Living in earthquake country, I have a variety of pry bars in various kits and other strategic places including some of the ones from County Comm that Izzy mentioned.

I'd be shocked to learn that anyone living here wouldn't have some.

I normally keep an axe, a mattock and a large pry bar in my car. Shovel is on the roof rack.

Even batoning to get at dry inner wood for kindling?

But I agree - it's all compromise

I am always puzzled by the fascination with "batoning" to create kindling. I have been kicking around the woods and fields for a very long time, and I have built numerous fires, more than a few in adverse and emergency conditions, and I have never had to resort to using a knife to produce kindling. I do not typically carry an axe or hatchet.

A well placed boot or rock, smashing dead wood, produces all the firewood necessary. Typically about ten minutes work will accumulate enough for an all night fire.

You live in dry country (I presume). Up here a lot of down wood is wet or even punky on the outside. You need to expose good dry wood to get a decent fire. You also oftentimes have to make splits for kindling, as small twigs are often wet, snow-covered, or covered with lichens or moss. Depends a lot on time of year and location. I would also add that in a survival situation in the boreal forests, stomping wood to break it is a risky manuever.

The western mountains get plenty of snow and rain and can be quite soggy. The vegetation, coniferous forest, is roughly equivalent to what I have experienced in Minnesota. Northern Arizona is basically Bemidji with mountains. Plenty of dead wood, especially pine knots, which even when wet will take a flame quite readily.

Stomping wood, at least the way I do it, is no more risky than walking off trail on uneven ground ( or exposing sharp cutting edges). A nice 25 pound rock, dropped from chest height, on a propped piece of dead wood, is a great kindling machine.

Even so, as I became more and more experienced with making wood fires, I also became aware of the benefits of alcohol and gas stoves, and carried them regularly. On at least one occasion, that habit paid off handsomely, and is the reason I am still packing around all my original toes and fingers. But I still carry matches and a lighter, along with dryer lint and petroleum jelly or hand sanitizer to get the old wood fire going.

We started referring to white gas as "boy Scout fire starter" when we used it to overcome the reluctance of wet wood to burst into flame. Now that is risky!

Batoning is hard on the knife and on the hand. Even high quality knives can snap in half from the extreme leverage that batoning puts on the top-front of the tang. It would certainly not a first choice method for firestarting, but it is one tool in the woodsmans toolbox. A person who is on a well prepared camping or backpack trip would never abuse a knife this way. In a survival situation however, a medium to large sized full tang knife could be used in the absence of an axe by batoning to cut down a tree, split some cedar to repair a canoe, make a flat splint for a companion, make some snowshoes, or fashion a paddle. The old woodsmen will tell you to never enter the woods without an axe. There is a reason that the more primitive and remote the area is, the bigger the knife the locals carry.

Living in earthquake country I keep half a dozen decent sized (some large) pry/breecher bars strategically placed around my house and barn including under my bed. I’ve put some colored or reflective tape on them to make them easy to see and attached brightly colored cordage to others that hang next to doors. There are a couple in my SUV, one that stays there and a very small one in the psk in my purse, however, I question what real good a small one would do. I live in a wood frame house but doors getting jammed would be a real possibility in a quake. Along the same lines having sturdy shoes, leather gloves and a flashlight next to the bed is a good idea as most likely there will be at least some broken glass. My town was the epicenter of the Nisqually quake and hardly any home or business escaped some broken glass. Since then I've carried leather gloves in my purse, granted not real heavy or thick, but still better than nothing in clearing a path out of a grocery store. I was at home during that quake but after seeing the news reports from grocery store aisles virtually covered in broken glass, I stopped wearing flip-flops to the stores in the summer. Sorry to take the thread off-topic but in an earthquake along with doors being jammed and things coming down trapping people, there will be lots of broken glass.

Well look at it this way, I'm work for an urban FD, I'm a LT. on a truck co. Our tools are mostly in one of two catagories
cutting or prying.....

When is only carrying one tool, it's nice to know it can take abuse - then you decide whether to abuse it or not.

When you can carry multiple tools then you can find one matched to your specific need. If I have an axe then I don't need my knife to do so much chopping - if I have a prybar then I won't need to use my knife to prise anything open.

Knives are - usually - suboptimal tools with a lot of versatility. Specialist tools (skinners, machetes, scissors, chisels, saws etc) will do a better job but add weight/bulk.

YMMV