A proper winter emergency kit for you who prepares for things.

We’re knee-deep in yellow snow now! rings through your head, as you realize your front wheel drive clunker of a Mazda has crashed in a ditch on a remote backroad somewhere well beyond Bumsville. The airbags deflate. A vanilla-scented Wunderbaum swings on the rear view mirror. You feel the car is stuck on a pile of snow. The engine dies, and all lights go out. Turning the key in the ignition does nothing. It is dark, it is midnight, and absolutely nobody is around. But no worries, because you are prepared! You open your assault pack and take out the BCB Winter Emergency Kit while your partner is gasping for air – both for the injuries sustained in the crash and for the sheer astonishment of your preparedness.

It is getting cold. You roll your partner in a foil blanket and leave him on the passenger side. You yourself don an insulating emergency poncho, which leaves your hands free for survival moves. You wipe your hands with antiseptic wipes – the hygiene above all – and then you load a folding cooker with solid fuel blocks and fill a cooking pot with snow, ready for your partner’s use. An injured person must hydrate and try to keep warm. The chore of boiling some water can also be good for morale, which is very important in survival scenarios.

This time dialing 911 is not an option – but you must get help. Suddenly you remember a farm north from here, which you passed by a few miles back. Genious!

You give your partner the matches, then you head north, a micro flashlight and a mini compass leading your way. You strap a drinking water pouch on your belt with a karabiner – you are sure you can fill it once you get where you are going.

After so many hours of fighting through the snow, the windows of the farmhouse begin to shimmer through the thick brush. You reach the end of the brush. A tall fence with barbed wire separates you from the house. Two large Dobermanns patrol the yard. Dammit! How to arouse the attention of the people inside? You once again pull out your emergency kit from your assault pack. Just as you are about to blow the distress whistle found in your emergency kit, you notice a police car and a department of corrections vehicle in the farmhouse yard. You decide to head back to the Mazda to have a sip of warm water and to make a new plan.

The return trip goes much more smoothly, tracing back your own steps. You arrive at the car. There’s no movement inside. You call for your partner, but there’s no response. You approach the passenger side window and stumble upon a terrible view. You are all alone now. The toxic fumes from the fuel blocks must have snuffed out whatever life remained in your weakened partner. What kind of doofus would use a cooker inside the confined space of a car? Damnit!

Writhing in self-loathing, you close your partner’s eyelids, and use the last match to light the emergency kit candle in remembrance. Somewhere close by an owl hoots. The clouds are breaking up, and moonlight begins to shine down on the forest. Suddenly you hear a thud coming from the trunk of your Mazda. Another thud. And another. You run your fingers on the bottom of the almost empty emergency kit. You touch something. You take a sharpened pencil in your hand. You exit the car and go around the back.

It has come to this, you hear yourself thinking. But however bleak things might be, you are still moved by a warm and proud feeling – you had been prepared! Then it hits you – what has been bothering you for a while now – the bioethanol fuel tablets burn clean and would not have been able to produce a sufficient amount of toxic fumes to suffocate your partner. And at that moment, you hear a noise behind you and see how the moonlit snow has a shadow rising above your own silhouette…

WINTER EMERGENCY KIT CONTENTS

• Foil blanket
• Emergency poncho
• Antiseptic wipes
• BCB Firedragon folding cooker
• 3 bioethanol solid fuel blocks
• Cooking pot / Storage tin
• Matches
• Micro flashlight
• Mini compass
• Drinking water pouch with Karabiner
• Distress whistle
• Candle
• Pencil