What to Know About Buying Survival Tents for Indoor and Outdoor Use

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Survival tents can be used indoors and outdoors. It may seem ridiculous, why would anyone need an indoor tent? But by the time you reach the end of the article, you will have a better understanding of how indoor tents are important in survival situations.

No matter the situation, all preppers should have a tent, better yet two, especially in the cases of a larger family. A survival tent is not too different from a quality camping tent. The biggest difference would be the name, as a survival tent is not restricted to merely holiday excursions.

When to use a tent

When disaster looms, for example an imminent hurricane headed straight for your home, you may have the urge to pack up your bug out bags and bug out. This may be spending a day or two in the wilderness while you wait for the storm to pass. But you will need some form of portable shelter for this.

Actually, anytime you need to camp in the great outdoors you will need a reliable form of shelter.

You will find plenty of survival books that teach you how to construct a decent to extravagant shelter with twigs, leaves, mud, branches and natural bedding materials. But you will want to make sure your skills are on-point before they have to be applied in an emergency situation.

In any case, if you have a reliable tent, you will not need to learn to construct a five-star hotel with a teaspoon. You will have access to one of the most sophisticated portable shelters known to humanity, the modern tent.

Modern tents are designed with superior materials and impressive designs that allow them to be deployed in a wide variety of locations. There are also more basic designs that are suitable for a day at the beach, but will not fare well if placed under any amount of attrition.

After you have selected a worthy tent for your survival needs, you will want to spend some time learning to set it up. This should be second nature to you and you should choose one that is easy for you to carry and set up and comfortable enough for an extended stay.

Why would I use a tent indoors?

Ok, let’s get to the question at hand, why would anyone need to pitch their tent indoors? One perfect example occurred in Texas during February 2021. The weather was cold and right at this very moment the power went out and the people were left with no electricity and therefore no heating. It may seem like a small problem, but it can get pretty hairy in a hurry.

If you find yourself in such a situation, you will find out quickly that it is pretty difficult to heat up an entire home. You will need to close all the windows and doors and begin blocking all avenues that allow for heat exchange and draughts.

Next, you will set up your tent in an appropriately sized room. You will find that it is much easier to heat up a small tent than the entire home. As a matter of fact, a candle in a mason jar will do very well as a miniature heating source with no noxious fumes.

You will only need one or maybe two of these lanterns in your tent. After only a few moments, the heat transferred to the glass will begin to emanate around the somewhat insulated tent and you will begin to feel warmer already. If two candles produce fumes, you will want to leave the tent flaps a little open to allow the air to circulate.

What to look for when buying a tent?

The first and most important point will be to choose a tent that is lightweight and portable for you and your capacity. If a disaster strikes you may be the one required to hoof the tent to a new campsite along with the rest of your supplies. If you have chosen a heavy canvas tent with steel tent poles, you can bet this will be a tough ordeal.

The next most important point will be how easy your tent is to set up. The last thing you want is to have to deal with a tent that is especially difficult to set up, needs trees and complex support frames. You will find that military style tents are strong, but very rudimentary and even a bit uncomfortable.

You will do far better if you choose a tent intended for civilian purposes. Not only are these far easier to construct, but they have far more comfortable designs.

Next on the lists of important considerations when choosing a tent is the material it is made from as well as the construction of the tent itself. You want to find something that is strong and well-shored up against the elements. This will be evident in quality stitching, welded corners and inverted seams. All of these key features ensure that the tent is well-protected from the elements.

Another important feature to be aware of is the ventilation provided by your tent. It can get pretty stuffy inside the tent and condensation will collect on the inside. Moisture is no friend of a good tent and a good tent will have plenty of ventilation flaps that allow for the moisture to be transferred outside. These will typically be covered in a top-quality mesh that keeps the bugs out.

As you go about selecting the size of tent for your needs, ask yourself how many people will be staying in the tent. As a general rule of thumb, a tent is best for only two people and a two-person tent is just about the right size for a single adult. A full-sized adult over 6ft tall and with all the equipment they need for an extended stay may not even fit in a two-person tent.

If you will be travelling with two fully-equipped adults and possibly a dog, you will find that a 4-person tent provides ample space, but you may also fit nicely in a 3-person tent. If you will be traveling with 2 adults, 1-2 kids and a dog, you will find a 6-person tent is the most comfortable for your needs.

The final choice to make is all about the color of the tent. The best color for a tent you may need in a survival situation is something that doesn’t attract too much attention. You will want to keep a low-profile in survival situations because desperate times can drive normally decent people to do horrendous things to survive.

In Conclusion

Make sure you go out into the wild fully prepared, if you are having trouble imagining everything you will need in every eventuality, take a moment to research some handy camping and survival checklists that include everything you may possibly need.

Then begin practicing setting up your tent and taking it down. This must be done systematically to ensure that nothing is damaged or lost in this process. If you follow the key pointers mentioned here, you are sure to find a tent that will serve you well and keep you safe and warm in a variety of instances.