Post deleted by Chris Kavanaugh

Your pretty close to the way I feel about it... but a sharp rock will take the place of a knife.... The trouble with these threads is none of these tools, foods, shelters, and clothing will get the 1 thing you truley need...water.....<br>if you can get water then you can survive. perhaps besides water the next thing one needs most is WILL POWER to survive...... my 2 cents anyway....... the rest of the stuff is a luxury.....But we live in luxury, and since we can do better faster with tools, to be more comfortable each and every one makes sense. The trouble is having them when lease expected, and prayiing that they are still in working order.Mac<br><br>Came back in on edit: mebrad I think that you are selling primitive skills short. Admittedly these skills must be learned, but I don't think that is so hard to do. i have to question what you say about the bow drill, and about cordage. While it is true I have training in these crafts, anyone can learn them. it is the time factors you have set that I disagree with.<br><br>i am an old coon and I know you can tell.... i know what works for me, and i know it can work for most anyone too.<br><br>Unfortuantly hikers get hurt and killed here. They have the best of the best stuff. Far more money goes into the equipment than I ever could afford, but they freeze, and die.<br><br>There are 2 things that bother me about this. Since they have the best of the best, and did not even loose a plane in the process why is it that they abandon their gear and run?<br><br>Why is it they have no will to live?

i thnink a lot of what you say has a lot to do whith mindset......as a nation at war people are intrested in what they might need in the event of a catastrophy.such as; what will i and my family need to sustian ourselves in the event of attack,earthquake ,tornado,flood etc.....a people prepard frees up valuble resorces to those who go unprepard.......this appears to be the prevailing mindset here in this nation......thus the consumerism for equipment........V.......

I don't think we're all blinded by consumerism as you have pointed out. True, there's plenty of threads on gadgets and gear. But the reality is that these conveniences can save lives. And you may frown upon them as not being rustic enough to satisfy a mountain man (or woman), but I will carry and use those tools (a.k.a., "gadgets") that I feel will help "me" survive. So I'll carry a SparkRite instead of flint and steel. For my lifestyle and experience, it provides me with a better chance of survival. And at that point, I'm not to concerned about earning style points for being closer to primative techniques.<br><br>Now there are "gadgets" and there are "gadgets." In general, I believe the folks here on this forum and the info on Doug's web site, steer folks away from useless gizmo toys that would only end up harming them in the end. There's also plenty of information on the quality of products. You sole survival tool of a knife could prove disasterous if you have a cheap quality blade that breaks within hours of a survival situation. <br><br>Consumerism is not going to save me. But you must be aware that there are all types of folks that may rely upon this information. And many of them are not expert outdoorsman. Nor is every survival situation a wilderness adventure. My wife has absolutely no interest in the outdoors. If she were in a wilderness survival situation armed iwth only a knife, she's dead. But I may be able to build her a car kit, including some gadgets, like a candle and lifeboat matches or a Fox whistle, etc., that she can make use of and perhaps improve her odds for survival.<br><br>I'm not trying to come down on you for expressing your position. I'm mearly pointing out that there is a place for this information, including the gadgets. And that you should realize that there are all sorts of people with various levels of skills, experience and capabilities and that we need to be more tolerent of these differences and actually learn from them. I actually look forward to learning about more pragmatic techniques. The thread on Jewel Weed deviated from the normal content on this forum, but one may find the information useful in the wild someday when you run out of that foil packet of poison ivy salve in your PSK. :-)<br><br>Peace<br><br>

