Is camping with a WISH survival kit a good idea?

Hey guys, welcome back to TA Outdoors. Today I am testing out this, a survival kit from Wish.com. This cost me the grand total of £35. I'm not expecting much but there are quite a few survival items in here. We're going to be spending the next 24 hours here in the woods testing out these items and seeing whether they are any good. For the past half an hour I've been walking around and I've found this lovely spot by this lake which I've not been to before. So the first step is to set up the tent and the shelter and then we're going to take a look at the items in the kit. So lovely clear flat spot and I've got with me just a simple one-man tent for the shelter, one I've used before. Nice and compact, pretty straightforward and easy to set up as well. As usual I always lay on the tent, give it a roll, check there's no lumpy bits or slopey bits, blood's not going to my head then I know I'm going to be alright once the tent's up. Seems good to me that. So tent's set up, I'm going to set up the sleeping arrangement later. It is actually quite windy today, 40 mile an hour gusts but it's averaging about 20 mile an hour at the moment. You won't be able to hear it at all because the microphone, that type of microphone that I've got on. Anyway the tent's set up which is good, we've beaten the rain, that's the main thing. Let's take a look at the kit. It's kind of in this Cordura bag, it's a bit bigger than some of the other cheap survival kits that I've had like the Amazon one and the Teami one. I'll link those in the description below but it's definitely a bit bigger than that. Molle webbing on the front, carrying d-loop handle on the back and a strap so that you can sling it over your shoulder as well and there's also some attachments at the back there. Other than that the bag feels alright, it doesn't feel that cheap actually. It feels pretty decent, it's got some morale patches on there. I didn't put those on, they came with it but there's a little first aid one on there as well. Right let's have a look inside. It's got a little strap at the top, kind of like a clamshell to open it. There's a decent amount of items in here. Let's take a look at them, see what we've got. Glow sticks, a paracord bracelet with a compass, a whistle just there, a little mini striker if you guys can see that just here. It's got a firesteel in the middle, a mini firesteel just there. These are rubbish I can say now. It's very hard, oh there you go, it gets a little spark. They're really not great because the firesteels are so small. Oh we're raining, it's hailing. Oh there goes the firesteel, look it pops out. I've got a duck in the tent guys, it's about to hail. Let me show you. I've just got a little bit of hail there, typical. It's looking a bit ominous up there. So as I was saying with those firesteels that are in the middle of these clips, they pop out all the time. So obviously you can then try and use it but you've got to have quite a bit of good finger strength to hold it to get the sparks. It's really quite tricky. There you go, they're very soft so they erode away quite quickly. Look in a survival situation I guess it's quite handy to have but for me they're quite gimmicky. Whistle, these are good, I always rate these whistles. Compass it's nice to have, it's free-flowing and there's a good amount of paracord on there too. Next up we've got the sort of marine style whistles, these flat ones. Sorry to everyone with dogs. A metal carabiner that is not for climbing, they never are on these kind of wish type ones but it is a locking one and it is metal. Got these plastic ones, the clips. Oh we have another compass, a base plate compass. It doesn't have a brand on it but it is a bit better for taking bearings, these ones. Doesn't stick too badly, sometimes these stick quite bad. It's a pretty cheapy feeling but in my opinion it's better than the button compass. Oh a random bit of cordage, I don't know if that's meant to be with anything. We have some paracord, I don't think it's 550 paracord though. Got some what looks like jute twine, about four pieces of that. So we can fluff that up, try and get fire going. We'll just see if it'll take a spark. In here is, what is in here? Oh we have a knife! We actually have a knife in a kit. Little two and a half inch, three inch blade. Yeah it's got a little clip there, felt clip. Give that a go, see if we can make some feather sticks from that. A piece of pine here, I've not really split it actually yet. Let's just get rid of some of the bark. It makes, to be fair, it makes some pretty fine curls. I'll tell you what, they're going to be good enough for lighting a fire. It's a cheapy knife but I'd be pretty pleased. Yeah it's quite blunt, as they generally all are coming out of these kits. I think the only one that's not been blunt I've had is the SE4 from the advanced survival kit that I got. Does make pretty fine curls, as you can see. I'd be happy with those with any knife really. So it's not amazingly sharp but it's definitely better than having no knife at all. They would take a match easily and probably a fire steel, a decent sized one. I'll just give you an example, we're going to try something. Trying to use these mini fire steels to light something like this is going to take a long time because they don't throw a very kind of hot spark. The way I would personally do it, if I was going to have to light a fire with this dinky little fire steel, is I would use this first, the rope. If you unravel it and fluff it up at the end it can become quite, you need to fluff it up as much as possible. Unfortunately this one's not amazing. If I work on fluffing that up, if I can just get a little bit of a spark to land on the tip of that, this