>>546336Here's a quickie I typed up on paracord hysteria:
When you take a gander around the web for survival packs and gear rigs, 9/10 of them include 550 paracord. Real, genuine paracord is a nylon braided rope. It’s made up of a woven sheath over 7 nylon strands. Each of those 7 strands unravel into 3 thinner nylon strands. Genuine paracord is also weight-rated to 550lbs, which is pretty impressive by itself. Couple that with its low cost and it’s every prepper’s dream rope, right?
Sort of.
Paracord is very versatile but has some drawbacks that should make anyone that includes it in any kind of ‘pack’ think twice about bringing more, and different rope. The thinner nylon strands in paracord can make a crude bow for hunting, or expedient fishing line, or the whole cord can make decent non-vital rigging (such as hanging food in a tree to prevent predators from getting at it). It is not great, however, for lifeline applications or water applications.
When considering life-safety applications, such as rigging or climbing, the “Safety Factor” of the equipment being used has to be applied so that we know how much weight the equipment can take before it begins to warp. For fibre ropes being used as life-safety applications, the Safety Factor is 15:1 as per the NFPA 1983 standards. They calculated this ratio by first implementing the standard that all lines holding two workers must meet or exceed a 9000lb breaking strength. NFPA’s acceptable weight rating for one worker is 300lbs, so a line rated to 9000lbs must be used to support a maximum of 600lbs. 9000/600 = 15/1.
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