The smell of iron

To those who have smelled blood in the air in any substantial quantity will always recognize it. It smells like iron, in fact I have been caving before in some areas where iron content in the water was high and once I smelled it I thought to myself that someone must be bleeding. If you spend enough time putting yourself in rigorous situations you will either be injured or present for someone else's opportunity. Whether it be travel, training, deployments, or day to day life you have a very good chance of being exposed to a situation where it is good to have a minimal amount of medical gear to compliment medical knowledge. For this reason one of the very first products on the shelves of Austere Provisions Company was The Austere Provisions Company Basic Blow Out Kit. While the market seems to have been flooded with everyone's take on the concept there are some very good options and we feel that we supply one of the better kits at a reasonable price. In that light, it has come to our attention that a company has registered "The Blow-Out Kit" as a trademark phrase and in order to be fair we will be changing the name of our kit. After all we feel that the contents of the kit and company behind it are just as important as the name on the label. So, this weeks product of the week will be a detailed introduction to our basic kit and the kick-off of a competition to rename the kit.

Competition outline:
Starting at the publication of this blog we will be taking suggestions in the comments section here as well as on the forums that we advertise on (LMS Defense, M4Carbine.net, 5352.org). On Monday the suggestions will be compiled and the new name will be selected. The winner will receive a free kit and some of the new logo gear we have made up for SHOT.

Onto the kit:

From Blog album

From Blog album

Description from the product page:


This kit is designed as a well rounded load out for addressing the major causes of preventable death on the battlefield: Major bleeding, Occluded airway, and Tension pneumothorax. The kit contains the following:

1-Cinchtight H Bandage
1-TK4 Tourniquet
1-Primed Gauze
1-Combat medic reinforcement tape
1-30fr Nasal Airway
1-Packet waterbased lubricant
1-14gax3.25" decompression needle
1-alcohol wipe
1-Iodine wipe
1-1.5" blue Cyalume light stick
2-Large safety pins
2-medium nitrile gloves
2-large nitrile gloves


As with all kits built by APC the contents are the distillation of years of experience, as the old saying goes "the more you know, the less you carry". In holding true to that statement we encourage all purchasers to seek out training in each item or the kit as a whole. Should you be interested in referrals for high quality training relating to this and other kits we build please contact APC by email and we will direct you to a program appropriate to your skill level and background.



NOTE: A number of the items included in this kit are intended for invasive medical use. When purchasing you assume full liability for your actions.

Each of these items are selected because they are either very efficient in functioning one specific task or they are easily adapted into other uses. As an example, I want to cover some of the ways each item can be pressed into service outside of it's designed intent:

1-Cinchtight H Bandage
Designed to be used to control mild to moderate hemorrhage through direct application. The elastic bandage works as a good athletic wrap on sprained joints or as an improvised sling. The entire bandage can be used as an improvised wrap tourniquet by simply adjusting placement and wrapping to the point of constriction.

1-TK4 Tourniquet
Designed as a full occlusive tourniquet for veinous and arterial blood flow. Can be use as a sling, or compression bandage in conjunction with primed gauze.

1-Primed Gauze
Multipurpose by design. Couple with duct tape for small wounds, use as drainage packing in infected wounds, use as padding or to secure splints. Also works as a good wicking material when soaked in a flammable liquid for fire starting.

1-Combat medic reinforcement tape
All the uses of duct tape from securing bandages to holding vehicles together.

1-30fr Nasal Airway
Easily used as an improvised cric tube.

1-Packet waterbased lubricant
Whatever the imagination can lead you to, dont blame us if you get caught putting this stuff on your boss's door knob

1-14gax3.25" decompression needle
Intended for needle decompression of the chest but can be used for removing splinters/foreign bodies, or draining abscess and blisters.

1-alcohol wipe
Clean up any surface before sticking a needle through it or help start a fire.

1-Iodine wipe
A secondary method for cleaning before dropping a needle in someone OR as an improvised irrigation solution. Fill up the bag the kit comes in, drop the iodine pad in it and you have a quick and easy way to reduce the chances of infection in nasty lacerations, also safe to drink with a suitable dwell time for the source.

1-1.5" blue Cyalume light stick
Just big enough to provide a little light to search a body for a wound or mark a downed colleague but not big enough to be a target indicator to the plain eye. Blue shows a better contrast to blood than red or green and is intended to not distract from follow on triage which is generally red, yellow, green, and black.

2-Large safety pins
Safety pin mangled tissue out of the way, immediate closure technique, manage an airway, create a sling with a shirt, dig a splinter out, a million and one uses only limited by your imagination.

2-medium nitrile gloves
2-large nitrile gloves
While one pair of gloves in a standard size works ok for most we want you to be as functional as possible as well as being able to recruit the helping hand of a colleague who may not be as prepared as yourself so we have included two sets of gloves. In addition to the obvious use as a barrier between you and your patient, gloves make an excellent bladder for irrigation, a hasty CPR mask, bit of entertainment for children during a disaster, occlusive dressing, impromptu collection bag, and many more uses. Obviously the usefulness is limited if you only have one pair of gloves, ours are color coded so that you know which size is for you and which is for improvising. Medium Gloves are BLUE and Large Gloves are VIOLET (indicated on label as well).


These are in stock now and the name has been temporarily changed to The Austere Provisions Company Basic Medical Kit which will not be the final name obviously so dont submit that. Get your suggestions in and we will make an announcement on Monday January 18th as to who the winner is.

On a separate note: Austere Provisions Company will be attending the SHOT Show, we will be closed for shipping orders after 1100 January 17th so that we have time to get all orders submitted up until that time shipped before the show. All orders after that time will be shipped January 25th when we open back up. As thank you for being patient all orders from now until the morning of January 25th will receive 10% off the order with the coupon code: SHOT .

Austere Provisions Company Basic Medical Kit