The contents of a ditch kit will change depending on where you are and what you wear on your clothes.  I will assume the following: this is for canoe country and the person will be wearing some kind of utility knife.

1) Compass: minimally important, you are probably not going anywhere and a map would be more useful than a compass.  (And if you wear one as many do, then totally no need to put in kit).
2) Blade: not needed, wearing utility knife.
3) Saw: Many utility knives can serve as a saw
4) Fire makers: YES
5) Medical: YES
6) Containers: No.
7) Food/water: no (water all around).
8) Signal: whistle and mirror (if whistle not worn)
9) needle/thread: needle, safety pin, and some kind of thread/string/line that is very small yet strong.
10)Small bit of duck tape
11) Space blanket

Basically, stuff to stay warm, deal with medical problems, and signal for help.

mastertangler wrote on Nov 24^th, 2010 at 3:55am:

Who said anything about the flame climbing back?  

I've ignited hairspray.  I even remember when Right Guard deodorant came in a spray can (yea, I'm OLD).  I remember the Right Guard especially, since it wasn't uncommon in my college dorm to have a 2-3 foot flame shoot through the door vent from someone standing outside and igniting their Right Guard spray.

BUT, neither of these were BEAR SPRAY!

dd

It's my impression that the concept of the ditch kit is that you're not going to get sepparated from it.  No matter how wet & cold you are, you still have the ditch kit.  This is something that's on your person at all times.

In a survival situation what's normally outrageous is often perfectly acceptable.  I might normally say that a fire you need to stand away from is too big and just a waste, it's the order of the day when hypothermia/survival is a reasonable concern.

Aye Aye Capt.
I'll take your word for it. Stuff sounds kind of rough. I always have it in my tent at night but I have to remind myself that it would likely render me incapacitated if I used it.

I would have to be in dire circumstances to employ the spray for ANY reason. Hmmmm, I wonder how a bear would react to the flamethrower method........I'M KIDDING, I'M KIDDING....sorta

MMMMM Here's a bit of a story for you all...A number of years ago; but still post the aerosol right guard era, but on another note I do remember those days-your not that old DD. Least we forget the Binoca flame, a flame of a different spice...but once again I digress, with pyrotechnic JOY .

But back to the story at hand.

At the time I was a canoe guide, what ever the heck that means (adolescent boys, low pay, chestnut barges (the other cadillac) and taco TVP ). One of the things that was a typical pre-trip gig was to run through an exercise to access swimming skills of the campers and demonstrate a canoe over canoe rescue. The first group that was blessed to have me as their "guide" came to me in early June, actually a typically cool windy June day.

The swim went peachy as I found my sinkers The canoe was swamped, after a lot of coaching to properly achieve that necessary simultaneous lean, as was the rescue technique-these boys were impressive and shy, and the later is important in the chain of events that would continue to precipitate.

They elected contrary to direction to bring their change of clothes to the bath house for the post dunking warm up. With in 5 minutes I had one camper go from a typical "well functioning" 13 year old to ...a vomited out COLD grey blue unresponsive sack of flesh. Hypothermia is real, and IMO something that will impact most if not all of the fancy notions expounded in this thread for getting warm.

I understand the bush skills are very important, but only if one can make it through the DITCH. Simply said, good boy scouts dont ditch.

If one does ditch in cold water I sure would not want to find out the "system" (complex or otherwise) that I had developed is something that I could get my cold, numb, poor functioning body and compromised mental status to do. Is it an easy walk in the park always successful thing you can do...if not  they wont be yours....

BTW the camper ended up being fine, his family, friends, and I got lucky; and he elected to do the trip to boot. After I got him warmed back up enough for him to come to, talk, and walk (some 30 minutes later) we took a stroll to the nurse's cabin his temp did not register on a thermometer (the lowest reading available on the glass was 86F) I still blame this on a "bad" thermometer It was hours before his temp was normalized, even with the hot drinks and sleeping bag covers...

So you think you can always flick your BIC    , I hope you know so!