« previous next »
Pages: [1] 2   Go Down

Author Topic: If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?  (Read 6346 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline BamBams

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1272
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« on: October 25, 2005, 01:37:18 PM »
You know you have to head for the woods.  You will be there at least a week.  The weather is hospitable today.  You have no firearms.  You can only bring ONE thing with you to help you survive.  What would it be, and most importantly, why?
Logged
NRA Handgun Instructor

Offline JPSaxMan

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1779
  • Gender: Male
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #1 on: October 25, 2005, 02:27:34 PM »
I would take a multi-tool...like a Leatherman Wave. I can make a shelter out of the wood avaliable, even if it means cutting down various limbs, etc, to make a lean-too, then I'd construct animal traps or snares to kill game, or even kill the game by hand with a knife in the set.

But that's me 8)
Logged
JP

Attorney: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in
his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?

Doctor: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

Proverbs 3:5 - Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding

Offline 379 Peterbilt

  • Moderator
  • Trade Count: (1)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1070
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #2 on: October 25, 2005, 02:29:53 PM »
Hard question to answer, as you said only one item. Water would be my first choice.

If I could pick 2 things---My Zippo lighter. If ya cant start a fire to stay warm, ya may die.
Logged

Offline TNrifleman

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • A Real Regular
  • ****
  • Posts: 542
  • Gender: Male
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2005, 02:30:49 PM »
Gee, that is a tough question. If no gun, then I would carry a good, heavy duty fixed blade knife. this is a weapon and a tool to make other tools. In my part of the country, good water is fairly easy to find.
Logged

Offline mr.frosty

  • Trade Count: (3)
  • A Real Regular
  • ****
  • Posts: 568
  • Gender: Male
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #4 on: October 26, 2005, 02:03:47 PM »
Quote from: TNrifleman
Gee, that is a tough question. If no gun, then I would carry a good, heavy duty fixed blade knife. this is a weapon and a tool to make other tools. In my part of the country, good water is fairly easy to find.


i think i asked this before where in tenn are you?

i usually carry a knife in the wild anyway i probably would take something to keep hydrated
Logged
" People should say what they mean and mean what they say. Life is too short to be lead down the wrong path."

Offline TNrifleman

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • A Real Regular
  • ****
  • Posts: 542
  • Gender: Male
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #5 on: October 27, 2005, 01:40:57 PM »
frosty,

I live in Sequatchie County about 20 miles from Chattanooga. How about you?
Logged

Offline williamlayton

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15415
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #6 on: October 28, 2005, 09:19:46 PM »
I would carry an already assembled box of a number of things I carried when I left from the hurricane or whenever I go on a road trip.
Includes, a fire source, lantern, knife, water, parka, sweater, pack of cigs or two :roll: , weapon, rope, tie-downs and a variable number of other things, depending on the time of year.
Do not wait until you have need as you will not have time to figger out the needs.
Blessings
Logged
TEXAS, by GOD

Offline willysjeep134

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 362
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #7 on: October 31, 2005, 11:47:53 AM »
It would be a toss up between a knife or a lighter.

I suppose you could try primitive fire making techniques assuming you had a good knife to prepare some materials with. On the other hand, it might be possible to get by without a knife if you had a lighter. If I could make a really good shelter I might opt for the knife and bet on my fire making skills with a bow and drill or possibly with a chunk of flint or quartz. A good shelter might not need a fire, especially if it is still summer

On the other hand, it might be easier to improvise a cutting tool from a chunk of flint or other rock than it would be for me to make a friction fire. A fire somewhat lessens the dependancy on a shelter, but I would be more dependant on a cutting tool to keep my fire fed. Having both would be the best I guess.
Logged
If God wanted plastic stocks he would have made plastic trees.

Offline williamlayton

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15415
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #8 on: November 01, 2005, 01:26:57 AM »
My mother would say "clean underwear!"  :grin:  :oops:  :roll:
Actually--there is no "one" thing that will work. Actually, there is no "one" group of things that will work in every case. Well, er, Actually, there is no way to determine without omnipotence--be prepared.
Blessings
Logged
TEXAS, by GOD

Offline gino

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Avid Poster
  • **
  • Posts: 180
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #9 on: November 01, 2005, 04:01:54 AM »
My first thought would be my BOB (full of tools & goodies!). But if it was just one item I would go with a knife. With a good knife you can make shelter and a lot of other tools. JMHO
gino
Logged

