The Sleeping Bag

German Sleeping Bags

Emergency sleeping bags are a bit different from your regular sleeping bags. While regular sleeping bags are made thick and all soft and comfortable, emergency sleeping bags are thin, lightweight, very compressible and are made of special material that can keep your body warm even in the toughest of conditions.

Normal sleeping bags are meant for comfort as well as warmth while emergency sleeping bags are designed for use only in emergency situations as is clear by the nomenclature itself. As such, these bags need to be very handy and easy to carry in all conditions and so do not use special cushioning and other such extra fluff which can make it difficult to ferry around. Infact, they are as thin as polythene bags and when compressed and packed will be only about a little bigger, if not as big as, a deck of cards or a pack of cigarettes and can easily be carried around in your pockets without making their presence felt. But of course, they are surely not made of the same material as polythene bags!

Emergency sleeping bags are normally made of the same material that is used in space suits. The best ones made of this material can reflect and preserve as much as an unbelievable 90% of the heat radiated by the body. This means that these thin bags will not allow any heat to go away from your body and into the surroundings thus keeping you warm even in very cold temperatures.

It is for this reason that people out in the wild on unknown adventures will almost always carry an emergency sleeping with them. Being easy to carry and not costing more than 10 bucks, these can be very useful in emergency situation in case they get stranded somewhere in cold weather or something untoward happens. Emergency sleeping bags are also made water proof so that they protect you in rain too.

If you are anyway carrying an emergency sleeping bag with you on an outdoor trip, you could also put it to various other uses. Some people cover up their made ready-to-eat food or MREs in the emergency bag so that the food keeps warm. Some others use the emergency bag over the conventional sleeping bag in case it gets very cold. Thus, these bags are not just useful in emergencies but at other times too.