is how I would personally do it with the wrist fire steels, the ones that I would try and do that. So let's try and light this this lot with that mini fire steel. So to fluff it up all I do is use the blade of the knife and just scrape it on top of the twine back and forward and you can see it's basically turning into like fur. That's what you want because it's never going to catch a spark that end like that. It's too solid so I need it to be as fluffy as possible because that little fire steel only throws tiny little sparks. That's fluffy enough for me I reckon. Feather sticks here, let's keep them nearby. The ground's wet though so we've got to be a little bit careful. In fact let's just use that first aid kit to rest there but I don't know if it's even fluffed up like it is. Oh there goes the fire steel. I don't think it's going to tell you what it's the back of the knife but no let's just we said we'd do it with this. It's really fiddly. I don't think I've ever seen anyone light straight from the kits with these. There we go, so there. Then get that underneath your feather sticks but it's still not fluffy enough. Oh no it might have gone that. There we go, just about a bit more flame, turn it upright and that's how I'd light my fire with the tiny little, where is it, tiny little thing but we have fire. Then I'd obviously put my kindling on and build up my fire from there. So that's the cheap bracelet and the cheap knife, a little bit of jute twine and we're able to get a fire going. A poncho, cheapy type. I should have put that on just now when it hailed actually. One size fits all. This is the emergency shelter. Like last week's where I spoke about it, it's the tent type with the mylar blanket. There's some footage of me setting one up now. You just string a line between two trees, forms a little triangle, pin up the sides with some logs or weight like stones and things like that and it's a little tent. Then we have a pen with some measurements on it and some units. There's like centimetres and inches and there is a little spirit level on the pen as well just there. This looks awfully like a shovel. Mini shovel. All the handles detach though on this one. So we'll wind that off. So it's a shovel and a pick as well. The thread does not feel too good on it at all. Oh there we go. There's no kind of rubber o-ring. So you've got bottle opener. There it is folks. Every survival kit, every survival kit so far I think has some sort of bottle opener in it. I don't get that. What is that? Like what is the reasoning behind that? I've never in 15 plus years of doing this type of stuff ever needed to use a bottle opener other than to open a bottle of beer. So where does it come in a survival situation? I don't get it. I think it's just it's for the crack isn't it? It's for the social. For the fun. Crack it. Have a survival kit. Crack a beer with your mate. That's what it's about. Anyway let's have a dig. This is absolutely a poop trowel for when you're dropping trowel and you need to drop the kids off at the uh in the forest. Yeah that's... but you know what look I'm gonna see if I can bend it at least. It can take a bit of beating. It's not it's not bending too much. No that doesn't bend actually. To be fair the Timi one was hilarious how bad it was. This little bit here is a root saw. It's not sharp for sawing wood. It's for things like tree roots like that to just cut them cut them back when they're in the way. For folks wondering there's a tree root there. Just rub it. Let's test the pick side of it. Do you know that for a little tiny thing it's actually not bad at all. I'm down almost to the getting to the gravel there. There's the stones. It's loosening up well. Not ideal for my back this but let's try it that way with this shovel. I was expecting a lot worse to be honest. That's that's fine. It's not it's not bending on me. Got to remember this kit is 35 pounds so in reality you get quite a bit. They are cheap obviously but in terms of quality they some of the stuff is naff yeah but some of it is is really not too bad. I mean you can especially when you do it so much that you can't even undo it. Maybe I have wedged it too tight now and that'll be it. It won't fit back in the pack. I think folks that is jammed tight. We are not going to be able to get that back in the bag. Just as I was saying about yeah stuff's not too bad. No that's well jammed in there. When I started this series on survival kits the OGs amongst you will remember this was actually better than I expected. It's a spork well spork up this end then a blade knife down this end you obviously bottle opener because you've got to have a bottle opener but actually and there's a whistle in here as well and obviously it's got the sheath as well so when you want to eat you can hold the sheath and not cut yourself on the knife and the knife I vaguely remember was a lot better than I thought. Let's test it out. That's what it looks like. It does have the root saw there for tree roots yes it does it makes feather sticks so there's two blades in this kit actually two so if one was made redundant you have a backup. I mean this would be ideal for filleting fish that type of thin profile small size less for this type of work more for this sort of processing game skinning they can go quite fine all with a spoon and a knife on the back yeah I actually like these they're pretty good. Okay next up we have this pouch which has oh let's take a look it's a mini axe hatchet sorry very very small kind of kindling splitter does come with a little rubber sheath which is split through unfortunately then it's a hammer an attack hammer then there's this clip at the back which if you squeeze I guess squeeze down yep that one does and we have pliers at the top