Survival Vest Philosophy

Original article by Greg Hren/Zane Jacobson. Adapted from the Knowledge Series video by Greg Hren, Bushwagon East.

Thoughts on Survival Vests

It's a common suggestion among backcountry pilots to put together a survival vest—because in the event of a crash and post-crash fire, what you're wearing when you walk away is likely all you'll have. But what should actually go in it?

We covered this topic with The Survival Vest, written by British Columbia-based professional pilot and wilderness survival instructor John Vandene. It's a thorough, practical piece and worth reading alongside this one. But speccing a vest is a personal process, and BCP member Greg Hren, "Bigrenna" on the forum, founder of Bushwagon East, took a different approach to building his.

Greg is a paramedic and a Fellow of Wilderness Medicine, and rather than starting with a vest and filling pockets, he started by identifying what a crash survivor actually needs to do and worked backward from there. The result is as much a philosophy as a gear list.

This article was expanded from Greg Hren's original Knowledge Series video. Read on, or watch the original below.

Starting with the Right Question

I think the mistake most people make is starting with the vest. They ask which one is best—the fishing vest, the military surplus vest, the photography vest with ten pockets. They find something they like, and then the equipment drives everything: "Well, what the hell can I fit in these ten pockets?" I think a better approach is to clearly define what the problems are going to be first, and then once we know the problems, solve them with equipment. That's how I tried to address this.

Disclaimer: I don't purport to be any kind of expert. These are my own wild meanderings. I've been thinking about this a lot, so take it for what it is. The vest is an evolving, organic thing. I add to it and subtract from it, and I still don't know what I feel about it. Work in progress.

The Three C's

Whatever you build, I think the vest has to do three things. It's got to be Comfortable, Compact, and Complete. Mine is pretty complete. It's comfortable—it may look bulky, but it wears fine, and I can fly in my Skywagon with no problems. Compact? The jury's still out. It grows and shrinks. But I'd like it a little smaller. I'm always in that risk-reward situation.

How Long Are You Going to Be Out There?

The first question worth answering is: how long does this vest need to sustain you? Who the hell knows, but fortunately there's some data. The FAA has a metric called LKP, Last Known Position to rescue time. For VFR flight with no flight plan, that average is 42.5 hours. Roughly two days. That's a reasonable baseline to build around.

Evolution of an Insult

To figure out what equipment you actually need, I think you have to first map what I call the Evolution of an Insult, borrowing the medical definition of "insult" as an event that causes damage to tissue or an organ. If you think through the arc of a crash, it gives you a much clearer picture of what you're going to need and when.

Here's how I see it playing out:

1. Initial Event / Insult—the crash itself. Everything starts here, and the nature of the insult—fire, impact, terrain—shapes everything that follows.
2. Disorientation to Reorientation—we've all been in a fender bender; you find yourself upside down, bumped in the head, and then it starts to register what just happened. This phase can last seconds or minutes depending on the severity of the impact.
3. Extricate and Evaluate—get yourself and whoever is with you out of the wreckage. If there's fire, this happens fast. If there isn't, take a breath and move deliberately.
4. Stabilize Medically—tourniquet, burn treatment, a broken bone, a bleeding scalp wound, something like that. Life-threatening hemorrhage gets addressed first. Everything else can wait.
5. Stabilize Mentally—this may just mean sitting on a log and taking it all in. "Holy shit, what just happened?" Don't underestimate how much this step matters. A clear head makes every subsequent decision better.
6. Communicate—start the rescue cascade. Get a signal out, activate your PLB, key the radio. You've got about 41 more hours on the clock if you're running the averages, but the sooner people know where you are, the better.
7. Establish Shelter—protect yourself from the elements. Exposure kills faster than almost anything else in a wilderness survival situation. The aircraft itself may serve as initial shelter.
8. Establish Fire—warmth, morale, and a signaling tool all in one. Fire also gives you the ability to purify water and heat food, which matters more psychologically than nutritionally over a two-day window.
9. Hydrate—you can survive two days without food, but dehydration impairs judgment and physical capability far sooner than most people expect. Clean water is the priority.
10. Rest—you're going to be completely used up. Curl up in that shelter and wait. Your body needs it, and burning energy on unnecessary activity only shortens your window.
11. Go / No-Go Decision—staying put is almost always right. Search and rescue works from your last known position outward. But if there's a medical emergency that requires evacuation, or a compelling reason to move, you need to have thought through that decision before you're in the middle of it.

Use this as a guide, and it'll tell you what equipment you need at the most minimal level to answer those questions.

The Four Tenets of Post-Crash Survival

Once you've mapped the problem, I break the solutions into four categories—four tenets:

Be Healthy. Be Comfortable. Be Crafty. Be Found.

