The great thing today is that you are a leading expert in this field. You’ve got a, a long background that goes all the way back to your father and, and that and all that. So that’s great. And we’re gonna get into some things, I think some things that people think are basic, like, you know, shelter, like, you know, the, the survival blankets you see which out we’re gonna, we’re gonna debunk some of that. We’re gonna talk about fire signal, but really how do people stay safe because we’re out there, fly fishing and traveling around the world and stuff could happen, right? You could break an ankle, break a leg, and how do you survive, you know, say for two or three days out there in a while. So we’re gonna get into all that. Dave (2m 7s): Before we do, take us back, because I know your history is amazing. How did you get into this survival? Did it start with your dad? Brett (2m 12s): It did. So, you know, kind of growing up, my father, his name is Skip, and he is a bit of a guru in this field. So I was born and raised. He was teaching this stuff and he dealt a lot with search and rescue teams and emergency preparedness kind of at, at just about every level. So I just thought it was kind of normal. That was just kind of regular thing for me. When I got into the Air Force after I graduated from college, I had an opportunity, I was, I was flying airplanes for Uncle Sam and there’s a position there called life support. And so I was, I kind of gravitated that way just by because of my background. So I was a natural fit. So the Air Force sent me to Survival School and then they sent me to Accident Investigation School and then Search and Rescue School and, and I ran the parachute shop and the guys that did all of the training and equipment for the combat pilots in the squadrons that I was a part of. Brett (3m 6s): So that was kind of the, the formal background. And then once I finished with my, my tours in the Air force and, and that sort of thing, I eventually came back to the family business and that was really what it, you know, the, a lot of our, our, our clients were kind of ex-military flyers and, and that sort of thing. And I, I speak pilot, so that’s, that’s handy. And so working with those folks, I started kind of on, in the field and in the classroom kind of bringing what, you know, my, my background and my just, you know, expertise in terms of, of how pilots work and how what they’ve been trained on so far. Brett (3m 46s): And then how to kind of integrate that if they got themselves into trouble. So customs and border protection pilots, coast Guard pilots, and then obviously expanding out into those same arenas that my father had established in our business in terms of, you know, county sheriff’s departments looking for. They’re the ones who are, you know, boots on the ground If you get in trouble, you know, what is it, what is it you can do to make yourself, you know, a good customer of search and rescue, so to speak. Dave (4m 8s): Mm, gotcha. That’s awesome. And going back to your dad, skip stale, I love that. Right? It’s, it’s, it rhymes, it’s all that stuff, but have, have things, you know, back to the day, I’m not sure when your dad started, but If you go back, I’m guessing this is many, many years ago, have things in the survival changed that much from then until now? Brett (4m 25s): Oh my goodness. Yeah. And you know, it’s continuously, so his start, it was the Air Force as well. He was a, an actual survival instructor. So there’s a, the number of schools that the military branches use and, and he was part of the Survival School for the Air Force kind of Vietnam timeframe. And so he trained the folks that were headed to Southeast Asia directly and was part of that. And then that’s, you know, kind of the genesis of where, where our family business kind of came from when he separated from the military. But in terms of the, the, there have been several kind of watershed moments as far as survival stuff is concerned. And it was, you know, old school mountain man kind of stuff in kind of evolving and developing and adding some real science into it. Brett (5m 11s): And then a little bit of, of statistical background. But it has radically changed. And unfortunately, a lot of the stuff that’s out there, it’s kind of, you know, it’s a hard to shake kind of situation because there’s some bad information out there that I’m not, I’m not exactly sure where it comes from, but a lot of people think they know and you know, you watch TV and you watch, you read stories and magazines and all of that. And that’s the, that’s kind of where people go awry, you know, it’s, it’s common sense, honestly. Most of the survival stuff. But it’s not common knowledge, you know, that’s a little cliche statement, but that’s generally how it goes. Dave (5m 44s): Yeah. It’s common sense. That’s right. And we’re gonna talk about that today. What, maybe just on on that bad info, I mean, I know one of those things like, I think everybody has probably right now or seen as the survival blankets, but what’s some of the mis, you know, misinformation or bad information that’s out there? Oh, Brett (5m 58s): For sure. Well, the big one that people come in. So yeah, we’ll get into space blankets and, and, and all of that sort of thing as well. ’cause there’s misinformation in that department. But the first thing that people always ask me is when we’re out there in the woods, it’s like, what do I eat in a survival situation? I mean, a human being takes 45 to 60 days before you even are in the realm of, of having to worry about starving to death. So I mean, that’s, you know, that’s measured in months, not measured in, in days or hours like most people. ’cause you know, most of us have people in our families or things that are going on where, you know, If you, If you miss lunch, you know, you get hangry and, and it’s a, it’s a life or death struggle. So there’s a lot of misinformation about food foraging for edible plants and animals and, and all of that sort of a thing. Brett (6m 43s): And frankly, it, it just isn’t that big of priority. It’s not that it’s a zero priority, but it’s, it’s generally speaking, I mean, most survival situations, this is another myth. People think, you know, castaway or you know, Robin Caruso kind of situation where you’re gonna be isolated for weeks on end. We have a database of hundreds of thousands of cases that we, that we take a look at. And, you know, 98% ish are completely resolved in 72 hours or less. So when you start thinking about how long is one of these situations really, what should I expect? It’s possible to go longer, obviously, but statistically speaking, three days is not very long. Brett (7m 26s): But If you look at the timing, that in and of itself kind of colors up what you should do in terms of getting ready and the equipment that you take, protecting yourself in the Pacific Northwest, for example, for three days, is that can be a challenge. Yeah. Especially, you know, you’re in the Central Cascades or if it’s February or, or whatever the case may be, a little bit of a challenge. And it’s relatively hostile to human beings kind of in our, you know, especially if we were out there in our birthday suit. So that’s, that’s kind of where we start and let’s we use what, what we call the priorities and necessities to kind of color that, that discussion. Dave (8m 1s): That’s amazing. No, I love, I love where you’re going here because I think simplifying this is a great way and getting rid of the misnomers out there, right, which is Yeah. Food and trying to survive. So I, I mean, that’s one big thing, you know, we’ll talk more about that, but, you know, we’re traveling also This year we’re heading up to Alaska, right? We’re actually gonna be doing like a road trip up there. I’m gonna be doing some remote stuff and, and does this, everything you talk about, does this apply whether you’re up way up in the Alaska where it’s super cold or way down in the desert where it’s super Brett (8m 26s): Hot? Yeah. It, it applies everywhere. And so the base needs that a human being kind of comes together with, they’re the same. I mean the human animal, the human machine, however you wanna look at it, If you provide the things that the body needs, you get survival. And that’s kind of the way to approach it as opposed to, you know, where in particular you are, the, the body’s needs are the same, the environment changes. So I still need the same things, but if I am in the tropics of, say, Panama versus the North Slope in Alaska, though, providing those requirements is, is a different situation. I, I need to get to the same place, but now I’ve got different challenges, you know, cold versus hot, humid versus dry, you know, snow and frozen versus windy rain and mosquitoes. Brett (9m 15s): You know, there’s, there’s all kinds of different potentials. Dave (9m 17s): Yeah. Is your the kit, and we’re gonna talk about that. That’s when we, I think I first, we first connected, although I’ve seen your name out there, but you have a kit you can get, which is amazing. And I think you were showing me how to start a fire and stuff, but maybe talk about that a little bit, and I don’t know If you wanna talk about the, the fire shelter and kinda the three top things. Brett (9m 35s): Yeah. So there’s kind of a priority list and you’ve, you’ve intimated it a couple of times and, you know, shelter, fire and signaling are kind of the top three priorities, especially in, you know, we kind of focus on North America just because that’s where most of us are. There are other considerations depending on, you know, open water or desert or tropics, you know, all of those kinds of things. And we start to get into that as you start to travel south in the United States in particular, but you’re talking, especially in Alaska, that sort of thing. Shelter really does rise to the top. And it’s all about, you know, the priorities in necessities. You have to ask yourself in this environment, what is the thing that’s gonna kill me first? And not to be macabre, but it’s, it’s truly, that’s the question to ask. Brett (10m 17s): So what’s gonna kill me first? And that’s what you focus on and that becomes the problem at hand. And when you solve that problem, guess what question you ask now, now what’s gonna kill me first? Dave (10m 28s): Right, right, right. Yeah, Brett (10m 30s): Rinse and repeat until you’re not in the situation in anymore. And that, that truly is the, the, the scenario. The other thing that I’ll add, just on a myth and misconception, there’s nothing really glamorous about being risk taking and or doing goofy things, you know, forwarding the river or swinging from a cliff on a jungle vine or something like that, that you see in some of the popular materials. If you’re, if you’re bored and warm, you know, so much so that you’re falling asleep. I mean, that you, you kind of are the ultimate survivor. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a bit of a paradigm. Dave (11m 3s): So If you can fall asleep, if you’re in a survival situation, I, and I always love to think of examples like the cool, I mean, not, not the cool, but the interesting thing is we we’re around water a lot, you know? Right. And I’ve heard lots of things. I have friends that are kayakers and they say the number one death is when people are just walking in the stream because of foot entrapment. But, you know, I can imagine somebody’s out there, they’re fishing or they’re doing whatever, and they maybe break an ankle or, or leg and they can’t walk out. Right. But they’re, and they’re wet. So what would be in that situation? Is that something where you could guide us today? You know what I mean? Like, just talk Brett (11m 33s): About it. Oh my gosh, absolutely. Okay. So the first, you know, when you’re, so you start talking about wat, and this ties right into that number one priority as far as shelter. So when you’re wet, you’ve got a real obstacle course in front of you. And the reason is because of water’s heat carrying capacity. So not to get into the weeds too much, but, but water by itself, just solid water conducts heat 25 times better than air at the same temperature. So what happens is, when you’re in the water, the danger is how much heat is dumping into that water. It’s a, you know, it’s a law of thermodynamics that the, the thing that’s warmer dumps heat into the thing that’s colder, and that water is a lot colder and it just keeps carrying your heat away and your body can’t keep up with it. Brett (12m 15s): So If you get into the water, you know, there’s some, some interesting examples of this. Most of it have been in a swimming pool, in a hot environment or something. You get out of the pool and there’s a gust of wind and it feels cold on your skin, and so you’re like, oh, I need to get back in the water because it feels warmer. Hmm. If you follow that, that urge, that’s the wrong answer. Your body can deal with the wet way better. So getting un wet starts to be a priority, but not to the point. I’m not, I’m not advocating