there there's a little spring which pushes it all closed to make to give you the force to close it looks like a nutcracker in the middle as well pliers at the top and some wire cutters down at the base there is that it no there's more there's another knife a phillips head screwdriver a saw we'll try that it's an actual saw multi-tool saw bottle opener there it is we've got I tell you what boys if we had beer we'd have no problem surviving three bottle openers hex nuts there slots to undo them like a wrench and nail file that side looks like a little root saw there as well so it's a multi-tool let's give it a go let's take a look at maybe the saw first and then we'll whack something with a that's not gonna go for anything too ambitious this is just the saw on the multi-tool pinches a little bit probably because it's pine because it's a little bit of sap in there it's pinching quite a bit it's not the sharpest saw my pen knife my victorinox pen knife is uh sharpen that it's a shame it doesn't sort of look do you know what I reckon this is actually better descaling fish but I think it'd be better as a descaler I think it's a descaler for fish is a bit better anyway but look it cuts just gets stuck quite a lot I could snap that now the only thing is is these fall down quite quickly it is cheapy um dare we try it no idea what to expect for this folks that just popped out the little support bit I mean it chips away but the handle bit here keeps coming loose if I'm honest it's I'm finding it a bit useless I'd rather just a hatchet I think the hammer would come in more useful if I had a few nails in a kit yeah it's gonna take a long time to get through it with this tiny little tiny little blade I'd say it'd almost be better splitting some sort of kindling that's what it'd be good for like vertical splitting because it's quite a thick profile on the tip here which would lend itself more towards splitting as opposed to kind of carving into wood so in the last hour I've just been told my uncle passed away it's something we've known has been coming for a while doesn't make it I guess any better I just had this overwhelming urge to make a little memorial kind of cross I don't know why just came up it just came over me the sun came out above the lake it was really pretty um and I just wanted to make something in memory of him so I just made this little cross and I've put it just down there by the water's edge um yeah not the nice sight not obviously not not the nicest thing to um to hear at any time anyway I don't know why I just had an urge to make a memorial for him a little cross it's starting to rain now um yeah we've known this has been coming a while I think what I'm going to do is maybe take a bit of time um and then we'll go through the rest of the kit there's not there's not actually loads left to go through there's there's a couple of items but it's just about to tip it down so I think I might sit in the tent for a bit and wait for possibly a bit more sunshine but sun sets in an hour so I don't think we're going to get too much more I'm glad I'm glad I took a bit of time out to do that all right so sun has come back out again let's take a look at what the rest of the items are bottle carrying clip which you guys have seen in before you just wrap that part around the top of a plastic bottle or any type of bottle and then that goes on your belt you can carry your bottle on your belt we've got I'm not sure that's needed in a survival kit really but it's a waterproof phone case yeah you put your phone in there it's like a zip lock thing and it locks just like that those two flaps and then we've got a wire saw uh there's a b-roll footage of me using a wire saw that you're looking at now you can use it multiple different ways putting your hands through the eyelets or putting two sticks through the eyelets or making an actual bow saw from it either way it's basically like a tiny pocket thin pocket saw we've got some gloves just general plastic gloves thin plastic gloves we've got some fishing items little fishing kit in fact that's one thing from last week's kit which was an amazing amazing kit uh to put into perspective this kit is 35 pounds about 50 dollars 60 dollars last week's kit was 600 there's quite a difference in the two kits I'll put a link in the description to the playlist where you guys can watch all of these videos okay so we've got two floats or bobbers two snap swivels there some very small you might just be able to see them just here sinkers little lead split shots a small hook slightly bigger barter two rolls of fishing line not sure how long they are they're probably about six pounds breaking string then a little imitation lure a shrimp and I've kind of grabbed their red one I'm not going to use the fishing kit today because conditions are terrible for it it would literally be a waste of time uh but I've said this in previous episodes we're going to be doing a fishing one probably summer time um I'll show you what I would do with this type of fishing kit um I just it's better to wait for the fish to come in especially if I went to the coast and the sea where you can eat what you catch it's just a little bit better um so I will do a fishing one down the line maybe maybe wait till the end of spring beginning of summer or midsummer keep an eye out in general it will come out and we'll do some survival fishing kit stuff as well we've got first aid kit we'll take a look at that in a minute a rechargeable headlamp I don't know whether it has the batteries in it quite big quite bulky oh there is some battery in it there's a single light in fact you'll see that on me and there's four lights and then the fifth light is the light in the middle as well five and then the strobe I don't think there's