Outdoor safety isn't so much a game of survival as it is an exercise in preparation. Knowing your limits, understanding your environment, and preparing the right equipment and knowledge to aid you during your outing is crucial. Knowledge and equipment must go hand in hand. It is useless to build an arsenal of kits and gadgets and not have the knowledge to be able to use them.

According to John Street, president of Woods Walker, Inc. in Florida and an outdoor expert who for the last 31 years has been involved in teaching various aspects of outdoor awareness and survival, working with outdoor educators, classroom teachers, and hunter education instructors, "Outdoors people need to understand that with today's equipment and the advanced techniques of search and rescue, most emergencies involve only hours and not days or weeks. With basic equipment and an understanding of how to use it, most situations should end up happily."

Most outdoors people don't know how to put together an emergency kit, however, and end up heading to the store or thumbing through a catalogue to find a prevalence of "canned" survival kits packaged in plastic boxes, metal cans, sheath knives and more.

Are these "survival in a can" gimmicks, or are the products legitimate safety items that should be purchased and promoted for what they are, basic packages that may save a life if the need ever arose?

"The first thing an experienced outdoor professional would say is, 'I would hate to have to depend upon this'," says Street, "but the other side of the issue takes into account the beginner. The purpose these kits serve is that they may be better than nothing and, if anything, with the proper education, will serve as a springboard to help assemble a more complete and appropriate kit that any outdoors person should carry with them."

What does an outdoors person need to consider when assembling their own kit? Patrick McHugh, vice president of MPI Outdoor Safety Products advocates learning five outdoor survival skills, understanding the seven enemies to personal safety, and determining which of the five basic climates you may encounter.

According to McHugh, the five skills are first aid, signalling, fire building, obtaining food/water, shelter. Loneliness, fear, thirst, fatigue, pain, hunger, temperature make up the seven enemies and temperature, snow, ice, tropical and desert round out the climates. McHugh asserts that anyone can put together an effective personal outdoor safety kit with nothing more than a rudimentary working knowledge of his '5-7-5 will help you stay alive' plan.

Street is quick to point out that even without adequate training, a little common sense goes a long way, providing the individual in trouble has followed a few universal preparation guidelines.

"Mother nature is not forgiving, she does not revise her plan because poor John Q public is inadequately prepared. Smart outdoors people always carry some basic emergency equipment with them," says Street. "The essentials, knife, waterproof matches, fire starting materials, map and compass, and a whistle and/or a signal mirror should always be in your pockets - not stashed away where they could be forgotten."

Street also suggests the following additional items should be assembled in a separate, but compact kit:

• Kit container - something that you can cook in and will easily, but compactly hold all of your items inside
• Needle and thread
• Fishing kit with two types of line - mono and a heavier one, a variety of hook types and sizes, and a variety of artificial lures
• Parachute cord or some type of rope ( 25 - 50 feet in length is suggested)
• A source of light - be sure to check all batteries
• Snare wire
• Wire Saw
• Emergency Blanket or Space Blanket or Space Emergency Bag
• A Basic First Aid Kit
• Water Purification (chemical treatments have a shelf life - also use two water bottles with chemicals, one to drink immediately and one to purify for future drinking.)
• Emergency food
• Someone responsible to know where you are going. You can't fit them in your kit, but make them a part of your emergency planning!