The Ghillie Blanket!
A ghillie suit can be the perfect camouflage for one person, but what if you have multiple people, like children? What if you need to be able to make your whole family melt into your surroundings fast, leaving no trace? What if we were to fashion a ghillie blanket?
Being the prepper dad that I am, I constantly try to come up with ideas to give me an edge in protecting my family. One of my big fears is being pursued with small children in tow and needing all of us to disappear fast.
One day one of my Amazon recommendations was a Ghillie Suit. Then it hit me, what if I make a Ghillie Blanket? Ghillie Blanket should be large enough to drape over us and allow us to melt into tall grass or forest vegetation.
Once I started looking into Ghillie Blankets, I realized there weren’t too many out there. I did find a pretty decent Ghillie Blanket, but I think I can make two for the price of one the one that is already pre-made.
Now that I had a concept in mind, I needed to find a simple way to make it. I think I could start with some burlap. Amazon carries some Mossy Oak Camo Burlap, that looks like it would be a great starting point. I bought this Mossy Oak Camo Burlap that comes in a sheet of 12 feet by 54 inches for some other tests a few weeks ago.
I’d like to mention that I saw this exact product at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago, so if you’re out shopping you might want to peek at the prices for it back in the sporting good section. I think the price was really close to the Amazon price.
While this Camo Burlap does a pretty good job of camouflaging items, I’d really like to add some Ghillie strips to it. Some quick searching lead me to some Ghillie suit kits, that I could use the strips from with my burlap. The Rothco Ultra Light Camo-Kit, Woodland runs just under $20, so I’ll probably start with one of those then add a few misc Ghillie suit kits.
After the Ghillie suit kits arrive and I get them all tied on to the Mossy Oak Camo Burlap, I’ll take it out and roll it around in some dirt, mud, leaves and get some foliage tangled into it. I might even fasten an Olive Green All Weather (Heavy Duty) Space Blanket, shiny side down, to my Ghillie blanket to defeat thermal detection (drones etc…) I plan to make a couple of them.
One big enough for me and a kid or two then one for my wife and a kid or two. If you plan of fleeing or bugging out solo then a ghillie suit might be the perfect camouflage for you, but if you have children or a small group you might want to fashion a few ghillie blankets?