Before I go any further I just want to thank everyone who contributed to this list. I was really surprised to wake up to so many useful lists.

Quote from: The TravellerIf you can get your hands on a compact survival blanket, great stuff and very small.

Like those aluminum-looking blankets?

QuoteCompact tampons if you can't find or store cotton wool, these can double as bullethole stops in a pinch.

Points for being unconventional. I imagine we'd probably have cotton balls, but would they work for the same purpose? Is there a danger of sticking something fibrous inside an open wound?

QuoteUnlubed condoms for water carrying (put in a sock).

Why this? Because they're easier and less bulky when they aren't full?

QuoteBaking soda, best kept secret of survival. Toothpaste, soap, deodorant, detergent, and more.

Very nice.

QuoteBoiling water is not enough, that wont get chemical pollutants. Using bleach pills is not enough, that won't get pollutants either and only a few of the microbes. Filtering is not enough, that won't get the microbes like cryptosporidium.

I read something about this. A lot of sites recommend that you boil and filter it. The bleach is supposed to be for emergencies only, and even then you're supposed to let it settle for like 20 minutes and filter it afterward.

QuoteI use a four-step filtering process. Drip in bleach to a large bottle of water, let it cook in the sun for a few hours for UV cleansing, filter it through activated charcoal (normal charcoal is no good), then boil it in a kelly kettle. That last by the way is an indispensible bit of survival gear, for cooking and cleaning water. Not that large either if you have a smaller model, although unlikely to be in a suburban home, unless it's my suburban home.

What's the difference between activated charcoal and regular charcoal, and where can I get my hands on the former? How long will a filter made from activated charcoal last?

QuoteI prefer a big fuckoff knife rather than a hatchet, something like the ka-bar which was used for almost a century by US forces. Digs trenches, hammers things, cuts down trees with the baton technique, quite reliable too.

I was concerned about this. A hatchet is really useful, no doubt about it, but everyone keeps telling me that bulk and weight are the enemies, so it's one of those trade-offs, I guess.

QuoteFolding saw.
You can use a bivvy or survival poncho to make a temporary tent very easily.

I'm taking it you'll need branches or poles to make a tent. Should I carry something like that as well? Remember, a lot of this game will be spent in large cities and along stretches of highway or small suburban towns. I'm sure some of it will also include murky swamps and patches of woodlands.

QuoteA smallish pot can go a long way, along with a few tin cups.

Tin because they boil?

QuoteGenerally good advice on clothes and food above, to which I'd add vitamin pills and honey.

I'll bear that in mind. I'm taking it the idea is to stay nourished? Or would you want to use the honey as a way to stretch rations and stave off hunger?

QuoteThere's lots of other stuff too but this isn't the forum for it.

You've been extremely helpful as it is.

Quote from: Lucid;686152Like those aluminum-looking blankets?

Yeah something like this:

They fold down to a very small size.

Quote from: Lucid;686152Points for being unconventional. I imagine we'd probably have cotton balls, but would they work for the same purpose? Is there a danger of sticking something fibrous inside an open wound?

Indeed, but it's better than bleeding out. Tampons were made to absorb blood and not leave bits behind so better than nothing.

Quote from: Lucid;686152Why this? Because they're easier and less bulky when they aren't full?

Exactly, if your main water bottle gets holed they make a useful backup.

Quote from: Lucid;686152What's the difference between activated charcoal and regular charcoal, and where can I get my hands on the former? How long will a filter made from activated charcoal last?

A smallish amount, say as much as would fit in the palm of your hand piled up would do for about a month as long as you aren't washing the dishes and bathing in the filtered water.

Activated charcoal is charcoal that has been ground up and seared with either acid or superhot steam so it's comprised of lots of tiny jagged particles with an enormous surface area. This captures anything that isn't supposed to be there, like a nanofilter. You can manufacture it in the field but you'll have to look up how that's done yourself. It's dangerous to do.

Quote from: Lucid;686152I'm taking it you'll need branches or poles to make a tent. Should I carry something like that as well? Remember, a lot of this game will be spent in large cities and along stretches of highway or small suburban towns. I'm sure some of it will also include murky swamps and patches of woodlands.

No, that 550 paracord I mentioned will work in suburban areas, you can tie the poncho or bivvy or tarp to protruding surfaces, sometimes as simply as just hanging the tarp from the line with the walls held outwards using rocks or rubbish. I wouldn't carry a pole unless you had room to spare, and even then only telescopic.

Quote from: Lucid;686152Tin because they boil?

No, tin because it's the first thing that came to mind. Anything you can put into a fire will do.

Quote from: Lucid;686152I'll bear that in mind. I'm taking it the idea is to stay nourished? Or would you want to use the honey as a way to stretch rations and stave off hunger?

