Equipped to Survive

My friend and fellow Outdoor Channel person Chris Chaffin introduced me to Doug Ritter a couple of SHOT Shows ago — Doug's a "survival guy," not a "survivalist guy." If I recall, we had a deep conversation on the efficiency of various wicking microfabrics, which is a pretty important subject if you spend time in the backcountry.

Doug runs a great website, Equipped to Survive, and he recently started up a very cool blog, Doug Ritter's Equipped Blog.

I trust his equipment reviews, and that is saying a lot. I've spent too much time in scary places to put a lot of value in other people's "opinions" — everyboyd, after all, has one. When I met Doug, I told him that I had a closet full of mismatched, battered gear, but that it had done the job. He said, of course, that was all that mattered.

His current blog entry links to a fascinating article from Time Magazine on, "Why We Don't Prepare:"

Because the real challenge in the U.S. today is not predicting catastrophes. That we can do. The challenge that apparently lies beyond our grasp is to prepare for them.

[...]

But it's not just bureaucrats who are unprepared for calamity. Regular people are even less likely to plan ahead. In this month's TIME poll, about half of those surveyed said they had personally experienced a natural disaster or public emergency. But only 16% said they were "very well prepared" for the next one. Of the rest, about half explained their lack of preparedness by saying they don't live in a high-risk area.

The article comes just when I'm restocking for winter. Interesting reading, and again, I heartily recommend Doug's sites!