What are your top 3-5 Survival Scenarios and how do you see a knife fitting in?

BOSS1

BOSS1

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Greetings all,

What do you consider your top 3-5 real world survival-type situations...No Zombie attacks, real stuff. Folks in the south, hurricanes? Folks in the north, freezing? Desert, heat stroke?

What say you?

As for me, I live in a pretty temperate area, we get well down below freezing, but seldom break 100 degrees. Mountains and forests are what's in my neck of the woods. Not too many poisonous snakes.

So for me:

1. Probably just good ol' lost in the woods. If injured, it gets even more severe. The knife would do what a knife does...shelter, firewood, food prep, etc.
2. Stranded/freezing. If you car breaks down in freezing weather outside of town, you could be in trouble. Same thing...mainly firemaking, shelter building, opening food, etc.
3. Major storm...we don't get hurricanes, but we get some bad ones...trees down out on the rural roads and whatnot...if the power goes out and the road to town is blocked, you could have to fend for yourself for a bit. Less on the shelter, assuming your house doesn't have tree fall through it...but along the same lines as before, plus going along with you (security/tool) as you try to get roads open, keep the fire going, etc.

So what's your scenario?

BOSS
 
Your scenarios are the same for me. Tornados are in our area. again shelter, fire prep, and food processing. maybe defence if needed, if my gun jammed or failed in some way.

Bryan
 
For me a knife in those situations is a tool for cutting cord, building shelters, building fires etc. Just about any blade in my stable will fit that role.
 
My scenarios are pretty much the same as yours with the addition of capsizing or falling off a water craft. Hypothermia, heat stroke, trauma, exhaustion,bleeding, bee stings, blood sugar problem, heart attack... are all concerns of mine. I feel most comfortable carrying a good multitool , a Leatherman Charge in my case . I dont like the odds of survival if all I have is a knife or multitool. Without a cel phone and matches/lighter I may find myself in serious trouble. I go into shock easily. I think if the leatherman can cut limbs/saplings with the saw blade, for raw materials and cut clothing for rags to stop bleeding then it would suffice as good as any other knife I own. I dont leave home without it.
 
Now being of senior citizen age, I see any small mishap in the woods being possible to turn into a survival event for me and the better half. If I trip a and fall and break something, she's gonna have to help me make a camp so she can leave me and go for help. If she falls down and can't get up, same thing. I have to make sure she's secure and sheltered before I can go for help. Also, we sometimes can't cover ground as well as we remember, so if darkness catches us in the boonies, we may have to make camp and build a fire until daylight. So any small outing, we carry a daypack with the right stuff in it.

Each one of us has in that pack a knife, a Fiskars sliding blade saw, a flashlight, spare battery, fire making stuff, and disposable plastic drop cloth thats 12X12 and is the size and weight of a paper back novel. That gives us two 12X12 plastic tarps for shelter. Day packs weigh in about 5 pounds with full water bottle.

If we're out in the canoe, fully charged cell phones go in zip lock baggies inside an Otter box.
 
Great idea for a post!

I've thought a lot about this, and I think people think they need a "survival knife" because it's long been touted as the single most important thing a person can have in a wilderness survival situation.

For a person trained in survival a knife provides the most utility in the smallest package for most environments. Many, many other tools will do things better, but a knife gives a person the most bang for the ounces. And it's not like you can put a axe and shovel in the pocket of a flight suit...

But without the training and knowledge to make use of it, a knife is just something to look at while you perish.

1: Because I spend a lot of time flying a small airplane over uninhabited areas, a plane crash is my most likely true survival scenario. Unfortunately, it's impossible to outguess what you're going to be left with in a crash. You might have an upright airplane which makes an excellent shelter and still has working radios, or you might have what you were wearing when you scrambled out the door and nothing else. Whatever needs to be done to stay alive until help arrives is where the knife fits in. Maybe it's improvising a shelter, starting a fire, modifying equipment, etc.. While I do cary a knife on my person at all times while flying, I also cary a personal locator beacon. That, and a well maintained engine, are what I'm really putting my faith in.

2: I spend a lot of time hiking, sometimes quite far. A realistic scenario is I need a walking stick to negotiate a bad piece of terrain, so I cut one with my knife. If I get injured to the point of not being able to walk out, the knife is going to be very important in fire making and possibly creating a more comfortable environment around the fire...bough bed, heat reflector, and the like. Though a person who cannot walk is probably not going to be building shelters, either.

3: Lastly, while I'm a firm believer in firepower for self defense, a knife is a pretty good claw if you're backed into a corner and don't have any choices left. It's not ideal, but it sure beats your nails and teeth. That scenario can happen any time, any place.

