Finally making Dollar Survival fulfill its original purpose
As you read this I am camping somewhere in New Brunswick. I will be starting to fulfill the original mission of this publication as I do.
What I Created Dollar Survival For
I shop at Dollarama a fair bit. Something about the giant selection of mostly crappy stuff makes me strangely happy. Dollarama is the most successful dollar store in Canada, although far from the only one. Somehow it just seems better than the others. The quality of the items seems slightly less terrible. The selection seems to be better curated. I love Dollarama for that.
I also enjoy the outdoors, camping, bushcraft, prepping, survivalism. One thing I buy a lot at Dollarama is camping/outdoorsy type items. Some of them are actually really good (at least in theory) survival items.
I created Dollar Survival with the intention of testing and reviewing these items. Does the Dollarama rope actually hold weight? Does the survival blanket keep you warm? Is the survival shelter viable? It was planned for YouTube but I’m a writer more than I’m a camera whore so it ended up on Medium instead, and started with articles about my thoughts, bits of research, whatever. I haven’t started doing the thing where I test out dollar store items yet.
I was never planning to limit myself to Dollarama, instead, I was going to stick to dollar stores.
Expanding the Mission
Along the way, I decided to do budget survivalism/prepping/bushcraft. A lot of the blogs out there focus on the best gear. I wanted to focus on the cheapest gear, DIY gear, making do without, etc. So, that’s what Dollar Survival is about now.
The articles I have published here and on Medium reflect that reality.
The thing is, I always planned to carry out the original mission. Both video (I said I’m more of a writer than a camera whore, not that I am not a camera whore at all…) and in print — both on dollarsurvival.com and on Medium.
Get to the Damn Point Already!
Okay, fine… so this weekend I’m going camping. Since this will publish on Sunday I am already camping. I’m Canadian so July 1st is our big national holiday in the summer. The one where camping is possible. It’s a long weekend. The main focus will be spending time with my girlfriend and her daughter, but I am bringing along some of that sweet, sweet dollar store goodness! I will have items with me that I will be testing and reviewing. I don’t know how many I will get to, but at least a few of them.
Why Camping and Not Actual Survival?
I am choosing to do these tests while camping and not trying out a serious survival situation because I’m not suicidal. I am testing things that are from a place notorious for, shall we say, inconsistent levels of quality. If I rely on this stuff for my life, I suspect my life is going to be rather shorter than I would like. Dollar store rope might be fine, I don’t know, but I’m not willing to risk my life on it. Hell, I’m a sailor, rope is something I have spent a great deal of money on. I will be testing the ropes from the dollar store and relying on the ones from the yacht shop.
What I’m Bringing
Well, I’m bringing my real camping stuff… A Coleman stove, a decent sleeping bag, a camp hammock, all kinds of creature comforts. All of that is to enjoy the trip, the main focus. My girlfriend is bringing the tent since her tent is way better than mine. Hell, we even have a decent air mattress (at least I hope it’s decent, this will be its first use).
I’m also bringing:
So, that’s the list of possible items for review.
Video Work
I’m bringing two cameras. One is a decent video camera and the other one is my SLR. I’m also bringing a decent external mic. Syncing audio is probably a better idea than recording off camera. Am I going to record a lot of videos? Depends. If my girlfriend and her daughter want to then yeah, otherwise probably not. Like I said, this isn’t the purpose of the trip, although I will be doing some of it.
The next few weeks my Sunday Survival post will include the results of this experiment — I’m hoping to finally manage to review the Dollarama survival shelter, but that’s one of the less likely pieces.
Conclusion
Not really a conclusion — I’m going out into the woods to camp. I’m going to test out some survival stuff of very, very questionable quality. When I come back I’m going to write it up and possibly post some videos. More of a tl;dr than a conclusion I guess.