that you strip down naked or anything like that. This gets into clothing selection. So things that have insulating value, even when they are wet. So that’s where, you know, your wolves and some synthetics that are out there as well, that will keep insulating. Brett (12m 55s): They’re hydrophobic, which means they, they don’t tolerate, you know, water, they, they wick the water away, et cetera. So that’s a real help. So getting as dry as you can and then starting to insulate yourself such that you can be protected from the wind, which generates convective heat loss and the water that’s associated with that as well. So protecting yourself. And there’s some pretty simple things that you can do in that regard. So if you’ve got good gear and you can fish out your, your rain gear, for example, that’s, that’s great. But If you don’t even something like a big plastic bag, you can put that on there. The bag creates a volume of trapped air. Your body heats up that air that’s inside of that bag with you, and now you’ve got a protection from the wind and the colder environment outside. Brett (13m 37s): So even something like that is a, is a good technique to carry, like in a hip pocket or something like that. Dave (13m 42s): Gotcha. So that, and that goes back to, so If you, If you were to, in this example, fall into the water, say it’s wintertime, you’re steelhead fishing and you’re freezing, it’s cold out there, you get out, you’re like, oh my God, what do I do? Maybe you’ve even broken something, you can’t walk. So the first thing isn’t to strip naked, it’s to literally hope you have some gear on that’s still wet as that, and then you get the bag around you. Yeah, Brett (14m 2s): Exactly. So getting as much of the water off as you can, so you want to get it as dry as possible. So here’s another tip, being prepared for something like that. There are some things that really do enhance your comfort. And IE you know, I would say maybe a base layer that’s in a big Ziploc bag or something that’s a, you know, that’s waterproof. So that If you do have a situation like that, you can kind of change that layer and down below. So now you can put some dry socks on. You can put maybe some dry long underwear and you know, if you’ve got even like a food saver vacuum packer or something like that, you put a, a thin dry base layer in a bag and vacuum seal it, it doesn’t take up much room and it doesn’t weigh very much. Dave (14m 45s): If you’re looking for a world-class fly fishing experience, it’s time to check out Mountain Waters Resort. Nestled along Newfoundland’s, legendary Portland Creek. This spot has a history that runs as deep as the Atlantic Salmon that call it home once they fly fishing. Retreat for the great Lee Wolf. Today. It’s your turn to step into these historic waters and swing up your salmon This year. You can head over to wetly swing.com/mountain Waters right now and make it happen. That’s wet fly swing.com/mountain Waters. Let’s get out there today. Check out Jackson Hole Fly company today. Premium fly gear straight to your door without the premium price. Jackson Hole fly company designs and builds their own fly rods, reels, flies, and gear delivering quality you can trust at prices that let you fish more and spend less. Dave (15m 33s): Whether you’re picking up a fly rod for the first time or guiding every day they’ve got what you need, check ’em out right now. That’s Jackson hole fly company.com. Jackson hole fly company.com. Part of this too, we might not get to this today, but I’ve also been thinking about the go bag, right? You hear about this a lot. Oh yeah, you live on the coast, tsunami warnings, you know, you live, you’re living town. You’re like, well, earthquakes. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, stuff could happen. Like that’s the reality of it. And so the go bag, I think is another level, right? Because you maybe are out there longer than three days or something, but for what we’re talking about, you know, you’re saying, yeah, have that gear in there, have the extra base layer, the wool I love, I mean, I think wool feels like it’s like just that one natural thing that nothing has ever come close to. Dave (16m 18s): But so If you, if that person was wet and let’s say they didn’t have a backup layer, so you basically would say, take your stuff out, squish it out, get out the water, put it back on. Now it’s still damp, but now you have that. And then let’s talk about this bag because I have, right now I have a one of those space blankets. It folds up so small, but tell us why that is kind of a myth and why that maybe isn’t the best thing. Oh Brett (16m 39s): Yeah. Where do I, I’m on a bit of a crusade against these space blankets. Yeah. And, and not from the fact that they’re useless. They’re, that’s not the case. But there are so many better options. So this, this Mylar space blanket, you know, and there’s a lot of different varieties out there. There’s not one that’s in particular, but they’re, they are ubiquitous, they’re everywhere. You, they go by the bucket full, it’s sporting goods stores and, and things like that. The blanket itself, what it’s claim to fame is that it, it doesn’t absorb heat, it reflects a hundred percent of the infrared energy that hits it. So the idea is you’re like, oh, that’s awesome. I’ll just wrap it around myself and my heat will reflect back to me and it’ll help to keep me warm. The problem is with those little blankets, they don’t reflect it, it doesn’t contain the heat. Brett (17m 22s): So the heat does hit it and reflect off. It just bounces around and then leaves and they’re a little bit noisy. Yeah, they’re number two, number three, kind of changing gears from a search and rescue perspective, because they don’t absorb any heat and they reflect it completely. They work as active camouflage for any kind of infrared sensor. So a forward-looking infrared, say on a helicopter or an aircraft, you get underneath it, you will literally disappear. Oh wow. The other is the, the reflective coating on the outside. People are like, oh, it’s shiny. It’ll be easy to see. No, the common distance where you get away from that, it’s a mirror. So it reflects all of the, of the, the surrounding terrain and, and vegetation and everything else. Brett (18m 8s): So it’s active camouflage. I mean, you can’t see it visually. It makes you blend in it, it hides from the infrared and it doesn’t do a super good job of protecting you from a heat perspective. Now, If you have nothing else, and that’s all you have, yeah, it is windproof and waterproof If you can get it to stay together. Most of those space blankets are about 10 microns thick. So that’s the width of a human hair. And If you poke a hole in it anywhere, it loses all of its strength and integrity. So it shreds. So, and you know, it’s one thing in a gymnasium or in a, you know, kind of, Dave (18m 45s): Yeah, like a without without sticks and pokey things, right? Brett (18m 48s): So we, when you wrap this thing around and lean up against a tree, for example, you know, the bark on a tree or a, a sticker bush or something like that, that grabs it. What you end up with is Swiss cheese as far as that. And then when you sneeze, it comes apart. So it’s literally, you know, I say that kind of ingest, but that’s, it’s kind of this, this avalanche of negativity when you deal with it. So I always think about space blankets and say, okay, I’m gonna put ’em in my first aid kit. So there, it’s a windproof waterproof layer that I could potentially use. We use ’em, I’m a volunteer ski patroller. So if, if we get a, a patient that is hypothermic, you know, we’ll wrap ’em in a space blanket like a burrito, and then we put a wool blanket around that. Dave (19m 27s): Okay. So you will use that, that splay spank for in some situations? Brett (19m 31s): In some situations, yes. But the problem is the rough and tumble is where they just are miserable. And then the connection to what they do to search and rescue sensors. And they make it difficult to see what you end up with in an integral bag. Instead now we start moving up, you get a heavy duty plastic bag, for example, that’s, that’s lined with Mylar. So that would be what we would call an emergency bivy. That’s kind of the next step up from a basic plastic bag and or space blanket. The combination of the two is actually effective. So If you have something there, but unfortunately what you get with an emergency bivy is something that costs you 30, 40 bucks. So we’re out of the, put it in your pocket, don’t worry about it. ’cause it’s super cheap, which is where the plastic bag comes into play. Dave (20m 12s): What is the, maybe we can go, I mean, your kit essentially maybe talk about, you had that there, this thing that’s like over six feet tall, it’s three feet wide. Talk about this. Is that what this thing is? Yeah, Brett (20m 23s): It’s exactly, we call it an immediate action shelter bag. My, my brand name is called a 98.6 bag, but really it’s a big plastic bag. And the plastic itself, the actual bag, I mean, If you went and got a contractor bag at Home Depot, it would do the same thing. It’s just kind of a different color and maybe not as big. But what happens is it traps air inside the bag and that air cannot circulate to the outside. So similar to the way a wetsuit works, you know, it traps that material on the inside and then your body becomes the source of heat on the inside and it just raises it up. So, you know, environmentally it could be, you know, close to freezing outside, maybe even into the teens, your body can warm that air that’s inside the bag and it can’t circulate. Brett (21m 6s): So you’ll create an environment that’s 50, 60 degrees Fahrenheit inside the bag as opposed to the freezing subfreezing temperatures that are outside. And that is much, much easier to deal with. Now you couple that with brightly colored, so that’s where the, that’s where the blue color of our bag comes in. The blue color that we use, it’s a bright royal blue. It doesn’t occur in the natural world. So it contrasts with every environment. So you stand out, you stick out like a sore thumb If you use a black contractor bag, yes, they’re, they’re cheaper. You can get, you know, 200 of ’em for, for 20 bucks at a, at a home improvement store. But you, you look like a shadow or a rock from distance. Right. So, you know, those are, there’s just, there’s kind of a multi-layered kind of approach. Brett (21m 49s): So you kind of, we try to hit a lot of these things, you know, just kind of without saying. Yeah. Dave (21m 54s): Got it. So I’m looking at now, yeah, the 90, 98 0.6 bag on outdoor safe.com. And actually right here it’s $10 nine. Nine nine. Yep. Brett (22m 1s): That’s for a vacuum packed one. Okay. So a vacuum packed one. And it has a face hold that’s precut in it. That’s a, that, so there is one for $7, that’s just basically a bag and we put a little razor blade in there. ’cause you can do a lot of different things with those as well. Dave (22m 13s): So the cool thing about this bag is first you have the color. So now people, they can see you out there. And this thing has, so it’s lined with the Mylar inside of Brett (22m 20s): This? No, no, this one is not, it’s just a plastic bag. So If you put the Mylar inside, that becomes an emergency. Vivy is kind of the class for that is, and that you’re gonna be talking, you know, 30 bucks. Oh, I see. 40 bucks for something like that. Dave (22m 33s): But for our pack that, let’s say, I’m trying to think of the pack. Okay, you’re out there fishing or, or hiking. How small does this, is this something like that would go in your pocket? Brett (22m 40s): It would. So it’s about the size of a, of a wallet. Oh wow. It’s kind of what it’s, yeah. So you fold it up, it’s vacuum packed, vacuum sealed down, and it doesn’t have an expiration date or anything like that. As long as it stays vacuum sealed, it stays small. There’s nothing expiring about it or anything like that. It just makes it really small when it’s vacuum packed like that. And, and then when you need it, you take it out. And the point about some of this gear and some of these concepts, yeah, you can do a lot in terms of protecting yourself, but you, you know, give me a, the back of a pickup truck and I’ll make a hell of a survival kit. Is, is kind of what it boils down to. You’ll be comfortable, but if it’s complicated and difficult to carry and heavy and, you know, people won’t, they don’t use it because, you know, there there’s this, this another myth, you know, it always happens to someone else. Brett (23m 23s): Oh, right. Yeah. So these comments, you know, these, these concepts are, you know, it’s, it’s not a big deal until it’s a really big deal. Yeah, Dave (23m 30s): No, and that’s what we’re getting at today. I mean, I think that probably a lot of people listening, you know, probably have never had a need for this. Right, right. But you never know when that next time could happen, you know? And that’s, I think what we’re building. So, so your kits are basically