My 11-year-old daughter asked me this today: If you had to choose just one item to carry on you for a real-world lost or stranded-type situation, what would it be? How about two, or three? The question made me re-think some of my previous ideas. I've been looking at the things I carry from the perspective that I have a backup for this or that, so it need not be bulletproof.

Here's my partial list, ordered by priority:

1 - Knife
2 - Lighter
3 - Paracord
4 - Flashlight
5 - Compass

This opened up a whole new can of worms for me, since my EDC knife is a cheapo "Smith & Wesson Homeland Security" model, my EDC lighter is a Bic (not too bad as far as quality goes), and I don't regularly EDC a flashlight, compass, or paracord.

I'm looking online right now for a bombproof folding knife, good flashlight (Photon maybe), and a beefy but small compass.