Wal-Martalists

Wal-Mart and its Ozark Trails brand of camping and outdoor merchandise are the skidmarks in the underwear of survivalist gear and disaster preparedness.

The aisles are littered with the most low-quality, Chinese junk and when you run into something from Coghlan's or Coleman, you breathe a sigh of relief...and that's not saying much at all because there is very little gear from either one of those companies I would trust my life to. Coleman sure as hell isn't the Coleman brand of the 1970s and early 1980s, I can tell you that.

I cannot for the life of me begin to understand why someone with any outdoors experience whatsoever would choose a lensatic compass from Mal-Wart.

(And, NO, I don't like that company and I don't appreciate what they have done to my country so, yeah, when I get a chance to bust their ass and be honest about it, I'm going to do it!)

Worse yet are the rocket scientists on various survival-based forums who think that a "fish-eye" compass like you can find at China-Mart is "serious survival gear." And they get their ass up on their back if you inform them otherwise, too.

You know, if there was a massive strike against the United States involving dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of thermonuclear weapons and the only thing I had was a fish-eye compass or a piece of shit lensatic compass made by some slave named Wan Hung Lo that I found lying in the street, so be it! But I would not choose to go into a survival situation with that type of low-quality, shitty gear.

It's just me...

..and I hope you, too, or I might be wasting my time talking about this sort of thing. Why even have a blog at that point? To tell people how great garbage gear is and how overrated real gear is?

I am NOT the kind of guy that has to have a Busse survival knife because ESEE Cutlery and Beckers are not good enough, that's just goofy to me. The increase in quality is nowhere near the increase in cost. Yet, I see people who have these "Bug Out Bags" and they just have them packed with trash because it's easier to go to China-Mart and drop less than $200.00 to buy a bunch of stuff than it is to spend a few hundred over the course of months or a few years purchasing real gear.