Honey has a variety of uses, some medical, but really it just lasts a very long time and isn't prone to spoiling.

the wind/waterproof shelter thing isn't so much of a problem if you can construct a basic debris shelter, but your characters probably lack that knowledge.

Honestly?  You don't need much.  I've backpacked over a good chunk of the USA at one point or another.  

A metal water container
Some means of starting a fire, ferro rod  flint and steel, waterproof matches, etc.
Knife.
Wool blanket.
Cordage.

Everything else is luxury, but I'd add a backpack, an axe, appropriate clothing, extra socks, rain gear, tarp, shotgun or rifle, and a long bow.

Quote from: Lucid;686130I read that if you cover a cotton ball in petroleum jelly, it becomes highly flammable -- and actually starting a fire can be very difficult ...

I'm just loathe to leave behind what is probably going to be the only source of pure water I'm going to find for miles around. I don't need nine gallons of it, sure (I can't even carry that much), but I'm thinking at least one gallon between the two of us -- maybe more, if I can get away with it.

Starting a fire's a lot easier than you think, if you know the trick to it.  What you do is feather a stick with a knife ... presuming that traveling through all that settled territory, you can't put your hands on the best tinder there is: sheets of paper.

Well ... as far as water and cans of Chef Boyardee go, here's the critical problem.  I mentioned earlier that 60 lbs between you were about the maximum reasonable carrying capacity.

Let me go through the minimum you'd need:  axe (5 lbs), hatchet (1.5), knife (.5), multitool (1), first-aid kit (.75), 2x sleeping bags (5), 10x10 shelter half (2.5), 4x plastic tent stakes (.25), 2x foam mattress pad (1), titanium 3-piece ultralight cookset (2 pots, 1 skillet, .5), 2x titanium sporks (2 oz), 2x titanium mug (.25), 2x titanium plate (.5), ½ pt detergent (.5), headlamp (3 oz), mini hiking binoculars (1), 4x spare wool hiking socks (.5), 4x spare wool shirts (2), 30' high quality nylon rope (1.5), spool high test fishing line (.25), 2x poncho (.5), miscellaneous equipment (2).

That's just short of 28 lbs, half of your capacity, right there, and you can see a bunch of stuff you'd like to carry that isn't there.  This also presumes that your parents were backpackers, not auto campers, and had very expensive ultralight gear.  This also presumes you're cooking over a campfire instead of bringing a camp stove and fuel, a task that rookie campers usually botch.

A gallon of water weighs eight pounds.  A can of Chef Boyardee ravioli weighs a pound.  If you're planning on defending yourself, a Remington 20 gauge shotgun weighs over six pounds, and a box of shells weighs a pound more.  Carry just two gallons, carry that shotgun and 25 shells, carry just nine cans of ravioli, and you have weight for NOTHING else.

This is a challenging scenario, especially for kids unused to roughing it on this scale.

I wouldn't consider axe, binoculars and plates essential.

And using camp stove is not rookie thing. Modern gas stoves don't weigh that much and you can use them in almost any condition. There are places where it's almost impossible to make fire.

Why not ride a bicycle(s)?

cable ties and duct tape are your friends although they get used up.

Good thread by the way.

I think an army camp bed is better, lighter and more comfortable than a karimat + waterproof sheet. You know the ones with a canvass sheet and metal legs. weigh about 3 lbs and you can get a good nights sleep. Course after a week of sleeping rough you can get a good night's sleep on dirt.
 I agree that the expected terrain is key here. If you intend to travel through urban areas you can dump a lot of weight and just forage it each night, so sleep in abandoned cars, or houses also depending on population density

Quote from: The Traveller;686135I generally avoid those sorts of sites, look at general discussion for the reason... a comment on Russia's anti gay laws...

"Why stop at handing out fines and prison sentences? Give them some of the old ultra violence like this guy received. A case of the lumpy face is more of a deterrent imo."

...every fucking time with these sites. There are better places to get information.

You raise a good point.  I almost added a disclaimer to stay out of the General, Political, and Religious sections, but there is useful information there and I didn't want to scare anyone away.

Quote from: Technomancer;686408You raise a good point.  I almost added a disclaimer to stay out of the General, Political, and Religious sections, but there is useful information there and I didn't want to scare anyone away.

The same information can be gotten elsewhere without handing traffic to people who probably post at stormfront half the time. I don't know what it is about bushcraft that attracts these nuts, if it's not the stormfronters or the english defence league it's the aryan nation clutching their paracord survival necklaces every time a black child joins the local school.

Bah, run the lot of them out of it I say.

Quote from: The Traveller;686415The same information can be gotten elsewhere without handing traffic to people who probably post at stormfront half the time. I don't know what it is about bushcraft that attracts these nuts, if it's not the stormfronters or the english defence league it's the aryan nation clutching their paracord survival necklaces every time a black child joins the local school.

