In a survival situation, given the choice of only one, which ? Fire or knife?

For me, I'll say fire. I may be able to improvise a knife, but at this stage in my outdoor skills, I would be unable to make fire by friction.

Definitely a knife. There are so many ways to start a fire with just a little skill, but I feel naked without a blade.

A knife!
You can make fire from knife and make a fire faster than you can make a 'real' knife...

Knife... you don't always need fire.

Totally depends. If it's 40, bee raining for 5 days and is still raining hard and I'm hypothermic I want a fire and I want it now. In fact, if we're talking short term survival (72 hours or less) I'll take fire most any time. I can certainly do a lot with a knife during that time, but I can stay warm and signal with a fire. In fact, if I'm just sitting still in the woods waiting to be found I can't think of much I NEED a kife for, nothing that would be more likely than hypothermia to kill me anyway.

Knife

Fire for me.

Vince

It's amazing how completely unrelated web sites can have similar articles on the same day. From this article: PlanetFargo: Dungeons & Dragons Made Simple


FIRE!!

Hot! Fire hot!
No touch fire.
Fire make boom.

TIP! Fire bad.


POINTY STUFF

Pointy stuff make hurt!
Hurt bad things. It is fun.

TIP! Bigger pointy stuff make bigger hurt!

After the great Bic debate I'm buying up hollowhandled survival knives and converting the storage area into a giant Bic. I am also taking an idea from an old WW2 vintage cartoon. My signal panel is being painted in an East Los Angeles bodyshop by a homie who looks remarkably like Cheech. Il'l just deploy it and within minutes screaming air national guard aircraft will be napalming Osama's likeness. One should always 'think outside the box' and I dislike these either or questions. I don't even like the 10 essentials list or the STOP acronym. I carry 24 essentials and my acronym is HAFMYGMI- "heres another fine mess you've got me into."

ROFLMBO!!!

Trust D&D fans to come up with that.

I'm a GURPS and SR prima donna. Glad to know I'm nto the only gamer here.

Oh, yeah, my vote: Knife. Preferably in a sheath that has two pouches on the sheath, one with a leatherman, the other with a cut down magnesium firestarter and a sharpening stick in the other. :P

Thanks goat' , I needed a good laugh.

Troy

IronRaven, you hang out on the SJGames forum ever? I'm GoatRider there too.

I don't play any paper & dice RPG's anymore, but if I were to start again it would be GURPS. I even have the 4th edtion books. I used to play D&D, long long ago.

Chris, back when I was cowboy'n ever day, and there was a bunch of us and something would go wrong, we would pick the guy that wasn't there to blame it on for the rest of the day. ( I later learned this was a wonderful psychological tactic, but what did we know?)

Gaming, now that brings back memories. Used to do the D&D thing back in the late 70s/early 80s. Became a most sought after DM, I incorporated the first Arduin release into Gygax' stuff and used my old Sinclair ZX-81 to keep track of stats and such. Got to where weekends at my place were like a mini-convention. Eventually RPG gaming got better and better on the PC, and so the labors of setting up the games and arguing about how many d6 damage each player took kinda lost their appeal.

Not really, I just don't have time. Two forums are my limit, and I like this better than any of the gaming forums and mailing lists I've been a part of. :P

Actually, to me, gaming and survival prep are kind of the same. "What do I do if...." I GM fairly realistically, and every group has spent at least one night in the woods. As a result, a lot of my players now have BOBs and a decent EDC.

I consider a missionary of the survial mindset. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

A better question might be: If you have an hour of light left would you rather build a shelter or collect wood and build a fire?

Fire to illuminate the immediat area for shelter building (as well as warmth... unless its warm and theres a full moon. Ofcourse where I hike at this time of year its in the 80s at night and rarely rains so I really wouldn't need shelter or fire other than fire for the purposes of signalling.