You make a good point about the OP's question. I wouldn't want anyone to lie in this forum. That would be disingenuous, because people reading here expect posters to be speaking from experience, with a few grains of salt of course. Just because I disagree with you does not mean I don't think what you said has value. I hope you are not taking my rather argumentative personal style of discourse personally. It is not intended that way.
No, no, I try not to take things personally. Nothing in this thread has offended me in any way.
I like discussion, although my words may seem a bit strong at times - partly due to me being a non-native English speaker, and partly due to just my personality, as I really like to speak my mind even if it isn't that pretty.
As far as I'm concerned, this has been a good thread and a good discussion. Certainly interesting enough for me.
What you are describing is not preparedness, but the skillset needed to make do when you /aren't/ prepared. Being prepared means bringing the stuff with you that you will need. You can certainly build shelter and a fire without tools. (Well, I'll take your word for it that YOU can. I can't.) However, no matter how much experience you have, it will still be much faster WITH tools. Even if you are capable of doing without, if you find yourself lost, cold, and wet due to an accident, you'll be really glad you brought your SAK, 10' of paracord, and a firesteel.
That's where I'll disagree! Skills are preparedness, too. In my opinion, they're the most important type of preparedness. Skills are information, and information is preparation. Let's look at an example.
You have a sales meeting tomorrow at eight. There are some important figures and features of your product that you need to present in the meeting, convincingly, to succeed. You want to prepare yourself for the meeting, because you want to succeed. The question follows now. You have two choices: 1) you can prepare a paper with all the important features and figures written on it and bring that with you, or 2) you can memorize all the important features and figures and store them in your mind instead of a piece of paper. If you choose option 1, the paper, are you prepared for the meeting? If you choose option 2 instead, memorizing all the important data, are you prepared? This is assuming that you don't fail either - you don't lose the paper, and you don't forget what you memorized. The point here is that the paper is a tool that you can choose to take with you, but your memory follows you everywhere, always...
Catch my drift here? If you ask me, you're prepared if you choose 1, and prepared if you choose 2. But, you will look more convincing if you actually remember all that stuff instead of reading it from a paper. You might just do better, too, or have more fun. On the other hand, there's a risk - what if something distracts you and you lose your memory for a second. Stuff happens.
You will need skills even when you have tools. Skills are what you build everything else on. If you don't have skills, you don't have anything. I could give a full store's worth of equipment to a urban teenager that has spent his life on playing video games, never even seeing a forest much less walking in one, and put him in a tough spot. And even with all that gear, he would end up dead, while I, even without the smallest pocket knife in the world, would be just fine most likely in that very same situation. Skills first, gear second. Loading up on gear and ignoring skills is preparation, sure, but for what? For failing, that's what. In some very safe situations gear may do our work for us, but when things go sideways, we will need skill, or we will die. Of course, in some situations, we will need both skills and gear, or we die.
It is true that gear makes skills produce results faster, no matter how skilled you are. That's certainly good.
Preparedness is certainly about need, yes - and that's for every man to evaluate for himself as befits his situation. For my needs on a simple hike or overnight in familiar terrain, practically no gear will be fine. And if it's not, then I guess that will be the end of me, and I had it coming.
To use the car seat belt analogy started by Ravaillac: using a seat belt (tool) is something I would do if I was driving 100 km/h along a highway, but it's also something I would not do if I was driving at 15 km/h in my own yard. Different needs in different circumstances.
I partly agree with you on this. However, if you're bringing just the clothes on your back, and you planned for a day hike, what happens if you get lost and/or stranded overnight? A firesteel and a SAK take up much less space and weight than an extra sweater. The name of the game is "what if".
You have to consider the big picture in what ifs.
What if you're going somewhere where there's nothing to burn? Ever been in the arctic? There are a lot of places around that have not one tree or brush standing anywhere within a dozen miles... Can't rely on getting a fire going, even if you have a flamethrower. Better to have clothes that enable you to survive without the fire, even and especially when things take an unexpected turn and you end up staying longer than you intended. So, to answer your question... if I planned for a dayhike in familiar terrain, and somehow managed to get lost and would have to stay overnight, then I'd find a nice little spot to sit down in and rest. No big deal if there's no fire. I'm fairly used to sleeping outdoors... It's really quite fun, although not for someone who dislikes ants and things.
This is an ad hominem argument, a very common logical fallacy. It has no bearing on our current discussion. Nonetheless, you are correct in your assessment that I don't get out in the bush nearly as much as I would like. However, YOU are just as much a product of the modern age, as is everyone else reading this thread ON THEIR COMPUTER SCREEN. Our ancestors once survived in the wild without even clothing. They would be a far cry from modern humans, though. What is it that elevated modern humanity above that, and made us the dominant species on Earth? Tools! I am not arguing in favor of the Gear-Fu mindset. I acknowledge that I am guilty of it at times, but I'm doing my best to wean myself. Seriously though, regardless of whatever other gear you choose to carry, you need a damned knife in the bush, even if it's a SAK.
Sure, but it's also the truth.
And it does have some bearing - it was my way of not so subtly implying that a lot of us humans these days really have a strange outlook towards the natural environment around us, and have grown alien to it. I'm a product of the modern age, true, but also of another, thanks to my parents.
What elevated humans to the dominant species on Earth, you ask, and reply tools. That's close, but it's not quite the truth, obviously. Tools are a result of that which elevated us. They're not the reason. The reason is intelligence! The reason is our minds. You could give a bear all the tools in the world and he wouldn't elevate himself anywhere higher than a tree, because he lacks a human mind. It was the mind that made the tools possible.
What did you expect? I'm a foreign national!
But so am I!
Oh, one more thing...
With regard to the debate between Elen and others in this thread, I think its worth mentioning that Finns are often imbued with a very strong fatalism which is quite foreign to Americans (and to me as well, as an Australian). I think its one of the reasons that they produce so many outstanding race car drivers, particularly rally drivers like Rauno Aaltonen, Juha Kankkunen, Tommi Makinen, Marcus Gronholm etc. I haven't been to Finland but I'm told that guys in the countryside can often be seen driving really, really fast on narrow, slippery roads. Like Elen going out with nothing but the clothes on his back, they know its unsafe and they're taking serious risks but their culturally imbued fatalism means that they do it anyway.
I think you may be on to something here. There is a sense of fatalism among many Finns, although not perhaps the hopeless kind of fatalism (that is to say something along the lines of "things go as they've been predestined to go and nothing can change it"). I'd say it's more like "things go as they go and if I can't change them to my liking then I bloody well don't deserve to." To apply this to the present discussion, it does rather well fit my way of thinking about it. I believe I have the skills to do fine, and the skills to evaluate what to bring and where to go. And I believe that if I screw up and bite it, then maybe I deserved that.
The part about driving fast on slippery, narrow roads is certainly true - quite a number of young Finns die that way every year.
Besides, cigarettes make good tinder.
