Limited experience with firepistons.
Love Zippo but need to carry fuel. If in a pinch they will burn almost any flammable liquid that will take a spark including camp stove fuel and gasoline. Diesel is a bit hard to light but can be done if you are very determined and have a strong thumb.
Bics are great but you need to protect the fuel button. If it gets compressed while in a pack you suddenly have an empty lighter.
I believe Iron Raven suggests using a cable tie to mouse the button and guard it from dumping the butane.
You might have explosive clothing or packs if the gas is trapped in them too.

I have been finding more cheap bic sized butane lighters with caps that have a jet flame lately. Some of them have even been cheaper than the bics and are refillable. These come with lids to guard the nozzle.
The bic or other butane lighters are cheap and light enough to be in many coat pockets, vehicles, cupboards, drawers on shelves in tool boxes and in and backpacks.
I hardly ever use matches because they are too easily wrecked by moisture and there is a danger of the igniting accidentally.
(once in a jeans pocket is enough for me)
Matches are household items though and there is a box of kitchen matches in the kitchen.


I have a sparker for backup in my pack if I run out of lighters. My favourite is the Doan magnesium block because the block is such a convenient handle. (I find the Swedish ones are nice big rods but the fiddly small grips on them are awkward for me)

I find making a small squared edge on the back of my knife gives me a very good scraper. You need to be able to give a good strong scrape to get the nice fat fire starting sparks instead of just a bright showy flash. The spark should hit the ground still glowing bright if you are standing up when you scrape the rod. You might not get that always but the fatter and hotter the spark is the better.
The square edge is nice and effective for getting good scrapes of magnesium off the block too but I have seldom needed the magnesium as tinder.

If you do carry tinder for a sparker the best natural one I have seen is the birch conk fungus.
The one that looks like a horses hoof.
Id you slice it open there is a block of porous material. You just slice it thin. I like it across the grain about 1/8th inch thick or less. It catches a spark well and burns as a bright ember. You use it to start your next level of tinder/kindling going.
After that come the dried grasses etc etc.
Vaseline greased cotton balls and other prepared tinders are good. Fat pine shaved thin is very good. shredded birch bak to grow the flame because it is rich in oils and will burn when wet.

All the other fire starter I tried that are easy to carry are far behind these ones for me.

Apologies for the wall of text effect.

I do carry a second second butane lighter. And a pressurized one. And matches, because if I have to, I can bundle a few of them together and light them with one- hotter! And a ferro rod (actually, everything backs this up). And usually a second thing of matches. And a frensel lens. And cordage so if I've got nothing else other than banging rocks together, I can try a fire bow again. And I can bang rocks if I really need to. And there is tinder in my gear, usually PJ-balls and/or tinderquiks, jute, and candles.

Lets just say I LIKE being warm. And I might like fire. *laughs*

As for why one might carry a fire piston, because they are cool. My inner pyro and the scientific sides of my brain both giggle gleefully at the concept. But I wouldn't carry that as my only source of fire.

You make a good point. IMHO carrying a mini-Bic as primary, a second mini-Bic as backup, and a third mini-Bic wrapped in wax paper and sealed in foil tape as reserve is a viable plan. You might substitute lifeboat matches and/or a spark-rod for the second lighter. A 'boots and suspender' sort might carry all five. All the units are small and light enough to make carrying backups practical.

But the law of diminishing returns starts to cut in after three IMO. Maybe four if your going into the very deep woods.

Survival aficionados will have some experience with a fire bow, plow or cord, and how to use a lens to start a fire. Impressive, and handy in a pinch, but seldom needed.

A few months back I bought one of Countycomm's peanut lighters (uses Zippo fluid but has an o-ring to seal it better), but life's been kind of crazy, and I haven't had a chance to even juice it up and try it yet.

I can see a fire piston being extremely useful in a long-term hunkering-down-at-home situation. You will probably have other people around, and that's the time you would find out that all of them want to start a fire, but don't know how.

Yes, I know... everyone here knows how to start a fire. But try this:

I have two sisters, one smart and one is an idiot. (Idiot in the insulting use of the word.) The Idiot was visiting from out of state. Ten minutes in the same room with her has me trying to crawl up the walls. She wanted to start a fire in the stove. Fine, I gave her a new box of strike-anywhere wooden matches and I escaped to run a few errands. When I returned, she was still trying to start a fire... with the matches and three large pieces of split firewood. There was a box of kindling and some small sticks and some Coghlan's firestarting sticks (sawdust/wax) right beside her, none of which she had attempted to use. Most of the box of matches was gone. The firewood had a few smoke marks on it.