built, you have some different levels, but they’re made to be pretty compact and you could take with you, so you could throw it, you know, everybody here is probably gonna be wearing a fly fishing vest or, you know, something like that or a pack. Brett (23m 53s): Totally. So my thought is, okay, let’s do, let’s make some kind of immediate action shelter that someone can put in their fishing vest or they can put in their back pocket while they’re wearing their fishing vest. And that way if it’s easy and you just kind of put it in there and forget about it, then you’re good to go. And that’s the, we, we’ve kind of won the battle and you don’t need it till you need it. And then, you know, there we go. Dave (24m 13s): That’s it. Is it better to use, you have the two here, the one that’s the precut with, you know, already the f Is it better to have that, or should you have the one that’s not precut that way you can build like a tank? Brett (24m 22s): You know, it really depends on how much you want to get involved in terms of different environments and different ways to, to use it. Right. So, so the precut is literally, you don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is open the package. You can put it on. So that’s the idea. The one with the, the razor blade in it. Now you’ve got a little bit of a cutting tool, but there are other instances, other things that you can use the bag with. So, you know, like for example, if I go to out on a boat, I mentioned it works like a wetsuit. It actually does work just like a wetsuit. So as long as you had some kind of flotation, you can get inside the bag full of water and literally use it, you’d triple your survival time in cold water because of that. Brett (25m 5s): So like If Dave (25m 5s): You Oh wow. Brett (25m 6s): If you were offshore or If you were out, you know, if you’ve got one of those, so there’s, there’s more uses Dave (25m 11s): For it. No kidding. So If you were out in the ocean, you didn’t have a whatever suit, you could literally put this thing on and it would do it be like a wetsuit. Brett (25m 18s): Exactly. Right. And you do it inverted. So in the land, I’d put it with the closed end on top of my head. And then I’d have a face hole that I could stick my face through in the ocean, in the water, open water. I would get into it, you know, kind of feet first in the bottom of the bag and pull it up over the top of my head where the opening portion was and hold it closed while I’ve got a life preserver on, you know, that sort of flotation. And that’s the, the effectiveness of it. So your body starts to warm that water up and now you, that heat carrying capacity of the water, it starts heating up immediately. And the trick is, you know, you know, huge body of water, the water just keeps circulating, right? The warm water just moves away. But If you trap it and it’s connected to your body inside the bag, that gives you that, that amount of water that you can actually warm up and then it starts to provide a little bit of insulation for you instead of just kind of dumping your heat continuously. Dave (26m 7s): Amazing. So this is awesome. So we’ve got this now itch. And again, back to our story. Let’s say you fall in the water, you’re wet, you’ve maybe broken something so you could get your clothes kind of squeezed out and they’re still wet, but you could put this over you and do you just keep this over you for hours and hours? Brett (26m 23s): You do. And so what will happen eventually, especially if you’re wet, the heat will start to evaporate some of that water and it’ll start to condense on the inside of the bag. ’cause it’s like any, you know, most people have worn like a rubber rain suit, you know, or If you button up a tent, you know, with the rain fly on everything you get, it gets a bunch of moisture on the inside. So after an hour or two, when you start to visibly see that condensation on the inside, you simply take the bag off, vent it, turn it inside out, and put it on again. And you keep doing that. So it’s not, you know, a misconception, you know, people think they’re like, oh gosh, this is gonna be like the, the Hilton, right? It’ll be, it’s not like cuddling up into a, a feather bed at the Hilton Hotel. Brett (27m 5s): No, no connection to Hilton by the way. Right. So, but what you end up with is, you know, it’s protecting you. It’s giving you that layer of protection so that your body can compensate for the environment you find yourself. Dave (27m 18s): When would you use the, you know, have the tent, why build a tent versus say this? ’cause If you have the tent, let’s just say you have one of these things, then you’re gonna have this tent without anything over your body. Brett (27m 28s): Yes, exactly. So you know, you put over, you know, like a tent, like pitching a tent. Yeah. Dave (27m 33s): Like actually making a shelter. Why would you do that? Why not? If it’s, If you’re out there for say, let’s just say the seven two hours, why not just use this bag? Brett (27m 39s): Yeah. So the effort that’s required to put something like that as a shelter is concerned. I don’t know If you’ve ever tried to build one of these shelters that you’re describing. Dave (27m 47s): Yeah. It’s not easy. Brett (27m 48s): No, it’s not easy at all. And windproof waterproof is something that, I mean, I basically, I stand up in front of classrooms all the time and I say in an improvised scenario, it’s impossible to build a windproof waterproof shelter with nothing but natural stuff in your hands. I mean, that’s, it’s not actually impossible, you know, on from a MythBusters kind of sense. Yeah. But it is incredibly difficult. And when you throw injury in, and the environment itself, If you’re a, a fisherman and you’re in cold water, I mean your steelhead scenario in particular, I mean, you lose dexterity and strength in your hands very quickly when you get exposed to those cold environments and when you’re wet. And so we have to prevent that. And the, the faster you, If you don’t guard that 98.6, you lose your mental capacity, you lose your ability strength. Brett (28m 34s): I mean, it’s hard to even button up your coat or use a zipper, let alone construct some fantastic shelter out of natural materials. Dave (28m 42s): Right, right, right. That’s awesome. So basically the number one thing is like we’re saying, and the photo is great because it’s a guy that’s at on your website, outdoor safety.com. It’s a guy wrapped up and he is got his head sticking out and he’s, you know, looking like he’s getting ready to fall asleep, maybe, you know, not super. Yep. But so you have that go to the next, let’s talk about the next thing because fire fire’s tough. Brett (29m 2s): Okay, so fire, so fire becomes the next stage. So shelter, fire. So, and this, by the way, this list of priorities are the pieces of equipment that I, that I recommend that you carry. So something, it doesn’t have to be a 98.6 bag, although, you know, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if that was what people carried. But you go through there, it’s something to protect yourself from the environment. That’s windproof, that’s waterproof and that stands out. So the next category is fire making, fire craft. So a way to reliably make a fire no matter what the environment is, when it’s wet, when it’s windy, when it’s cold, you know, all of those. Can you do it when you’ve got your dominant hand injured, for example. So that’s some, it’s a skillset for sure. But there are some materials that you can use. Brett (29m 42s): And we use, we use erum and cotton and Vaseline of all things. Those two in combination. So I usually have a little fire kit that I put together and it takes up even less room than the shelter bag does. And so this gets, just gets added into maybe another pocket or into a container that, you know, I I, in case of emergency, you know, unzip this pouch. Dave (30m 3s): Yep. And so the kit, so the fire is, and you did this when we were there, you know? Yeah. And I saw you, you were like, this is how it is. Because the struggle is, again, let’s say you’re in a wet environment and everything’s wet around you. How do you even start the fire, first of all? And this is what you do, you get caught in mixed with a bunch of Vaseline put into a little container. Brett (30m 20s): Yeah. So the Vaseline and the, the, so the cotton burns really, really easily. It catches on fire with a spark. That’s what makes it great. But all of us have have seen what a cotton ball would do. If you expose it to a couple of drips of water, it just absorbs it. And then you don’t have a snowballs chance and you don’t where of getting it started. So what you end up with the Vaseline petroleum jelly, it coats all those cotton fibers and protects ’em. ’cause Vaseline doesn’t mix with water. So it repels the water. And Vaseline actually burns really well. It just has a high flashpoint. So the cotton takes, the sparks starts burning lights, the Vaseline, it’s like a candle. It’s kind of the effect. So it’s a Vaseline candle that you’re packing around with you. But a little, a single cotton ball will burn for almost 10 minutes. Brett (31m 2s): And so it’s 10 minutes of open flame to get something else burning. Now in the Pacific Northwest in certain areas, I mean you go over to the Olympic peninsula, for example, in Washington state, I mean 144 inches of rain every year. That’s 12 feet of water on every square inch of the land. So everything is soaking sopping wet. And so what you need is something small. So you’re asking, Hey, what do I burn? You’re not gonna rub two sticks together in that environment ever to get a fire started. So you need something that works well. And this, this pharaoh rod metal match is what I call it. It’s an alloy of a combination of metals that makes sparks no matter what. And it doesn’t matter what the temperature is, whether it’s wet or dry, you make those sparks and those sparks are like 5,000, 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Brett (31m 46s): But they’re really, really brief. And so what you end up with is a, a shower of sparks. They hit those cotton fibers, you tear one that cotton ball apart that you’ve packed and it hits those, those sparks hit those little cotton fibers and they light. And then you have 10 minutes of flame. So before you light up the cotton ball going out into the environment and you want something that’s as protected from the environment, wet as you can find. And the best place to get it is think toothpicks is kind of the size of the wood that you’re looking for. But If you get into conifers in particular, that’s a, you know, cone bearing, right? So people say pine trees, that that’s one type of cone bearing, you know, fur trees, same thing. Brett (32m 28s): Spruce trees will do that. You get up underneath right next to the trunk of the tree, a a one that’s kind of a juvenile or even a, a fully mature one. The canopy of needles that are on the outside prevent light from getting into the core of the tree right next to the trunk. And what will happen is you’ll get a whole bunch of toothpick size branches from when the tree was younger that don’t have needles on ’em anymore, and the tree isn’t wasting energy on ’em. ’cause there’s no light for photosynthesis in there. But you’ve got all these little toothpicks on the inside that are, that are protected from the environment and bone dry. And that’s what you’re looking for. So you get up in, right next to the trunk of a conifer, and you look for those little dry toothpicks and you gather ’em and you get a big bundle, like a whole handful. Brett (33m 13s): And that’s gonna be the first stage even in the, in the rainforest of the Pacific Northwest. That technique will work. And the small branches, the little cotton ball fire, it dries ’em out, then they, the temperature comes up and then they catch on fire. Dave (33m 27s): So what you’re saying is you go to the base of any of these conifer trees and just Right, right at the base of the trunk, just grab some of the, the foliage or whatever’s right there. Brett (33m 35s): It’s not the foliage, it’s literally the, the branches themselves that don’t have any needles on ’em. The branches, the wood on the inside, the little tiny, this thin as you can find, I mean the thinner the better if it’s the diameter of a toothpick. You’re right what I’m talking about. And it’s dead and dry. So standing dead is what we talk about. The a big mistake in fire craft that people make, they do two things. Number one, they pick up off the ground anything that they can find and the stuff that’s on the ground is wet. And that just means all that water has to be evaporated before it will catch on fire. And 10 minutes might not be enough, especially if it’s larger. But If you get in something that’s toothpick size, even if it is moist on the outside, it’ll dry out. Brett (34m 18s): The other technique, especially in a wet environment, if there’s any moss or lichen, you know, they call that goats beard or oats old man’s beard on that stuff. Get