Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/28/man-takes-the-cheapest-sur.html
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Not sure why people would be compelled to buy a crappy kit after it has been reviewed to be inadequate. Frankly the vendors jacking up the prices and having people still buy the product is just a simple case of separating idiots from their money.
Also in the case of survival gear i’m not sure i would want to rely on the cheapest items i could afford.
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I guess the point would be…for $30 I wouldn’t have minded grabbing this and stowing it in my Outback. Small and compact, if I rarely if ever use it I won’t feel bad that I spent the $30 on it.
Now it sitting at $116 makes me say “Yeah, screw dat.”
It astounds me how greedy some companies really can get and how it fogs their vision to what works best.
Walmart and their ilk have proven…large quantities at lower prices is far more profitable.
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Thankfully a lot of items suited for survival situations are simple, so with a little bit of shopping around one can keep costs down. A good machete, axe, striker, and other items shouldn’t cost a fortune. Cost might depend largely on how many items someone decides they have to have vs what they can do without.
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Does this mean we’re back to the “Poor people eat fast food to survive, so don’t knock it” discussion? 
But seriously, I think you make a great point. I’m usually of the mindset that there’s often no need to go out and buy something. One can so often just make use of what you may have around you.
Edit: Er, wait…maybe that wasn’t your point at all. I guess that was just how I interpreted the photo that you posted. (I freely admit that I often find gif-only posts to be ambiguous, to the point that I often miss the point of them…)
Where one lives, or where you plan to be when something goes awry, will largely dictate what you’ll need to get by. If you’re in an urban environment then you’ll most likely need food and water to survive, and maybe some kind of charger for electronics. If you’re in a more remote place then you’ll need more gear.
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I’ve noticed that the sellers are watching and sometimes jack the prices when a site or YouTuber with any audience posts something
Maybe, but I think a simpler mechanism also explains it. If you sell a lot more then normal of something, raise the price before you sell out. If the sales start to decline lower the price (but not so much that you lose money on each sale…unless you are paying too much for storage, or need the money now and the loss is smaller then interest payments, and many other exceptions). This can be deliberate, or it can be because when you reorder your wholesaler is already doing it, or because sales run through your inventory so quickly you need to pay a higher price to get the restock fulfilled quickly.
That doesn’t require you to constantly scan social media for thing you sell, and catches private events you can’t get access to, and things in languages you don’t understand, and it scales well no matter how many things you sell.
This. I wouldn’t buy it for legit survival needs. Rather i would use it as a handy multitool kit.
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If you are at all outdoorsy, you probably already have this gear, maybe not in one pouch. If you are not so outdoorsy, the best part will obviously be the phone recharger, because then you can call for rescue.
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I have a love-hate relationship with Wranglerstar. Some of his videos are pretty interesting, but he sometimes delves into topics about religion and politics that he should probably just steer clear. I have subscribed and unsubscribed to his channel quite a few times.
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The "in one pouch aspect is what makes these and other similar “cheap” sets worth it imo.
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So this is the thing. I do have many of these items in my EMS pack for backpacking. They are a mish-mash of exactly the things I need when backpacking…but like I said above, for $30 I would have gladly “splurged” on this one small form factor bag and thrown it in the back of my Outback for emergencies, or when hitting the beach, or camping with the kids, etc etc.
The comparison I would use is the vehicle roadside emergency kits some many folks have. You could go out and buy individual pieces, but the convenience of buying some quick kit works if the price is right. Same can be said for grilling tools, and pot and pan sets, kitchen knives, drill driver and tool sets…the list goes on and on.
Conveniently grouped “kits” are usually worth the price. At $30 it definitely was…even at $50-60 it would have been bearable. At $116 it is absolute craziness.
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Why all the petty dismissiveness for the metric system? Is dividing by 10 somehow un-American?
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According to this historical price tracker, this thing never cost $30. The cheapest it ever was is $65.99 back in February.
The other items he’s reviewed (the Coleman Camp Axe, the Survivix Survival Knife, and the Kungix Outdoor Survival Kit) have either stayed the same price or actually gone down a little bit.
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Maybe I’ll try the survival shovel from the local Dollarama. I think that’s $3.50 or so. What could go wrong?
I saw this on shop related…looks like the same basic kit and is priced around $35
I think he’s trying to be funny. He’s a bit of a right-winger, and vocally supported Trump in the election last year on his channel. I imagine he thinks it’s funny to denigrate the socialistic measuring system.
I saw that too, but since it didn’t have a bat or the unlicensed camo on the packaging, I figured it wasn’t the same thing. And all the same, even that never sold for as little as $30.
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Wonder if Amazon gives personalized prices that are reflective of a user’s own history, and are not reflected in historical price trackers?
Or, sneakier, if companies can get Amazon to push a sale price on an individual known to review, so that they buy it at that price and review it… Unlikely, but quite possible now or in the near future?
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I still have my K-tel survival knife with fishing line, matches compass etc - you could cut down a small tree with the serrated back. Survival Knife kit
Can’t say I ever used it, but it seemed useful at the time.