A knife does give a person the ability to modify what's available to better fit their needs, and it can be an effective weapon... at least better than bare hands. Past that, I think the value is overstated. I think it's particularly unrealistic to believe that a knife with certain attributes is somehow going to save the day while another knife will not.
 
OK, top 3-5 "survival scenarios" and where does my field knife fit in.

1) Say i'm out hiking in the mountains, far, far from my car/camp/civilization and really bad weather sets in - immediately (happens frequently in mountainous terrain). I don't usually bring a shelter with me so my field knife, as part of my overall "survival" kit, can help me get a fire started, make a shelter and sleeping platform and generally cut/split whatever wood or material at hand to help with these tasks. Granted this is pretty unlikely because i tend toward making it "home" regardless of the conditions, but still it *could* happen....

2) Since i carry my field knife about everywhere (either it stays in my car or my pack comes with me), another realistic situation could be anytime i'm in the outdoors and need to make a hasty campfire. My knife is my 1st go-to tool when i've gotta make fire (i start looking for a camp/campfire site right away, wood/fuel, etc).

3) If i ever am able to get back to hunting, my field knife is a natural 1st-line tool to get the clean-up work started after a game animal is harvested.

So, yea, my field knife has a huge role in my outdoors tool kit. It's not the best knife for every situation or implementation (ie it's not a kitchen knife - slicing n dicing with aplomb), but it is designed to do the rough, hard tasks i need to stay *living* and do them so well that using my knife is an extension of my mind/hand. Honestly, i'm not perfectly "in sync" with my new field knife, but i'm getting there. The knife is awesome, i just need to spend more time using it to attain that level of familiarity.
 
Realistically, getting lost on a long hike and having to spend a night or two out there with what's in my daypack. The knife will do what a knife does: Fire, shelter, food, and the comfort of knowing I have something I could use as a weapon.

Anything else I can think of would involve a car and I'll be way too well equipped for a knife to make a difference.
 
If we are talking true survival......... I'd use my knife to flick the beans out of the bosses chilli, because when we hit the rack. The sulphurous trumpet from hell awakens ! :eek:
 
Mi most usual survival scenario is well above the tree line. Ice, snow and sub-zero temps. We might be going to or comming back from a climb, trek or whatever and suddenly the weather changes, the GPS goes to hell or anything that prevents us from going down the expected route. Zero visibility or whatever. I actually happened to us in the Alps once going to the Mont Blanc. The only thing we used our knives for was to open freeze dried packages (something we could have done with any other sharp thing like the ice axes or the crampons or whatever).

The snow shovel and cooking pot (sometimes you don't have enough elbow room to dig properly using a shovel) saved our bacon because it allowed us to dig a snow cave for the two of us to spend the night in relative confort. Seriously, the knife was totally worthless (Vic Farmer or Vic Rucksack, cannot remember what I had on me at the time).

Mikel
 
Smart..we would be reading the news article about how you guys were found safe after a set back.
jackknife said:
Now being of senior citizen age, I see any small mishap in the woods being possible to turn into a survival event for me and the better half. If I trip a and fall and break something, she's gonna have to help me make a camp so she can leave me and go for help. If she falls down and can't get up, same thing. I have to make sure she's secure and sheltered before I can go for help. Also, we sometimes can't cover ground as well as we remember, so if darkness catches us in the boonies, we may have to make camp and build a fire until daylight. So any small outing, we carry a daypack with the right stuff in it.

Each one of us has in that pack a knife, a Fiskars sliding blade saw, a flashlight, spare battery, fire making stuff, and disposable plastic drop cloth thats 12X12 and is the size and weight of a paper back novel. That gives us two 12X12 plastic tarps for shelter. Day packs weigh in about 5 pounds with full water bottle.

If we're out in the canoe, fully charged cell phones go in zip lock baggies inside an Otter box.
Click to expand...
 
In actually thinking about that I guess here in the southeast where I live and work my top ones would be:

1) Breaking down in the woods while working and having to camp out till help could get there. Fire making, food prep, making shelter near the fire, mental occupation (whittling, sharpening, fondling, etc. :) )

2) A weather event (tornado here, hurricane further south). Food prep, opening cans, cutting various materials for shelter construction, making water filtration devices, fire making, pry bar, defensive tool in a pinch, amputation in a true worse case.

3) Accident at a nuclear plant. Trail blazing (roads would get clogged quick), climbing aid, tools utensils and weapons making, food prep, fire making, shelter building.

4) Terrorist attack at a nuclear plant. See all of the above
 
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