rid of all of that before you try to light it on fire. Dave (34m 28s): Oh, you don’t want moss or any of that stuff either. Yeah, Brett (34m 31s): Moss actually gets its water from the air, from the relative humidity in the air. So I mean there’s, and water, if water’s a fire extinguisher, it doesn’t make things burn better. Right? Yeah. So we wanna get rid of the water if we can. Dave (34m 42s): Yeah. So, and that’s what we’re doing with the fire. The fire is kind of burning some of the, but If you get the small toothpicks and that’s gonna start your fire. And then what would be, and then what do you do? Do you just get branches that are Brett (34m 51s): Now branches? Exactly. So go into the same place. Those branches, the little tiny toothpicks are gonna be attached to things that are the size of a pencil or your little finger. And then that’s the next stage. And then after that, you get something that’s, you know, the diameter of your thumb and then you get something that’s, you know, the size, you know, maybe an inch and a half in diameter. And at that point when you’ve got inch and a half in diameter burning, you can put wet wood on that and it’ll eventually dry out and catch and everything else. So it’s just, it’s a building process and that’s the part what you don’t want is, you know, when your cotton ball burns out after 10 minutes to have a bunch of black sticks and not a burning fire. And that’s the, that’s the way you do it. Dave (35m 29s): Okay. And why is, you know, let’s just take this scenario. You’re gonna be out there for seven, two hours. Why is fire important if you’re not cooking anything? Brett (35m 36s): Well, so what we end up with is a heat source. Okay. So the heat source, now we’ve got a way to continue to dry out and as soon as our materials, our clothing is dry, so we put the, the shelter bag on, we’ve got a way that infrared actually goes through the plastic and it warms up the air on the inside. So you got a little bit of a muggy environment inside of that thing. But I’m trying to get rid of the moisture in my clothing, number one. And number two, now I’ve got a way to get my hands warmed up to get some circulation in there. And now my hands are gonna work better. I’m protecting my faculties. That 98.6 temperature on the inside, it enhances that. Dave (36m 13s): Yeah. Gotcha. And then once you get a fire going, you can what, start to take off some of those clothing layers and dry ’em off. Brett (36m 19s): You can, you can take off the layers, dry ’em out, and then when they’re dry, put ’em back on and now you’ve just enhanced again. And that’s kind of the, that’s kind of the ultimate in your situation, those getting dry and getting a fire started are probably the two big. Dave (36m 32s): Yeah, those are the big ones. Brett (36m 33s): And then what you end up with, with the fire is it’s a signal of a sort as Dave (36m 36s): Well, oh, and a signal. So it serves Brett (36m 38s): Multiple purposes. Right. The smoke is visible, the light is visible at night when it gets dark, now you have, you know, you can actually work a little bit. It’ll keep the critters away. You know, animals and, and insects are both, you know, so fire becomes an enhancement for mental state. It becomes, it’s multi-tiered, but you know, it’s an enhancement to the shelter as well. And then the final, the final piece at that point is, is signaling. That’s the big three, right? Shelter, fire signaling. Dave (37m 5s): Yeah. Well, before you get into signal, I wanna, I wanna tee this up because this is great. First of all, you said that the fire is good for like, if people worried about edibles, like cougars do not like fires if they see a big fi a fire going Exactly. They’re probably not gonna come mess with your bears or whatever if you’re up in Alaska. Yep. We did this, it was interesting. I, you know, I wish I would’ve had your survival kit. I probably would’ve been less worried. But we, we were in the middle of Alaska, this was quite a few years ago. Our, our boat broke down and we were just like on a gravel bar in the middle of like literally the Yukon Delta 20 million acre wildlife refuge. Yep. And we were like, okay, what do we do? No food, you know, we had waiters on, so literally we started a fire, I, we slept in our waiters, had the shotgun with this. Next we go for bears and we went down and caught a couple coho and ate some food. Dave (37m 48s): You know what I mean? The next morning our friend came, like you said, less than seven, two hours, the next boat came and they found us broke down. But you know, in that situation, the fire was key because it, it felt like, you know, we stayed warm. Right. That was key. But it just kept our mental right. Yeah. We call Brett (38m 1s): It survival tv, you know? Yeah. It’s always the same channel, but everybody loves it and it’s always the same show. Right, Dave (38m 7s): Right. You never get tired of it. That’s awesome. Okay, so we’re gonna add the feral rod basically to our gear kit. And then also you mentioned the cotton, you know, the Vaseline and that can just go into whatever, like waterproof container sort of thing. Brett (38m 19s): Exactly. So some people will put it into, you know, they try to get a little chintzy and they’ll, they’ll put it in a Ziploc bag. And that works great for, for a few minutes. I it longer than a few minutes, but a season in your bag, If you put a, a Ziploc bag into your gear and then leave it there for a year, it’s gonna get a bunch of pin holes in it. And then the next summer when it’s in the trunk and it’s 120 degrees in the trunk, it will melt and it’ll get all over your gear. Dave (38m 45s): Oh. So don’t do that. So what is the, is it the little orange, like Brett (38m 49s): Yeah, there’s little orange match case. Those work. Well you can go. And so here’s another key, just a generalized tip. If you have a piece of equipment, Americans in particular are infatuated with tactically colored stuff od green black steel, gray camo stuff, right? Well, If you drop something that is camo steel gray or forest green in the forest, you do not have any chance of finding it again. So something that is critical, your survival gear bright orange, I have blue duct tape, for example. I, you know, I put these flashes of color on my gear that I don’t wanna lose. I mean my survival knife, it’s got just search and rescue orange on the tip and on the, the sheath is that color as opposed to the one that I could get. Brett (39m 35s): I mean, it looks cooler to carry an od green knife on your hip, I guarantee you. As opposed to this one that looks like a, you know, a clown should be carrying it, but, but when you drop that, you can find it, it sticks out. It’s like, oh, there it is. I mean, from 20 yards away you can see it. And that’s one of those things that, you know, something that you don’t want. So your fire kit, I mean, put it in a, in a bright orange bag, your little Tinder source that you’re gonna, you know, light cotton on fire, put it in a, don’t put it in an od green plastic one. Get a bright orange or a bright blue one. Dave (40m 5s): Okay. So that’s good. So use the bright orange and then you mentioned the blue. So do you need, in this kit, do you need matches? It seems like the feral rod is, is pretty much your Brett (40m 13s): Match. No, I, well, so they always talk about using, you know, this is an old a boy scout trick, you know, when I was a kid there’s like always have two methods to start a fire and it’s, it’s one of those well, so i, I mistakenly thought, oh, I’ll get a, a method that works and then I’ll have to do something else. So the classic would be like a feral rod or a lighter and then matches as a secondary. Right. It’s like me personally, I take two feral rods. Yeah. The reason for that is If you lose your primary, you’ve got something that works as a backup. Well that feral rod, it is universal. I mean, matches work great as long as you keep ’em dry. I dunno If you ever try to light a wet match, but it’s, it’s not fun or easy. Dave (40m 50s): Yeah. I don’t like the ma. Yeah, this is great. So I could see us having Yeah, the little quick pocket thing with the feral rod and then maybe in your, in your pack you got another feral rod in there. Brett (40m 58s): Totally. That’s how I do it. Yeah. Dave (40m 60s): In case something happens and you lose your pack and now you at least have the three things. Brett (41m 4s): Well, and it, even those little, even those little match cases that we recommend, those have a little tiny strip of feral rod on the end. Oh they do. And so there’s maybe two or three strikes worth of sparks that you get there just as an absolute backup. So there’s, you know, again, there’s multi-layers of, of being prepared as you go through there. Dave (41m 22s): Yeah. This is awesome. Yeah. So the fair rod’s huge. So the third thing, at least in this is the signal, which is another game changer for me because explain that you showed me that. But this, this is pretty awesome because there’s lots of planes overhead, right? There Brett (41m 35s): Are, and so what you end up with is you’ve got so aircraft for sure search and rescue teams, but you, you already hit the nail on the head as to why you need this signal. You, you were talking about this 20,000 acre Yeah. You know, wildlife refuge, right? That’s a big piece of ground. And so how do you reach out and let someone know that you are in trouble? And that’s the thing, I, I have to get the attention of someone who can potentially help me. And that’s what signaling is all about. So there’s a couple of ways to do it. Probably the most effective daytime signal that’s out there is what’s called a signal mirror. So that reflects the sun, but you need the sun in that case. So there are pieces of equipment now signaling at night some kind of an artificial light source is appropriate. Brett (42m 19s): So that’s where your fire comes in. The smoke in the daytime is also a signal if there’s search and rescue in those areas, and this is where that multi-tier kind of stuff comes in. So if our shelter bag is bright blue and sticks out like a sore thumb and we enhance that shelter with the fire, and then when it starts to get dusky, that fire sticks out like a sore thumb. And now a helicopter’s out there with forward looking infrared and low light night vision, they can see that fire from 50, 60 miles away if they’re up at altitude. Wow. So I mean all of a sudden all of these things and then when they get close, it’s like there’s this wash of green vegetation and then this little bright blue thing over there and they’re like, what is that blue thing? So now all of a sudden it starts to make sense why you integrate all of these things together to make it easier. Brett (43m 3s): You know, one of the most important signals, and this it’s a little bit, I’m tongue in cheek when I’m saying this, is to let somebody know where you’re going and what your plan is so that when you don’t come home on Sunday night, they realize that you’re not just being a flake and you’re gonna be out there for three extra days or whatever. And that’s what starts the rescue process. Dave (43m 20s): The one I always go to on that is the guy that remember that book that the guy cut his arm off to get up. Remember his Brett (43m 25s): Yeah. Yes. Aaron Dave (43m 26s): Ralston. Aaron Ral. Right. He was nobody knew. Right. And that was the That’s right. What was the name of that? What was, do you remember the name of that? Brett (43m 32s): It’s a certain number of days. I wanna say it was like, like 27 days or whatever his, Dave (43m 36s): What was his name? Aaron. Brett (43m 37s): Aaron Ralston? Yeah. Dave (43m 39s): Aaron Ralston. Brett (43m 39s): Yeah. He’s a climber. He is a professional climber. And that was in Colorado that, that Dave (43m 44s): Happened. Oh it was, Brett (43m 45s): Yeah. He was pinned and he was pinned for so long. His arm was basically crushed. Anyway, he cut his arm off with a leatherman. Dave (43m 51s): Yeah. 127 hours, Brett (43m 53s): 127 hours. That’s what Dave (43m 54s): It was. Yeah. And, and so what is that? So you said the average 98% is, is within three days, which is 72 hours. So he went a little bit longer. Brett (44m 1s): He went a little bit longer than the, than the average. But why did he go a little bit longer? Well he was at the bottom of a rock canyon and he didn’t tell anybody. Yeah. And you know, everybody had to notice that he was gone before they started the rescue to go, you know, look at it, Dave (44m 17s): Step into the world where the river whispers and the fishing is nothing short of legendary. 