In General, Tools are useful. The more versitile the tool the more useful in a survival situation. I would agree that skills at woodcraft and campcraft and physical training are more important even than tools. If you follow the threads here closely you will no doubt have seen the thread on survival skills and the many threads on primitive fire-making etc. This forum is not focused on sills but rather equipment. (see the name of the site "Equipped To Survive"). Although I did learn to get by with a knife and the clothes on my back as a youngster I have also learned that having a few reliable tools and a bit of equippment makes life a bunch more enjoyable and also reduces the risk. <br><br>A knife can be used to fashion a leanto and even be used to strip enough bark to make cordage. OTH if I have a small wire saw, a trash bag and about 10 feet of any type of cord, I will be sitting in a teepee cooking dinner while the fellow with the knife is still cutting the first pole. Furthermore I will be dry in my teepee whereas the fellow with the knife only will probably be wet for the first week while he figures out how to waterproof his leanto with debris and perhaps animal skins or bark. Which of us runs the greater risk of hypothermia? Which of us is sooner able to turn our attention to higherlevel issues of survival if it turns out to be a long term situation? Issues such as securing the perimeter, laying up stores, createing a defensible structure etc. <br><br>With a knife and the clothes on my back I can certainly fashion a reasonable deadfall and be eating small critters rather quickly but with 20 feet of snare wire I can have 3 or more traps set in the time it takes to fashion one deadfall from rocks, sticks and knife. This difference means that I will be smoking the extra for traveling food while you are fashioning the third set of sticks and looking for the third large rock to make a deadfall. Furthermore the snare may be placed in positions not available for more primitive traps. Yes you may make a cord snare with fashioned cord but the fashioned cord appears a week later after you have stripped bark or other fiber, made it maleable and spun it, and then there is the fact that most prey will be able to gnaw through cordage if you don't get back to the trap quickly so you need to spend more of your time monitoring your food gathering effort.<br><br>Yes, you could probably get a fire going rather quickly with skill and a drill fashioned from sticks, clothing(shoe laces) and knife and sufficient practice. But with a bit of tinder and a sparklite and much less practice you can make 30 to 100 fires from the sparklite and 5 cubes of sparklite tender. The drill fire will be burning brightly in about 20 minutes including all stages upto a large enough fire to boil a cup of water. With the sparklite, a pinch of the tinder cube and some reasonable punk , birch bark, standing dead pine etc I will be drinking my hot cup or tea, preventing hypothemia and dehydration and infection in less than 6 minutes.<br><br>Yes, with a knife and the clothes on your back you probably could secure clean water. The effort to find the moisture is the same regardless of what gear you have. OTH the cleaniness of that water is another matter. As discussed above your time to cleanliness is around 20 minutes with a knife and clothes. With iodine tablets my time to cleanliness if around 1 minute. This reduces my risk of dehydration and infection greatly. Yes my iodine tablets will run out in a few days but since I am not wasting as much time improvising as you are in the areas of shelter, and food and fire I would wager that I will have set up a decent method of producing a resevoir of boiled water before my iodine runs out. If this is a long term situation then I will be working on securing my perimeter from attack and going residential as quickly. I would venture to guess that your approach is to go gypsy instead. These are choices. The great bulk of history of mankinds survival at every level favors the residential, defensible, agrarian community choice over the nomadic individual or even tribal choice.<br><br>Yes tools cost. Well chosen tools are not consumable - they last. If the situation gets truely bad making tools will not be an option. Stainless Steel is not something you improvise. Have you learned and prepared to put together a bessemer furnace with your knive and clothes on your back?<br><br>Time is essential in an emergency situation. If I have even one day's worth of iodine and that means that I don't have to worry about spending time securing the cleanliness of my water supply for that first day then I can safely wash wounds, stay hydrated and spend my time working to remove risk from other areas.<br><br>You seem to be a reasonably well trained and experienced individual so I don't really believe that you would ever allow yourself to be thrust into a situation of true survival risk with just your knife and the clothes on your back. Though I am sure that you could handle that eventuality if it arose I doubt that you would choose it and I feel certain that you carry more than that on you at all times. So, 'fess up. What do you really carry? In the city? In the wild? If you fell out of a plane tomorrow over a wilderness area what would fall with you in your pockets? Have a lighter or other fire starter? Have pocket lint and wisdom to use it? Have more than one knife for redundancy? Have a weapon? Have a belt made or cord? Have any container capable of carrying water that you have boiled? Have any container capable of boiling water?<br><br>If you were volunteering into a situation where the risk of being removed from resources was higher than normal would you carry anything more? Perhaps a fully loaded pack with sleeping bag, tools, bivy or tent, mess kit? Does that make you a market driven mindless consumer?

