A Question Of Survival

[dinosaur]

With all of the new interest in survival, I would like to pose a question I have asked of others from time to time and in various situations.

If you knew you were about to be placed in the middle of the wilderness, were properly dressed for it and allowed to take one (and only one) tool with you, what would it be?

You could choose any tool, even one you don't currently own. This means an endless list including flashlights, guns, knives, shovels, tents, bicycles, GPS, cellphones, bows, pots, radios, pitchforks.......anything you can think of; but only one. And why would you choose it?

You will be alone in a remote area, wooded with flaura and fauna.

I'll give my answer later. Choose wisely.

 

[ChadTower]

Is this assuming that we have anything else? Or can we only bring one thing that isn't clothing?

 

[oldsarge]

A helicopter to fly my butt out of there!


Really, I'd choose a knife. Only because I feel proficient with it enough to get me by. Of course if I had the ammount of experience some of the others have on this forum, I might choose something else. But given my level of experience, I'd have to stick to my knife. Next would be a really tough well built multi tool

 

[ChadTower]

Yeah, my likely choice is one of those two, unless I have to assume I don't have a water bottle or any cordage at all.

 

[Michael]

A tough fixed blade knife, probably something like an ESEE 4. Something large enough that I could conceivably chop through small branches, but fine enough to gut small game.

Edit to add:

A good knife is one of the harder things to improvise from stuff in the wilderness.

It's also very multi-purpose. You can use it to build shelters, prepare firewood, process game, build traps, and a bunch more.

 

[Grandpa]

I've been contemplating on this all morning and my final answer surprised even me. My first choice, of course, was my SPOT. Push the 911 button and let someone else haul my stupid fanny out and pay the fee as a lesson to not let myself get in a mess like that. But, I don't think that was the spirit in which the question was asked.

Nothing was said about which wilderness so I opt for my western pine forests where I am more at home. The next obvious choice would be a good knife, but after thinking a bit, I had to ask myself why. The beauty of pine is you can take a dry piece and smack it on a rock and it will probably shatter and leave a good sharp point as well as a sharp edge good enough for gutting a fish. And long enough to whack a spruce hen out of her perch. A knife would enable me to cut willows to make a fish trap but that would entail staying put, and my objective would be to work my way out of there. Besides, I have been tickleing fish out of creeks since I was 8 years old. I could catch a fish that way as easy as with a trap. Difficult but doable.

Making a fire out of nothing takes a lot of time and energy. But I can do it. Since I don't have the back of my knife to use as a steel, along with a hunk of granite, flint or obsidian, the thought of a bic lighter came up. Now I have my fire, what am I going to do with it besides stay warm. Pine bark isn't much good for making a water boat for heating water and neither is aspen, the two most common trees where I am. Which brought me to my final answer.

My old large metal cup.

With my old metal cup I can boil water even if only for pine needle tea, boil up several plants that need to be cooked for best eating, make various stews, depending on what I can find. I can even use it as a frypan to fry up a grouse egg or two. And when it's time to move on, with a little dry sand in the bottom, it would make a good carrier for a hot coal for my next fire.

For out here, I go with my metal cup.

 

[limbs]

I would take a Swiss Army Knife. Perhaps the Voyager Little Red Ruby. If I am really lucky I might get one of these for Father's day.

 

[outwest]

Swiss Army Knife does come to mind but you know I oddly lost mine so I guess that could not be on my list unless I stopped at a store to pick up a new one before the trip started. My next guess would be a machete, why? Well you want to be prepared for everything right? Maybe next guess a large screwdriver. Yes, I know I am an oddball.

 

[oldmangunner]

I have given that a lot of thought. First I thought I'd bring a knife, then I thought about flint. In the end I decided that this is what I would bring .

 

[Michael]

I would take a Swiss Army Knife. Perhaps the Voyager Little Red Ruby. If I am really lucky I might get one of these for Father's day.

If I were going to take a Swiss Army knife, I'd definitely take one with a saw on it. The saw on a Victorinox is a marvel of the modern world.

Actually, now that I think on it, the lock blade Trekker would be a pretty good only thing to carry.

 

[ryoga-kun]

My Ka-Bar knife.
For boiling water and stuff... I can find clay on river banks (it'll take some time) and construct a bowl. The quality will be bad but it'll do it's job. If I don't find any clay... actually I thought of two things that I might experiment in future.

 

[wvbreamfisherman]

I was going to say a fully-charged satphone, but I'd have to say a decent-sized knife would be my serious choice. By decent-sized I mean a 5-6 inch blade heavy enough to be used to chop or split wood. I'd want it to have a full tang, and a butt that could stand being pounded on if necessary.

 

[Ranger]

Supposing I have not read any of the answers, I would take a Swiss Knife. But since I don't really want to repeat their answers I'd bring something else, a genie in a bottle.

 

[Judy Ann]

SOG S67N: With the fixed straight and serrated blades, in addition to all of the other tools, and ease of use I believe I could build a shelter, clean fish and game, modify found objects to create utensils and cooking supplies and devise filters for clean water, protect myself, and have tools at hand for whatever whatever opportunities present themselves.

 

[Refrigerator]

For me it's Toilet Paper...I like to have this instead of leaves.....

 

[perchbutt]

A good knife.

 

[LongShanks]

It would have to be a fixed blade knife. You can make fire without much more than wood shavings and a stick. But you can't cut down anything to help yourself out if you don't have one.

 

[outdoorchick]

I am going to go with the majority of others here and say a knife. Of course I would have to go out and buy a nice knife before the trip began. A knife provides protection and many other capabilities as well.

 

[southerngal]

I like the idea of the metal cup I really do and it is certainly multi-purpose I just don't know if I could construct some sort of weapon or anything like that without having a knife. I'm going to be boring and say a really good knife!

 

[Refrigerator]

stickin to Toilet paper..