The 1 week £100 challenge

[Mosnan]

Last spring me and 2 friends created our own mini disaster scenario.
We decided all we had on us where our mobile phones and what we would do if thats all we had. The phones could be sold for £100 and if we had to spend a week in the woods. what would we take.

End of next month we are doing the same thing and I'd recommend it for people (like me) who are trying to cut the things they carry.

This is what I took:

Old army army blanket £10
Folding Saw £4
Sharpening file £1
Knife £5
Pan, cup, fork etc £6
Toiletries £4
Paracord £3
Water pufication tablets £2
Rucksack £5
Warm Coat £10
Lighter and tobacco £10

Food £40 - Porridge, rice, dried beans, beef jerky, honey, few onions, flour, milk powder, rum etc

Any ideas of what you guys would take?

Nicolas

 

[Peat]

I couldn't get £1 for my phone...

 

[Jusali]

Currently survive on £100 pound a week anyway

 

[Everything Mac]

So I assume in this scenario that you are unable to reach your house for some reason - to pick up all the shiny's?

yet all the required shops are open?

 

[MrEd]

I would take similar but would ditch the baccy and take a millbank bag instead instead of the purification tabs, i would also fit in a firesteel in there and ditch the rucksack for a 99p jute bag. would ditch the plates and cups etc and just take a spoon and a couple of bean tins from the food

 

[Everything Mac]

blanket
folding saw
knife/ cutting tool.
cup + spoon

carry bag

bottled water
purification tablets
food

 

[jonajuna]

recently did a week in the woods on a survival school (5 days actually)

what did i actually need????

mora £8
toothpaste and brush £2
clothes on my back (wearing)
billy can £3
something to carry/store water in (free, waste bottle from bin/hedgerow)
spork (stick will do) £2
spark stick £3

all would fit in my pockets other than the water bottle/billy can, but a carrier bag would do

so £18 (not including food)

what else did i have but didnt "really need"
sleeping bag
food (nice and prefferred,but not needed for a week surviving)
folding saw
cup
change of clothes



water tabs are a poor spend, boil instead, killls everything rather than "most things" like tabs do

what could i get away with now ive done the survival school?

my survival tin £10 and the clothes on my back

assuming we are talking "surviving" in the woods rather than camping out in some comfort

as a absolute minimum, my clothes and a knife/spark stick. ive learnt that i can collect, filter and boil water to make it safe with no more than a tshirt and a salvaged plastic container or even some paper. (although with practice i would hope to be able to put the theory of birch bark containers into practice... im led to believe you can boil up in a condom with care, although have not tried that)


good question though but id say the £100 limit is massively generous, make it £30 including food and itll be a good challenge

and if you have access to the wood land and permissions to use the resources therein, a challenge id enjoy taking on with you

(in late spring /summer... i did my survival school in late january with snow hail and minus 7 temps..... would "need" my sleeping bag then (i am gettin gon you know! arthritus and all that ))

 

[rik_uk3]

Vango sleeping bag £20

Viking knife £3

Builders tarp £7

50 metres garden twine £3

Bow saw £4

Cell foam mat £4

30 Tea lights £1

8 'Bic' type lighters £1

2 size 10 cans Lidl Chicken and noodle soup, use empties for a hobo stove and pot £2

New mobile phone with £10 of credit £18
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Produ...c_2/3|cat_15701358|Mobile+phones|14419095.htm

£63 so £37 left for food.
Mac cheese 45p
Value beans 11p
Value hot choc 70p
Value bars milk chocolate (100g) 23p
Tinned hot dog sausages 39p
15 fresh eggs £1.50
Margarine 60p
Cheap bread 35p
Value cheese £3
Corned beef 99p
Toilet roll x 4 pack £1
Pack of playing cards 50p

 

[crushthesystem]

sounds like a good little idea i might get a few friends up for it and see how we get on. my ideal list would be

a mora £10 ish,

army blanket (stolen from original post price £10),

6 metres picture hanging wire £3,

some tinned food from lidl (say £5 worth and retain the tins),

copy of food for free £3.50,

lighters £1 and

tarp £7.

all in all about £40 and then if anything else was needed it seems that i can just pop to the shops as and when needed

 

[nickliv]

Travelodge have a sale on at the moment........

 

[Adze]

There's a place in a wood in France I know of which lets chalets by the week. A 3 person chalet is about £185... which would leave you £115 for food, booze, fags and women of loose morals for a week.