Bah, run the lot of them out of it I say.

It kind of scares me sometimes, some of the people on message boards like that, or the kooks on shows like "Doomsday Preppers"...if there really is some great disaster, THOSE are the guys who will thrive post-apocalypse.  They are the one's who are best prepared to survive.  The future of the entire human race will be in their hands :eek:

Quote from: Technomancer;686429It kind of scares me sometimes, some of the people on message boards like that, or the kooks on shows like "Doomsday Preppers"...if there really is some great disaster, THOSE are the guys who will thrive post-apocalypse.  They are the one's who are best prepared to survive.  The future of the entire human race will be in their hands :eek:

Well them and the mormons. And possibly people like me who appear to be outliers by dint of not hating people of other ethnic or sexual persuasions.

Notable by their absence on those forums are the SJWs incidentally. You'd think they'd be piling on with gusto rather than digging through old elfgames looking for non offensive yet arousing imagery.

Anyway, getting offtopic here, OP let us know how your game went!

Quote from: Sope;686335I wouldn't consider axe, binoculars and plates essential.

If not plates, then bowls.  You're cooking up food.  That food, by the nature of survival cookery, will often be stews.  You have to serve it IN something.  It's best for that something to be sanitary, especially in the disease-prone environment of the deep South.

As far as an axe goes, I'm rather shocked.  NO one genuinely familiar with long-term camping would ever say such a thing: an axe not only is essential, it's pretty much THE basic tool for wilderness survival.  With an axe, you can build a shelter, start a fire, cut materials for fishing and hunting traps, build a raft or a dugout, butcher game, fashion weapons ... and an axe is a weapon in of itself, which will still be there when you run out of ammo for your firearms.

As far as binoculars go?  Look at the scenario.  I'm a 16 year old kid, and I've got my 14 year old sister with me.  We're traveling several hundred miles on foot, and civilization has broken down.  Looters are everywhere, and there are plenty of people who'll snuff us in an instant for the stuff in our packs, provided they don't then keep my sister alive for other purposes.  I not only want a pair of backpackers' binoculars for such a scenario, I'm going to keep them around my neck at all times when on the march, to stay in the habit of gazing at anything questionable.

QuoteAnd using camp stove is not rookie thing. Modern gas stoves don't weigh that much and you can use them in almost any condition. There are places where it's almost impossible to make fire.

I didn't mean that using a camp stove was hard for a rookie; they're pretty easy to use.  It's cooking on a campfire that's hard for a rookie, who generally doesn't know the tricks.  But while backpackers' stoves don't weigh much at all, the big rub is the fuel.  The standard small bottle of propane sold in the United States for camp stoves (the miniature bottles of fuel paired with most ultralight stoves are only found in specialty stores) weighs a pound.  One of those bottles isn't going to last a month, nowhere close -- and this trek is going to take at *least* that.

Quote from: Ravenswing;686483As far as an axe goes, I'm rather shocked.  NO one genuinely familiar with long-term camping would ever say such a thing: an axe not only is essential, it's pretty much THE basic tool for wilderness survival.  With an axe, you can build a shelter, start a fire, cut materials for fishing and hunting traps, build a raft or a dugout, butcher game, fashion weapons ... and an axe is a weapon in of itself, which will still be there when you run out of ammo for your firearms.

You can do all that and more with a knife too. There's a good deal of debate on the topic in various circles as you can see for yourself with a bit of googling, but it seems to me that people will use whatever they have the most proficiency and are the most comfortable with. If you have both and can handle the weight, why not take both.

I sure wouldn't say that people who don't prefer axes are making up their experiences though. You may be unfamiliar with baton techniques (plural) as applied to cutting and splitting wood, you can take down pretty large trees with even a modest knife using them. Personally I find it easier that way than carrying and swinging an axe, but then again I don't try to cut down very large trees, having no use for them.

Quote from: Ravenswing;686483But while backpackers' stoves don't weigh much at all, the big rub is the fuel.  The standard small bottle of propane sold in the United States for camp stoves (the miniature bottles of fuel paired with most ultralight stoves are only found in specialty stores) weighs a pound.  One of those bottles isn't going to last a month, nowhere close -- and this trek is going to take at *least* that.

Exactly, camp stoves are great till the fuel runs out.

Why have a hatchet if you also need axe (isn't hatchet small axe or am I wrong?)?

I meant with eookie thing that you said earlier that rookies usually use camp stoves and real pros cook their food by campfire. That might be true in forest, but in tundra and mountain area that camp stove might be the only thing you can cook food with. I would have gas camp stove with me for emergency days for survival (for places where I couldn't make fire).