Do you have experience with survival (perhaps a survival class) or with hunting? The tasks that your skills allow you to do may determine what constitutes the "best" knife for you. It's really hard to tell just by looking at knives unless you have experience and knowledge. Manliness isn't a good test of knife quality, I'm afraid.

The same is true also of fighting knives. So many knives that are being sold as "fighting" or "tactical" knives are, as far as I can tell, complete junk. If you train in a good martial art, you'll soon discover that you're going to gravitate towards something that doesn't look Rambo-esque at all, or you're going to end up with a specialized-looking tool, depending on your fighting techniques.

With that said, I am fond of the Benchmade Griptilian. Doug Ritter's modification also seems very good. Not sure you can cut yourself out of the fuselage of a crashed plane with it, though. I'm not a big fan of Ka-Bar -- a bit unrefined to me, but that's just a personal opinion. I've been impressed by ergonomics of Helle knives, but I've never used one. They're also expensive.