Here is a little fire making story for you...some years ago, a buddy and I decided we needed to try out more of the things we had accumulated for various survival applications. A prime one being firemaking articles. We each had a collection of magical tinder products guaranteed to light a fire in any condition, and so on. Well we headed up to a nice cool pine forest in the mountains away from the masses and prodceded to leave all the comfort items in the vehicle and walked off with our packs stuffed with "emergency" gear only. Well, it was raining and when we set up a nice tarp shelter and began the process of cooking, we of course needed a fire, having no stove with us. We gathered the driest wood we could find, tinder, kindling and so on. Then we tried tablets, tinder dry products, fire ribbon that had been stored maybe too long and so forth. We were after a point considering hiking back to the car to get a stove, since nothing we had worked, no method was able to get a fire going despite any earned experience we applied. Then in a last ditch attempt I lit a little Starburst candy wrapper from my pocket, I had been chewing on them all day. Like magic, after adding one or two more starburst wrappers we had the start of a nice hot fire in the rain, with soaked wood. Starbusrt wrappers are nothing more than wax paper about 2 inches square. With some more testing it was found that a dry cotton ball could be lit within a strike or two by a metal match and a wax paper ball would burn hot enough and long enough to start most damp kindling, without much effort there was fire. The nice thing about the plain cotton balls and wax paper balls is they are cheap, cheap and can be carried in a 35mm film canister and they never go bad over time, they always work, every time you use them. To this day, I carry a film canister with about 5 or 6 cotton balls and a like number of wax paper balls made by tearing off about a 6in piece of waxpaper from a standard roll and wadding it up and stuffing it in with the cotton balls, alternating one to one. I do not count on any miracle product that can dry out over time or have the chemical evaporate out if it and will not work when needed in an emergency. Same reason I do not soak cotton balls in vaseline, they can dry out and fail when needed. Cheers!