Customer Reviews

Emergency Sleeping Bag, Survival Bag, Emergency ZoneŽ Brand, Reflective Blanket

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Bought several of these to hand out to friends. While they look flimsy they are quite difficult to puncture. The conductive metalized surface is on the inside. In bright light you can see through one. These are so much warmer than a blanket made of the same material (I have both). The bag is about the size of a 'big hand' and can easily fit in the car, tackle box, even a coat pocket. They are very reflective and would be easy to spot from the air, just 'crunch them up' so there are many different reflecting angles. When they arrived, I unpacked one and tried it at 70 degrees F and became too warm in about 2 min... Once you unfold this thing, you will never get it back in the bag so I use a 'vacuum seal' food bag for used ones. Highly recommend everyone have one for each person. Keep a couple in the car, boat, camper, house, etc.

2010 FOLLOW UP:My lightweight sleeping bag was getting cold so I put my 'normal sleeping bag' INSIDE one of these, it made quite a difference...

Reflective emergency blankets of all sorts have been around for quite some time. Their advantage over a conventional blanket is that they are small and lightweight, easily tossed into a glovebox or a grab-and-go bag. Emergency blankets will only keep you warm if they are large enough to fully wrap yourself up in them, preventing cold air from getting in and heat from escaping. The bag types (like this one) are definitely better than conventional tarp-like emergency blankets.

Here are a few suggestions regarding their use:

First, don't lay directly on the cold ground. Believe me when I say that the mylar bag won't be enough to keep you warm. It is much better to lay on top of an insulative material or structure - anything can help, from old clothes to a bed of pine needles. Second, if you're clothing is damp, take it off before getting in the bag. Some people prefer to lay in these bags nude (or in their underwear), but I find that a light layer of clothing is preferrable since it acts to insulate you from the cold surface of the bag. Third, if possible, use this bag in conjunction with regular blankets or a sleeping bag. This will make a huge difference, because once again, they insulate you from the outside world. Fourth, you need to figure out a way to secure the bag up around your head. Many people tape them up to leave a small face hole to peek through. Any hole is a leak path for your heat, so you ideally want it quite small. If you leave the top of the bag open, you will lose a great deal of heat. There are products similar to these that are designed with a drawstring to close up the top except for a small face hole. They are more expensive, but also easier to use.

Hope this helps!

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Written by Arthur Bradley, author of the "Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family."

If you're not familiar with these things, you're missing out. They are great at keeping you warm, fold up into a very compact size(about the size of a wallet) and can be used in many situations, mostly of an emergency/survival nature. In addition to being used as a blanket, it's intended use, it can also be used as a way of signaling for help.

All in all, with as cheap as these things are and as much help they can provide to you in an emergency(not to mention how little room they take to store), everyone should have a handful of them in storage "just in case" they ever need them for anything.

The item is not very tear prone, and really does work. What I would really recommend it for is an outer layer on a light-weight sleeping bag; for those traveling ultra-lite. In this case it does provide a modest amount of extra heat (which you will feel very quickly) to your sleeping bag--certainly enough to make the difference between a comfortable or uncomfortable night of modest cold. There is not a slit or zipper down the side, so once inside you are wrapped around in it, and that is that. You will also have to get use to the "crinkle" sound as you move around in it. The item is fairly roomy, and is quite a bit larger than many sleeping bags--certainly the "mummy" type. Again, a nice item to place on the outside of your normal sleeping bag. Also, if your sleeping bag is not waterproof, this item will certainly help with that.

Unlike the other reviews posted here, I actually used this product in a real survival situation. I almost died of hypothermia. The product is nothing more than a cheap, thin, plastic bag with the silver reflective surface SPRAY PAINTED ON! After a long, cold, wet night, when the sun finally came up, I realized I had this silver paint all over me and my gear. The bag had ripped in several places. I was freezing. If you rely on this product to save your life, IT WON'T! Consider yourself warned: DO NOT BUY THIS GARBAGE!

Kept me warm when I needed it most in freezing temperatures(wraps around the entire sleeping bag)...makes a krinkling noise which might annoy fellow campers...the sleeping bag gets damp because the tube keeps all the moisture inside, so you hang it up to dry out the next day. I would recommend this product.