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Brett (45m 19s): That’s a good question. Potentially he thought that if he didn’t cut his arm off, that he was gonna be stuck there because nobody would ever find him, find him. So on the signaling side of that, you know, bottom of a box canyon, really difficult. It’s an open question. So would he have been able to last longer with my kit? Unquestionably, whether he would’ve actually had to cut his arm off or not? That’s a tough one. Yeah. Dave (45m 44s): Right, right. Because like you said, the food you don’t really need for 127 hours water, I guess. Well, let’s talk about that. So, well first, before we talk about water, I wanna get into that. Let’s talk about how to signal the plane, because you mentioned how you can actually point, so the airline pilot actually gets the flash. Brett (45m 60s): Exactly. So what you end up with, there’s, and you know, I, it’s hard to show on, but you know, If you get an improvised signal, I dunno If you can see my hands or not, that you go in there. So you actually can use your fingers like a gun site, and you can, you could point the reflection of a mirror through that. But what works even better than that is they’re mirrors that are designed to flash aircraft. So the military uses them all the time. That’s why I’m familiar. I was a military life sport Dave (46m 28s): Guy. Oh Brett (46m 28s): Yeah. So there’s a little fiberglass mesh that’s a, that you can see in a little, there’s an aiming circle on the inside that’s basically, it punches right through the mirror itself. And on that fiberglass mesh, there are all these little microscopic glass beads that are oriented in just the right way. That refract part of the, the light source that you’re reflecting, IE the sun. And when you look through that little clear aiming window, you can see a glowing dot. And that glowing.is basically the reflection where it’s going. So when you look through the site, you put the little glowing dot on whatever you want to get the flash. So if an airline pilot is flying by you, you literally put that on the airplane and you just wiggle the, the mirror back and forth. Brett (47m 10s): And they will get that flash from the ground. And I, my background in aviation, If you see something that looks like the sun from the ground and it keeps flashing you, it’s really hard to ignore. Dave (47m 23s): Yeah. So basically, so this device isn’t just a mirror, like Right, right. This is a, and this is on your side, I think I’m, it’s, yeah. It’s called just the signal mirror glass. Brett (47m 32s): It is, it’s from the original company that made them, was called Vector one. They’re glass signal mirrors and they’re, it’s a military specification or mill spec glass signaling mirror. Coghlan’s actually bought Vector one when the, when the founder of that company passed away. Oh yeah. So a coghlan’s glass signaling mirror and you, I mean, you can get these things online, you can get ’em from me, I sell ’em. And then there is actually a plastic version that’s called a rescue flash company called SOL Sells those. Dave (48m 5s): Oh yeah. SOL sure. Brett (48m 5s): Survive outdoors longer. Right? Dave (48m 8s): That’s right. S right, that’s well, okay. And so that’s the mirror. So the cool thing about this mirror is that you can actually, you know, it’s not just a, a regular mirror flashing things. You could pinpoint this thing. So it goes to the PI by zooming in, like you said. Brett (48m 19s): And so anecdotally, I mean, you’re talking as far as long as they’re visible in the horizon. So something that, you know, 15, 20,000 feet, you could signal them, you know, 30, 40 miles away potentially from the sun. And they, you know, it happens all the time in the military context. You know, there are stories about, you know, signals at 50, 60 miles. That might be a bit of a stretch. But again, 20, 20, 30 miles is definitely within realm. And that’s to be able to reach out in the middle of the day, 20 to 30 miles really does make you stand out. And that’s, that’s Dave (48m 49s): Okay. And where could be, I know on your website you have some DVD, is there a place where somebody can watch you signaling or seeing this demonstrated? Or what would you recommend to follow up to kind of take more that, to learn how to do this? Brett (49m 1s): I do have some literature on there. I’ve got a Survival Basics blog. I do sell a video, but it’s a little bit like watching paint drive. Okay. It’s an older colleague of mine that actually does that. So, you know, we do sell, it’s a little, at this point, it used to be A DVD, now it’s a USB drive, If you were interested in that, that is something that I, I should probably pursue now that you’re even thinking about it. Yeah. Most of the time I demonstrate. Dave (49m 25s): You demonstrate. Yeah. Because you’re where people can find you as at your show. Now, talk about that real quick. Let’s take a, on what you do, because you go around to shows. Are you covering mostly the Northwest or are you going around the world? The country, Brett (49m 36s): I do go all over the world. I do air crew survival training, and then I do people survival training, obviously, that are just outdoor users, that sort of thing. So you and I connected at the Sportsman show. Yeah. In, in Portland, Oregon, I believe. Yeah. And so as you go in there, that’s, that’s a kind of a public safety aspect. So Toyota sponsors me to come in and give talks to people, and I demonstrate and show how a lot of this stuff works because there is so much myth and misconception out there. But I spend a lot of time working with search and rescue teams. I train them on how to search. So what I’m trying to do is pass as much information to the public. You know, your listeners in particular are a good example of that, of a demographic that could potentially need search and rescue services. Brett (50m 18s): And so, hey, how do you be a good customer for search and rescue? And then on the, on the search and rescue side, hey, how do we effectively look for people? What do lost people do? What’s their behavior? How do you manage an, an operation like that? Dave (50m 28s): Yeah, gotcha. Okay, cool. This is awesome. So, so we’ve got the signal mirror, we’ve got some of that. So really we’re still in the, the, the three things. We’re Brett (50m 35s): Still in the big three. The one other thing I would add in addition to the signal mirror is a whistle, a really loud whistle. And the reason is because I don’t know If you’ve ever been to a rock concert or not, but if you’re yelling and screaming at the top of your lungs, I’ll give you maybe 10, 12 minutes of that. And I mean, really making as much noise with your voice as is humanly possible. Your vocal cords just don’t last. But you can, you can blow on a whistle all day for a week. And it’s, it doesn’t take a lot of effort. And what you want is somebody, ’cause that your whistle blast can carry literally for a mile or two. And again, it just makes you, your footprint larger so that anybody who comes within that zone can actually see you or hear you or figure out that you’re there and need some help. Dave (51m 16s): Right. So whistle’s good. We mentioned water. So you’re out there. How do you, what do you tell people about water? Do they need to be drinking water? Brett (51m 24s): So water disinfection and storage. So what I have is a six category list. So the big three, that’s the minimum. That’s what I always focus on. So If you got nothing else, shelter, fire signaling, those are the three that you, that you definitely want to concentrate on. The next three, water disinfection and storage, survival medicine, and then tools. And so those are the next three. So a survival kit actually has six component groups. And this is literally where I start. So I’ll do survival kits that you’re gonna put in a vehicle, for example, or I’ll do ’em for a sheriff’s department or whatever. So getting back to what you’re talking Yeah. Water disinfection storage. So is water a big deal? It can be. So 72 hours, you know, the old scouting rule of threes, you know, they say you can go three days without water. Brett (52m 7s): It’s really variable depending on how hydrated you are when you start, what your activity level is and the environment. So I mean, if I have you sit in a La-Z-Boy chair in your living room and don’t move, you know, you could go much longer than three days probably without water it wouldn’t be pleasant. But if I, if we go down to Death Valley on the 4th of July at noon and we do a CrossFit workout, we’re gonna need water way faster than three days. And so that’s the, a little bit of variability there. What you end up with in, in water, it’s a bit of snake oil. You kind of need to know what you’re filtering and what the situation is. So in North America we’ve got pretty good hygiene stuff and sanitation. Brett (52m 51s): As far as the water’s concerned, the primary threat is Cryptosporidium and Giardia, which are protozoa that are from animals, you know, pooping and peeing in the water. And the interesting thing about that is those pathogens are not necessarily deadly. They just make you miserable. I don’t know If you’ve ever had Giardia or not. Yeah, Dave (53m 13s): I’m not sure. It’s Brett (53m 14s): Not very much fun. Really, really bad gas pains and stomach cramping and, and and diarrhea even. So obviously we wanna avoid that. So the good news about Cryptosporidium and Giardia is they’re relatively big on the microbial scale, so they’re relatively easy to filter out. So there are carbon filters that you can get. Yeah, Dave (53m 38s): Like the life straw. Brett (53m 39s): Yeah. Sawyer life straw. That’s a good example. Yeah. So really, really effective. So what you’re doing, I mean, you think like a Brita filter, you know, you have to make the chlorine taste go outta your water, you know, at home or something like that. It’s a very similar technology that goes through there. So it’s still a screen and the microbes are kind of like, you know, the basketballs of the microbial world. So they’re easy to filter out. So I would highly recommend doing that, especially if you’re gonna be drinking out of a stream or a creek or something like that. Dave (54m 4s): Yeah. So have one of those little straws or something like that in there. Yeah. Brett (54m 7s): The other option is chemical disinfection. Dave (54m 10s): Yeah, like water tablets. Brett (54m 11s): Yeah, water tablets. So the old school solution was iodine, like a, a company called Potable aqua. They had you put iodine tells. And the irony of this, and I mean I was a, I was in scouting when I was a kid too, and we put this potable aqua iodine tablets in, and they had these little pills that you put on the after the iodine to make it taste better, like the little lemon drops. And iodine is not effective in controlling protozoa. So the part of their lifecycle is a little cyst and the the cell wall is so thick that the iodine can’t get through it. So what you’re doing is, is the iodine was killing bacteria and viruses for sure. And, and is effective at doing that. You need a more powerful chemical. Brett (54m 52s): And what you’ll find is chlorine dioxide is kind of the chemical of choice. There are other things that are out there. Be very wary of buying old water disinfection materials at a swap meet or something like that. Just go in. Chlorine dioxide has about a five year shelf life. Each tablet, the way that they’re designed is for a liter of water. So, you know, half a pot bottle, big, big pot bottle bottles, kinda what, how much water you can disinfect. The big mistake that people make when they’re disinfecting water chemically is they don’t give it enough time to actually work. It takes at room temperature, so say 70 degrees Fahrenheit, it takes 30 minutes for those chemicals to kill all the critters in the water. Brett (55m 33s): So If you just put the, the tablets in the water, shake it up and drink it, it just makes the water taste bad. It doesn’t really do any good for you at freezing temperatures or right before the water goes solid into ice. It takes four hours of contact time to disinfect the water. So there’s a little bit of a caveat with that. Very, very dense, very, very effective for small amounts of water. In fact, for a micro kit that you could carry in a pocket and you’re worried, you know, about three or four days, you know, to disinfect water, chlorine dioxide tablets would be a very effective solution. ’cause a, a life straw even takes up more room and, and weighs a little bit from a density standpoint. Dave (56m 10s): So that’s it. So, and I see on your website you have micro Pure. Yeah. Are those tablets, Brett (56m 14s): Haines, micro, pure one. Yep. That’s probably the most popular version that’s out there. The most easily available. Dave (56m 19s): Yeah. And you got 20 tablets. So literally, I mean like one per bottle, I mean, mean you could probably just throw in five tablets and probably be good. Totally. Brett (56m 27s): That’s exactly what I’m saying. Now the other thing on the water side, you need something to put your water in. So you know, If you, you know, let people will carry a, you know, like a, a Yeti bottle or a hydro flask or something. ’cause they work great, but those are like thermos. So I’ve got another option, another brand, you know, a clean canteen, what you use for those, because they can actually, you can use ’em to heat water up. So another