These are the real, original space blankets, I strongly recommend these (in any color) over any other over-priced or chinese knock-off survival blankets.Space blankets are a very thin aluminum-coated plastic sheet (mylar), no thicker than a garbage bag but much tougher. Mylar doesn't tear or puncture easily. These are called blankets, but don't get these confused with the thick, heavy-duty tarp-like space blankets. These are really one-use, throw-away emergency items.
Light, cheap and very functional. They can be a tarp, blanket, rain poncho, water carrier and a host of other stuff. There's a lot of ways to use these, and I typically carry a couple in my car and when camping. These blankets come in 3 colors, green/silver, orange/silver and silver/silver. I use the green/silver so that I don't stand out or look like an accident victim like you would when using the orange blanket.
When camping or traveling, take one of these along. They're light and small, don't take up any room, use them if you need to and then throw away.
I set up a little, limited scientific experiment to test their value. Here it is:
DO NOT TRY THIS YOURSELF!
First, I took my temperature with a medical-grade thermometer. 98.6 deg F, right on the money. I walked out on my back porch in Chicago on a 20 degree night, wearing jeans and a tee shirt. I wrapped myself in one of these blankets, very tightly with my head covered, then sat in a lawn chair for the next two hours. Don't worry, I wasn't too bored, I had an audiobook. I walked inside and took my temperature again. 98.3 deg F. Not too shabby, not at all.
I repeated the experiment the next night, at 22 deg F, with almost identical results. The next night, it was 26 degrees. I sat out on my porch WITHOUT the blanket, as a control, as long as I could bear it, which was about an hour and a half. My temperature without the blanket after 1.5 hours was 96.4 deg F. A very big difference.
As a medical profesional, I am very impressed with the lifesaving potential of this product. I've worked with kids and the elderly who became hypothermic after being exposed for just a half hour in 50 degree weather.
Now, I won't say I was wonderfully comfortable with just this product and a tee shirt. It was not pleasant. And my temperature did drop some. If you were exposed with just this blanket, dressed as I was, for more than 5 or 6 hours, you'd probably have a problem. Especially if the temperatures were below those at which I tested it. As your core temp drops, your body will focus heat in vital organs, away from the skin. Therefore, there is less heat for this blanket to reflect back, and the rate of temperature decline will accelerate.
But if you're stranded in a car with a coat, or inside a dugout shelter, this is pretty valuable. In a survival situation, I highly recommend putting this INSIDE your warmer clothes against your skin. It will exponentially increase the effectiveness of the product, in my experience. In any case, make this an inner, not an outer layer, or your blankets and layering for sleep.
I don't consider myself a "prepper" really, but I do keep emergency gear in my car in case I need to walk, and a little bug-out-bag at home just in case. Why not? It's not expensive, and a little entertaining if nothing else. Plus if things ever do go downhill quickly, you're a little better off having options.
Anyhow, the problem with normal mylar survival blankets is they're quite bright if you're trying NOT to be found. They're either orange or mirror silver made specifically to be visible. That's why I chose these blankets. If you don't want people to see you, olive green is pretty much the way to go. Moreover, this material Is VERY tough. I'm a big, strong dude and I had trouble ripping it. That's impressive.For the price, this is a good buy. There are two sides to the material--one side highly metalic, one side OD green. The green side does not ever flake off from the metal. We purchased these blankets to provide an outer rain cover over our tent, and this item does that nicely. We added grommets also, but the material does tear after modest use (several days on the tent). This material is extremely light weight and yet less than paper thin. My son wrapped it around himself to see if it would work also as a blanket, and reported that it really did have a modest warming effect. You would have to get use to the metalic "crinkle" sound every time you move, however. For what it's for and it's price, I think this item is a very reasonable buy. I will say we used this material through a number of very substantial and motivated Alaskan rain downpours and the material is the only thing that saved us from being soaked inside the tent. For our use, the box of material lasted a little over a week as a tent cover.Don't let the color fool you. These are NOT to be mistaken for "Sportsman's blankets" or "casualty blankets". These are the thin survival mylar type blankets, not the heavy duty survival blankets.At first when I received the emergency blanket I was a little surprised and disappointed as I wasn't expecting the Mylar type material. One reviewer said that this is more of a one use type blanket which is typically true. But I wanted to do a little torture test just to see how bad it is.
So I took a decent size piece and crumpled the heck out of it expecting to have green flakes all over the place and a bunch of holes in the blanket. I was quite wrong about that. There was light shining through tiny looking holes but it was just because of the very small places where the olive drab color came off. It came off but very little. The light holes weren't actually physical holes for air or water to come through though. So already it is very impressive.
I also tried stretching and tearing the material. It is typically pretty hard to stretch and eventually does give. As for the tearing, it is also hard to tear but once it's torn, the tear runs very easily.
With this blankets compact size folded and enormous size when unfolded, this is the perfect emergency blanket to keep wherever you think you may needed. Cheap enough for one use, durable enough for a couple uses. A recommended buy for anyone who likes to be prepared.
Edit: I wanted to note one more thing for those who haven't had much experience with mylar type materials. It is a bit noisy with all its rustling. The olive drab color is nice for a sort of camouflage in the wilderness but the noise can render that useless. Not a huge deal but I thought it was worth the mention.
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