Fire is crucial. My experience has been that those who can build a fire, survive. Those who can't, don't.

Keeping a fire going, once it is started, is trivial. Before long, the glowing bed of coals will ignite rock. You can let the fire flicker out, throw on some more fuel, and away you go..

If starting a fire were so difficult that I would need to consider carrying glowing coals, I would seriously reconsider the decision to travel. It could easily be better to stay put, rather than travel.

Usually you travel to improve your situation. In the mountains of the western US, a very short trip will put you in a different environment, typically warmer and drier, with greater ease of fire building. If I could not anticipate those conditions, I would stay put.

Maybe I am pushing the envelope too much.

I am thinking of getting caught in a situation where you have essentially exhausted your ability to make fire, perhaps by repeated failures, or had the ability to make fire forcibly removed from you by injury, accident, or otherwise, barely succeeded, and cannot or do not want to go through that again if you can possibly help it. Instead you strongly need to preserve your first fire.

Then, perhaps going one more step too far, I threw in a need to move or travel - to avoid risk, for self-rescue, whatever - which puts you in a situation where you need to carry a bit of that first fire with you.

Hopefully far-fetched but not beyond imagining. And perhaps educational to add to your survival contemplations and preparations?

This statment might be true if it was said about shelter!

What the pioneers did:

1) You need a noncombustible container to transport the coals; the old-times would use a hollow cow horn, you can use your cup; you might also be able to make a 'cup' if you access to river clay and a fire to fire it in. Fill your cup about 1/3 full with ashes, add your coal, cover with about the same amount of ashes. Don't choke it off by sealing it against air. I would assume that a larger coal is better than a smaller coal, but that is an assumption on my part. To avoid having to hold your cup in your hand, make a swinging carrier for it so you can hang it from your arm or pack without dumping it. Coals from hardwood are said to last longer than coals from softwoods.

2. For longer carry, they would wrap the coal with dry, flexible bark or some dry, punky wood that would smolder slowly, then wrap that bundle with damp grass or other dampish material (rather than ash) and put it in the container. Again, it needs air.

When traveling, I would think the biggest problem would be to guard against dumping it, esp dumping it without knowing it. I would think that the person carrying the coal would literally be the Keeper of the Flame. Or at least The Keeper of the Coal. Probably quite an important job at some points in time.

Sue

You guys aren't very good at cheating...

1. To have a portable fire, I'd use a torch. No, not a flashlight. Take a broomstick, wrap gauze around the end, soak in alcohol, and light with your fire. Learned this from a very cute dancer several years ago. Works great.

2. If possible, have someone tend your fire while you travel and light your new fire. This way you always have one fire going.

Now you say I don't have any fuel, and no gauze or substitute like a t-shirt? I would then ask "what sort of cartoon have I been drawn into, that I'm so ill prepared?"

This was interesting, though. I'm going to have to try to make my own torch...never know when I might have to join up with a bunch of villagers and chase monsters.

In my experience, shelter comes in a very close #2. I am not talking hypothetical here, I am talking about real victims, some of whom lived and some of whom died. Fire, or its absence, was critical. On a few occasions, I was among the potential victims.

Let me go over the obvious.

Hypothermia may be the number one killer in the outdoors. If so, then, after breathing, staying warm, or if you need to getting warm, is the priority.

In cooling wind, rain, snow, etcetera, you must get out of the elements to preserve body heat - you need shelter. If a good insulating shelter is found or created timely, then your own body heat can sustain you for quite a while. You will then be able to survive without a fire for a time, so long as your body fat or uncooked calories are available to keep your inner fire stoked.

If you have lost a lot of body heat and / or you cannot find or create a good insulating shelter, then you pretty much need a heat source to survive, be it a fire or a willing friend or two. Once body heat is restored, see above.

You can die in 3: minutes without air, hours without shelter in a cooling environment, days without water, and weeks without food.

Any way you slice it fire is important. I do not think the debate on whether shelter or fire is more important can be answered out of a specific context, but this thread is intended to focus on two fire-related topics: keeping it going and taking it with you.

Let the games continue!

Edit: Please forgive exclusion of desert-type dehydration hazard environments.

I suppose one thing you could do while you have a fire going is to dry some tinder, possibly prepare some char cloth or something to make starting the next fire easier in case you do lose the first fire.

If you had an old can you could carry a small fire in it too. charcoal maybe with extra charcoal to feed it as you trek.

Actually, falls are the number one killer in the outdoors. Falling is a potential hazard present in all environments and many, many people succumb to it. You can trip over your shoelaces and hit your head just wrong - and die. Any free fall, out of a tree or off a cliff, in excess of forty feet, and you are pretty much dead.

I knew I would draw heat in emphasizing the need for fire. The prime mantra in the survival school industry is "shelter is the #1 priority." Everyone knows it.

It is a little more subtle than that. Blasted by adverse weather, you need to create a microclimate that will allow body functions to regain something like normal function. Fire is handy in this situation.

In practice, you can't build a fire without some sort of shelter, but that shelter can be as subtle as the lee side of a boulder - not perfect, but it will suffice. You then create "shelter" by snugging up the hood on your very good parka (or better still, drag out that bivy sack you were smart enough to bring along). If you can't do that, you definitely need to build or find something sheltering.

Fire and shelter together solve the problem of creating a "recovery microenvironment," the vital necessity that will see you through to the next day.