What to Keep in Your Ultimate Survival Kit

A very important item in the Ultimate Survival Kit is potassium permanganate. It has a wide variety of uses, but one of the most common is purifying water. This alone could be an excellent reason to have it in the Ultimate Survival Kit. However, there is one more very important reason to include potassium permanganate: it can be used to make fire. Yes; it can. When glycerol (antifreeze) or glycerin (present in most soaps in small quantities) makes contact with potassium permanganate, a violently exothermic reaction occurs which results in safe, effective fire. In a survival situation, if you happen to run across any glycerol or glycerin, this bit of information could be your saving grace. A viable source of antifreeze might be your car.

Another very important item is rubbing alcohol. For one, rubbing alcohol can be used to clean your flesh wounds--and in a survival situation, it is highly unlikely that you will not sustain any flesh wounds at all. It may burn like heck, but it's better than waking up with green puss oozing out of a cut. Rubbing alcohol can also be used for the purposes of fuel for your fire. And if you end up taking a swim, you would probably want to clean your ears out with rubbing alcohol in order to prevent such ailments as swimmer's ear, which would make survival even more difficult.

Bring along a flint and magnesium stick, if you can. They're small, but can be very useful. This is the only item in the Ultimate Survival Kit that has but one real purpose (although, there are probably more uses that I hadn't considered); and that purpose is take make fire. Chip off a bit of magnesium from the stick and then scrape your knife against the flint hard to cause a spark to set your magnesium ablaze. Also, it probably wouldn't hurt to have a source of magnesium at your disposal.

Bring a knife--a good knife. Stainless steel or carbon steel, if at all possible. Preferably a knife with a blade that can both slice and rip. In a survival situation, you may need to cut or tear things that your hands alone couldn't do. The reasons for having a knife are obvious.