disinfection technique for water If you run out of the tablets is to boil it. So that’s the one that you can do long term, but it presupposes that you have at least something that you can heat the water up in. Right. So, you know, when you’re really looking at a small low impact weight and space, you know, taking a collapsible platypus water bag is not a bad example as well. Brett (57m 15s): ’cause when it’s empty, it doesn’t take up any room at all and it weighs almost nothing. But you can actually put a liter of water into it Dave (57m 21s): And you could pump into it. Yeah, I see your, yeah, you can get a, bring a filter pump too, so you could pump into your Exactly. Platypus. So there you go. Okay. And that’s awesome. I mean the, the tablets, so, and you’re saying when you put those tablets in, you need to let it sit in there for hours before you can drink the water? Brett (57m 35s): At least 30 minutes. Dave (57m 36s): Oh, at least 30 minutes. Okay. Brett (57m 37s): At least 30 minutes. So room temperature water is 30 minutes, freezing water is four hours. So it’s a spectrum from those two, depending on what the temperature of the water is. So if you’re up in Alaska and it’s like glacier fed stream, it’s gonna be longer than 30 minutes. Oh, okay. As you go out there, the thing about water filters, you know the answer’s money. Now ask your question. You can get a reverse osmosis filter pump that you know they use in life rafts and that’ll desalinate the water. Oh wow. I mean, the screen on that is so fine that a molecule of salt will not fit through the screen. But a but H2O, a single molecule of water goes through. So that purifies the water. Now all the way back to your little Sawyer life straw, what I’m trying to disinfect is important because, okay, so Cryptosporidium and Giardia, those protozoa that I mentioned, they’re relatively large and easy. Brett (58m 26s): But if I, let’s say we have an earthquake, a 9.0 earthquake on the I five corridor in the Pacific Northwest, or you’re south of Seattle or something like that. Okay. We’re the sewer line breaks and now we get e coli in the water supply. So what happens every once in a while, you know, when they’re doing construction or something, you get a notice from the water company and they’re like, Hey, boil your water for the next couple days. Right. Well what they’re telling you is there’s, there’s bacteria in there. Well, a soiler life straw will not factor the bacteria out. They’re too small, they get through the screen. So what you’re trying to do, if I go to Sub-Saharan Africa and I’m worried about Ebola virus or something like that, right. Viruses are orders of magnitude smaller than bacteria. Bacteria are orders of magnitude smaller than protozoa. Brett (59m 7s): So it takes successively thinner and thinner filters to get the small, when I say thinner, I mean smaller pore size filters. So when you go out there, and this is why I said snake oil at the very beginning, every water filter salesman is gonna tell you his is the very best. So you beware of weasel words, you know, things like Dave (59m 27s): Yeah. Good for everything. Brett (59m 29s): Well, nominal is what you’re look is, you know, you, when somebody says what’s the nominal filtration size as opposed to absolute. So IE what is the, what is the biggest thing that’s possible to get through this screen? And that’s where you go in there. So it, there are good filters out there and there are filters that will filter viruses and that sort of thing. They, they’re just a lot more expensive. So a life straw is gonna cost you, you know, you’re talking 20 bucks, you know, you get one of the filters, viruses, you’re gonna spend three or 400. Dave (59m 58s): Right. Right, right. Gotcha. So for what we’re talking about, which is, you know, maybe in, you know, the us in our example, again, somebody’s in the stream, you know, that might be good enough. The, the lifestyle or the tablets sort thing. Brett (1h 0m 10s): Exactly. Right. Exactly. Right. Now one other, one other caveat, and then we can move on away from water. If you have no filtration or disinfection capability, drink the water. Dave (1h 0m 19s): I was gonna ask you about that because we had, we had Yvonne Ard on, I believe it, he, he said this, you know, from Patagonia, the founder. Yep. And he said on that podcast like, Hey, I’ve been drinking the water straight from the stream for my whole life. Yep. And what is going on with that? Is that because he’s get his body’s used to it or what? Well, Brett (1h 0m 35s): Yes, his body is used to it, number one. And number two, there’s a lot of water volume that doesn’t have protozoa in it. And I told you the ineffectiveness of iodine and killing. Yeah. Protozoa. I drank water as a scout. I, we were up in the, we did 50 mile hikes and got the hiking merit badge and all that kind of stuff. And we were drinking outta streams all the time and think just fat, dumb, and happy putting these little tablets in the water. That wasn’t protecting us at all. And so, and you know, some of us got sick, but it was usually attributed to not doing your dishes well enough or, you know, you know, some kind of a, of an issue like that. But we all survived it. And so what you end up with is some discomfort and you’ve had a an incidence of it. Brett (1h 1m 17s): Can it be serious? It totally can. So you, it it’s prophylactic, but we can cure sick. We cannot cure dead from dehydration. Yeah. So, right. You know, being overly scared. It’s, it’s an evaluation. Right. What’s gonna kill me if I need water and I have a water source, it’s absolutely silly not to drink the water in that context. Dave (1h 1m 37s): Yeah, that’s a great point. That’s a great point. Cool. So that’s a little on water. And again, all of this we can follow up with you on your, on your site. You’ve got the survival blog as well, which I’m sure goes into some of this. So, so, and I’m looking at now what’s, yeah, this is cool. I’m at your blog now. What’s wrong with the space blanket? You got tools and supply. So cool. This is gonna be a good resource I think for people that want to move further. But let’s get the last, you, you mentioned six, so let’s go to the last number five. Yeah, Brett (1h 2m 0s): The last two. Yeah. So the next one, this one’s pretty straightforward. It’s survival medicine. So when I say survival medicine, first aid is not what I’m talking about. So first aid is a totally different subject. And am I advocating you carry a first aid kit? I absolutely I am. And it should be commensurate with whatever training level you’ve received. But you should get some, number one, it should be focused on wilderness. Especially if you’re gonna go out in the woods. And that means where you, you may be outside of being able to call 9 1 1 or what do you do If you come upon somebody in your party or you yourself are injured, you are definitive care at that point. So that’s where wilderness medicine comes in. But the survival medicine piece on the survival kit, there’s two aspects of this. Brett (1h 2m 41s): Number one is kind of a bandaid booboo kit. So If you, something that, you know, If you, If you stick a fish hook in your thumb and you know, you, you get it out and everything else, but you don’t wanna cancel your trip because of that. So there’s some basic stuff that I, that you put in there. So this is like a neosporin and a good set of bandages or maybe some medical tape that will actually stick so that you can protect your hands. So that a little annoying injury like that doesn’t become a life threatening injury. That’s the first aspect. So that’s where you get your bandaids, generic antibacterial soap and some antibacterial ointment, some just basic bandaid and bandaging from varying sizes, et cetera. Brett (1h 3m 25s): You do have to cycle those out every couple years. ’cause the adhesive on those things will go bad. The other is any personal medications. So let’s say you’re on blood pressure meds or you’re a diabetic or you have an, an allergy to bees or through something like that. What we recommend in a survival kit is a 10 day supply. So you, you know, you’re just, your medication, whatever, it’s, you know, if you’ve got beta blockers, ’cause you’ve got, you know, AFib or something like that. I mean this, as you get into, you know, older demographics, a lot of them have a regimen of medicines and that sort of a thing. So that just takes that off the table as something that is, is gonna sneak up on you. And it can be extremely serious and it can be more of an inconvenience. Brett (1h 4m 7s): But like I said, a 10 day supply of the medications that you’re on is what we recommend. Yeah. Dave (1h 4m 12s): 10 day. Okay. So basically medicine is just literally, that’s the medications you need just to, to survive again, to keep you from dying. That’s kind of the focus of that for the most part. And Brett (1h 4m 21s): It is now the, the basic comfort stuff. So generic pain relievers, so your ibuprofen, If you twist your ankle, you know, and anti-inflammatory like ibuprofen obviously don’t do that. If you have medications that that conflict with, you know, NSAIDs and stuff like that. But If you go in and then there’s also, you know, baby aspirin for example. If you have, you know, as a, as a potential treatment for somebody in your, you know, somebody has a heart attack or, or something like that. These are all little things that you could add to a kit that are kind of over the counter medications that are effective Benadryl as a generic anaphylactic. So If you have an aller allergic reaction to something you’re not even aware of, that can be helpful. Imodium or Peptizole tablets. Brett (1h 5m 2s): Right. So these are things that make you feel a little bit better. They make something that could be relatively miserable, a little bit more tolerable. Because when all of is, this is said and done. And even when we talk about food, you know, I, we, we mentioned that food is a myth that you need it, it is a powerful psychological benefit to have something to eat or to chew on or to suck on or something. So when somebody says, should I put food in my survival kit? They usually get a lecture that lasts an hour long first. And then I say absolutely yes, put some food in it. Yeah. Dave (1h 5m 32s): Right. Brett (1h 5m 33s): Because it makes you feel better, right? Yeah. So you put a little, you know, that’s the, that’s the key because if your psychological state goes up, then your, your physical reaction to the harsh conditions and everything else gets better. Dave (1h 5m 46s): Okay. So in food could be what, like a cliff bar or Right, like anything Totally Brett (1h 5m 50s): A cliff bar or a, a protein bar. Even like the little power snacks that you can get, you know, If you bunk on the trail or something like that. You know, any of that kind of stuff. Something that keeps, well, depending on the, how long it’s been, you know, you, you replenish it before you go out on the trip, you put something decent in there. Even some hard candy is beneficial in that regard. So again, it makes you feel better. I’m hungry, I’m bored and I’m scared or kind of synonymous with gimme something to eat and I’ll feel better. Yeah. Gotcha. Dave (1h 6m 16s): God, that’s perfect. Well I think the last one is gonna be good because is is it tools? Is that the last tools? Brett (1h 6m 21s): That’s exactly it. Dave (1h 6m 22s): Yep. So we all love tools, right? We all love a pocket knife. Brett (1h 6m 25s): Absolutely. So a knife is a good, a good survival tool. I would say a solid shank knife, that’s what I put in. And the reason is because a knife with a hinge in it, the hinge is the weak point on the knife. Even if it’s a high quality one. And we start batoning IE pounding on a knife with a big stick or a hammer, you’ll break the hinge. So another one is a saw of some sort. So it’s, these are force multipliers when you’re dealing with, with creating shelter, with creating fire, with fueling the fire and that sort of a thing. Signaling all of that is just, you have the ability to kind of expand out into the environment a little bit so you’re not just, you know, stuck with breaking sticks that you can do with your, with your hands and things like that. Brett (1h 7m 8s): So a solid shank knife, try to avoid one that’s got spikes, you know, k bar piece spikes on the back of the handle or a saw blade or anything like that. Because when you baton, which is literally hit the back of that knife with a larger piece of wood or something like that, you’ll chew through that hammer very quickly if it’s got a blade on the back of it. Gotcha. So anyway, that’s a backup. By the way, the knife is a good backup for the feral rod. ’cause it usually takes, you know, carbon steel is the best thing to make sparks with it. Oh, Dave (1h 7m 38s): So you could use that. Yep. Brett (1h 7m 39s): Saw knife and then your a leatherman, like a, not leatherman in particular a multi, let’s say multi-tool, right? So there’s a lot of different brands. It doesn’t have to be