SAS and I don't oh there is SOS sorry you just got to hold the button and you get the SOS signal I always think that's good for a head torch to have for beginners and things like that just know that some head torches if you hold the button in or press it three times or press it twice just having automatic SOS signal I think is really really important on a lot of you know in any sort of head torch light situation then this side we have what is this a gorilla let me undo this and show you I have never seen this before it's a man it's like a primate primal man he has a bottle opener what a surprise another bottle opener well can opener um some measurements on that side some wrenches as well it's like a little I mean I don't think you need the shape necessarily like that normally these come in like a square credit card size and you have them on that but this one's just placed like this probably wouldn't use many things on that to be honest I mean what's strange is that the increments on the measurements are going over his knee so it's like bent it's not a straight edge I've never really seen that before and then in here emergency blanket mylar survival blanket and something else oh and a larger fire still that would have been handy to have earlier I've never seen that it has a rubber tube on the that goes on top of it to prevent it from oxidizing as much I think that's the first time I've seen that that throws better sparks than the one obviously so that's good to get good to know there is one more thing in here this side and that is a triangular bandage which leads us on to the final part the first aid kit in this little pouch here quite good that it's in a separate red pouch wow do you need enough cotton wool buds I've never seen that many there is another bandage small five centimeter by four and a half centimeter bandage plastic tweezers some safety pins for the bandages some scissors mini scissors for cutting the medical tape if there is some and bandages then we have a non-woven pad two of those and then here iodine wipes all iodine no not all iodine wipes there's about six two four six eight ten iodine pads pre-prep pads and ten alcohol wipes disinfectant wipes and this looks like band-aids like bandages plasters different shapes the standard ones there lots of them which is good in fact this is the most used probably item in my first aid kit is plasters and band bandages these type of band-aids it's obviously oh there's more a little bit of medical tape and some rubber tape there as well I like that it's in a separate red pouch nice and obvious to see and actually I know it's quite minimalist but it's got a lot of the basics in terms of plasters alcohol wipes iodine for the price of the whole kit it's not too bad that is it I think that's everything in the Wish survival kit the uh yeah there's actually a bit more in there than I thought there would be quite a bit more I knew there was a lot of items but there was a bit more than I thought and I'd say it's definitely more comprehensive than the Teemu survival kit and probably better than the Amazon survival kits or on par with the Amazon survival kit I think the knife was better in the Amazon than one of those I used two from Amazon um I was just saying about the first aid kits obviously this is a very simple simple one doesn't have anything for burns doesn't have anything for eye injuries like an eye wash or anything like that last week's video the kit the Uncharted 72 pro kit had the best first aid kit I've ever seen in a survival kit obviously you could put together your own if you go to medical specific first aid kits then they can be really comprehensive but this for a survival kit first aid kit it is amazing it's really really good um if you want to watch that video I'll put a link in the description below we are 5.09 I think we've got an hour and a bit of daylight getting cold I might change my hat in a minute for a wall one because it's the temperatures today are 10 degrees or 13 degrees but feels like six it's like half this is celsius it's half the degrees of what it says that feels like temperature because we've got northeasterly wind which is really cold so I think I'm gonna get a bit of food on luck I mean here in this bag there's no food there's no way of purifying water in fact is there any way of collecting water there's nothing this is one of the most essential things water there's no water purification tablets there's no way of collecting water which is a big obviously bad thing um and there's no food so you know that's wish.com that's you know wish is 35 pounds what I did sort of expect that so I have bought my own luckily little tip I do is get your this is cold water at the moment get your food in the cold water and get it on the flame straight away and that way as the water heats up your food's going to heat up a lot quicker than waiting for it to boil and then putting it in and waiting another five minutes for it to heat up just put it all in while it's cold that is a lovely sun that's going to be a lovely sunset really nice it's temperatures have dropped now let's put my beanie on because it's temperatures are cold so dinner tonight is black bean chicken and rice that was I just used one fire dragon tablet to heat that and we got the old spork with a knife oh wow it's literally green oh smells nice though cheers that's really nice oh that's one of the best MREs I've had I'd say that is really good wow I've never had that one before it's a wayfarer black bean chicken and rice that's lovely about 450 calories I think 16 grams of carbohydrates obviously you need your energy I'm going to finish then I'll get back to you guys I don't know if you guys can see you probably don't see it very well but the sun is just about to go