Yes indeed, people on this forum talk about life and death situations daily. Unfortunately just talking about something dosent make it creditable information. Most of what is discussed probably is directly regurgitated from these books with no experience to back it up. When Les Stroud writes about encountering a bear in the wild I tend to pay heed as I am sure it happened to him a time or two. When someone on a forum named "frisket" talks about it I take it with a grain of salt. I don't know who you are, where you are from, even if you are a man or a woman.

I am not saying you would give bad information, I am simply saying there is no way to tell where you get that info from.

As such, I believe forums in general are simply that, forums.(places to chat about things)

I totally agree that proven reputation is half the battle for anything. It's the "proven" part that worries me when dealing with such places.