Originally Posted By: Medicineball
Kudos to bigreddog for raising this - I'm VERY skeptical about the utility of a fire in most situations. The number one problem (not mentioned) is opsec - do you think our special ops troops on a three day mission are building fires? Of course not - flame gives away your position in the dark, and smoke gives away your position during the day. Fires require time to gather fuel (most people DRASTICALLY underestimate the amount of fuel consumed by a small fire in one day) and they are terrible for security. I think the reason why we focus on fires is because we like them.


I guess you are marching to a different drummer. Most of us are considering civilian survival situations, not combat conditions. The disadvantages in combat are huge pluses in normal life and in "normal" survival situations, where a fire fire simultaneously signals your location, warms your body and your food, and raises your morale. What's wrong with that?

I can't think of a single instance in my SAR experience where people who built a fire did not pull through, and there are several where people did not, although there was no good reason why they could not have, and subsequently died.

Fire is life.
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Geezer in Chief