Whether you commute on the T, drive rural New England and get car-jacked, ride a motorcycle or ride a snowmobile into the woods, I found the following article thought-provoking.
Lost in the Wild.
As a start for wilderness travel, they offered this:
Far more likely is this scenario:
So what's in your pockets?
Stuart Nelson Jr., the Iditarod's chief veterinarian and an experienced outdoorsman, capsized his kayak on a solo paddling trip in the Yukon. From the water, he watched as his boat—and food, shelter, and satellite phone—rushed irretrievably downstream. For 13 days, he survived on the contents of his pockets, which, because Nelson knows what he's doing, were a veritable hardware store: a folding knife, a wire saw, a signal mirror, two lighters, some Sterno (in a tiny Nalgene bottle), a space blanket, tincture of iodine, 30 feet of parachute cord, three silver spinner fishing lures, and some fishing line.
Lost in the Wild.
As a start for wilderness travel, they offered this:
At a minimum, according to survival expert Tony Nester, founder of Ancient Pathways (apathways.com), you should be prepared with what he calls "the big four": a spark rod or waterproof matches (not a lighter, which is useless when wet) to make a fire, iodine tablets to purify water, a glass mirror or whistle to signal help (this is especially important if you can't move), and, to build a temporary shelter, a pocket-size heat sheet or space blanket.
Far more likely is this scenario:
PREDICAMENT: You're being mugged.
GUT REACTION: Hand over your wallet.
ON SECOND THOUGHT: Hand over a decoy wallet instead, filled with expired IDs, credit cards, and some trivial amount of the local currency. Outside contributing editor Patrick Symmes pulled this move two years ago in Venezuela, forking over the wallet, a wad of expired Bolivian bills, and the $70 in his pocket—preserving the $500 he'd zipped into a money belt.
So what's in your pockets?
Last edited: