By Tan Jen Kai
The survival kit is an essential companion to a scout everywhere he goes. As the name suggests, the survival kit contains items that will come in handy during a life-threatening situation and be the determining factor between life and death. Today, the ventures gathered to pack their survival kit as part of being prepared for the outdoors.
When packing a survival kit, it has to be light and portable. The ventures went through each item and discussed about the roles of each item and evaluating its necessity. By doing so, we would cut down on non-essential items that would add weight to the kit.
After sorting out our survival kit, we moved on to learning to create diversions from simple items, which in this case was a flint stone from lighters.
After taking apart the metal casing and spark wheel on the lighter using pliers, one would carefully retrieve a spring and flint stone. Using the spring, he will then wrap the spring around the flint stone and heat the components until the flint stone turns glowing red. By throwing the spring and flint stone on the ground, the flint stone will disintegrate and produce sparks that act as a distraction.
The purpose of knowing these techniques is because as scouts we must be prepared for any circumstance, and it may come in handy when dealing with animals in the wild with creating snares and trapping using the survival kit and escaping with diversions using the simple lighter.