Could This Survival Gear Save Your Life?

so what's the story with survival cards are they any good would these be a good addition to a survival kit or just a big waste of time survival cards like this are usually laser cut and they have a whole bunch of little items in them that are supposed to help you in case of a survival situation what I want to do today is take these out and test them actually test them to see if they really do what they claim to do this one I got off Amazon for like 11 bucks so they're not really expensive and they're super fun I mean they got all kinds of little gadgets on them and who wouldn't want to own one of these but let's put them to the test we're gonna cover snares fishing hunting trapping cutting there's items in here for crafting tools for repair but are they truly useful or are the Alternatives that you can make out in the wilderness just as good or better stick around and we're going to cover all of that in this video all right survival cards I'm going to start with the Frog gig we're gonna put a frog gig together on a spear see how it works once you break this apart then everything else is going to kind of fall apart too which is kind of a bummer so if you have a little container that'd be best to put them all in just gonna work these free from the rest of the parts trying to get a hook in my finger there it is but let's try to lash this to a long pole and see how it works the trick is you want something pretty long so you can kind of sneak up on a frog so get yourself something very long and kind of straight like this next we're going to clean up the end and then fit the gig into it and tie it up what we need to do is split this down the middle and then slip this gig in there then lash it with some cordage now you slip the gig into that split we made and I always have to lash around it there's seven nylon strands inside of a 550 paracord so I'm just going to use some of those to tie this on I'm going to tie on a clothing to start off once you get a few wraps around it then you can tie it off in a square knot I don't usually like working with paracore because of this reason it's very very slippery and it stretches too much so I don't really like it I usually like to use Bank line Bank line because it doesn't stretch as much and it's a lot easier to work with there's our frog gig [Music] now we haven't had rain in a long time here so everything's very dry there's like no frogs that I can find but I did find a bottle at least I'm picking up some garbage this stuff bends really easily because it's stainless it doesn't take much force to completely mangle it but then you can just kind of bend it back you'll be able to do that a few times before it breaks so um be careful if you're gonna use these another item on these survival cards are what they call snare buckles or snare locks these are really great when you are trying to snare or Trap game using snare wire because these if you set them up right can actually lock the wire in place when it cinches around an animal because what I'm demonstrating here is a squirrel snare I'm going to use the very small one that they gave us now right out of the box they don't work as good unless you were to bend them all you have to do is just grab them with your multi-tool kind of bend them over a little bit with a rock or a log just like that that's why every survival kit should have a multi-tool with you because it just makes life easier a lot of survival kits will come with snare wire like this now you can make an effective snare out of this material however using a snare lock like this from a survival card can be very very helpful it really improves the chance of actually snaring the animal and keeping it it can be effective to just simply pass the wire into a loop like this but you can imagine if it tightens down it can just loosen back up again that's why we really want to have that snare lock in there so instead of a loop like this we put the snare lock on first like so so this part that we bent over is going to ride up and down on that working end of the Rope here the working end is going to go back and tie to the release so if we were trying to snare a rabbit we'd make something about this size and this is where we would position the snare Buckle at the top so gravity will work towards it when the animal goes through so now if the animal gets stuck in there it cannot come undone because it's biting against the wire so as far as survival cards go these are a total win I highly suggest keeping these in every survival kit now it goes without saying you should not be making snares and leaving them set unless you're in a survival situation in most places it's illegal to snare animals in this way this is purely for educational purposes and it should only be used in a life or death situation now just putting out one snare is probably not going to be enough to keep you alive most people greatly underestimate how many traps and snares they need to make in order to stay alive if you're in a spiral situation you would have to have a lot of these snares set so make sure that all your survival kits have a lot of wire and plenty of these snare buckles might not be a bad idea too to pre-make these sets like this these snares sets so you can easily deploy these and get them set up quickly okay next let's talk about these saws that they have they have several saws on this card and a lot of survival cards have these saws in them so let's see if we can make something that will actually cut something this one has a couple of needles inside of it I'm gonna get those taken out just so we don't lose them so you have to improvise a way to hold this so you can actually use it so we're going to attach this to a sapling with some cordage and see if we can actually cut anything with it this might help you make small notches and things like snares triggers toggles Camp craft items this could help you make small tools and utensils that would be helpful in a survival situation yeah I'm gonna take a little bit of that snare wire and I'm going to lash it on these two points right here and twist it down nice and tight then we'll see if it cuts [Music] and there's the finished product now let's see if it works so I would definitely give