Never underestimate stupid, esp in a survival situation.

Also, when the power goes out and there's three feet of snow on the ground is when some people discover they forgot one little thing... matches.

Sue

Byrd..i would skip the Sterno,i find it really makes some nasty fumes in a closed space and does not put out much heat.i have cans of very old Army wood alcohol heat tabs..much like Sterno,and they are still good.for a stove i would get a Gaz burner.the heads can be found cheap looking thru the web.they don't run great in the cold but if you get stuck you could put the Gaz cart inside your jacket to warm it up a bit and once it gets burning it will keep it's self going.any Coleman stove would be fine but a white gas spill in a car would be a killer if it lit..i know people say fuel up outside but in real life that does not always happen...my first experience with real cold was at the college in Bemidji.i was back from Korea and the DMZ was nasty but that part of Minnesota was worst.i put a duffel bag of warm gear in my car,1960 Chevy,along with a quart of Vodka.my roommate told me not to drink that at sub zero temps as it did not freeze like beer it would be as cold as the air temps as it was stored in the car and i would frost bite my throat if i drank it that cold..

I just took a shower and checked for cancer thanks to a pair of shower cards that show you how to check for cancer of the chest area, and the lower area

maybe you should include a "HOW TO START A FIRE" card along with matches, next to your stove/fireplace? You never know what kind of relative will try to start a fire alone

At one level I'm inclined to react to such ineffectiveness with derision. But then again things I often consider intuitively obvious are obscure and, conversely, social norms and popular references go over my head.

I'm frequently amazed by what people don't know. A few years back a part-time portable sawmill crew was taking advantage of the scrap wood left by a larger lumber operation. To get the spindly trunks into the portable mill they knock off the branches. One of the guys was using an axe and it ricocheted off a limb and laid open his leg. He was bleeding massively. They held a rag on the gaping wound and he bled to death on the way to the hospital.

How a crew routinely using chainsaws and axes could avoid knowing how to control bleeding is a mystery to me. The concepts of direct pressure, pressure points, and tourniquets aren't difficult to understand. And not difficult to carry out even if there is no specialized first-aid equipment. Tee shirts, a belt and socks will all work in a pinch. A person could learn the basics in ten minutes. But for a lack of ten minutes training by even one person the man died.

It isn't all that uncommon for people who haven't been better informed to think lighting a fire is just a matter of touching flame to wood. The idea that small flames light the small stuff and the small stuff makes big flames that lights the big stuff isn't complicated or hard to understand. But most people need to be told because nobody is born knowing it. Way back every four year old understood this because they watched the adults lighting a fire. People can now live their entire lives without observing anyone light a campfire. Or, as the case shows, having anyone tell them.

The cure for a lack of knowledge is education. But then again lack of education isn't the only reason people don't know things. As Susan points out; people forget things when stressed. I once pushed a truck a good part of a mile before the driver figured out that they needed to have the ignition on. D'oh!!!

When troubleshooting a computer that won't run it is always worthwhile to check to see that it is plugged in and turned on.

Although mine needs its lubrication to be renewed from time to time.

I thought the main reason for knocking a firepiston is its physical size. They tend to be large because you need a large volume of air to compress to make the heat.

Primitive fire making skills are always a nice fallback for when everything else fails and you are left to using whatever nature provides. That it is not the most efficient or expedient survival method of creating a fire is an inherent quality of our intellect, but does not diminish the knowledge of how to build and use the tools. I would think knowing how to build one and use it would be far more valuable than actually having one in stores.

As for the bic, it is one of many viable options for primary/backup firestarting. I prefer a refillable windproof butane lighter that I get for $10.00 as my primary. For backup I have a couple of $3 refillable standard flame butane lighters and a zippo. I usually keep the zippo stored dry and the fuel in an airtight container so the fuel doesn't get needlessly wasted. The way I see it, even butane lighters can lose fuel over time sitting unused, so the notion of a cheap refillable for a few dollars more isn't such a big leap. In fact, I have both refillable and disposable butane lighters in reserve.