If an item doesn't serve at least one of those four purposes, it probably doesn't belong in the vest. What follows is what's in mine—not as a prescription, but as a starting point for thinking through your own.

What's in the Vest

I carry a military-issue flight vest: Survival Vest Type 1, MIL-DL611. One size fits all, fully adjustable. Everything inside is vacuum-sealed in food-saver bags to compress bulk and protect contents. Dual-purpose items are good; I look for those wherever I can find them.

Photo: Ryan Lunde After surviving a balked off-airport landing in southern Montana left his Aviat Husky in a ravine, pilot Ryan Lunde reflected: "One thing I'll do differently is use a well-stocked survival vest. From the Live to Tell series: Impact

Be Healthy

The Be Healthy category covers everything that keeps you physically functional after the crash—trauma care, wound management, pharmaceuticals, and water treatment. The goal isn't to set up a field hospital; it's to handle the most likely threats to your survival long enough for rescue to arrive.

I'm a paramedic and I teach wilderness medicine, so this stuff is near and dear to me. This is not a full medical kit—it's bare-bones basics. A larger trauma bag should be stowed separately in the aircraft, easily accessible alongside your bug-out bag.

Trauma (vacuum-sealed, in a pouch under my right side—positioned there because it doesn't interfere with the door or flat panel):

• CAT tourniquet
• Hemorrhage control / compression bandage (military issue)
• Abdominal pad
• Water gel burn bandage, plus two smaller burn gel bandages
• Petrolatum gauze for a sucking chest wound
• Two rolls of Kling conforming gauze
• 2x2 and 4x4 bandages
• Two pairs of nitrile gloves
• Medical tape
• Cravat / sling
• Povidone-iodine swabs for wound sterilization, but also dual-purpose: soak the swab in water and steep it to treat the water for drinking
• 5 ml syringe for irrigating wounds
• OPA and NPA airway adjuncts with Surgilube

Minor Wound Care:

• Band-aids and alcohol prep pads
• Moleskin for blisters if a walkout becomes necessary
• Antiseptic ointment

Pharmaceuticals (consult your own physician—these are my personal choices, not recommendations):

• Diphenhydramine (Benadryl)—antihistamine
• Anti-diarrheal (Imodium)
• Tylenol and Advil—one acetaminophen, one NSAID; they work differently, and you can stagger them every two hours to stay on top of pain if you have to hike out
• A vial with a stronger analgesic and a broad-spectrum antibiotic (Cipro or Doxycycline)—for a longer stay than planned
• Personal prescriptions, glasses, or contacts as needed

H2O Purification:

• Water purification tabs (Verify how much you need.)
• Povidone-iodine swabs—secondary water treatment method; dual-purpose with the wound care kit

Be Comfortable

The Be Comfortable category is about sustaining yourself physically and mentally over the duration of your wait—staying warm and dry, protecting yourself from the elements, and keeping your head in the right place. Comfort isn't a luxury in a survival situation; it's what keeps you making good decisions.

Fire:

• BIC lighter
• Bear Grylls fire steel, with a small piece of cotton in the cap for tinder
• A match case stuffed with Vaseline-impregnated cotton balls—about 12 of them; they'll light in the rain and burn for three or four minutes each, which is plenty to get a fire going

Fire does double duty here: it's warmth and it's morale. The ability to make a hot cup of coffee or a bowl of broth after a crash is not trivial—it's a psychological reset that can pull you out of a very dark place.

Wear Warm and Dry:

• Smartwool long-sleeve base layer
• Smartwool thin beanie
• A dry pair of socks

I'll be honest, I go back and forth on whether this earns its space. But if you're cold and wet, everything becomes a mental problem. Getting warm is how you keep your head on straight.

Sleep Warm and Dry:

• Sea to Summit bivy sack (sleeping bag liner—adds roughly 10–15 degrees of warmth)
• SOL waterproof bivy—handles wind and rain

Together these two give you a sleep system that's compact enough to justify the weight. Combined with dry base layers and a fire, it's a workable overnight setup.

Elemental Protection:

• Orange construction-grade trash bag—cut the arms out for a rain poncho, or use it as shelter or ground cover. The orange color also doesn't hurt for visibility.
• SPF 50 sunscreen—kept sealed; altitude and pressure changes can cause liquids to leak, so I don't open it; it just lives in the kit
• Bug head net
• DEET bug spray—if you're up in Alaska, the skeeters and black flies can get bad

Sustenance and Mental Status:

Water is the priority, not food—you can go two days without eating. But there's a whole mental component to survival that I think is seriously underrated. Anything that gives you a small win, a moment of normalcy, or a reason to feel okay is worth its weight.

