Monday, June 28, 2010

Becker Necker (BK-11) Personal Survival Kit (PSK)


My neck knife of choice is the Ka-Bar made BK&T BK11. I'll go into reason I went with this particular knife in another post, so for now I'd like to focus on what I did to mod this into something of a small personal survival kit or PSK.

I've been carrying this kit for a while since I saw the original idea for it and pleased with how it's worked out. Truthfully though, I don't like the idea of "survival kits" because my personal philosophy is that what you carry on your body and in your mind which should be what you need to survive, but of course...shit happens. It's precisely because of this that it is important to have layers of redundancy, so that if one "layer" of your gear fails or gets lost, you have a fall back. So keep in mind that this kit is meant to augment what I normally carry, in the event that "shit happened".

I drew inspiration from Colhane in his video here, where he talks about his own neck knife kit, so there will obviously be a lot of similarities. It's worth taking a look at, and he does a very good job and explaining the reasoning behind why he put certain items into the kit.

The kit I put together is admittedly a lot smaller, and not nearly as robust...however it was built for what suited my particular needs of the kit. It consists of:


  1. Sheath + Lanyard
    - Stock sheath that comes with the Becker necker, may wrap it with duct tape at a later time. The lanyard is about 4' of 550 cord. Not much, but I carry some more cordage in the kit.

  2. Knife
    - I wrapped the BK-11 handle in high visibility orange paracord which I gutted for more comfort when gripping. Orange was chosen after I had an incident a few years ago where I dropped my knife in the middle of the night and had to wait until the next morning to find it.

  3. 2x tubes of petroleum treated cotton
    - Not much to explain here. Just a bomb proof way to get 2 fires going in an emergency.

  4. 20' kite string wrapped around 2 nails
    - Cordage for improvised fishing, snares, shelter building...the uses are endless.

  5. 10' black thread wrapped around a finishing nail
    - Thread for repair in the event I need to sew rips or tears in my clothing.

  6. 2x large repair needles for sewing
    - See above. Could be used for an improvised fish hook if pressed.

  7. 1x "mini-match" magnesium + flint rod
    - Fire starting tool, a scaled down version of your typical mag bar. With the flint side I can get a fire going with the tinder tubes and some choice natural materials. For a particularly stubborn tinder I can use the magnesium and make shaving to give it an extra boost.

  8. 1x 1L water bag
    - Used for purifying water with the aquatabs and also transporting water if on the move.

  9. 4x aquatab water purification tablets
    - 4 tabs is enough to purify 4L of water. That's 2 days worth of emergency water in the worst case scenario. Considering doubling the amount, will tweak the kit if I need to.

  10. 1x keychain LED light
    - Nothing special here, click once to turn it on, click it again to shut it off.

  11. 2x pieces of bicycle inner tubing
    - Will be used to keep the kit together, but strips of it can be cut off and used as a fire extender in wet weather.

Putting it all together...

The kit is put together with the 1L water bag, folded in 3 around the pack of aquatabs and the 2 needles + thread taped to the back of the sheath.


On the other side of the sheath, the tinder tubes, magnesium rod, kite string and LED light are laid on the sheath, and the whole thing is wrapped by the 2 sections of inner tube.


What the finished kit looks like. The whole thing is only about 3/4" thick and is not heavy around my neck at all. Under my shirt it has a very low profile and is not immediately noticeable to most people.

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