Each individually packaged blanket is under 2 ounces so you can easily toss one in with your gear or pack and not even realize it's there. Besides being ultra-lightweight, cheap emergency blankets are incredibly compact so you can essentially take them anywhere. Most cheap emergency blankets fold up to 2. They're small enough to fit in the palm of your hand so you could literally carry one in your pocket if you needed. Photo: NASA. If anyone knows technology, it's NASA. They put people on the moon for God's sake.
These are the people that developed the "space blanket" which is the technology used for cheap emergency blankets. Well, the technology used for the space blanket was so effective at protecting space equipment in cold temperatures they've gotten wide-spread use across a variety of other areas now, including survival.
So, along with the great qualities of being lightweight, compact, and reflecting heat well There are a hand-full of downsides to cheap emergency blankets we need to cover to determine the best way to use them in a survival situation.
The same reason you take a sleeping bag camping is the same reason you want an emergency sleeping bag in your survival gear as opposed to relying on a cheap emergency blanket to keep you alive. A high-quality emergency bivy is thicker than an emergency blanket plus has sealed seams on 3 sides preventing heat loss and locking out wind, rain, and snow.
You can try rolling up burrito-style to lock out inclement weather and cold What comes with a low price point is often lower quality, and that tends to hold true with cheap emergency blankets.
Cheap emergency blankets are much thinner than a higher-quality thermal blanket or emergency sleeping bag and they're also not coated with any sort of protective material making them tear and puncture resistant. That results in them easily tearing or getting damaged after a single use or even worse Now that we have the pros and cons worked out, we can narrow in on what cheap emergency blankets would be best suited for in an emergency or survival situation.
If you don't have to rely on the emergency blanket as your shelter in an emergency, one of the best uses is to combine the benefits of the cheap emergency blanket with your shelter and reflect heat. If you're sleeping in a bivy sack, tent, or even a bushcraft style shelter, you can use the emergency blanket to line the area above you or the back wall.
This way, the durability of the thermal blanket becomes less of an issue but you can get the heat reflective and warming benefits of the blanket. If you're sleeping in a tent and have rainfly, a great way I've found to do this is to slide the emergency blanket between the tent and rainfly.
This not only adds an extra layer of waterproof protection but will also reflect your body heat and help to warm the entire tent. In a survival situation, staying warm and dry is critical. And if you're left without a structural or tent shelter, you could be left sleeping in the dirt.
Well, even if you have a tarp and sleeping bag, that cheap emergency blanket you tossed in your pack will still come in handy to keep you from freezing your butt off and provides another layer of protection from moisture. How could you use a space blanket in a survival or emergency situation? Keep reading to find out. How can something so thin keep you warm? Manufacturers created the material by depositing vaporized aluminum onto a very thin plastic film.
The resulting material is thin, flexible and thermal-reflective -- meaning it reflects heat. The aluminum helps redirect infrared energy , which is just a fancy word for heat.
Depending on how the blanket is made, it can reflect heat away that's how NASA used it to cool down Skylab , or it can reflect heat in that's how it regulates body temperature.
Sometimes called a passive warming system , space blankets assist the body in conserving that infrared energy. Let's focus on how space blankets work to keep a person warm. First, we need to understand how a body loses heat in the first place. Excessive heat loss leads to hypothermia, an extremely dangerous condition. Space blankets stop both evaporative and convective heat loss.
Evaporation is the process of water changing from a liquid to a gas. In the case of a person, the liquid can be sweat or wet clothing. Evaporation uses a lot of energy and lowers the body temperature. This is why you need to be careful not to get too sweaty in cold weather. Your body temperature will drop quickly once you stop exerting yourself -- and the evaporation of sweat will make you even colder. To prevent evaporative heat loss, you should try to stay as dry as possible.
A space blanket helps slow down the process of evaporative heat loss by increasing the humidity of the air next to the skin. Convection is a lot like conduction. Conduction is the transfer of heat or cold between two objects. For example, if you sit down on a pile of snow, your backside will get colder, and the snow will get warmer.
With convective heat loss, however, the cold object is moving -- like a cold wind. The wind takes the warmth away from whatever it touches. The faster the object is traveling, the colder you'll get. You can help reduce convective heat loss by wearing layers of clothing as insulation. A space blanket forms a barrier between the wearer and the wind, providing insulation. Lastly, we also lose body heat through radiation -- it simply radiates off our body.
The reflective agent on space blankets -- usually silver or gold -- reflects about 80 percent of our body heat back to us. According to several reports from Afghanistan, the Taliban sometimes use space blankets to avoid detection from U.
The space blankets hold in the wearer's body heat, making him less likely to show up on camera as a concentrated area of warmth [source: Smucker]. An important part of any first aid kit, a space blanket provides you with more benefits than just keeping warm. However, keeping warm should always be your first priority in any type of survival or adventure situation. Some of the most useful things about space blankets are that they're lightweight, take up very little space and don't cost very much.
Folded up, it's about the size of a deck of cards, and unfolded it's about 56 by 84 inches by centimeters [source: REI ]. Emergency blanket -- Of course, the space blanket's main purpose is helping you or someone else stay warm.
It's especially useful in a first-aid kit if someone is going into shock. Wrap the blanket around the person, tucking it in on the sides and under the feet in order to keep body heat in and cold out. Cover the person's head with a hat or scarf to prevent further heat loss. Emergency shelter -- In a pinch, you can use your space blanket as a tent, tarp or lean-to. The material is waterproof so it will protect you from rain or wet snow.
If you are in a cold weather situation, take advantage of the shiny side of the blanket to reflect heat from a campfire back to you. The metallic surface will bounce the heat of the fire toward you and help keep you warm.
Keep warm -- Besides using a space blanket as a blanket, you can also use it to insulate your space. For example, let's say you become trapped in your car during a freak winter blizzard. Cover the windows of the car with the space blanket -- shiny side in. It will help reflect your body heat back inside the car. The glint of sunlight or a headlamp beam off of a space blanket can make you visible to searchers from much further out than usual.
In addition, some manufacturers make one side of their blankets blaze orange, further increasing visibility. Any standard-issue mylar blanket will do for normal read: emergency use. The latest gear, trips, stories, and more, beamed to your inbox every week. Photo: Courtesy of SOL. Backpacker Newsletter The latest gear, trips, stories, and more, beamed to your inbox every week.
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