Your post reminds me once again that semantics exacts aside survival and bushcraft [or period reenactment for that matter] whilst sometimes seeming to overlap often have bugger all to do with each other.
First things first, and I'll address you observations about 24hr survival and the advantage of a heavier duty cutting tool over a smaller one. I totally agree. My love for the golok is no secret and if I wind in a saw and pruning shears [which I often do], that's the fastest and most efficient combination I can possibly imagine having over a range of scenarios -[I'll leave the ax idea out for now because I find them limited in their versatility, although I sometimes use those too]. With the golok I've obviously got more brute power when it comes to working wood relative to what a small knife can do. It's also a vastly superior tool when it comes to harvesting bedding and thatching, two things I'm going to want huge piles of if I'm doing this with any degree of seriousness. Then there's the expanded capability for lifting turf or cutting bricks from a peat bog and all that. Although not directly applicable to me as I am here but I'd also add jungle, cutting and scraping at snow and ice blocks, or getting sanctuary from the sun amongst the thorny nastiness. These aspects of knife selection as they relate to survival are exactly the kinds of things I think about if one has the luxury of being able to pick a survival knife in advance. But then, and here's the essential bit as far as I'm concerned, with the luxury of prior warning you aren't really picking a survival knife, you are just picking a big knife. If you have picked correctly, as far as the knife aspect goes at least, you're just a bloke with a big working tool precluding a survival situation arising.
So, whilst I am in agreement with you on the size of the cutting tool we have also stumbled across the concept of prior knowledge and the implications of that. I wonder; with prior knowledge why would anyone artificially constrain themselves to trying to solve a possible 24hr survival situation with any kind of knife? Don't get me wrong I enjoy reading about a lot of what you do here and I do a whole lot of it myself. It is play and it is great fun. However, I am very aware when I am doing it that it holds zero relationship to my mindset as a survivor. I go to places where I perceive a genuine threat from cold and exposure and none of them involve trees. When I see trees I see comfort. I can relax and do things the hard way. I can artificially limit my choices to making shelters, warmth and maybe catching dinner using primitive methods. It's a doodle compared to clinging to a freezing lump of granite up above the tree line or being out on an exposed moor in the thick fog, with no trees, at a grovelling pace 'cos at any moment I could sink up to mah nether regions in a freezing concealed soup with sharp rocks in. Where even the dry ground is like a damp sponge [Lundhags boots]. In short, I see the ease of being in trees the very thing that allows me to play through wilfully handicapping myself to solving survival[ish] type scenarios by means of a big knife. Perhaps it is akin to the adrift raft survivor washing up on a beach and declaring feksake, this isn't hard enough, I'm going to only use the one hand.
To combat a genuine real deal situation where the goal was to avoid exposure for 24hrs my approach would soon see a lot of this woodsman mentality dumped. Fair is fair, and if I can have prior warning about the size of the knife I might prefer then I can have prior warning about other kit too. Instead of all the fun stuff playing with chopping, or bits of string, or rubbing sticks together, or making a bed 'cos I fancied a snooze, or learning how to tame my flatulence by recognising wild mint or whatever I'd be in the camp of the people that do this stuff in genuinely perilous conditions. As per mountain leadership training 24hrs is a few hours in the bothy bag, hunkered over a night-light, sitting upright on the pack, bored stupid, with a few tarzan bars, strobe going, waiting to pop flares or smoke.
Like I said, I enjoy much of the primitive stuff, and some of the neo-bushcraft stuff, and much of what I do draws upon bushcraft-proper and survival techniques. Yet I am also very aware that when I am playing I am making arbitrary parameters of which using a knife as a solution is often one. Real deal survival awareness can be a different can of worms entirely. Mostly my approach is a mashup, and I like a bivvy and tarp not a bothy, practical stainless over retro-rusting, and I'll cook a squirrel and nettle stew thickened with instant potato over an open fire quite merrily, and so on. But when the subject of real world survival scenarios comes up it is time for me to shelve a lot of that in favour of what is optimal.
