I’m getting older and so are my preps. I’ve been going through my old gear and supplies and finding things rotting away, spoiling, etc.
So when I came to my 15-20 year old chemlights, I did not expect them to work, and I purchased new 8 hour duration white chemlights.
Once they came in, I tested some of my old chemlights, and it made me pretty happy to see that they still worked. I was rather worried that they would have been activated in the packages from rough handling in the past.
These old glowsticks of various ages all still worked.
The yellow colored “Brightstick” brand glowlight was the dimmest. But it came with some red cord that could be use to secure or signal with this light.
The white “Cyalume” brand light was nowhere near as bright as the old green Cyalume lights. The 12 hour duration green chemlight would light up a dark room enough that you could see what was in it, but not so with the 8 hour white light. I now know to mainly order the green lights and to use the others just for marking.
It has been over 12 hours since I activated these three lights, and they are still faintly glowing. The green is clearly the brightest.
If you have not used a chemlight/glowlight before, these are disposible single use light sources. They are a slightly flexible tube filled with non-toxic (but not good for you) chemicals. In there is a breakable vial where when you bend the light you break the vial allowing the chemicals to mix and the activating the light source. These are available in a variety of sizes and colors, including IR for marking under night vision. You will see the 6″ long green and IR light sticks commonly used for marking in the military, and all manner of these glowsticks popular at raves and places where loud music and drugs flow easily.
I am going to be buying more of the 6″ long 12 hour green glowsticks for illumination. I’ll just use these white glowsticks for temporary marking of locations at night. I feel much better knowing that they have a long shelf life and that they are durable enough not have broken when I had them in backpacks/buttpacks/car trunks, etc. At about $2 each, I wouldn’t recommend buying tons of them. I think other light sources are better value and more practical for emergency use. But these are still very handy to have.
Back in 2006, one of the radio posts I was in had no electricity, so we would use about 20 glowsticks a night to light up the entire comms room.