10 Survival Items Under $20 Actually Worth Buying!

Welcome back survivalists. So I think there's a common myth out there that prepping for emergencies is expensive and that the average person just can't afford to buy additional food and water and gear to be prepared for a disaster situation and I wholeheartedly disagree with this. I think that some of the most impactful items and gear that you can have during a survival situation are also some of the most affordable. So today I wanted to run through 10 survival items that you can purchase for under $20 and are actually worth buying. So the first item on the list is going to be a single wall water bottle. So during a disaster situation, water is going to be one of your top priorities, right? We all know that you can go up to three weeks without any food, but only three days without drinking any water. So hydration is going to be critical, but during a lot of disaster situations, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, you may not have access to clean drinking water and that's where having a single wall water bottle comes into play. These water bottles really serve two purposes. Obviously you can transport water in them, but because they're single walled, you can also use these for boiling water. The CDC recommends you bring water to a boil for at least one minute in order to kill any bacteria and viruses in that water. So if you're experiencing a power outage and the pump to your well is no longer flowing, or let's say it's a winter blackout and all your pipes are frozen, you can gather up some water from outdoors, try to filter it before you put it in here and then boil it, and then you have drinkable water. Now it's important that you have a single wall water bottle, not a double wall, right? You don't want a thermos, something that's better at providing insulation. You want this to be pretty thin so that that can convey that heat and you can actually use it to boil water. There's a couple different options with these. You can get a wide mouth water bottle like this. This is actually meant for camping. This is from the Pathfinder School of Survival, which is Dave Canterbury's school. You can get this, or you can literally just buy just about any water bottle from Kmart or Walmart and use these as well, and you can use that as a dual purpose in order to boil water in an emergency also. Now one additional item that I also recommend that you buy is one of these guys, and this is actually meant for fishing, and it's just a spring here that is meant for opening up the mouth of a fish, but you can use this with any of these water bottles in order to hang the water bottle above a fire. So this is a very versatile tool, and you can use it with most water bottles, and that makes it so much easier to hang this above a fire and actually boil the water. You know, the other option is you'd have to kind of sit this in the charcoal, have to try to find some way to get it out of the fire without burning yourself. If you've got something like this, or if you have a water bottle that has a metal hook attached to it already, that would be ideal for boiling the water, and you can usually get a single wall water bottle like this for under $20, and I really do think that this should be an essential item in anybody's survival kit. So next on the list is going to be a Mora knife. So Mora is a Swedish knife making company. It actually has a fantastic reputation for building a high quality and durable knife at a very, very cheap price, and so this is the Mora companion here. You can get this for $20. It's kind of their entry-level knife, and you see that it's got a plastic sheath, and it's got a rubber grip here as well, and I believe it's got either like a rat tail tang in there, or maybe a tapered tang in there, but this is what pretty much all the Mora knives look like. They look just like this, or some variation of this, but you can get this knife for under $20. Now they have some additional knives as well. This one here, it looks very, very similar, but it also comes with a ferro rod and a knife sharpener attached to it. This one here, again, this is kind of an emergency knife, so a little bit brighter colors, but it's a very similar design, slightly different tips in the knife. This Mora one here is actually meant for fishing, so it's got a serrated edge in the back. It's got a much thinner knife blade, so you can gut the fish with them, but Mora is a really great brand. I've been playing around with these knives for years now, never had any issues with them, and I actually like the rubber grip. A lot of people see rubber grips as kind of cheesy or inauthentic, but they really are very grippy, right? You don't have to worry about losing your grip when you're holding a Mora knife like this, and once again, you can get the Mora Companion for $20, and then they have a few additional knives, a little bit more expensive, that have additional bells and whistles with them, but if you're on a budget, even if you're not on a budget, a Mora knife is a great thing to have in your survival kit, and for $20, you really can't beat the quality and durability of a Mora knife like this. So next on the list is going to be an emergency water filter, and one of the most common and well-known brands out there is the LifeStraw, and this is essentially just a charcoal filter that you stick one end in a puddle or a pond or a cup of water, and you suck the water through the filter and out the other end, and you've killed 99.9% of all the bacteria and viruses in that water, and LifeStraw is just one of those most commonly known brands out there, and a lot of people include these in their survival kits, and you can purchase one of these for under $20. Now, another common brand in the water filter space is actually Katadyn, and I believe they have a similar product to this, but I'm actually a bigger fan of their water bottle, and it's essentially the same thing. It's just a charcoal filter, but they've attached this to a water bottle, so instead of you having to lay on your belly and suck water up out of a puddle, you can scoop that water up in your water bottle and then take it with you. Now, I'm just a bigger fan of this design. Now, this is a little bit more than $20, but Katadyn is a very reputable brand in this water purification space as well, and I believe they have a similar product to the LifeStraw as well, and again, clean drinking water is going to be one of your top priorities in almost any survival or disaster situations, and I really do believe that having a water filter like this should be one of the first things that you buy for your survival kit. The next on the list is going to be emergency food rations, and there's a couple different directions