Well, I'd invite you to describe a realistic scenario. The one I gave is an exageration on one point only- I didn't break my leg three years ago, I dislocated my knee when I slipped on an icy patch on a trail that I'd walked a couple times a month since I was 6, before tumbling down the side of the ridge. The fact that two of my friends were with me and we were a quarter mile from my house is why I can type this. I've gone through ice a few times, and have stayed out longer hunting or on hikes longer than I should a have from time to time. <br><br>In most of the US you'll probably be found in under 24 hours unless you are unconsious, dead or purposefully trying to hide. Usually when people need survival skills, injury, lack of proper planning, and/or hypothermia (dehydration in some places) are the major reasons for needing it.<br><br>People who don't plan ahead far enough to think "It's November and I'm hiking Mt Washinton, maybe I should bring warm clothes and a shelter", won't learn the basics. If you're really hurt or hypothermic, you probably won't the be able to take the time to build friction materials, before a dropping core temp or shock make your hands shake so bad you can't use them. But you can usually get a fire lit, if you have matches and tinder on you.<br><br>I can and have, in an hour, taught people how to build a fire in under ten minutes, using matches. And they remember. I doubt the same can be said for friction techniques. It took me years to learn how to reliably (80%+) build a fire using a bow, and this wasn't something I was spending a couple minutes a year studying. It took me a couple months of four or five trys a week before I could build a decent bow and board using just a knife, and even now that takes a while. I think people SHOULD learn these skills, as supplimental skills AFTER mastering the basics. But I'm also the person who thinks people who can't tell a pine from a spruce shouldn't be allowed out of the suburbs. <br><br>I'm not trying to make this a flame war, and if that's where you want to take this, take it out of the group. But I believe you are dangerously overestimating the usefulness of certain techniques. Teaching people to make bows and cord and how to knap flints is all well and good, but real world with real people, it isn't going to happen. If you can find me two cases over the past 20 years that occured in the continental US, Canada or Alaska, where the ability ot light fire by friction, or any other neolithic skills, saved the day and the person wasn't trying to hide from searchers, you'll have found the first two I've ever seen.