- Joined
- Jan 12, 2009
- Messages
- 3,198
With a great deal of my almost 60 years of hiking, distance hiking, hunting, fishing, and goofing off outdoors, I have never had to chop my way out of a bus, a downed aircraft, a ship wreck or fight a zombie. In hikes lasting as long as 10 days in remote areas, I have never found myself alone, lost, at the mercy of the elements with my knife being relied on as my savior. Those conditions however, are a consideration for many.
I quit posting them, but I used to add the survival stories of real survivors to the mix when the need for a "hard use knife that could take anything I could throw at it" came up. They were quite different from the daydreams of office workers, cubicle dwellers, and those that get to wear casual clothes to work. Never, ever, in the years I was watching those stories did I ever see one posted where large, thick, obtusely ground sheath knife saved them. I did see story after story though, of folks that stayed calm, thought things through, and didn't take any unnecessary chances to compound their dilemma. Even had a great story last year of a 10 year old boy that was lost in the forest for 4 - 5 days in freezing weather with no food. No knife was involved. Thankfully, he was a Boy Scout, and had some kind of woods experience.
After challenging the sharpened crowbar crowd to find any story where their knives were justified as a real, honest, survival knife that was the most important factor to a survival story, there were none. And certainly there was NOTHING as dramatic as cutting one's way out of any kind of wreckage. Nor was there one instance of being lost, left behind, and building a shelter to withstand the elements from trees chopped down with the survival knife when between duties of batoning wood for fires.
That didn't stop me from buying the RAT5, though. I bought mine in D2, as I am a sucker for D2. I found that the more I used the knife, the more I liked it, and the 3/16'' thick blade is PLENTY for me. That being said, I use my knives primarily as cutting tools. In my mind, a 5" blade is too small to be an effective chopper anyway.
But one should buy what one wants. For the folks that want the RAT, good! For the guys that have the extra scratch and want the ESEE, good! This thread was started as a simple request for opinions, and the old Blade Forums edginess of "this is why I am right, and you are wrong" meaning, "my opinion counts here, not yours" seems to be creeping in to it.
Robert
