As you may imagine, I spend quite a bit of time researching, reading about and fact-checking the articles our subject matter experts submit to ASG. If you’ve been reading our magazine for any length of time, you know we don’t confine ourselves to a narrow range of prepping and survival topics. We cover everything from the basics of food, water and shelter procurement, personal safety and security and first aid to less-common topics such as mental health, childbirth, global communications and many others that we think you should, and want to, know more about.
Of course, every area we cover (we try to organize them into the Six Pillars of Survival: Water, Food, Shelter, Security, Health and Communications) involves the use of tools or gear of some sort, so we perform reviews and curate product sections to give you an idea of what’s available in the marketplace. Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in either the new gizmos themselves or the allure of acquiring something new that one of the basic tenets of prepping and survivalism gets buried under the fluff. The toys aren’t really what will keep us alive.
Sure, having serviceable gear is very helpful to our cause, but not knowing how to use these aids effectively, or create your own from local materials, is a mortal sin that many of the owners of impressive collections of gear will commit. While this is reasonably easy to overcome by spending time practicing with your gear and learning from qualified instructors, there’s another concern I have that may be harder to resolve.