The "SUBIVOR" Subway Survival Kit - Missing In Action now...

The picture with the "SUBIVOR KIT" is the one with the black and orange pack that the contents fit into.

My kit with better contents for half price is the other picture. The "welfare-weasel-looking" picture.

So, the "Subivor" is nowhere to be found now. You never know, lack of interest and then the business fails or someone has a good idea, or what they think is a good idea, and they cobble together the money to make a limited run of some product and it fails and dies.

The "Subivor" is an interesting and intelligent concept. Unfortunately, it is easily copied.

I cannot even find the website for the product but instead I am linking to many Google hits on the "Subivor".

This is what the "Subivor" Kit consisted of:

1 - SURVIVAL MASK

1 - 3 1/2 inch Flashlight

1 - 7 inch Orange Pry bar

1 - Silver tone Metal Whistle

1 - Orange Moist Towelette Pouch

1 - Compact Bag

Let me give you the quick rundown on this and it probably won't cost you $39.95 plus shipping and handling fees.

It has one (1) disposable dust mask. You can get NIOSH N95 Masks for between .50 and $1.00 a piece at Home Depot.

You can get a "3.5 inch" flashlight at many different locations. Might I suggest something twice as long that you can purchase at AutoZone? It is an Energizer Brand Penlight. It takes two AAA batteries and has a Nichia LED. It is incredibly bright and you can purchase them for under $7.00 and if you don't have an AutoZone near you, I think I remember seeing them at Target as well.

A seven (7) inch prybar...it's orange! Well, go to the paint section at Wal-Mart and you can get a Stanley brand name prybar for about $5.00 that just happens to be black with some bright yellow on it.

Nevermind the "silvertone metal whistle." Purchase a FOX-40 whistle at County Comm or at least a British Lifeboat whistle or an ACR Coast Guard Approved whistle. $5.00 to $10.00 and worth every penny. FOX-40s are $5.00 at County Comm.

If you think you need more light, get a County Comm SO-LED and place it, along with the FOX-40 whistle, on one of their tough little steel cable key rings.

The next two items are a moist towelette pouch and a compact bag. Hmm, do we have to source these out? You can get them at checkout lines in almost any grocery store.

I suggest WET ONES brand moist towelettes.

So, not counting shipping from County Comm or the gasoline it takes you to drive to AutoZone or somewhere else for the other stuff, we have cut the cost of the "Subivor" Subway Survival Kit in half. Nice, huh? Not only that, I guarantee you that the mini prybar in that original kit was probably not as good as a Stanley (unless they purchased them through Stanley and painted them which seems highly unlikely). The FOX-40 or other whistles mentioned are, literally, 100X better than the thing they had in that kit. The Energizer Penlight or the County-Comm SO-LEDs are probably anywhere between 25 - 100X better, in that, they are probably tougher and you will squeeze much more usable light out of them because they have LEDs. Cut the price in half and increase the effectiveness of the kit so many times over it almost seems like hype to say it...but it's not hype.

It is possible the flashlight and the prybar in the original kit were excellent pieces of gear. Given today's climate of just "taking people" and hurrying off to the bank with your loot while yelling, "Caveat emptor! Caveat emptor!" I suspect it was bottom of the bay gear.

Oh! I didn't include a nifty carrying pouch or something? "Get over yourself, Darling." - The Fictional Danny Archer