My concern is that I may need to split wood to find dry material. A small pruning saw may be fine and more efficient to cut down a 3" dia. piece of dry wood than chopping it, although with a large knife a few swings will slice though that wood so you could argue which is more efficient, now if you are tired and cold it may not be as safe to swing a knife around. If you are really in a survival situation and you need a big fire and you can't spend all you time tending to it you need some large logs to keep it going. Small branches that you snap over your knee are fine for a small camp fire but if you need to signal a plane a large fire may be required. The coals that are devolved after a large fire has been going for a while will allow you to throw on large logs and just leave them to burn.

In the early spring it is always fun to go out just after the snows have melted and try to get a fire started with the available wood. Anything on the ground is soaked. Anything small off the ground is soaked. I usually need to cut down larger branches of standing dead wood and split them up.

As far as digging holes is concerned a knife is a decent digging tool. Why pack a saw and a shovel when a knife can do that and more.

And last but not least a nice sized fixed blade makes a good pry bar.