Gadgetory

hi my name is Michaela mercury if I'm a small-time gear designer and inventor best known for the Ember lid stove but today I want to introduce you to the world's first production emergency super shelter warm all over it is it's like if you can imagine what a rotisserie chicken would feel like that's basically what you're doing is sitting in a like a solar oven almost okay we're at 75 good right now and it's still climbing we're almost at 80 degrees there are five heat loss mechanisms that you have to watch out for in a cold environment number one is conduction that simply means touching something colder than you are if you sit on a cold bench you're gonna lose heat through your butt to that bench it's the way it works number two is convection convection is wind you all heard of wind chill so you know just how effective the wind could be at accelerating your heat loss number three is radiation a lot of people don't realize it but we are actually constantly radiating long wave thermal radiation out into our environment up into space next we have respiration when I take a deep breath over that cold mountain air is refreshing but as I exhale I'm exhaling warm moist air from my lungs and that's heat coming out of my body finally we have evaporation if you're wet from sweating or you've been in the rain or the snow or you've fallen in the creek the water evaporating from your skin greatly accelerates your heat loss there are a lot of inexpensive actually kind of cheap tube tents and mylar blankets that are available on the market they do an okay job at insulating you against those five heat loss mechanisms they get you out of the wind and the rain they help reflect a lot of your body heat back at you but honestly one of the little secrets that is pretty well known in the bushcraft and survival community is you can do just about the same job with a garbage bag well all these different shelters including the garbage bag they all have the same limitation and that limitation is they don't actually help you produce heat all they do is try to stem the loss of heat from your body and so if you are sick if you're injured if you're already wet or malnourished or tired there's a good chance that your body might not be able to produce enough heat to take advantage of one of those shelters anyways at the very least you're getting to be miserable and uncomfortable shivering all night long so how does a super shelter work well it does the same job that all those other shelters do it takes you out of the wind and out of the rain and snow it reflects a lot of your body heat but it does something they don't and that it can be heated from the outside with a small campfire you ever notice how when you're next to a campfire or wood stove that it feels like it warms your bones it's because it kind of does that fire is giving off thermal radiation like a big spotlight and it actually penetrates your tissue and starts to warm you from the inside and so what the super shelter does is acts like a greenhouse by collecting that radiation by collecting that warm energy coming off a fire and it traps it inside there with you so that it can warm you as well this is where the genius of the super shelter comes into play and I wish it was my genius but it's not all credit goes to a gentleman named Morris Kochanski more's is a highly respected and knowledgeable wilderness living skills and survival instructor he came up with the concept for the super shelter in the 1980s I believe it was inspired by his observations of how igloos function and it is still today regularly improvised and built in the field by bushcraft and survival nerds alike by utilizing this method with a little bit of space-age materials and put it into a tiny package that you can throw in the back of your snowmobile in the back of your pack or your day pack you could be in your t-shirt and a pair of shorts even when it's below freezing outside as long as you know how to tend a small fire and you have of course a super shelter everywhere we look we find inspiration from the trees of the forest to the lights of the city to the peaks of the mountains that make us feel so small backpacks are an essential piece to the outdoor trekker an urban explorer there's a reason they've been around for thousands of years they expand our reach allowing us to travel further and do more as adventurers the backpack has become our most cherished companion Asgard was founded on the idea that the quality of gear should match the quality of your experience the Asguard 42 litre backpack this is a feature-rich backpack that's meant to get you from coffee shop to campsite this bag was made for everyone usually you need a variety of bags for all the activities in life we decided to make one bag that does it all it has all the key features you'd expect in the backpack plus many more everything from a laptop sleeve to an ice axe loop we went through five prototyping phases in shrink each model added more durability and function to the backpack our number one focus is and always will be quality we needed a shell fabric that was apparation resistant waterproof but also classy as hell we landed on a TPU coated polyester with a DWR coating it pairs extremely nice with the YKK zippers this ensures that the weather will never ruin your day we also implemented performance materials such as EBA padding for the back and shoulder straps military-grade webbing and a breathable power mesh for maximum airflow ensuring your core is always comfortable we've taken everything we learn from manufacturing our duffel bag and implemented it into this backpack plus more it's our best work yet you you