Personal Survival KIT (PSK) Cheat Sheet

This is a cheat sheet of some of the more common survival tips designed to fit into an Altoids tin Mini Personal Survival Kit (PSK). The sheet is an accordion fold of eight pages, four on the front and four on the back, that you place on top of the kit's contents just before you close the lid.  That way it will be the first thing you see in an emergency when you open the kit.

At first you may think, "Why is such a sheet necessary since I already know everything that's printed on the list?"  There are two reasons I can think of.   One, in a true emergency survival situation, you may not be truly in control of all of your faculties.  Perhaps your disoriented from a crash or from dehydration.   Or perhaps you simply panic.  It can happen to anyone.  This sheet may be helpful in regaining your thought processes and help you decide on your next step.   Two, you may end up unconscious and dependent upon another individual who may not have studied how to survive or have taken the time to practice the skills, such as fire starting.  Having a few key instructions for this person may mean the difference between surviving or not.

How to Print (top)

This is a two page document.  Print page one, then re-feed the page to print page two on the back side.  Print a test page on your printer so you learn how to orient the paper on the re-feed so both sides align properly.  This will give you two cheat sheets on one piece of paper. 

Trimming (top)

1. Cut each one out so you have two long strips of paper. 
2. Fold each one along each "page," accordion style. 
3. Trim the rounded corners while folded so you're cutting corners on all of the folded pages at the same time.

Download Sheet (top)

Use the Acrobat PDF file if you plan on using the sheet "as is."  Or you may download either of the PageMaker source files I used to compose the sheet.

There is no way to convert PageMaker files into some other authoring tool.  So if you do not have PageMaker and want to make your own custom sheet, your best bet would be to print out the Acrobat version to use as a guide and compose your own sheet from scratch using whatever software you have.  A low-tech approach would be to use white out over the portions you want to change and paste your content, then scan or copy the modified page.