A knife is not the most important thing to have with you. The most important thing is warm clothing unless you're in the tropics and then the most important thing is clean water.
You don't last as long in hot climates with no good water.
You'll find clean enough water to live well without big infections in most temperate climates, and fruits and berries will supply some too.
In the tropics the water can be lethal, full of parasites and bacteria, and the fruits can only be trusted to eat straight off the trees if they are thick skinned ones you can peel.
You can boil water but that doesn't kill everything. You need to keep it sealed and boil it for five minutes daily for three days to get it completely sterilised.
Quicker is to use a pressure cooker if you can carry one,haha
I trained in path lab stuff and served in the tropics, including a malaria survey in the jungles of Malaysia.
A steel bowl is one of the handiest things you can carry. Boil water in it and use it as a signalling mirror. Use it for cooking or for a small animal trap. You need about twenty voles for a decent breakfast though so don't expect to eat well.
The most useful of those items in the list is a torch.
It's the only one you can use to signal with at short notice and wherever you are.
If you are injured and can't move a torch may be your only means of sending a signal.
If you're too far from civilisation for that and can't move you're done for anyway.

You can get a knife of sorts by splitting rocks or stones or even find stones with a sharp enough edge.
Flint knapping techniques can be used with some other rocks too. That's making knives and arrowheads and axes and scrapers to live with and make clothes and shelters and boats.
In a survival situation...overused word that survival thing....if you can get rescued you've survived.
To get a message a long way...too far to shout....light is a good friend.
Even a small torch can be seen two miles away at night. A big one can be seen over five miles away in dark areas, and over ten miles away in very dark areas like mountains and deserts.
A pilot flying at twenty thousand feet can see it easy. Planes fly by GPS.
He can give a good location fix to the guys on the ground in the control towers who can get rescue services organised.
If you're too far from civilisation, save the batteries till you are close enough unless you see some planes.
Those last few miles may be impossible to get through if you're already on your last legs
With power in the batteries you can send a signal.
If somebody can come to you you don't have to go to them. Then you've survived instead of dropping dead with a few miles to go.
Six 1-second flashes at 1-second intervals in UK or three flashes at the same rate elsewhere, wait one minute, then repeat.
It's a standard distress signal.
Look for a reply and send again in that direction. If you don't get a reply you're no worse off than if you didnt have the torch but if you do that torch was good to have wasn't it?
There are alternatives to all the other things in the list but not for a torch.
Of course you can use a fire to send signals if you can make enough smoke to raise an alarm somewhere miles away or burn enough trees to send light across the wilderness but burning a load of trees can get awkward and if there are no trees around you're stuck.
A small fire has to be in a well exposed position and you need to shield the light to send your flash signals or it'll just look like a fire which might not be of any use as a distress signal.
Natural fires happen anyway.
You can't get a fire going and send a signal to a plane in just a few seconds and you can't keep a big enough fire lit all the time unless you stay in the same place.
In deserts there's nothing to burn anyway but you can still send a signal with a torch.
You can make fire with a bow and drill so you don't need a flint.
You can use the battery from the torch to make fire as well if you have a tiny bit of wire wool with you or some other very fine wire with low resistance so it glows when you connect it to both ends of the battery. Put it into some very finely shredded dry tinder and blow gently while the wire is glowing. You'll get fire
How to make a bow drill for fire lighting
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100920131804AAUcN8q . . . . .
Swiss army knives look cool but most of the stuff on them won't get used if you get one with everything but the kitchen sink on it.
The only knives I've carried in forty years of adventuring are a standard issue Army pocket knife and sometimes a small kitchen knife, which are of far more practical use than any survival knife in the shops.
It's also a lot better for keeping friendly relations with the natives. If you don't look like a threat or scare the hell out of them you'll get a lot more help.
Then you can survive better.
It's better to live OK with simple stuff that works than trying to do the big survival thing with something that's labeled 'survival' and doesn't work so well.
If you want to build a shelter a folding garden pruning saw is far more useful than a knife.
You won't see survival pruning saws though.
Survival saws, yeah. Even little sawing bands with handles.
Garden pruning saws are a lot cheaper and usually better made for the money, last longer, and cut wood better.
Who's going to survive best?
The guy with ordinary stuff that works or the guy with flashy looking survival stuff that does less?
Here's a knife one....same thing.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AqyLg8mpqRAZUhf2Z4WwmnHty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20100923231824AA56x8O&show=7#profile-info-5kg2nE7paa . . . . .

Whats On My YouTube Today?

Iain Sinclair CardSharp Utility Knife (size of credit card) - KnifeCenter

Here Are A Few Items From Amazon You Might Be Interested In.

Items recently purchased on this site:

Thanks for visiting!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 6th, 2011 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Gemstones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.