it has an absorbent side and a waterproof side, so it's capable of shedding rain. It's a bit fragile, so , after you use masking tape to make a 3x8 ft bag out of it, you have to tent it over a ridgeline and be careful as you enter-exit the bag, so you dont tear it. The other half of the 96 sq ft can form booties, mittens, a hood, and a poncho. Anothe bag, made from a hunk of regular plastic dropcloth is also advisable, vs wind/rain and behind wally's, there's bales of corrugated cardboard. If you lack forest-debris to use as insulation, use the cardboard,

When you tear the cardboard into tiny pieces, it makes great insulation-stuffing between the two bags and you can sleep ok at 20f, or at 34f in wind and rain, no fire. This is if you also have the clothing needed to be active at say, 30F, or to sit around at 40F. Like glove liners, balaclava, winter coat, wool socks, un-laced shoes, longjohns. Without the stuffing, you lose at least 10F degrees, even if you're up in a hammock or on a pile of debris. For my personal use, I favor a 2 person SOL "emergency bivvy" (90% reflective, $20, non "breathable" mylar) as the outside bag, and have some PEVA clear shower curtain as a "window" alongside the zipper of the absorbent stuff, so that I can form a Korchanski supershelter and utilize either the sun or a fire's radiant heat to warm me if it gets colder than my shelter and clothing can handle. **** happens, so best be ready for it. This stuff is very low in bulk, weight and cost. The double layer bag is 1/2 lb, and the "outside" plastic bag can be as lw as 1/4 lb, depending upon how thick the plastic is.

I can use a discrete Dakota fire pit to warm water or rocks, take them inside the shelter with me as I sleep. That's worth 10F degrees. If I stay awake in the reclining position, the UCO candle lantern, beeswax candle ONLY, that's also worth about 10F degrees. So is doing calisthenics inside of the bag. The sun always warms up things about 20F degrees by noon and so does the greenhouse effect of the supershelter. So I can use earplugs, eye mask, sedative and sleep from 11 am to 5 pm, even if it WAS too cold to sleep the previous night. The Siberian fire lay projects all of its heat in one direction, up to 2m. If it's colder than 10F, nobody's going to be bothering me, at night at least, about having a fire and I can be GONE from that area by dawn, if need be.

I prefer a hammock, for a variety of reasons. When you dont have a regular sleeping bag to compress by your weight, , and there's a sealed container around you, you need not care about heat loss to convection or conduction. The hammock gets you up off of hard, sharp, cold, wet, mud, snow covered ground, as well as snakes and/or bugs, and it it's made out of gillnetting (minus the lead weights) it can feed you, too. convert it into a seine or a baited net-weir.

I detest bulky sleeping pads and regular sleeping bags always seem to get wet, no matter what you do to try to prevent that. If it's rainy all day, you wont be drying the bag out, either, and without it, you might well die. So I dont use them. I DO, however, keep tape for use as repairs for the bags. It's always sufficed, so far.