that an A plus for what it's supposed to do it does a great job which is just fine detail work he makes quick work of making toggles for snares and stuff like that which is incredibly important yeah in a pinch this would be a great thing to have in a survival kit don't expect to felony trees with this it's not really going to cut through a whole lot before it dulls it'll help you make arrows it'll help you make notches for toggles so yeah a plus not something that intrigued me on this one is they have some Barbed needles here and I am thinking to myself that would be great for a spring snare they snap closed on an animal and it would pin them in place with those barbs maybe we could fashion something up with that all right so the idea behind a spring snare like this is to attach a very springy sapling to something with a trigger and so when it Springs closed these darts impale whatever is meaning to be trapped so a few Lashes in place very well I think this would be very effective nice to have as for this knife there's no Edge on it so we would have to find a rock to actually sharpen this thing it might take a while but let's try it I'm gonna pop the arrowhead out of it we'll save that for later and all these needles and hooks I don't need one of those stuck in my hand one thing that's really great about having a good multi-tool with you is that most of these multi-tools they have a good file on them so I can put an edge on this blade this thing's really hard to hang on to it's very flimsy so we should make a little handle for it [Music] always carry Gorilla tape with you it is a lifesaver if you didn't have a knife to Baton on this you'd use a thin Rock to split this in half there we go a little knife let's see if it cuts anything okay it works it's kind of like peeling a carrot though it's not really that impressive is it this is not sharp enough to cut into the wood so I don't really think this is a very useful thing the material is stainless so it bends really easily it's very soft it won't hold an edge that's never really going to do knife things and you're not gonna skin anything you're not going to cut anything really uh it's gonna cut cordage that's about it and then it's gonna be dull better to just have a small Swiss army knife or even a razor blade would be better than that I would give that a c minus yeah as far as the arrows go making a bow that is effective in the wild is not exactly an easy task it takes a lot of time and even some practice to make a bow that's worthwhile and is going to hit anything with enough force and accuracy to take it down these arrowheads that are supplied with this kit are kind of big actually and you'd actually need a bow with a considerable amount of force behind it you find a piece of hardwood like this it's got an excellent spring to it but it's just not gonna have the power needed to put that Broadhead through an animal and kill it I don't think the arrowheads are very very practical item for this kit sure if you take six hours eight hours to make a really nice bow and some arrows make sure that they're fire hardened it might be nice to have those but also you can just fire Harden the tip of a hardwood arrow and make some barbs in it if you want and it would have a similar effect if you are going to try it though grab a hardwood sapling like this that's nice and Tall about as tall as you are find the natural Bend in it by pushing on the middle so a bow made from a sapling like this is not gonna be very strong at all but you can improve its speed this is called making a bundle bow you can round lash saplings to an existing bow to increase its power so when you make a bundle Bowl you basically want to just have one main sapling and then you layer other saplings on top of that could be three four five six depending on the diameter make sure that you round last at regular intervals along the bow I tacked this together with some Gorilla Tape but now I'm lashing it with bank line because it's going to hold much better so although this bow looks like it could do some serious damage it's actually horrible there's too much band in this bow to start off with so I can't get a powerful enough draw out of this bow it's probably like a five pound pull right here that's not gonna do anything [Music] I mean I can stick it in a tree but it's not going to kill anything foreign myself 15 minutes to make that bow and it really reflects that it's kind of bad but I want to show you that as an example that if you use green wood and you make a bundle Bowl it's probably not going to work unless you select the woods right now you could strip the bark off those Force dry them over a fire re-tie them together and they'll be much snappier but as they are they're just far too green to use as a bow to do it right you have to carve the bow out of a Stave about that big around and there's a whole method to it it's very cool definitely worth trying out but in a survival situation this might not make a huge difference more effort is going to be put into the bow getting it strung finding or making the cordage to string the bow making the arrows is super tough finding Fletching for the arrows all that stuff I would give those a b because if you know what you're doing and you practice some bow making great if not then it could be a giant waste of time and calories to try to make a bow if you haven't done it already and practiced it these hooks are pretty cool I don't doubt for a minute that these would work they have a good bar bottom they're very lightweight and they're strong enough to be a hook and catch a small fish so I think it's a win these tiny needle those are also very cool put a small piece of nylon cordage in there from paracord and you sew up something that's rip or if you really had to you could give yourself sutures with this as for the fork I mean if you're in a situation where you need the rest of the items in this kit the fork is the last thing on your mind and I don't even think that's a very good Fork to be honest I'd rather try to use that as a frog gig I know there's better versions of these out there so let me know in the comments if you found one that you like I hope you found that useful or at least entertaining we'll see you later foreign [Music]