List of Survival Items for an Outdoor Emergency Kit

Even a routine outing can become life-threatening when you’re unprepared, so invest in the gear on this list of survival items to create your own emergency backpack.

As a wilderness educator, I frequently hear of situations in which people could have benefited from an emergency backpack containing must-have survival gear. One such situation was the epic survival story of 16-year-old Autumn Veatch. In the summer of 2015, she was flying home to Washington from Montana with her step-grandparents when their small plane crashed in the North Cascades. Autumn survived the fiery wreck with bruises and burns; however, her step-grandparents didn’t make it. The blaze destroyed any tools and first-aid or survival kits that may have been in the plane.

Although she didn’t have any training to fall back on, Autumn remembered a few survival tips from TV programs she’d watched with her father years before. She remembered to head downhill until finding a stream, and then to follow the water downstream.

So, Autumn made her way out of the mountains by locating and following a stream, climbing down several waterfalls along the way, until the stream joined a larger creek. The water looked dirty, and Autumn didn’t have any purification tools. She decided not to drink it, since she didn’t want to get too sick to keep hiking. She spent the night on a sandbar, huddled in a sweatshirt, without shelter or fire. The temperature was so cold that she didn’t get any sleep. But the next day, Autumn continued to hike downhill. Eventually, the creek crossed a hiking trail that led her down to a highway and a trailhead, where she found some hikers. Autumn was then taken to a local hospital, where she was treated for dehydration and burns.

Autumn’s story is amazing and hopeful. She did her best with the circumstances in which she found herself. When she believed she wouldn’t make it, thoughts of family and friends motivated her to keep going. The will to live is a powerful factor in many emergencies. Despite not having any formal survival training, Autumn kept her wits and persevered. Unlike so many others, she made it out alive and returned to her family.

Autumn’s story illustrates a less-common survival situation where navigating out of the wilderness is preferred to surviving in place until help arrives. Had she stayed by the plane, she might have succumbed to hypothermia or dehydration, especially since searchers couldn’t find the wreck the first day. She made good choices, had luck on her side, and ultimately made it out alive without must-have survival gear. Imagine how vastly better her situation would’ve been with rudimentary knowledge of survival skills, or a survival kit on hand.

A good survival kit is extremely helpful for aiding in and preventing wilderness emergency situations. It should contain tools that help you meet your needs faster and can help keep you safe. Having must-have survival gear in a backpack can also combat feelings of anxiety or fear that may arise during outdoor emergencies, and by increasing feelings of empowerment. Survival kits come in many varieties, from pocket-sized tins to giant bug-out bags. At Alderleaf Wilderness College, we recommend keeping a small survival kit in your daypack, a medium-sized kit in your car, and a larger kit at home.

List of Survival Items

When putting together an outdoor survival kit, first consider your needs. What’s the climate and ecology of the wilderness area you’re venturing into? What kind of background knowledge or skills do you have? How portable does your kit need to be?

In choosing the contents of a kit, the most important things to consider are the standard survival priorities: shelter, water, fire, and food. Ideally, each tool in your kit should be able to satisfy multiple priorities, and each priority should be supported by multiple tools.

The following tools are considered must-have survival gear. This list of survival items addresses top priorities for wilderness survival. A bare-bones, ultralight survival kit should have at least the first three items (compass, knife, and two ways to start fire). All six items will produce a heavier, but still quite portable, kit.

• Compass. This tool can help navigate you to safety. It can also ward off a survival situation before it starts by preventing hikers from getting lost — but only if combined with a map or a healthy familiarity with the surrounding wilderness area.
  

  

• Knife. You can use a knife to split firewood, cut branches for a shelter, fashion a bow-drill kit, skin animals, harvest plants, and carve other tools out of wood. A good survival knife is full tang (that is, the metal of the blade extends into the handle as one piece), has a fixed blade (because folding knives are susceptible to breaking), and has a high-carbon tempered-steel blade (allowing the blade to bend instead of break). The handle should be comfortable in your hand.
• Fire-starting tools. Fire can provide heat for a shelter, purify water, cook food, and help make other tools and containers. I consider these tools must-have survival gear, and recommend you always include at least two different ways to start a fire in your survival kit. Usually, these are a lighter, waterproof matches, or a ferrocerium rod (also known as a “fire striker”). Having at least two different fire-starting tools increases the likelihood that one of them will work in a given situation. Fire-starting aids, such as petroleum-jelly-soaked cotton balls and dry tinder material, should also be included in your kit.
• Wool or Mylar blanket. This handy piece of gear helps satisfy the first survival priority: shelter. It can also be used as a carrying device for debris or firewood. Wool retains its insulating faculties even when wet and is fire-resistant. A Mylar blanket (commonly referred to as a “space blanket”) is a highly reflective plastic sheet that helps retain body heat and can also be used to reflect sunlight away from the body.

