Altoids Survival Kit

There is a unique survival kit that intrigues me. Sure, you have your bug-out bag with a quart of water, some energy bars, socks, knife, and other things. But that is backpack size. How about a survival kit that fits in a shirt pocket?

Well folks are way ahead of me and jammed a survival kit into an Altoids Box. You know? Those gorcery aisle mints in a tin that a curiously strong?

Why an Altoids tin? It's small enough, yet crush proof. The can itself is a tool as a small tray you can heat over a small fire for cooking, and the refective interior can be used as a signalling device.

You make it yourself, and I am assembling a couple for myself. The point of it is to make it and seal it and only open it when you need it. You can throw it IN your BoB if you want. The strength is its small size and diverse quantty of handy items that can keep you alive. There is a commercial version or two, like the SAS COMBAT SURVIVAL TIN, that may predate the Altoids tins that you customize yourself. Look at the contents of the SAS tin:

Water resistant tin
Vinyl tape
Button compass
Knife
Matches
Pencil
Purification tablets
Snare wire
Candle
Flint & striker
Hacksaw blade
Fishing kit
Whistle
Sewing kit
Safety pins
Wire saw (finger loops)

That's a good start.

Survival.com has a homemade one with a modification so you can mount a small jigsaw blade on the box itself.

Field and Stream have a jam packed kit with 19 slides on the contents of it and other kits, like this:

And if you click through all the slides there is a BoB bag that is quite a bit nicer and bigger-than-an-altoid tin kit near the end.

As you can see so far, this survival kit if for Wilderness Survival. It's something you want on you when you find yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere. Like when you have to eject from a stricken airplane. Same principle, but a civilian won't have a helicopter crew deployed immediately to come get him, so the military band radio is superfluous. Better have a good cellphone and plenty of connectivity. And the flares we had that shot froma ballpoint pen size launcher might be a bit much for an altoid tin. The military kit is in the flight vest, with some extra stuff in the ejection seat that you may or may not be separated from in a punch-out.

Someone made a video of his assembly of a true altoids tin kit here, which is kind of cool.

Here is another sample of a homemade kit:

And a commercial version that isn't in a tin: