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My friends, welcome to this episode of the Outdoor Gear Review. I hope you all are doing well. For this week's adventure, we are testing out a survival product, the Survive Tent. A few weeks ago, on the channel, I put up a survival episode in regards to a lost day hiker who was basically stranded out overnight with no gear at all. All they had was the clothing on their back. In that episode, I showed you all what it was like to be out in that sort of situation, and also what to do so that you could survive the night. I have to admit, that was a very miserable night, but we made it through it. In that episode, I mentioned that we were going to begin testing out a number of
survival products, and folks, that is what we're doing. To start, we are testing out the Survive Tent. This is a very interesting product. It is a Mylar tent that actually has doors on it. That's different. Very, very different. Once I get this fully set up, I'm sure you've seen the design before minus the doors. Only recently did someone have the bright idea to add doors to it. You never know, the idea may have come from one of my previous survival episodes when I was testing out a similar tent and I complained about the fact that it made no sense at all that the tent shelter had no doors. Anyways, folks, we
need to go ahead and get this set up because as you all could see, it is getting very dark and at the same time it's getting quite cool. By morning, it's going to be quite cold. We will talk more about the weather conditions in just a bit. For now, let's go ahead and get this set up. By the way, it is currently around 8:00 p.m. This trip, this adventure will end at 8:00 a.m. We have a 12-hour survival scenario with the Survive tent. Let me tell you all, this thing freaking stinks. It smells like if someone was to strike up a match or something, this thing would just explode. It would combust.
This Mylar shelter comes with, I want to say it's 22 ft of 550 cord. And that's what you use to pitch it. As you all can see here, the Survive Tent has been set up. First things first, the setup process is somewhat difficult. I'm sure you're looking at this and you're thinking, "That's very simple." But, when it comes to actually setting this thing up properly, so that this actually has some sort of form to it, there's quite a few steps. In fact, I'm not sure if you would be able to set this up without at least some moderate bushcraft skills. It's not as simple as just tying your string to two trees, and this is then set up. You really do need to know how to pull the materials tight, how to
stretch everything out, and there's more to it than one would think. To use this as a bivy, basically a blanket in other words, that is super simple. To set this up as a tent, it's going to take some work, it's going to take some skills. With that being said, though, it is set up, it's ready to go, and you can see the overall shape. Basically, we have a triangle. To set this up, you have to take rocks and spread out the sides. And then you have the line which holds up the peak. From there, you crawl inside of this tent. Now, right here we have a door. And basically you close this, you put the rock on top of it, and that's what holds it closed.
It is not a very good design. It's going to work somewhat as long as it's not really windy or breezy or something like that. If it is, it might stretch the material, or it may even blow it loose. As far as closing the door goes, that's about as good as I can do. Unfortunately, there's no Velcro or anything like that to fully secure this. With this entryway here, I went ahead and I set it up this way so that you all could see easier into the tent instead of having a stick in the center. I figured that would be the best as far as viewing all of this as the night goes by. I'll be honest, everyone. I dread getting inside of this. This thing is really, really small. And I'm not as young as I used to be.
This is certainly going to be uncomfortable. Woo. All right, everyone. I am inside of the shelter. This is quite interesting. It's very small. And plain and simple, it has to be. When it comes to Mylar, it only works when it's close to you. And now that I'm inside of it and I'm close to the material, I can feel some body heat radiating back to me. Already, I'm a little bit warm from moving around, setting this up, and filming. So, I will go ahead and take off my jacket here. The last thing that I want to do is sweat.
Mylar is not effective when you begin to sweat. And I'll explain why that is later on. It can assist you when you're wet with sweat, when you're wet and whatnot, but it's best not to be. The unfortunate thing about this, and it's just a aspect of Mylar, it is very, very fragile. Mylar is essentially a piece of plastic that has some aluminum foil basically glued to it. It's like multi-layer. Because it's made out of plastic, typically polyester, it is very, very weak, very, very fragile. Already, this is beginning to tear up. There's quite a few holes in this.
Luckily, above our heads here, it is still 100% perfect. There's no holes, nothing like that. And that really is the most important part to this. So, we are officially inside of this shelter and the long night is about to begin. The fact that I'm able to seal myself up in this, at least a little bit, is helping a lot. And that's the biggest benefit that comes from this Mylar. It's not the heat reflecting back to me because the truth is that equates to very, very little. What this does do is block wind. At the same time, it keeps me dry if it was raining. As far as the weather goes tonight, we're looking at roughly 47° right now. By morning tomorrow, it's going to be about 38. At
the same time, it's going to be windy. There is a slight chance of rain. It's about 20%. So, we'll just have to see what happens on that one. Luckily, we have this here. And this is fully waterproof. It's also windproof. At the same time, it does not breathe at all, which means condensation could be a big problem. And that is just how it is. So far, so good. I do have the front of this open. I'm still cooling down a little bit. And I'm definitely cooling down. One reason why is because I'm laying on the ground. So, the ground is pulling heat away from my body. To reduce that, I could sit up. But that's difficult to do.
It's also something that I can't do all night long. I'm simply too tall for it. Too tall to do that. So again, everyone, this is the Survive Tent. The price on this is $25. It is very small, very compact, lightweight. It's about the same size as a can of Coke. And it weighs about 11 oz. So, it's less than 1 lb. This is designed to be used as a bivy, a blanket, or as a tent shelter like this. It measures 92 in long, 40 in wide, and it has a peak height of around 34 in. I almost forgot, everyone. I have a thermometer with me. So, right now it says 50.2°. And since I'm holding it, it's going to begin warming up. I'm going to set this up outside.
We'll keep an eye on it, and at some point in time, I'll bring this inside of this shelter here, and we'll see what the temp is. I'm beginning to get cold, so I put the jacket on. At the same time, I am very uncomfortable laying down, sitting up, either which way. And that goes hand in hand with survival, right? It's not supposed to be comfortable. If it was comfortable, it would be camping. When it comes to Mylar, we should talk about it, because often times, people look at this material, and they think that it's some sort of like holy grail product, that if you have this, you're safe. You're going to be protected.
You're going to survive. But, that's not the case. When it comes to Mylar, it is better than nothing. That's for sure. But, there's nothing especially amazing about this. More than anything, it's waterproof and windproof, and those are the biggest benefits. It does reflect back some heat, but it's not a whole lot. Often times, when it comes to Mylar, companies will claim that it reflects back 90% of your body heat. That sounds awesome. But, in truth, it's not. It does reflect back 90%. 10% is lost, but that doesn't mean a whole lot as far as warmth goes. You're talking about maybe a 1 to 2° difference between being inside of this, having it close to your body, and being outside and not having it close. There's nothing about this that is insulating.
Mylar reflects back body heat. It does not generate heat. It is not a cozy blanket, unfortunately. It's important to know that your body loses heat in four ways: radiation, conduction, convection, and evaporation. In an emergency, Mylar can help slow down hypothermia by reducing how fast your body loses heat, but it will not prevent it. It will only slow it down. As it stands right now, it's about 10:00 p.m. And the hours are going by quick. There's two things that I've observed. One is that the only time that I'm comfortable inside of this is when I'm laying down. And I'm I'm not super comfortable, don't get me wrong, but good enough. But, I'm cold because the ground is
pulling my body heat away from me. When I sit up, I'm uncomfortable, and that's when it begins to radiate back some body heat. It's an interesting situation to be in. Comfortable to lay down, but cold. If I sit up, I begin to warm up, but I'm really, really uncomfortable. It's a very interesting situation to be in. Talk about an interesting product, everyone. As I said before, survival is not meant to be comfortable and this is certainly not comfortable.
Currently, it looks like it is 44° outside. So, it's certainly getting chilly and I can tell you all, it is much better inside of this shelter than outside of it. Far from perfect, this is certainly better than nothing. Over the years, I have tested a lot of products, including something that was very similar to this. You will find a lot of emergency products that are designed just like this, but they do not have doors on them. This one does and that makes a huge difference. Huge, massive difference. Cold to be laying on the ground, that is. The thermometer says 41.2 at the moment.
I should have mentioned, as far as this goes, I have nothing with me but this tent. No food, no water, no supplies. Actually, I take that back. There's one thing inside of this backpack that I want to try out. And we'll do that later on when it gets really cold to see if it makes much of a difference. I'm right at the point now where it's time to seal this up. Seal this up and try to hold in as much heat as possible. Again, laying on the ground is not terrible. Sitting up like this is pretty terrible. That's kind of what makes testing out these products interesting.
You know, when it comes to like reviews of this stuff, there aren't any. On Amazon, there's people talking about how awesome it is in the package. And then of course there's the fake reviews where people talk about like camping inside of this 100 times because it's so awesome. No, that's complete crap. First off, after this one night, this thing is going to be absolutely shredded. Already the materials are beginning to like stretch and pull thin. You can see light through it. On the ground here from just tossing and turning, there's some pretty big holes.
This is not something that you can use over and over again. Maybe in a pinch, two to three nights if you're super gentle with it. Ultimately, you really don't want to be stuck in a situation where this is what you're relying on, but if you have to, do know that this is incredibly fragile. I did some research about emergency Mylar products. And get this. There's not a single case ever recorded where a product like this, a Mylar blanket or anything like that, has actually helped somebody survive. Not a single reported case. I did a ton of
research. I used all sorts of AI things to search and whatnot, and they could not find one legitimate case. There's studies that talk about the pros and the cons of this sort of stuff, this material, the technology, but studies are certainly different than actually using a product like this in the real world. The only case that I could find where someone actually used something like this, I don't remember what state it was in, but it involved a hiker, no, a hunter. That's right. It was a hunter who had gone out, he had got lost or something like that. And he was able to use a Mylar blanket in conjunction with a tarp and some clothes and blankets and stuff that he had with him. The article didn't really
specify, but it kind of made it sound like he may have used it as like a ground barrier to keep moisture from, you know, coming up through the ground. In that case, it offered absolutely nothing as far as heat reflectivity. Because again, when you're laying on top of this, it does absolutely nothing. You really do have to have the material elevated so that it can reflect back some heat. I mentioned earlier that claims say that this reflects back 90% of heat, and that's true, but it's deceptive at the same time. It means that only 10% of heat is actually making its way through the material. It's not like you're reflecting back 90% of your heat. That is not what that statement
means at all. And again, that translates to 1 or 2 degrees difference between inside and outside. I did find that interesting though. Not a single recorded case from any newspapers, any sources, nothing like that. There's plenty of unverified statements made by people who may work for this company or another company. You know how that goes. Half of the reviews for products like this are complete garbage. Just made up, paid for by the company, you know. Or I should say paid for by the companies that make this sort of stuff.
More times than not, these are Chinese products. With that said though, these do serve a purpose. There is a time and a place for something like this. In this case here, it is actually doing what it was designed to do. Not to the extent that the company claims of course, but it is blocking the wind and that is helping me stay warmer. It is reflecting back some heat and that does help. At the same time, if it begins to rain, it will keep me dry. And that right there is invaluable. The fact that it's blocking the wind means that this is almost priceless in this situation.
40° on the thermometer and still dropping. Priceless. Even though a good tarp would do essentially the same thing, right? And I've spoken about this previously. There are many very, very lightweight tarps out on the market that are close to the same size and weight as this. They do not reflect back any heat. But that doesn't mean a whole lot because again, that is not a deciding factor on whether you survive or not because this does not reflect back enough heat. Again, this is not insulating. This is not going to make a difference between life and death as far as heat goes. If it was freezing out, even with Mylar
close to your skin, you would be freezing, too. It is time to seal this thing up. I am officially getting cold. Let's see how easy this is. As far as an update goes, it is currently 11:30. And it's time for me to try to get some shuteye. I'm cold, but I think I can sleep a little bit, and I should sleep as much as possible. Already, with the doors shut up, I can see that condensation is about to begin forming on everything. Even the camera is getting fogged up a little bit. It's going to be a long night, everyone. But I have to say, it is far better in here than it is outside. Right now, it's about 38°.
Everyone, it's getting cold in here. At the same time, the condensation is getting pretty bad. That is a big problem when it comes to Mylar. I mean, it's essentially a plastic bag, and condensation is going to form on it. Then, factor in that you have to be as close to the Mylar as possible for it to have any sort of benefit. It's at times very dangerous. This is one example of how Mylar can be dangerous. As soon as condensation begins to form on the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor, you begin having some big problems. In a survival situation,
if you get damp, if you get wet, that makes you cold. And from there, your odds of survival go down big time. I'll tell you what. Let's pull out of the backpack what I brought with me. Let's give this a shot. With my lighter here, if you've ever wondered how to carry a lighter and prevent the gas from coming out, this is how. You take a piece of wire, and you wrap it around the lighter itself. Not only can you use this wire for all sorts of things, but it prevents the gas from coming out.
Tea candles. I was thinking about this. What would it be like inside of a shelter like this with a small heat source? Is one tea light candle able to provide enough heat inside of a shelter like this to make a difference? Now, naturally, it's a little bit dangerous. Flame inside of this, plus CO. Luckily, we have some airflow here. Let's take one of these candles and light it up. The candle is going. It's in a safe location. I'm going to be extra careful. I'm just going to lay here, not go to sleep, and just simply watch that flame for a little bit. where it's time to begin doing some push-ups.
I'm really getting cold. Also, condensation is becoming a real problem in this tent. As it stands right now, there's two issues inside of this shelter. One, condensation is becoming bad. And two, the paracord that is provided for the ridge line here, it has stretched. So, all of a sudden, this thing is now like laying on top of me, and there's real really no way to get away from this material to push it out. That means that the moisture on the walls is coming into contact with my jacket and I'm becoming damp.
Imagine being in this situation and not having any form of lights, right? So, you get lost or you're stuck out for whatever reason, you set this up and then everything's stretching, it's dark, you can't make any adjustments. You know, for every positive there is with this shelter, there's like three negatives. And just because this is waterproof and windproof and it does reflect back just a little bit of heat, that does not make this a really good solution. It is currently about 4:00 a.m. and I have a raging headache, right on the verge of a migraine. I really haven't been able to sleep. At the same time, just incredibly uncomfortable.
Oof. It's been a night. At the same time, folks, it's really cold. It's about 31°, something like that. It's below freezing. To stay warm, I've just been having to do push-ups. That's all I can do. It's getting windy outside, so going out, I can't go out there and jump around or anything like that. I'm pretty much just stuck inside of this tent doing push-ups and trying to get some sleep and that has not been easy. I've not been successful at that. I've slept maybe in total 40 minutes the entire night.
My friends, good morning. It is almost 6:00 a.m. We are making it through the night. And this shelter, folks, it's a joke. [panting and gasps] It's better than nothing, but it's still a joke. Designed by someone who really has no idea how to design emergency shelters. The doors are so problematic. Getting this to seal up is practically impossible. At the same time, this guy line here, the ridge line, it continuously stretches. So, the walls are coming in. Everything is soaking wet. Condensation is just awful.
It's been a rough night. A very rough night. That's the only way to put it. Before we wrap up this trip, let's grab the thermometer and let's put it inside of this tent for roughly an hour and let's see what the temperature difference is. It looks like it's 30° outside. Let's see what the temp is inside of this shelter thing. We've done it. It is almost 7:00 a.m. We have been inside of this tent shelter thing and the sun is coming up. I am ready to get out of this. This has been interesting.
It has gone from 30° to 36°. So, this shelter is 6° warmer than outside. It would be a lot higher if I was able to actually seal this up, but I can't. When you adjust one thing, it throws something else off. It just goes back to the terrible design of this shelter. Still, 6° it's something. Unfortunately, everything in here is soaking wet. There's just water pouring off of the walls. Water is soaking into my jacket, into my pants. The condensation inside of this is atrocious.
Well, the night is done. This experiment with this survival shelter has come to an end. And I can tell you all that it did succeed at blocking the wind. It did hold in just a little bit of heat. The thing is, you have to have it set up the right way, and the setup process is really complex. Getting a good pitch so that the material doesn't lay on you is virtually impossible. It's better than nothing, and that's the best way to put it.
There has to be a better solution out on the market than this. This is certainly better than the previous versions that I've tested out, the ones that didn't have the doors. Whoever designed this though, it's just ridiculous. It really is. I was thinking about this in the middle of the night. I might be the only person in the entire world to have ever used one of these products. I was able to make it through the night, and I froze my ass off. I have done I begin to tell you all how many push-ups, hundreds just to stay warm.
I've stayed balled up most of the night. If I was out in the wind last night, I'm not sure if I would have made it. Right now, it's about 30°, maybe even 29°. It's cold, it's windy, it did not rain any, but With this shelter here, making it through the night, half of it was just determination, plain and simple. With daylight upon us, I am done. Thank you all very much for joining me for this adventure. It was an adventure. But, I'm done. I am frozen. I'm going to hike up this mountain, get out into the road, make my way down to the truck, and warm up.
It's been a long night. And folks, I am I'm done, 100% done. As I have said in just about every single one of these survival overnight trips that I've done, you do not want to find yourself in this situation. You do not want to find yourself trying to stay warm inside of a product like this. You want to do everything in your power to prevent that from happening. If you found this episode interesting, please hit the thumbs up. I do appreciate it. This has taken a ton of work, a ton of very uncomfortable work. But, I showed you all exactly what it's like to be inside of something like this.
Thank you all so much for joining me. I do appreciate it. If you have a survival emergency product for me to test out, comment down below or shoot me an email. I do appreciate it. Bye everybody. Take care and be safe. Ooh.
