The Ultimate Zombie Survival Gear?
The Gerber Zombie Survival Gear is an array of pre-packaged blades whose popularity has skyrocketed due to its association with AMC’s The Walking Dead television series. The product descriptions are written with a touch of humor, hinting at the various ways in which the tools can kill zombies, but the blades themselves are indeed good products on their own. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get an idea of what all comes in the kit (and what each item is good for) unless you go and hunt down each item individually either on Gerber’s site or on Amazon. Unfortunately, this is both tedious and time consuming – meaning most people will never do it. Fortunately, we’ve done it for you. You’re welcome.
First up is the Gator Machete. The Gator Machete looks like your standard brush machete (with a reverse taper to the blade and a total length of just under 27 inches), but is made unique by a serrated edge on the other side of the main cutting blade. This serration re-purposes the other edge of the blade as a saw, making it useful in a number of situations where a standard machete would fall short. The Gator serves as the main sawing implement of the Apocalypse Kit, and is made of high carbon steel with a Gator-Grip.
Next comes the Camp Axe II. Presumably succeeding the Camp Axe I, we’ll assume this is the new and improved version. That’s not hard to believe, either – it’s a beautiful and well-crafted tool. The head itself is made of forged steel and is advertised as having excellent blade retention so you won’t have to be sharpening it all the time. The Camp Axe II is ideal for chopping and hammering, and comes with a formed plastic sheath for safe keeping.
The Gator Machete Pro features a 10.5 inch blade with a sharply recurved hook on the end. The blade itself is stainless carbon steel. The Machete Pro comes with a military grade sheath and and sharpening stone built in.
The Survival Series Parang is based of off traditional machetes and features a heavy, thick blade. The angle and weight of the blade is ideal for brush clearing. It also has a lanyard cord to enhance safety while swinging and comes with a small survival guide. As with most survival blades made by Gerber, this one has a full tang, to make sure it won’t have any give or bending when in use.
The remaining two blades are small form factor knives, the DMF Folder Tanto blade and the LMF II Infantry knife. Both are small, half-serrated blades and serve largely the same purposes. The main difference is that the LMF is a fixed-blade knife while the DMF is a folding, rugged pocket knife.
The zombie survival gear comes in a carrying case with custom sheaths for each blade.
Overall, these are fine quality tools, and will serve any survivalist well. My only complaint is that the inclusion of a third machete and two knives may be a little redundant; the kit may have been better rounded by replacing one with a folding shovel or other implement.
Category: Equipment