Dear Jampot,<br><br>It seems to me that your post is not about politics; it's about the online neighborhood you're hanging out in here with the rest of us. I'm going to re-state my earlier impression that you have us confused with someone else. As a group -- as a forum -- we're not about living in the wilderness. We're all about getting through the short term crisis until we can get back home, and as soon as possible please. You, on the other hand, seem to be about living in the wilderness. That's cool, that's neat and all that, but you're in the wrong place, and it's not going to get any better.<br><br>Please try to remember that this website began as a resource for pilots. For a pilot who has to make a forced landing, a knife might just not be the most important thing they can have on their person. A 406MHz signalling device might just be. Do you want to try to survive from days to a week or more with just a knife until you can walk out by yourself? Or do you want to get Search & Rescue there ASAP w/ an ELT (or EPIRB or PLB) and be home by the next day's breakfast, or at least, hopefully, late afternoon lunch? It is easy to imagine many other situations where signalling gear would be by far the most effective tools to insure survival. (And depending on circumstances, the next most important thing might just be a first aid kit ... or a raft. )<br><br>Do you want to make things harder than they have to be? It sure sounds like it!<br><br>In Chris Kavanaugh's Excellent Adventure (), his knife did not prove to be the most important item he had on his person. Ordinary kitchen sponges did. Sure, he could have used his shirt if he'd had to, but I'm sure the sponges were better, not to mention the iodine tablets and canteens he had with him! It is easy to imagine many other situations where water collection and purification gear would be by far the most important tools to insure survival.<br><br>I don't want to "survive with only this knife and the clothes on [my] back"! I want "society" to "save" me! I want my gear to make my task of survival easier and I want my gear to make SAR's task of finding me easier until my gear can help me to help them to get me out'a there! I don't wanna be there! I wanna be gone! (Unless I'm there on purpose, like when camping and/or hiking, in which case I'll have even more stuff on me!)<br><br>Everything you say leads me to believe you want to be out there, enduring the hardship, competing with the elements, making your way through sheer indominable will... If you do, that's great, but that's not short term emergency preparedness. That's something else. It's great, and it's impressive and it's cool... but it's still something other than what this forum was created for.<br><br>I was reading another forum where they were discussing their PSKs. One guy seemed to be in a contest with everyone else to see how much less gear he could carry than all the rest of them. It was odd. He wrote that he carried a spent .22 casing to 1) wrap tape around as a spindle and 2) blow across so as to use as a whistle. Good grief! Did he really want to handicap his signalling abilities like that by using a bullet cartridge as a Coke bottle? It seemed he had himself convinced that he had the whistle on his list covered, since everyone agreed that you need a whistle. Talk about self-defeating! He didn't want to be heard, he wanted to impress everyone else on the list with how little gear he carried, on the theory that it would somehow prove how capable he was.<br><br>Me? I want a signal mirror and a signal whistle. And that's just my PSK. I want another mirror and another whistle on a lanyard around my neck. Then, I want some potassium permanganate or marker dye, smoke signals, flares and anything else I think might help in my backpack. This above mentioned guy wrote that he never carried a mirror because he would just reflect light off his knife blade. This is a plan? No, this is not a plan. This is what you do when a plan fails! I'd do it if that was all I could do, but I sure wouldn't want to bet my life on it!<br><br>It's only about survival until rescue! We're not trying to live out there! Your love of the great outdoors shines through in practically everything that you write, and that's cool. That's great. But that's a different forum. Really.<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>The truth is the majority of these threads are simply crap, irrelevant, and downright misleading about what will be required of you in a survival situation.<p><hr></blockquote><p>Why are you even wasting your time here, Jampot? I'm here because I find the online conversation to be insightful, helpful & thought provoking. All of these great ideas from all of these people with all of these different backgrounds & experiences help me to prepare for all sorts of possibilities that otherwise would never have even occurred to me. If I thought that the majority of the information exchanged here was "simply crap, irrelevant, and downright misleading", I wouldn't waste my time. I'd go away.<br><br>Which, again, begs the question, "If you honestly think that the majority of what goes on here on this forum is simply crap, irrelevant and downright misleading, why are you still here?" I'm sorry that this forum can't be what you seem to want it to be, but please understand ... it never will be! It seems to me that you're still looking for the Rugged Men Of The Countryside forum. I sincerely hope you find it. I think you'll be happier there.