Absolutely spot on sniper 55. The intention being that if you ended up in LITERALLY just your clothes, having lost your Bergen, webbing and weapon, you were, at that point "escaping and evading" the enemy. That little tin was the last resort for survival until you could be recovered or return to friendly forces.sniper 55 wrote:The original idea of the tins (AFAIK) was for combat survival, they tended to be kept on the person so if the individual had to do a runner they had the very basics, in my day they were changed a lot to to suit the area we were in. They were never intended as a long term thing, just a few days maybe.
I too am not a great fan of this concept, there's way too many "generic" kits in this space based on a tobacco or altoids mint tin with some fishing line and hooks in it! My personal feeling is that your "last ditch kit" should be tailored to your specific environment, mine is mostly urban and hence all I need at that point is to "get home". Therefore, wallet with some 'spare' cash (if you can call any money 'spare'!), a couple of alcohol wipes and paracetamol, SAK mini champ, Thrunite ti12, fire steel, length of cordage and about 18" of gorilla tape. The spare credit card that has a decent limit and is unused is the most valuable item for if S starts to HTF!