Essential Survival 

Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival Kit

Best Survival Kits to Buy Online #6

This post will compare the Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival kit against my homemade pocket survival kit. At first glance this challenger looks in good shape, as I can see already that it has a survival blanket included. If you have read my previous comparison posts, then you’ll see that a heat blanket is not usually included.

The BG kit is off to a good start by including the most useful survival item in his kit. To see where the challenger fits into the scoreboard below we need to look at the other contents included in the kit.

Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival Kit – Contents

Container size – 5″x 7″x 2″ versus my pocket survival kit at 4″ x 3″ x 1″

A few hits and misses for me with these contents, heat blanket included but no compass and two whistles? I have watched quite a few of Bear’s TV shows and seen him use a compass a lot but never a sewing kit. It seems every survival kit has a sewing kit and then omits a really essential item, like the heat blanket.

Although, a compass is a valuable item, it’s inclusion in the kit only becomes essential when you have no other way to determine your direction. You can learn other skills that will lessen your reliance on having a compass in your kit. In saying that, they are quite compact and there is no reason not to have included one in this kit, except cost.

Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival kit – Essential Items

In order to determine where this kit will finish on the scoreboard, we need to separate the essential items for survival. Whatever items are not deemed essential will count towards the total score and not the essential score. So, let’s breakout the essential items inside the Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival kit.

• Gerber Multitool

The small multitool that comes with this kit has a knife, pliers, file and the typical set of screwdrivers and can openers. Luckily, it also has a set of tweezers, which elevates the essential score for this item somewhat.

Rescue Essentials

• Heat Blanket
• Rescue Whistle x 2
• Signal Mirror

These items are the inclusions for the rescue needs of a survival kit, for some reason they’ve included two whistles. One good whistle attached to the lanyard of the carry bag and the other one is junk. It’ll probably work ok but the construction is sub standard compared to the other.

You can see the low quality whistle in the lower right of this image

Second and better quality whistle on the lanyard

Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival kit – Fire Items

A good pocket survival kit should have two methods of lighting a fire, as it is a critical survival need. The Bear Grylls Ultimate kit has a nice set of boat matches and a decent fire steel and striker. These items will pass the test and added a good essential score for this kit.

• Boat matches
• Fire Steel

Similar fire starting equipment to the Bear Grylls basic survival kit version.

Water Options

Well, there isn’t any purification tablets included in the kit and the outer carry bag is a porous rip stop nylon type. There is a small zip lock bag that holds the contents inside the rip stop outer bag, that you can carry water in. However, there is plenty of room to add your own water tabs and even salt tabs to make this kit better.

Hunting and Gathering Options

• Fishing Kit
• Snare Wire
• Cordage

A small amount of these essential items are included in the kit, which will useful in a survival situation. There is nothing special about these items and are pretty standard inclusions with these type of pre made online kits. The Bear Grylls Ultimate survival kit provides the bare minimum that you’d like to carry.

Survival Instructions

One of the things I like about the Gerber BG gear, is the survival instructions they supply. This kit has the typical paper instructions and some rescue information on the outside of the bag. Always good to have, even if you already know everything, especially when under stress.

Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival kit – Essential Score

That’s all the gear that was deemed essential and this challenger finished with an essential score of 147 and a total score of 179. Subscribers can access the spreadsheet here. That score will put the Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival Kit into 4th place on the list, which is not really the ultimate spot.

It remains clear, that building your own kit is the way to go, instead of these online premade kits. However, I will search on for decent challenger to my pocket survival kit, thanks for reading.