• Electrolyte mix
• Tonka buffalo/cranberry bar
• Energy gel
• Small piece of chocolate
• Peppermint candies—there's good data on peppermint and focus; I put it in
• Chicken bouillon cubes (3)—I volunteer at the Boston Marathon, and at the aid stations we hand out chicken broth; nothing turns a cold, wrecked person around faster than warm broth. Heat one of these in the titanium cup and it changes the tone of the whole situation.
• Starbucks VIA instant coffee—get the titanium cup hot by the fire, make yourself a coffee. The only reason is mental: get yourself over a dark time
• A nip of Grey Goose—"most of survival is all about the mental, so anything to kind of pick up the spirits, I figure is good"
• Baby wipes—if all the shit's gone down, you deserve a clean ass
• Chemlite / glow stick—10 to 12 hours of passive light; crack it if it's cold and dark and the night feels long
• Deck of cards—some people bring a harmonica; I like solitaire. This is primarily meant to just keep your mind off the storm that just went down

Be Crafty

The Be Crafty category covers tools and improvisation—everything that helps you build, fix, gather, navigate, and adapt to whatever the situation demands. A crash rarely goes exactly as planned, and the items in this category are what let you respond to the things you didn't anticipate.

• Gerber survival knife (helicopter crew model)—sharp, good weight, striking surface, sharpener in the sheath; can be lashed to a stick if it comes to that
• Leatherman Wave multi-tool—the utility knife equivalent of duct tape; there's almost no mechanical problem it can't at least partially address
• 50 ft. of cordage—strong enough to rig a Swiss seat and rappel if you had to; paired with two carabiners
• Hand chain saw—for shelter construction and firewood; lighter and more packable than a hatchet
• Nalgene bottle with titanium REI cup nested over it, duct tape wrapped around the outside, fishing line coiled on the exterior—the bottle carries water and stores small items inside; the cup lets you heat water for coffee, broth, or purification. The cup didn't add any real bulk sliding over the top, so I put it in. The duct tape and fishing line on the outside cost nothing in space.
• Fishing kit—hooks, line, salmon egg, and a couple of flies. Realistically, for a two-day window you're not fishing for survival—but the weight is negligible and the option is there
• Zip ties and picture wire in a small tin—the zip ties handle a dozen improvisation problems; the wire doubles as snare material for small game
• Surefire flashlight (CR123 batteries)
• Small passive LED blinker (found it at a bike shop)—long battery life; leave it on a tree overnight so you don't miss a search aircraft passing in the dark
• Two large Ziploc bags—water storage, or clip a corner and use as a pressure irrigator for wounds
• Lensatic compass and pace beads—learn to use both; a map of where you're flying should go in the vest before each flight. I don't currently have one in here, and that's a gap

Photo: Daniel Nilsson A sudden gale flipped his Cessna 180 on floats during takeoff at a remote Manitoba lake, pilot Daniel Nilsson survived and learned: "What you have in your pockets is pretty much all you will have for survival." From the Live to Tell series: Overnight at Bushey Lake

Be Found

The Be Found category is about getting rescuers to your location—communicating your position visually, audibly, and electronically, in both daylight and darkness. This is the category where the vest earns its keep most directly: none of the shelter, food, or medical gear matters if nobody comes for you.

I break this into two parts: Communication and Evacuation. Communication needs to work visually, audibly, and electronically—in daylight and at night.

• Signal mirror—standard issue; instructions on the back. Highly effective in daylight at distances that would surprise you. Free to use, no batteries required.
• Greatland Laser flare—effective day and night at range; also takes CR123 batteries. I keep the battery installed upside down with a small piece of tape over the positive terminal to prevent drain or leakage in storage
• Bear bell—audible signaling on the move; doubles as bear awareness on the walk from the plane in Alaska
• High-pitched whistle—on the fire steel lanyard; three blasts is the universal distress signal
• Vertex Standard VX-7R handheld radio—tri-band ham radio covering VHF and UHF; a great communication device
• SPOT device (or PLB / inReach—whatever you prefer)—passive tracking and emergency alert. Don't get caught up on which brand. "Just have some kind of passive device that people can track where you are, and something you can send out an alert signal on."
• Firearm—I have a .357 here with six rounds loaded and six spares; my preference in bear country is a .44 Magnum Alaskan with a shorter barrel.

Quick Reference

Final Thoughts

That's the vest. Take it for what it is. I hope it gets you thinking about how you're going to approach your own situation: what you think is important, what you don't. The goal isn't to copy my list; it's to work through the same questions and come up with answers that fit where you fly, how you fly, and who might be with you.

This is a living article in the Knowledge Base. If you have feedback on the accuracy or legitimacy of this entry, or would like to add more information, join the discussion below or email [email protected]. Suggestions and changes will be incorporated readily.