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?