Hi. Very interesting thread. Thanks for all the comments, pleasure to read through :thumbup:. I agree with most of those, cannot add very much. I have always considered bushcraft and survival very different things.
Bushcraft is, for me, a set of basic skills to be able to manage an outdoor living, basically off grid, as they say it today. One can learn how to start a fire, to build a shelter, to filter water, to make containers, to fish and hunt, to recognize and collect wild edibles, to prepare food, etc. Bushcraft is very much living "adapting" to the nature. Its somehow comparable to the ancient hunters/gatherers life style
. Bushcraft is a kind of "outdoor sport", or a culture, if I may say something like this. Its a decision and pleasure to learn and practice some skills which can be very useful in a wilderness scenario where one cannot rely on the commodities we give for granted in daily life. Bushcraft, in my opinion, is more connected with
surviving rather than with survival.
Survival, for me, is the conscious and active overcoming of a life threat. Survival starts when one realize to be alive after a disaster. There are many dimensions of a disaster: environmental instability (e.g.: earthquake swarms, collapses, landslides, tsunamis, etc.); perceptual alteration (e.g.: smoke, sand, mud, rubbles, temporary blindness and deafness, etc.); physical and psychological trauma (e.g.: wounds, bruises, concussion, impaired breathing, anxiety, panic, etc.); physical and mental hindrances (e.g.: debris, flooding, lack of communications and information, air or water temperature, chest tightness, panic paralysis, etc.); death toll (i.e.: corpses are dangerous; death, especially traumatic one, it heavily affects the body and mind of the survivors). Its not very common for civilians to train about this and building snares and carving spoons its helping very little in this fast survival phase. Maybe these are good skills if one enters the phase of slow survival, very rare anyway. Survival also, in my opinion, doesnt give a damn about nature. It has different priorities. If my life is at stake and I have to signal my presence to get rescued, Id set a forest on fire with tanks of gasoline, if they were available. If I am camping out some days in the woods, I keep very attentive to make up small, contained fires, to properly extinguish them and to leave virtually no traces in nature, after I undo my camp.
This said, I believe its good to master some outdoor skills, some first aid skills, etc. but I am always aware these are just good to have things, these not necessarily will help me to survive a disaster. Thats when the brain and the will kick in and either one have them or not and the training possibility for this is, unfortunately, very limited for me anyway.
How many different ways does one person need to start a fire? Which is easier to lose? A box of waterproof marches and/or a Bic lighter in your pocket or multiple tins/ bags/pouches containing flint, steel, cerro rods, magnesium, fatwood, Vaseline inpregnated cotton, char cloth, whale blubber, pine pitch, plutonium, etc, etc?
