[Axe]

I'm in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with travel often meaning driving on lowly traveled roads which go through long stretches of non-populated areas with a lot of areas that have no cell phone reception. I have put together for each member of my family a survival kit that will sustain life very comfortably for 2-3 days, regardless of temperature, and sustain life less comfortably for at least a week.

Cold weather gear is an important item to have available at least half of the year here. I vacuum seal cold weather clothing for storage in each family member's emergency bag, which stays in their vehicle year-round. The clothing takes up SIGNIFICANTLY less room vacuum sealed.

You have to be careful of the type of insulation the garment has if you are going to vacuum seal it, as some insulations can require 24 hours or more of time before the insulation regains its loft, particularly down.

Thinsulate works just fine for warmth right out of the vacuum seal packages, however.

In the survival bags for each family member, I have individual vacuum sealed bags with polypro tops and bottoms, fleece tops and bottoms, polypro balaclavas, thinsulate watch caps, thinsulate gloves, fleece and wool socks, and water and wind proof Frog Tog tops and bottoms.

Each family member also has an arctic weight Wiggy's sleeping bag, which is also vacuum sealed to reduce bulk, in their vehicle. Wiggy's offers vacuum sealing as an option when purchasing bags. The bulk of the bag is reduced by at least a factor of 5 when vacuum sealed. I have had good luck buying pre-owned vacuum sealed Wiggy's bags from Ebay, which saves some coin over buying new.

Between the cold weather clothing and the sleeping bag, each family member should be able to shelter in place and maintain adequate body warmth for extended periods of time in weather as cold as -60 F, colder by double than anything ever experienced here in the past 25 years.

Water storage in a climate with -20 t0 -30 degrees F for a few weeks at a time and months of temperatures below 32 F can be difficult. I have found that the SOS emergency water packets, which are 4.227 oz mylar water bags, maintain integrity down to -30 for prolonged periods, can be unfrozen fairly quickly if placed against the body, are small enough to allow them to be packed around larger items in a bag, or in
small void spaces in a vehicle, and are still usable after going through months of sitting inside of a hot car in the summer. Each family member's survival bag has at least 1/2 of a gallon of water in it.

Each bag also has the other requisite survival kit items: redundant firestarting methods, tinder, a good knife, a multitool, a folding camp saw, a small first aid kit, a water filtration unit with the instructions laminated to prevent against water damage, an MSR Dragonfly camp stove with instructions laminated, portable pot for cooking or snow melting for water, food (lifeboat rations/MRE's/Mountain House), whistle, signal mirror, mil-spec strobe light, road flares, etc.

The bags are a little too large and much too heavy to be considered humpable by any of my family members, but that doesn't matter and is partially by design, as the training I have given to each family member is to stay with their vehicle under all circumstances that allow it.

One additional item I have purchased for each family member is an emergency PLB for each person. They are supposed to be stored in the vehicle when not on their person, and be activated if no help has arrived in 18 hours. I have had an older ACR electronics PLB for a number of years and put it to use once, which saved my ass. The older models were on the bulky side, which made carrying it a little difficult.

The newer models have come way down on size and weight however. The ResQLink+ units, which include GPS locating to within meters of the device, 24 hour broadcast ability, and a built in strobe light, are now small and light enough to fit in any shirt pocket, and cost less than $250.

If James Kim, who along with his family ended up stranded in southern Oregon in 2006 and who died walking for help, had had a PLB in his posession, they could have had help inside of 2 hours and the whole saga and death of Mr. Kim would have been a non-event.