leatherman, but for repair, for going in and and monkeying with stuff for taking apart or, or putting a something together, using the resources, improvising a Phillips head screwdriver or improvising a set of pliers is just not practical. You either have ’em or you don’t. Yeah. Dave (1h 8m 8s): What might you use a, a pair of pliers on out there for? Brett (1h 8m 12s): Well, so think about this. You know, depending upon what your equipment is, right? So everything from, let’s say you, you break your, you know, you damage your rod and reel when you drop or something like that. You know, there’s some, there’s potentials for, you know, I’m, I’m thinking more in context. Like a, one of the examples that I have, I was doing mountaineering and I was skinning up a slope that was covered on in snow and my, my binding broke. And so I used the pliers to disassemble the bindings. Right? I didn’t have a wrench. And so what you ended up with is it, like I said, it’s just that Dave (1h 8m 47s): Leverage. You never know right? You never know. You Brett (1h 8m 49s): Don’t know. And it’s, it’s amazing what you can do from an improvisational standpoint when you have some basic tools that help you with that Dave (1h 8m 56s): Stuff. Yeah, yeah. There’s all sorts of stuff on there, I’m sure. And, and the one that I have, I’ve had a few, but like, you know, the leatherman wave, you, you know what I mean? It doesn’t matter what multi do do they Brett (1h 9m 4s): All, it doesn’t take a look at the tools. They’re all useful. I mean, people are like, oh, what do I need a, a pair of scissors for? Well you’d be surprised, right. You know, so cutting a plastic bag, for example, the face hole in a plastic bag, a set of scissors makes that process really easy. A nail file, If you tear a fingernail, that can be a pain in the tush to deal with, right? Yeah. And you don’t want to just bite it off. ’cause then, you know, you, you get down in it starts to hurt. Right? So again, there’s just all these little things that could potentially let alone, you know, sharpening hooks or, or whatever the case might be. Yeah. You’re, that you’re dealing with some of this stuff, you know, an all or a punch is another one that’s on there. Some of them will have a little Phillips head screwdriver head on them. There’s variations. Brett (1h 9m 45s): Take a look at what the tools are and say, well when would I use this? Okay, maybe I don’t need the magnifying glass, but if I’m reading little tiny instructions on another piece of equipment, that magnifying glass is really handy. Dave (1h 9m 57s): That’s a good point. Yeah. Especially if you’re older. Like, like me, you know, the glasses If you Brett (1h 10m 1s): Right. My eyes stuck. Dave (1h 10m 2s): Yeah. If you lose your glasses or you don’t have ’em, it’s Brett (1h 10m 4s): Like, now what do I do? Dave (1h 10m 6s): Good. So that’s tools and, and pretty much like you said, everything, they could look at all the tools on your site. Do you have probably a place that they could look at some of the other ones? Brett (1h 10m 13s): I do. So, and the tools kind of vary back and forth. So there are some electronics things, you know, a compass, people who know how to use a compass, guess what, they don’t get lost. Right? Yeah. Right. A compass is a good thing. It’s a, it’s kind of a, it’s a vanishing skill and that, you know, your cell phone is a fantastic signaling device by the way. Right. It’s not a good compass. Even If you download an app that says it’s a Compass app. Dave (1h 10m 36s): Yeah. So even OnX, if you’ve got OnX or trout routes, right? It’s not, those aren’t perfect. They Brett (1h 10m 40s): Are not perfect. So having something that will actually wait, ’cause they’re dependent on That work coverage and they’re also now A GPS is another tool. Now as technology keeps getting better, there are some phones and apps that have decent GPS and don’t need network connectivity. So it is possible to have that. But that goes in the tools category. Anything electronic, you know, when you start talking about signaling, you know, having a light source that you can use to flash at an airplane or to flash at rescuers, but then also so you can see what you’re doing at night are things to add. So a light is kind of a tool, but it’s also a signal. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so If you get multiple uses from these different items, it’s just more incentive that that’s a good item to carry. Brett (1h 11m 22s): With that being said, try to avoid all in one survival tools. And the reason I say that is because If you lose and all in one survival tool, you just lost all your survival. Dave (1h 11m 33s): Right? Yeah. Don, no, you get it. What, what’s the word for it? You, you wanna have multiple layers, right? You don’t, yeah. Brett (1h 11m 38s): Yes, exactly. Right. So fallbacks, you know, it’s alternates. Yes, exactly right. Dave (1h 11m 43s): Okay, we’re gonna take it outta here pretty quick. We have a segment we call our Instagram story segment. And this is where we’re gonna get a story out of you on maybe some survival situations that, you know, where you applied some of this. But today this is presented by four wheel campers. So four wheel campers is with a camper. We’re gonna be taking up to Alaska. We mentioned this trip. We’re gonna be traveling up there all the way. And, and you never know what could happen along the way. Right. We might break down, you know, who knows, right? But we’re gonna, we’re gonna have your gear. That’s the point is on this trip, I’m gonna make sure to get all this stuff. So we’ve got this in the truck, but let’s go to that first because you know, on the stories part of it, first shout out to four wheel campers. But do you have something that would maybe a, a story out there that we can remember what we’re talking about here? Brett (1h 12m 25s): You know, there are a couple, I’ve got a couple of stories where what you end up with is, is not necessarily a, an example where everything gets applied. So most of my stories are, it’s a one-off, like there’s one investigation terms, we call that the accident chain, right? There are all these links that come together in the accident chain. And if any one of those links get broken, the accident doesn’t happen or the situation doesn’t occur. And that’s kind of where, where you come into these, these kind of situations. So, so what, let the first example, so, so this example of this kind of story, so I’m a a deer hunter, right? Yeah. So Pacific Northwest, Washington state, I am hunting for mule deers in the area where we are. Brett (1h 13m 11s): It happened to be foggy that morning. So coming down the hillside, it was foggy enough that I couldn’t see the surrounding area. So I went up the hill in the first part of the morning and then when I was not successful, was turning around and trying to come back down to the road where I parked my truck earlier and I went down, I was on a ridge line. So I thought, I’m just gonna walk this ridge line and I’m walking the ridge line and all of a sudden I get to the bottom of the hill and there’s no, not only is there no truck, there’s no road. Oh wow. Right. But it’s foggy. I mean, I can only see maybe 10 yards. I mean, that’s probably the distance. Right? Well, so that’s the first step where you’re like, okay, yeah, Dave (1h 13m 53s): Like stop that. I always get to that step where I’m like, okay, what is the first thing you do? Do you backtrack? Do you sit down? What do you do? Brett (1h 14m 1s): So the Air Force had a little acronym for me that I, it works great. It’s called Stop think, observe plan. STOP. So stop is absolutely what you do. So the the s the S in stop is literally stop moving. When you’re outta control, you feel uncomfortable, whatever the case is, it is literally a, it feels better because you have control over your movement. Dave (1h 14m 23s): Right? You’re not potentially getting worse off than you were. Brett (1h 14m 25s): You’re right. And so I’m just, I’m gonna drive some of this nervous energy into my feet and I can dispel it that way and it feels good ’cause I’m doing something not necessarily the best solution in every case because you could potentially make it worse. So sit down, take a drink of water, think a little bit about what was going on. ’cause you know, the first thing that comes into your mind in a situation like that is, I just went through the twilight zone and I’m now back in time when there’s not a road there. And it’s like, you know, that’s what comes to mind. Yeah. It’s like, ’cause I couldn’t possibly have taken a wrong turn. Right? Yeah. So that’s where you start to rationalize a little bit and you say, okay, what is it that’s going, okay, no, this is not some science fiction movie that I’m a part of. Now I, I came down the wrong ridge line, so how do I fix this? Brett (1h 15m 9s): And this is where it’s the point of convenience, which is like, well I can start walking along the bottom of the hill. I think that that’s where, that’s where people get into trouble. Yeah. Because the real solution is to go back up the hill, go Dave (1h 15m 21s): Back, follow your steps If you can back yes, Brett (1h 15m 24s): Go right back up to where you know where you were. And then pay attention a little more specifically so that you don’t take the wrong finger ridge. And that’s exactly what I did. So I hiked back up the hill and it took me a whole extra hour to hike up the hill, go back to where I was, and then I went down the right and guess what was at the bottom of the hill? Yeah. Your truck. My truck. And so yeah, get getting lost in the fog is my example. Now where could that have gone If you didn’t handle it correctly? All of a sudden now I’m in some valley or drainage that I’m not familiar with and now I’m walking and I start looking and, and instead of using that powerful survival tool between your ears, you turn around and you’re just, you’re kind of following your nose. And that’s a good way to get in trouble. Dave (1h 16m 4s): Yeah. Have you seen a lot of those, you know, the search and rescue, have you been a part of those things where you’re searching for people? Brett (1h 16m 11s): Oh my god, yes. Absolutely. And that’s exa so that’s how it starts. So I’ve got a, I have a presentation that I gave, it’s called I was just, and then.dot dot. Oh right. That’s how it starts. I was just, and now you fill in the blanks. Yeah. Dave (1h 16m 23s): I was just, I was just fishing out my back door sort of. Brett (1h 16m 27s): Yeah. I was just gonna run over there real quick. I was just gonna go behind this, this rock for some privacy so I could go to the bathroom. You know, I was just gonna run back up the trail to the campsite to get my camera ’cause I forgot it. Hey you guys keep on I’ll, I’ll meet you at the lake. Oh right, right, right. And then that person then starts the week long search and rescue mission. Dave (1h 16m 46s): Right. That’s it. So on that stop mode, was that a acronym? STOP. What’s it stand for? Brett (1h 16m 51s): STOP. Yes. Stop. Think, observe plan. So what you’re doing is you’re stopping, you’d stop moving. So now you’re, you gather your wits, take a drink of water. If you’re scared a drink of water, we’ll kinda wash that coughy fear, taste outta your mouth, get rid of the anxiety a little bit. Think about the situation, okay, what is it that actually is going on here? Observe the environment, figure out what it is that you’re seeing. I know where I am, I don’t know where I am. And then put together a plan to fix the situation. Dave (1h 17m 21s): That’s good. Okay. So we’ll put down, hopefully we’ll have maybe on our Instagram we’ll have a little story of this that we can put down. Maybe get some photos, some stuff. Well we’re definitely, and I Brett (1h 17m 28s): Was trying to come up with a fishing one. You know, my dad and I, we actually had, we were trying to follow a compass bearing across the straits. We were fishing up in British Columbia. Oh wow. So on the Sunshine Coast up on the northern, up towards Port Hardy. So we’re in the Canadian San Juans in there. And from where we were staying, we took a compass shot out to where it was. ’cause in the morning it’s foggy. So it’s fogging fog story. Right. Well there’s, but there’s shipping out in this, this lane that we’re trying to get across. What we didn’t remember was that there’s current in the ocean, right? Hmm. So we take our little compass bearing out in the front and this is my 12-year-old self. And I’m like, oh, yep, that’s the direction, you know, and I’m giving my dad back and forth. Well we’re going and we’re going and we’re going, we missed the island completely because we drifted to the south with the current. Brett (1h 18m 16s): And when we figured that out, we spent the whole rest of the morning trying to figure out where the hell we were to get back. And it took the fog lifting for us actually to get back to safety, so to speak. So again, it’s this a variation on the same thing, but you know, since your listeners are fishermen, Dave (1h 