( Ask a Soldier,I'll bet they'd be more than Happy to Hook you up with some Paracord,or at least point you in the right direction )

LOL. More likely it will make him ask
( Why do you need it ?? Show me some ID. )

So, no thanks.

Actually the culture of being prepared is not really much understood among most of humans, regardless of whatver geographical region. In the old days, yes, people were prepared, but they didn't call it "preparedness" or "survival". They just called it "way of life". Now that all these convieniences are around us, very few people undetsand why you need to store food or water, much less anything else.

A few weeks ago, I was in a worship gathering and the clery man asked ( why does ANYONE have to carry a knife in his pocket ?? ) and my hand automatically felt the folder in my pocket while my thoughts wandered around this strange world.

The clergy was talking about a crime that happened recently when a neighborhood decided to take matters in their own hands and start a campaign of "cleaning" up the streets. So, a man stopped a wrecklessly driving teenger and started advising him to drive carefully and not endanger the elderly and kids and telling him that he should in fact be a positive member of the society. The answer he received from the boy was several stabs in the chest. Hence the clergy question : Why was that boy carrying a knife to begin with ?? and why does ANYONE have to carry ???

Oh, well.
Sorry, I have hijacked my own thread . LOL

The objective of this thread is actually the skill of MAKING DO. If we find ourselves in a hard/emergency/survival situation, most likely we have to manage with what we have on hand. No matter how much better a RAT or Cold Steel knife is , the $ 10 knife I have in the kitchen has to do. Our mothers have manged for years using nothing but locally made knives that - in todays flashy knives - will be directly thrown in the trash.