that you can go with this. One of the most simplest directions is just buying some of these SOS emergency food rations, and these are pretty much like protein bars that are just incredibly calorically dense, impactful of all sorts of nutrition and energy for you, and in a survival situation, having this is far better than having no food at all. Now, again, food is not your top priority. You can go 30 days without food, but this will give you energy. After you go a few days without food, you're going to start noticing a depletion in your energy as well as some other symptoms, so this is going to give you energy and keep you going, and this is just a simple option to guarantee that you have some sort of food, and I really recommend that you actually supplement this with whatever other food you can find in your house, but this could be kind of the core of your meals during a disaster situation. Now, another option is that you can purchase some MREs, some meal ready to eat, and this is what the military issues to service members when they're out in the field, and they have a pretty wide variety of food in here, and they usually have some kind of container or contraption in here to heat up the food as well as some water mixes for Gatorade or something like that. Now, here's the thing with this. These MREs are very, very calorically dense. One of these is like 3,000 calories. I used to get these when I was in the military all the time, and I would very rarely finish the entire MRE because it's so many calories in there, and they do that on purpose just so the service member has plenty of energy, so you don't need one of these for each meal. In fact, in a really tough situation, one of these could suffice you for the entire day. Now, these are not cheap. Something like this is probably $8, $9, $10 just for one MRE, but if you got $20, you could probably at least buy two of these, and that would be a start for your emergency kit. Next on the list is going to be a Mylar blanket. Now, Mylar blankets are incredibly effective at reflecting your own body's heat back at you and really containing your body heat. During a lot of disaster situations, your best source of heat is going to be your own body, and your goal is really just to contain that heat and keep it as close to you as you can. That's really where these Mylar blankets come in handy. There's a bunch of different varieties of these. You have Mylar blankets, you have Mylar sleeping bags, you have Mylar tents, you have Mylar ponchos, all kinds of products out there like that, but they're all essentially the same. It's just this material is very good at reflecting your body heat back towards you and not letting much of it escape. These blankets are very lightweight, they're very compact, and actually very affordable. You can buy a four-pack of these for about $15. Now, there is a brand out there called Emergency Zone that's also making these. What I like about their Mylar blankets is actually double layer. They have the Mylar blanket, they have another layer on top of that, and that just adds another level of durability to the product. A lot of these things, since they are so thin and so lightweight, they're very easy to tear. I do like having that double layer there just to add more durability to it, so you don't have to worry about it tearing nearly as much. That's by Emergency Zone. I talked before about how water is one of your top priorities and a higher priority than food, but shelter is actually an even higher priority in most situations than water. This is really where the Mylar blankets come in handy. This is part of your shelter system, and this will keep you warm, keep you from getting hypothermia or frostbite or any other condition like that. Definitely, you want to add some Mylar blankets to your emergency kit. Next on the list is going to be Paracord. Like a knife, Paracord is just a general tool that you're going to find many, many uses for, from first aid to shelter building, just to securing your equipment to yourself. There's a couple of different directions you can go with this as well. What I like about Paracord is there's a lot of different designs and patterns that you can get with the cordage. You can get something really bright like this, and you may want this if you're building a lanyard, let's say, for your knife or for your fire starter, or you're lost in the woods, you want people to find you, having bright color Paracord is not a bad idea, or you can get something a little bit more camouflaged as well. What's nice about Paracord is that it is, one, it's very strong. Supposedly, it can hold up to 550 pounds, and that's why a lot of people use this for building shelter, but you can also pull back the sheathing, and you have access to a lot more individual strands in the Paracord as well. If you need to do a little bit more finer work, you can use these individual strands as well. There's another product out there that I really like, and that's called Titan Cord. They've taken this concept of having these individual strands in your Paracord to the next level. They have a lot of those individual strands within the sheath, but they also have a metal wire here that you can use for snaring if you're in the wild. They have a fishing line here that you can use for fishing, and they also have a tinder line here. I believe it's hemp, and you can kind of fluff this up to create some sort of tinder to make it easier for you to start a fire. I'm a big fan of this Titan Cord. Now, with the Paracord, this is pretty inexpensive. For 20 bucks, you can get 500 feet of this. Titan Cord is more expensive. You can't get nearly as much of it, but it is a very cool product. If you were thinking about creating a lanyard for your keys or your knife or something, or one of those wrist straps, one of the bracelets out of Paracord, or if you wanted to replace your bootstraps with Paracord, this Titan Cord is really the way to go, just because of all the other functionalities that it gives you, especially with that fishing line and the metal wire for snares and the fire tinder that comes within the cordage itself. So having some sort of Paracord, whether a Titan Cord or just generic Paracord, is definitely something that you want to have in a survival situation, because this stuff will come in handy whether you're in an urban survival situation or in a wilderness survival situation. Just having cordage, you'd be surprised how many uses you'll find for something like this in a disaster situation. Next on the list is going to be two books, and that's Bushcraft 101 and Advanced Bushcraft by Dave Canterbury. So Dave Canterbury teaches at the Pathfinder School of Survival, and he has some really good books about bushcraft. Now this is obviously