18m 29s): So Yeah, that’s right. Well I love the, the compass I think is interesting because I feel like the compass is very important, especially If you know how to use it. Yes. But you know, like for me, for example, I’ve never, you know, I’ve had compasses, but I just, you know, again, I do the thing you probably shouldn’t do my phone I have out there and you know, it, it worked great for me forever. I haven’t had that one situation yet. But, but how would you recommend on the Compass is there, is there a class that people would take? Do you think it’s an important thing? If somebody’s listening right now, do you think they should learn how to use a compass? Oh Brett (1h 18m 57s): Absolutely. I think they should buy a compass and I should learn how to use it. That’s just one of those, it’s an emergency gear. It never needs batteries. It always works. As long as the earth is spinning, you will have a compass. Dave (1h 19m 8s): Where should they go? Is this something where you just pop up 10 minute YouTube video and or where would you send people? Brett (1h 19m 13s): Yeah, there are YouTube videos out there. There are books written on the subject. It is not intuitively obvious. Dave (1h 19m 18s): It’s kind of confusing, right? Because you gotta turn this thing and then there’s some compasses probably that aren’t very good too. Right. Well, well I think again, the safety, going back to this, the blanket thing I think is so perfect because everybody’s got one, the kits are on Amazon, but like, they also sometimes have these compasses that are kind of flimsy and probably, are those really work? Brett (1h 19m 36s): No, my joke for that when I’m in the class is I pull one of these out and I say, this compass is very inexpensive and it always points to the country where it was manufactured. Right. Not to the North Pole. Dave (1h 19m 49s): Right. Brett (1h 19m 50s): So yeah, that’s, that’s a joke. Dave (1h 19m 52s): How does that happen to this data? So the blankets, these compasses, how does that get, because those are, there’s millions of those things out there and they’re not all Chinese made, right? I mean, no, how is that possible? Because that seems like that’s a dangerous thing to have out there. Brett (1h 20m 4s): I would agree completely. And you know, welcome to my world is, is what I would say. But yeah, that what, what you get is well-intentioned, uninformed people. And so what they get is, and you know who the worst is? I, and I’m not disparaging this group because they’re, they’re great, but it’s, it’s your hometown scout leaders for example. Dave (1h 20m 22s): Oh really? Like the scout, like the boy scouts. Brett (1h 20m 24s): Yeah. And not across the board, this is not a universal term, but I’m, you’re giving you an example of how this could go. Somebody doesn’t really understand. They think they do and they pass on bad information or the other really primary source. So that’s part of it. And now, you know, the university of YouTube is fantastic. I mean here we are on a podcast. I know. But when you talk about looking at popular media is, you know, real survival is not necessarily sexy or exciting when it’s done appropriately. And so what you get is somebody who’s making a a 20 minute segment for use for 30 minutes on a, on a network and they’re literally saying, we need more jeopardy. Brett (1h 21m 7s): We need something, you know, we, we’ve got the two minute culture, right? We’ve got this. Yeah. It has to be funny or exciting or jaw dropping or gets you within two minutes or we’re gonna click on something else. God. And that I think is part of the problem as well. And so what you get then because of that is the information that’s out there, the individual points that are appropriate get lost in the weeds. Dave (1h 21m 31s): Yep. That’s it. No, I love, that’s one of the things I love the podcast because we’ve been on here for over an hour now and we’re just, and it’s great because people, you know, there’s some people that are listening right now still in, in with us. And it’s beautiful because we don’t have to have these short little social media like Yeah, like you’re saying the junk, you know, the junk out there. We’re really getting, trying to get down to our essence as much we can in an hour or so. Right. How can we go? And I feel like, I feel like we’ve done good because I go back to like you, I think you simplify things. You know, you got three things, there’s three things right now we can get that we could throw in our pocket and we can take with us everywhere. There’s, you know, the six things that If you wanna make something bigger and, and I wanna just point people as we get outta here to your website because you have a couple of products, what would you recommend if somebody wanted to get one of these packages? Dave (1h 22m 14s): ’cause you have some different levels, what do you tell them? Yeah, Brett (1h 22m 16s): I do. So we’ve got three different levels. So I have a starter kit, we call it an outdoor safe survival kit. And that is a shelter, fire and signaling kit. It comes in a little cordura, which is a heavy nylon pouch with a zipper up on the top of it. It literally has a feral rod. It’s got two of those little waterproof match containers for cotton and Vaseline. It has an immediate action shelter bag in it. It has a signaling mirror and a whistle and a little piece of flagging tape actually that you could tie up in a tree. You know, so the, the, from a signaling perspective, you know, color contrast size movement, it sticks out and it does all of those things. So it, it’s an attention grabber for either for you or for someone else. Brett (1h 22m 58s): So that’s the starting kit. We have another, which is, we call it the 98.6 kit. And that one has all six of the categories. So it’s got shelter, fire signaling, water disinfection and storage survival medicine and tools that go into it. And it’s designed, we actually built that one under contract for customs and border protection. So it was a DHS product that we, and the pilots still use it by the way. We still supply it. They’re for air crew. So the idea was to put it in the leg pocket of a flight suit. So it’s, it’s about the same size as the pouch that we have on the starter kit. It comes in a little royal blue pouch that goes in there and it’s got an immediate action shelter bag. But what some of the added items in that, there are two of those MP one tablets and a small collapsible water bag that goes in there. Brett (1h 23m 45s): There’s a little LED flashlight that’s inside of it. There’s a little solid shank neck knife that goes with it. There’s 40 feet of cordage that’s in there from a sheltering perspective. And then there’s a instruction booklet. Oh, Dave (1h 23m 58s): This is the emergency survival kit? That’s correct. So this is the kinda the big thing that’s got pretty much everything. No, Brett (1h 24m 4s): No, no, no, no. This is the in between. This one’s called the, the one that I just described is called the 98.6 kit. Dave (1h 24m 8s): Oh yeah, that’s the 98.6. Yep. Yep. Brett (1h 24m 10s): Now the, the emergency survival kit is the one that’s designed for a vehicle and that’s like, that’s like four people, right? So, and that one’s gonna be, you know, it’s almost a foot across and maybe three or four inches thick. It weighs maybe seven pounds, five to seven pounds. And it’s got, it’s got enough stuff, it’s got all of those categories and you know, you could put all of those materials inside of that. Dave (1h 24m 30s): Okay, perfect. So yeah, you got these different level and I think again, the easy thing would be, right now, a good step would be for everybody to get that first kit, which is your top, your three things. Right? Brett (1h 24m 39s): Right. Now if most people also, when I talk to them, they’re like, oh, I already have a survival kit. And it’s like, okay, well let’s evaluate that. So every one of those individual items that’s in there, most people do have some decent stuff. They also have some, you know, like they’ll have a space blanket in there, right? And I’m like, okay, you should get rid of the space blanket and you should put a bag in there, right? That’s the, don’t even use my bag. Go to go to Walmart and get a garbage bag and use that. That will do you more good than the space blanket will, et cetera. So all of the individual components are available as Dave (1h 25m 10s): Well. Okay. And that’s the good thing is that, yeah, you don’t have to necessarily buy your stuff, although the way you package it and everything here is makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Brett (1h 25m 17s): Yeah. Makes it convenient. We’re trying to, you know, you can, you can spend a lot of money on survival kits and or equipment and not necessarily get any improvement. So you don’t want trinkets, but you don’t have to break the bank either. And that’s where it really comes into play. And, and the best advice in that department, I could give you whatever it is that you buy, try it out. Don’t just throw it in the trunk of your car or in your bag. Like literally play with it. And if it’s that good, I mean hell buy two, right? So, you know, beat the snot outta one and figure out how to use it and then put the other one that’s in pristine condition for when there’s an emergency. Yeah, Dave (1h 25m 50s): That’s a great point. So get it out, use it just like anything. Do the reps, you know, you gotta try stuff so when the situation happens, you’re ready to go. Brett (1h 25m 57s): Exactly right. Dave (1h 25m 58s): Cool. Well this has been great, Brett. I think we’ll kind of hold it there and send everybody out to outdoor safe.com if they wanna check more into this. And this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you going in deep here and we’ll, we’ll look forward to keeping in touch with you and Brett (1h 26m 11s): Absolutely, absolutely. Anytime And anybody can reach out as well at the website. Dave (1h 26m 14s): Yeah, that website, is that the best way? Just go to your website? It is, Brett (1h 26m 17s): Yeah. No, yeah, exactly. So there’s a, we have a little, you know, info at, there’s a, you know, contact us on the website, you can just drop me a note. And I, we’re a small business, so I do travel a lot and I do train a lot, but I’m, I come up for air every couple of days. So that’s, I answer all my email. Dave (1h 26m 34s): Okay, I see. And you even have a, yeah, you have a office phone too, email, office phone. So you got exactly both of those things. Okay, good. Well, and then any other questions? So we’ll direct ’em there and then yeah, until we talk again, Brett, appreciate all your time. We’ll talk to you soon. Roger Brett (1h 26m 46s): That. Stay safe. Dave (1h 26m 48s): All right, you have to, If you want to have a chance to stay safe out there, head over to outdoor safe.com and check in and maybe pick up that 98.6 pack that sounds like, I think it’s about a little over a hundred dollars and all the items are there. He talked about today, you could also just get the smaller pack, the three key items, that one as well. I’d go for EI mean, If you, If you do anything, it’s pretty easy, especially that small pack and just fit in your pocket and, and why not? It might save your life. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to this podcast. You can do that on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or any app that you are on out there. If you haven’t heard about Wetly Swing Pro, I wanna give you a little heads up here. We are relaunching, we actually already launched Wetly Swing Pro through our founders, and now we are launching the next cohort. Dave (1h 27m 37s): And this is gonna be pretty amazing. If you’re interested in, we Swing Pro, go to wew.com/pro and If you go there, you can sign your name up and we’ll follow up with you as we launch the next cohort. And essentially we’re doing these throughout the year to provide a better, better resource, better value for those, for that group that’s going in. So If you want to get involved in this next cohort, this next group, go there right now and you can find all the great stuff about Wetly Swing Pro and, and you can get involved in that. We’re, we’re trying to keep this to like a limited number as we get into this so we can make sure that this is the best experience possible. So If you haven’t yet, check out Wetly Swing Pro, sign up there and we’ll follow up with you on details. Alright, next episode. Alex Zini Hall Zini. Dave (1h 28m 18s): This guy is a, is what do you call this guy? He’s unique. We watched a, a short film on Alex, it was pretty awesome. Steelhead Angler. So we’re gonna get it with Alex Zini. If you know Zini, stay tuned for that next episode. He’ll be here. All right. Appreciate you for stopping in today. Hope you have a great afternoon. Hope you have a great evening. Or if it’s morning and you’re cooking up those eggs, enjoy them and we’ll see you on that next episode. Outro (1h 28m 42s): Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit wet fly swing.com.