I'd much rather stay there than Travelodge

 

[Ahjno]

Why not complicate it a bit more and only buy in 1 shop

Cool idea though!

 

[Brown Bear]

Last spring me and 2 friends created our own mini disaster scenario.
We decided all we had on us where our mobile phones and what we would do if thats all we had. The phones could be sold for £100 and if we had to spend a week in the woods. what would we take.

End of next month we are doing the same thing and I'd recommend it for people (like me) who are trying to cut the things they carry.

This is what I took:

Old army army blanket £10
Folding Saw £4
Sharpening file £1
Knife £5
Pan, cup, fork etc £6
Toiletries £4
Paracord £3
Water pufication tablets £2
Rucksack £5
Warm Coat £10
Lighter and tobacco £10

Food £40 - Porridge, rice, dried beans, beef jerky, honey, few onions, flour, milk powder, rum etc

Any ideas of what you guys would take?

Nicolas

Did you actually do it? Or just talk about it? If we're just talking about it then I shall spend £100 on beer and pies.

 

[rik_uk3]

Why not complicate it a bit more and only buy in 1 shop

Cool idea though!

That rules out Tesco for the under 25's, you can't buy a knife unless you look 25

 

[jonajuna]

thought about this some more, especially as i am about to go "cross country" to the pub, and realsied that i would keep the phone for playing games on when bored (im assuming im either out of credit, out of signal or both, else id call for a taxi home )

everything else i "need" i already have on me, clothes. leatherman and in my coat pocket, a tin of many useful things fire, fuel shelter etc is to be found in the woods im stranded in

not wanting to put that to the test tonight, forecast to be a tad chilly


is this "challenge" planned to be done? got somewhere to do it. if so etc, are you meaning for the total spend of everything, including what you are wearing to be £100 or under?

that would be interesting to try out

 

[johnnytheboy]

If you took some free stuff, you could have more money for food.

Bubble wrap makes a great mattress and plastic sheeting for a tarp, all usually chcucked out

 

[FerlasDave]

For britains climate in spring time?

Knife

 

[Minotaur]

thought about this some more, especially as i am about to go "cross country" to the pub, and realsied that i would keep the phone for playing games on when bored (im assuming im either out of credit, out of signal or both, else id call for a taxi home )

everything else i "need" i already have on me, clothes. leatherman and in my coat pocket, a tin of many useful things fire, fuel shelter etc is to be found in the woods im stranded in

not wanting to put that to the test tonight, forecast to be a tad chilly


is this "challenge" planned to be done? got somewhere to do it. if so etc, are you meaning for the total spend of everything, including what you are wearing to be £100 or under?

that would be interesting to try out

This makes more sense to me.

The point of EDC, a get home bag, and a BOB are to answer these questions.

To be honest, my whole set up is to get home so I can get my kit.

You do not have to do thought exercises about this stuff, just read about things like Katrina, 7/7, 9/11, or the floods. Also look at the lightweight hiking sites as well. The US ones tend to be very self-surfictent.

The first question in any of these plans is Survival or Bushcraft?

We seem to be getting lots of these survival questions, so I thought I would clarifiy my stance on this.

Bushcraft, for me, is about living with Nature, learning the skills needed to do this, and often keeping skills alive that are being forgotten. Most importantly, or a big part of that is staying within the law or customs of where you are.

Survival is about just that surviving. Read the books, in a survival situation where your head is the most important thing. In most places in the UK you can walk to help, or out of trouble in under three days so a true survival situation is not going to happen unless it all goes Pete Tong.

 

[tytek]

Lets change the rules - No money, no friends, no mobile, oh and no money...

Not so simple now is it???

Lets have the total tits up scenario....

 

[durulz]

Best of luck to you.
But I can't help but think that restricting yourselves to just £100 for a week isn't that much of a challenge. There are people who week-in/week-out have to manage on MUCH less.
£40 for a week's worth of food!? Hardly roughing it or testing yourselves.

On a slightly pedantic note, where exactly, during your disaster, are you going to sell your mobile phones for £100? And then pop along to the shops to buy stuff to survive said disaster?

Mmm...the more I think about it, the more the original thread sounds like a p**s take. Very funny. And I'm sure all those people who genuinely have to survive on less than £100 a week will be laughing with you.