behind the clouds it's beautiful it is nice it's cold now that temperatures are dropping so before it gets dark don't need my bivvy bag I'm just going to set up my sleep system ready for the night it's a lot colder than I thought it would be I do like this tent this would be the second time using it but I like how quick it is to set up and the kind of low profileness of it I'm going to keep using it I think and see how we do throughout the spring and summer months that's beautiful I'll watch that sunset in a minute I think well the sun is just about set really nice sunset very very pretty I'm going to get myself in the tent now and uh I think that's it guys I don't I don't think I'm going to film much more anymore tonight I don't really sort of fill up for it I hope that's all right with you guys um sorry about that but yeah if anything happens in the night I'll let you know if not I will see you in the morning morning guys it's 8 30 I've been up a couple hours actually nearly nearly two hours beautiful morning really really pretty morning the bird noise was amazing spring is uh it's definitely here I've seen a couple of grey heron fly across some red kites the buzzard and then there's all the smaller birds as well making their morning bird song it's it's been really really nice sun's coming out beautiful morning didn't have any rain I had some breakfast I got coffee going sat down by the lake had some breakfast had a just a croissant and some instant coffee but it was nice sometimes it's the simple things like that that just that's all you need you know don't need to make technical coffee and a big huge cook up breakfast sometimes it's just the simple things I really really like that yeah and it's very peaceful I started packing away a few bits of my gear sleeping bag mattress sleeping pad sorry the great thing about these stoves with the little gel fire gel cubes is that one block normally doesn't boil fully boil water to a rolling boil which obviously if you're purifying water is not ideal but where it's really good for is if you put your MRE in straight away camping meal in the pot straight away while it's cold put that in the water it will heat up to perfect temperature to eat straight away not too hot not too cold and the second thing I've noticed is it's perfect temperature for having the coffee or a tea straight away you don't have to wait for it to cool down it just heats up just below boiling and you put your tea bag in or your coffee powder or whatever and it and it works so they are brilliant I'm going to be using them a lot more just for convenience um yeah I think it's time to set up a set up tent it's time to pack away the tent and get out of here so what do I think of the wish survival kit at 35 pounds actually not too bad almost all of the items are very cheap yes they would have made probably quite big mark up on it however in terms of for a someone who's on a very very tight budget or a total beginner or perhaps a young like younger kids looking to get into survival and learning about survival it's actually not a bad place to start I know these kits get slammed obviously by most experts and things like that out there the fact is is that no one starts their journey in bushcraft and survival as an expert we all learn along the way a lot of us have started as kids you know doing scouts uh playing with pen knives and things like that building shelters in that's where kind of everyone started with it really so these types of things are a good starting point I don't feel like I've been ripped off I don't feel totally out of pocket um would I want to rely on it in a sort of survival situation well I guess in a survival situation no one really knows until you're in that situation but you know if I had a fire still like that in a survival situation I'd be really grateful because I'd actually have a fire still I've got some tinder in there I've got a tent a shelter an emergency blanket it covers almost all of the basics the only thing that was disappointing is that there is no way of water purification there's literally nothing if I hadn't brought my pot in my container I still wouldn't be able to really boil water unless I did it by the bushcraft method of scooping out a burn bowl and putting some bought you know hot stones in the bowl boiling the water that way so it covers shelter doesn't cover food and it doesn't cover uh water which are your two main things but in terms of a play around kit it's not it's not actually that bad um yeah it's been this series is going taking me on all sorts of adventures and different directions if you're interested in this type of video then check the playlist in the pinned comments below or in the video description I think we're up to 11 or 12 survival kits now ranging from £10 all the way up to $700 or about £600 so you know it's quite it's quite an adventure I'm really enjoying it we've got some more kits to test on the way and I'll be doing other sorts of videos as well in between but I just want to say thank you guys for watching so much I really appreciate it um don't forget to check out our other channel TA Fishing my dad's channel I'm sorry this video kind of took a bit of a detour from where it was meant to go after I received the news about my uncle um I don't know why I just had the urge to stop what I was doing there and then with the kits and just uh make that little memorial thing I can't explain why guys it just it's just something I needed to do uh and it's been very peaceful actually sitting down by the lake there um and I might come back and check on that that spot every now and then um you know everyone processes grief differently but uh thank you guys for watching really appreciate it and um I'll see you in the next episode take care