There are so many of these reflective mylar blankets/bags out there, there's nothing new to report here. It does fine for the intended purpose. I just wanted to add a slightly different perspective. Rather than wait for the end of the world, or getting lost in the woods I plan to carry one of these in my luggage from now on. Due to weather I got stranded ... not even sure where it was ... maybe Phoenix airport last year. Got in after midnight. No flights out. All the hotels were full with similarly stranded people. So along with a thousand other people I slept in the airport. By the time I got my checked bag all the good spots in the terminal were taken, so I slept on the floor under an exhibit of the art of Chuck Jones. Would have loved to have and one of these blankets with me then.

I have been interested in these for a while because the concept was so peculiar. How could something so small, flimsy and light possible keep you warm in the dead of winter?
So I bought 2 of these. 1 to keep for emergency purposes and 1 to try on a winter backpacking trip to the Cutler Coast in Maine. This is one of the eastern most points in the United States. It's only a few miles from Canada and consequently another time zone.
Generally the January temperatures in Cutler at night are between 0F and 10F. When you add the wind chill from the Ocean it can make for some very harsh conditions. I was "fortunate" that the night time temps only dropped to about 20F and there was no wind to speak of.

I used the reflective bag inside a Bivy sack and tried out a number of different things. When I first started, I used it as a sleeping bag with my head sticking out of the top. Almost worthless! Any heat I retained was more likely due to the Bivy then the Reflective bag. No matter how tightly I held the bag close to much air was getting out.

Then I adjusted the bag to close the top leaving only a small hole for me to exhale out of so moisture didn't build up inside. Within about 20 minutes I could feel myself warming up. I was shocked at how warm it made me. I won't tell you it was "comfortable" but with only my thermals on, I could have defiantly survived the night.

Last, I went naked. I apologize for the visual, but I have read a lot of articles that suggested this was the way to maximize your body heat in one of these bags. Personally, I didn't find that to be the case and 20 minutes into the "All natural" experiment I gave it up.
After an hour or so of playing around I switched to the comforts of my 0 degree sleeping bag and liner (and boy did my sleeping bag feel good!)

That said, I have drawn the following conclusions from my experiment:
1.) I'm confident that in an absolute emergency this bag will keep you warm enough to survive. It won't be comfortable and you won't like it, but using it correctly can save your life!
2.) I didn't find it "easy" to rip as others have suggested. This isn't Teflon, if you're rough with it, I imagine it will rip. But for practical purposes, with a little common sense, it should be fine.
3.) I'm 6'3 and 230lbs and I used this inside a Bivy sack (which adds warmth). While the bag produced A LOT of heat for me, the results may be different for smaller people.
4.)This is for emergency purposes and I'm not encouraging anyone to run out and use this as your primary sleep system on a freezing night. Going forward, I will include this in my "White Mountain Day Pack." The White Mountains have very unpredictable weather. It can be 90 degrees in July and I still pack for a snow storm any time I go above Tree Line. I would never want to spend a night with this thing but it's reassuring to know it works.

As stated before, you should know how to use these for them to be effective. I would also use these as an outer layer to a sleeping bag or blanket as opposed to a base layer if I used it for that purpose. During a military survival course I found other effective uses for them which I now prefer as opposed to using them as a sleeping bag etc. See below for other uses.
1. Lined the inside of my shelter which prevented heat from escaping as much as well as waterproofing my shelter killing 2 birds with 1 stone. ***be careful when puncturing these, once a hole or tear starts it will continue. Good ol duck tape solves that problem for me.
2. Placed a couple branches (vertically) about 1ft behind my fire and attached the emergency blanket to it so that it would continuously reflect heat from the fire into my little shelter that was also lined with an emergency blanket. Be sure not to place it to close to the fire as embers will burn holes in it. It will still work but wont be reusable if you plan onit moving or using it for something else. Talk about staying relatively warm. The temperature was 6-8 degrees by the way.
3. These are amazing signaling devices. It acts like a ridiculously oversized mirror and is highly contrasting to the environment and highly visible. All good things when trying to get found.

This sleeping bad is awesome works great and fit me and my girlfriend almost perfectly. Luckly we are both small in build and had no problem with both of us getting inside of it, but Would be great if it was made to hold two people for extra body heat. But all in all well worth the buy and I am recommending it to all my friends!