f we accept that, under inclement weather conditions, shelter becomes our highest survival priority, then we have to recognize that the first line of defense from the weather—our clothing—serves as the basis of our shelter. As such, in many cases, the simplest way to go about determining what constitutes an appropriate survival wardrobe, is to consult weather statistics, and your own experience in the region, and consider what the most miserable weather conditions you are likely to be faced with, in terms of temperature, wind, humidity, precipitation, and solar exposure. By the most miserable weather conditions, I mean within at least the last twenty years, and—if the data is readily available—perhaps the last hundred years. Then, all you need to do—theoretically—is determine what you need clothes-wise to keep you warm and dry and comfortable under daylight conditions, when you are wearing all the clothing you carry, and are doing something, or at least, are only stopping and doing nothing for brief periods of rest. Assuming you are reasonably close to the mark in achieving this, you will be reasonably sure that at night, or in foul weather, hibernating in some type of shelter, with an adequate sleep system, you will remain tolerably comfortable, even under the worst conditions. This type of calculation is dashed on the rocks though, by the reality that a survival scenario is not just a simple camping or backpacking trip. While many would-be preppers and survivalists lean towards the adoption of recreational backpacking attire for their proposed survival wardrobe, and others lean heavy on the latest available military surplus, it doesn’t pencil out particularly well, in either case, when you recognize that within our context, survival scenarios are neither recreational backpacking nor a military FTX. This kind of calculation involves not so much precise, scientific balancing of conditions and promised performance of clothing as it does the extrapolation of experience. It requires, of course, experience, but it works, remarkably well. In over 40 years of outdoors experience, from the sweltering, subtropical heat of the southern highlands in my youth, through a global experience in the military, and from the Deep South and Arizona deserts, to Alaskan winters, in my adulthood, the only times I’ve ever really been uncomfortably—even dangerously—cold or excessively, dangerously hot, were in the military, forced by doctrine and regulation, to utilize systems that didn’t fit my physiognomy, given conditions. I’ve trekked afoot—and horseback—across southern Arizona in the depths of blistering summer heat, without ever being unduly uncomfortable. I’ve skied and snowshoed through Interior and Coastal Alaska, kayaked off the PNW coast in wintertime, and spent more time than I can recall on snowshoe, ski, and horseback, in the winters of the Northern Rockies, without any great hardship, because I was able to make good, sound clothing choices, unimpeded by the regulatory dictates of a mindless organizational bureaucracy. This general approach works, regardless of what type of clothing you wear. It is used by extreme alpinists ascending the world’s highest peaks, by working cowboys and farmers across the nation, and a over the history of the United States—and the world—it has been used by everyone that worked outdoors. It doesn’t require the latest technologically marvelous synthetic fabrics, despite the claims of the manufacturers and their cheerleaders. My neighbors spend all day, at -30F, working outside in cotton canvas overalls and jackets. The first alpinists scaled the most formidable peaks, even trying Everest, in tweed shooting jackets. Two hundred years ago, the trappers of the Western fur brigades were using these methods, clad in linsey-woolsey, wool, and leather, to roam from the New Mexican deserts to Canada, and as far west as Spanish California. Until 20 or 30 years ago, even most backpackers simply wore modified forms of their informal every day clothing. The Primary Purpose of Clothes To begin, let’s overlook protection from sun and rain, and such subjective measures as fashion and conventional norms of decency. Instead, we’ll start solely with the conservation of warmth. People who have spent little time in the outdoors for lengthy periods of time, even when they’ve spent years or decades studying Internet lore, tend to misunderstand two important factors: (1) you’re not “keeping the cold out,” but instead you’re trying to keep the heat of your body as close to you as possible, where it does good. (2) The purpose of wearing clothing is not to keep you as warm as possible. Instead, it is to achieve as near as possible, a state of “thermal equilibrium.” That is, a state in which the heat produced by your body, at rest or during exertion, is roughly balanced by the heat lost through your clothing. In other words, if your clothing choices could be perfect, you would not need shelter, or external warming sources like fire, because you’d simply maintain a perfect thermal equilibrium, just with your clothing. Unfortunately, clothing is seldom so perfect. When you go from sitting still to being active enough to produce a heavy sweat, or most demanding of all, sitting still after sweating, requires a significant amount of effort, not just in your clothing choices, but in your management of them, once donned. In order to achieve thermal equilibrium under changing conditions of activity and/or simply weather, your wardrobe choices demand versatility, foremost. Major adjustments can be made by adding or removing a layer of clothing or two, in response to the weather, or changes in your own activity, but often that’s either not possible, or is—at best—mildly inconvenient, due to circumstance. This requires us to aim for the broadest possible range of comfort over which an article of clothing, or a combination of articles, will maintain you with a comfortable range. Generally speaking, this is achieved by clothing that will trap still, dry air, and thus insulate you, but will also, when you’re being active, will allow water vapor and heat from your sweat, pass through and escape. Your sweat is then able to do its job and extract that heat from your body. If your clothing though, absorbs some of that moisture, and therefore remains damp, when you cease your activity and stop sweating, then the absorbed water will reduce the clothing’s ability to insulate, but it will also serve as a means of conducting your remaining—needed—body heat away from you faster than through the air. This results in what the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine termed “after exercise chill.” The efficiency needed to overcome after-exercise chill, or to avoid it entirely, is the reason for the centuries old success of the layered approach to outdoor clothing. The Fundamentals of Insulation The ideal insulator for clothing needs to meet demands significantly different than those needed by a sleeping bag or blankets, where a sleeper maintains a relatively stable constant metabolic rate. Instead, clothing insulation needs to function remarkably similar to how the insulation in your home works. It must be able to cope with radical metabolic changes, from when you are sitting still, and it needs to retain every bit of possible heat, to when you’re actively engaged in arduous physical activities, and it needs to allow the heat to escape. The equivalent in your house would be when your family is asleep in your beds, versus when you’ve got famiy game night going on, with a handful of guests, while Mother is baking cakes in the oven. https://www.patreon.com/posts/cloth...paign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link Continue reading...