  

• Metal water bottle. A versatile piece of must-have survival gear that can be used to carry, store, and collect water, a metal bottle can also be used to boil water for purification. Steel water bottles are best for this purpose. A bottle of warm water can also be held between clothing layers to help maintain body heat at night.

  

• Emergency whistle. A lightweight, ultra-loud whistle can be used to signal for help. A whistle carries much farther than a shout and won’t tax your lungs as much. The universal signal for SOS is three blasts in a row; however, any kind of whistle blown in the backcountry will attract attention.

Additional Items

Anything beyond the previous six items will add an element of comfort to a survival experience and increase the possibility of your holding on longer in the backcountry. But the following additional items will also add bulk and weight, so they should be chosen carefully. A large, heavy kit has a higher chance of being left home instead of being brought into the outdoors.

• Water purification. Unpurified surface water can carry harmful parasites or bacteria that will seriously hinder your chances of survival. Purification systems can take the form of a commercial backpacking water-filtration device or a vial of water-purification tablets. Although UV-light-based water-purification devices are available, they require batteries and clear water to function correctly.

  

• Cordage. This is another highly versatile item that can support multiple survival priorities. The most economical and reliable cordage material for a list of survival items is 550 parachute cord (also known as “paracord”). Cordage can be used to lash a shelter together, as the string for a bow-drill friction fire-starting kit, or for snares, among many other things. The uses for cordage are limited only by your imagination.
• First-aid kit. Helpful for patching up minor wounds, a first-aid kit is especially important for guides who lead groups as part of official outings.
• Light. A headlamp or small flashlight allows for nighttime movement and activity and can be used to signal rescuers. A light can also provide a great deal of emotional comfort and raise your morale at night, especially if you’re frightened by the prospect of being alone in the dark. Be sure to use a fire as the main light source around camp at night to avoid depleting your headlamp’s batteries.
  Lamps allow you to move around at night and can be used to signal searchers.
• Tarp. Shelter is your first priority, so a tarp is an important addition to your list of survival items. A tarp can keep rain off your body, provide shelter from the sun, or be used to carry or gather water and other supplies. Many companies produce backpacking ponchos that double as serviceable tarps. For a survival kit, a tarp should be no larger than 8 feet square. Avoid the heavy utility tarps frequently sold in supermarkets, opting instead for a lightweight camping tarp found at most sporting goods stores.
• Extra food. Including a small amount of emergency food in a kit is a good idea, especially for those with a history of hypoglycemia. The best food items for a survival kit have high caloric density, are nonperishable, and don’t require cooking. Protein bars are a good choice, and one or two bars are sufficient for a personal survival kit.
• Tools. A hatchet, machete, or portable folding saw can make life easier in dense, brushy terrain or when you’re processing a lot of large logs into firewood. These tools also tend to be prohibitively heavy for a backpacking survival kit. Light repair tools, such as a small roll of duct tape and a compact sewing kit, can make excellent additions to your kit.

Several more objects that have a place on any list of survival items include a fishing line and hooks, sunscreen, a signaling mirror, a hat, and a packable set of rain gear.

Survival Kit First Aid Kit Tips

Every person’s first-aid kit should vary according to their specific skill level and needs. The user must know how to apply all the materials.

A good rudimentary first-aid kit should contain basic adhesive strip bandages, a roll of medical gauze, a pressure bandage, anti-inflammatory pain killers (such as ibuprofen), over-the-counter antihistamine medication, medical tape or duct tape, and alcohol wipes or iodine.

A kit containing the above items will be small, relatively compact, and sufficient for anything that doesn’t call for hospitalization.

Other items to consider among your must-have survival gear are medications for chronic illnesses or personal health issues, an epinephrine pen if you have severe allergies, and herbal salves and remedies for minor medical needs.

Jason Knight is director and co-founder of Alderleaf Wilderness College in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. A seasoned wildlife biologist and wilderness educator, he’s the author of The Essential Skills of Wilderness Survival.

Originally published as “Build Your Own Survival Kit” in the July/August 2023 issue of Grit magazine and regularly vetted for accuracy.