a little bit more geared towards wilderness survival, but if you're trying to build a urban survival kit for like a hurricane or something like that, a lot of these principles will still apply. And I oftentimes bring these books with me when I go camping, and every time I am camping I try to apply something new that I learned in these books, whether it's a new type of spring snare or a new type of feather stick for starting a fire, something along those lines. I always bring these two books with me and I try to practice those skills while I'm camping. You can get each of these books for $10. Now when it comes to survival situations and emergency preparedness, there's a couple different elements to it. One is that you can have the knowledge of how to do something, but on the other hand you also need to have the experience of how to do something as well. So you can read these books all you want, but that's not going to be the same as you actually having that experience doing it. And that's why I like bringing these when I go camping, so I can actually kind of field test a lot of these principles. And also in a lot of survival situations, I do know a lot of the stuff in both of these books from me reading the books and practicing a lot of it. But if you're in a real survival situation and you're dehydrated and you're malnourished and you're stressed, remembering a lot of these different techniques is going to be problematic. You're going to be under a lot of stress and you may not remember how to make that figure four deadfall or that spring snare or whatever else it may be. And that's why I really do like having some sort of survival book in your survival kit. And I actually have almost all of these right here are all survival books and survival manuals. So I do recommend that if you don't go with these ones, if you're not trying to build a wilderness survival kit, get some sort of survival manual or survival guide for your emergency kit as well. One is going to just give you something to do. If you're just experiencing a week-long power outage, you don't have your phone, you don't have any TV or internet or anything like that, this is going to give you something to read and kind of keep your mind occupied. And if you can keep your mind occupied, you're less likely to do something stupid. That's the truth. Keep your mind occupied. You're not going to make as many mistakes. And with these things, you're also going to be learning and these are going to be fantastic resources. But I am a big fan of both these books here and I do like bringing these with me whenever I go camping just so I can kind of practice a lot of the skills that I read in these books. So next on the list is going to be a backup battery charger. So these things have become very, very affordable in the last handful of years and is a pretty essential item that I highly recommend that everybody buys. You can easily get one of these for under $20. And this one here will actually completely charge my cell phone two and a half times. So anytime that I know that there's a bad storm coming my way, if I know there's a hurricane or just a bad storm or blizzard or something, I always charge this up and I always make sure that my phones are fully charged and all my laptops are fully charged as well. But let's say I did have a three day long power outage and I didn't have access to any electricity. This would at least keep my phone fully charged. And in a lot of emergency situations, that can be crucial. So again, if you're going out camping, let's say, or you have to bug out, for example, having this thing fully charged and bringing this with you can be a huge, huge game changer for you. And these things are just so inexpensive. You can literally buy it at the checkout line at the grocery store at a Kmart or Walmart or something, or just get one on Amazon. But I highly recommend that everybody have a emergency backup battery like this for your cell phone in your emergency or survival kit. So next on the list is going to be a headlamp. So a lot of people know that they should have a flashlight in their emergency kit. But the problem with flashlights is that they take up one of your hands. If you're trying to prepare a meal or apply first aid or fix something, you've only got one hand available. That's going to be very problematic. And that's really the biggest benefit to these headlamps is that it frees up both of your hands. So now I have two hands available for me to do whatever it is, whether it's setting up a tent or building a shelter, or just using the bathroom or applying first aid to somebody. Having two hands available is just going to be incredibly, incredibly useful and helpful in those situations. If I had to hold a flashlight in my hand or my teeth or something like that, it's going to be very problematic. And you can easily get a headlamp for under $20. I've got a small one here than a much larger one. The one that I have that I'm pretty happy with is by Luxe Pro. And I'm pretty happy with this one. It's got a couple of different settings, got a couple of different color lights as well. So if you're working at night and you don't want to disrupt your eye sensitivity to the nighttime, you can use a red light or a green light. So I'm pretty happy with this one by Luxe Pro. But really any headlamp like this will really do. And you can easily get one of these for under $20. So next on the list is going to be a collapsible water bottle. So I am a big, big fan of these collapsible water bottles because once again, water is going to be your top priority in many, many situations. What I like about these is that they give you a huge amount of storage and transportation of water, but they don't take up much space at all. And they are incredibly lightweight. So they really don't add much weight or anything to your survival kit. Now, this one here that I have is by Vapor. Once again, I'm pretty happy with this. This feels like a very strong and durable product. It comes with a carabiner right here, as well as a lid to the water bottle. But if you are in a situation where you're boiling water in order to purify it, you're going to want to have some way to store that water and transport it after you purify it. And that's really where these come in handy. And you may even want to have multiple collapsible water bottles like this in your survival kit. So now that you know that prepping for emergencies doesn't have to be expensive, check out this video I did right here, breaking down the 10 items every man should keep in his car at all times. Don't forget I'll have links to my recommended gear for each of these categories down in the description below. Don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you over in the next video.