Offline ButlerFord45

  • Moderators
  • Trade Count: (10)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1992
  • Gender: Male
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #10 on: November 01, 2005, 06:36:41 AM »
One day, week, month, year or lifetime, NOTHING will serve more uses than an appropriate medium heavy carbon steel fixed blade knife.  Forget the hi-tech steels, you'll have a hard time resharpening them with rocks you find along the way.  They won't strike sparks when you're trying to make a fire and they are brittle enough that the chance of breaking increases when you start pounding with them.  Everyone should try making a fire with a plough board and a drill, with and without the bow.  It's not hard once you've figured out how, just time consuming.  With the exception of the desert southwest, water isn't that difficult to come by and I'd bet that there are several of us that would be beter off if we didn't have much to eat for a couple of weeks.
My  :money:
Logged
Butler Ford
He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.-Leonardo da Vinci
An armed society is a polite society-Robert A. Heinlein
Only the dead have seen the end of war- Plato
Lord, make my words as sweet as honey
tomorrow I may have to eat them- A lady's sweatshirt

Offline stimpylu32

  • Moderators
  • Trade Count: (67)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6062
  • Gender: Male
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #11 on: November 03, 2005, 03:23:05 PM »
It would be my old skinning knife , the sheath came with a fine honing stone .

I took the stone out and replaced it with a bic lighter and it is always with in reach when ever i head to the woods  :roll:
Logged
Deceased June 17, 2015


:D If i can,t stop it with 6 it can,t be stopped

Offline Atomic Chicken

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Avid Poster
  • **
  • Posts: 111
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #12 on: November 05, 2005, 01:05:15 PM »
Greetings!

I would take a fully charged satellite phone... to call for rescue! :D

Best wishes,
Bawko
Logged
Support your local chicken.

Offline williamlayton

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15415
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #13 on: November 06, 2005, 12:11:03 AM »
BF hit it on the head, IF you only have one thing, and, you ignored your mothers advice on the clean underwear.
Blessings
Logged
TEXAS, by GOD

Offline kgillard

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 84
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #14 on: January 01, 2006, 08:52:09 AM »
There's no question as to what I would bring if I could have one and only one thing...my Puma Whitehunter fixed blade knife!

Karl
Logged
T/C Encore: .375 H&H Mag w/Leupold 3-9x40 and KDF Slimline Muzzlebrake, .243 Win, .20 ga, and 209x50 w/Leupold 3-9x40.
kgillard@cox-internet.com

Offline Dusty Miller

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2271
  • Gender: Male
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #15 on: January 01, 2006, 08:22:57 PM »
Hey, I ain't going into the woods for more than 5 minutes without toilet paper!! :grin:
Logged
When seconds mean life or death, the police are only minutes away!

Offline jbtazgrabber

  • Trade Count: (20)
  • A Real Regular
  • ****
  • Posts: 749
ff
« Reply #16 on: January 02, 2006, 06:17:17 AM »
ok id like to take my 50 # backpack with tent sleeping bag and all the extras.......but in real life????i have a small like fanny pack 4 like bycycles use.....it has 2 small conpartments one on each side of a waterbottle holder. i carry a mini mag light,pen knive,butane lighter,wraped with trot line,folding saw,sharping stone,rain ponco,soler blanket tolit paper ,pencil wraped with duct tape,compas,magnisium  fire starter,fish hooks ,small piece off ulumiun foil,bread twistie tie.and 2 hooks,a handwarmer,and a bandaid or 2.a small 2 in pair of chanell lock pliers, a relighting birthday candle......thats on one side the other i carry a deer drag,3 extra shotgun primers 1 shot charge and a 50 cal sabot with a bullet..............this dont weigh very much at all but i dont go to the woods without it......no matter what.......jb
Logged

Offline victorcharlie

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3573
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #17 on: January 02, 2006, 06:30:12 AM »
A good pair of boots! :)
Logged
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue."
Barry Goldwater

Offline williamlayton

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15415
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #18 on: January 06, 2006, 03:30:50 PM »
Been Chewing on this.
A Gun.
Water can be found.
weapon and powder from a bullet=fire.
Flint can make a fine knife.
rocks will make a hammer.
YUP! a weapon, I might be able to get a knife with a weapon.  :twisted:
Blessings
Logged
TEXAS, by GOD

Offline Dee

  • Trade Count: (2)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 23870
  • Gender: Male
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #19 on: February 10, 2006, 12:58:19 PM »
A good fixed blade knife. By the way. A bic in very cold weather is hopeless. Make mine a zippo. Even gasoline will burn in it in a pinch and you can lay it under the twigs of your fire until they are burning good.
Logged
You may all go to hell, I will go to Texas. Davy Crockett

Offline bullet maker

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • A Real Regular
  • ****
  • Posts: 979
  • Gender: Male
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #20 on: February 20, 2006, 04:02:45 AM »
If I could only take one item in the woods, It would be a single blade axe.
The type with a flat head on one side, so that I could use it to split fire wood. With an axe, you can build you shelter, chop you firewood to stay warm, and they are easy to sharpen with sand rock. If you are warm and have a shelter from the cold, you can survive.
   On the history channel about 2 months ago, they had a gentlemen that spent 40 odd years in Canada, with only his rifle, axe, knife and a bow saw. I whished I had recorded that program, it was one of the most interesting survival programs I had ever seen. Perhaps, you saw it also. Anyhow he built a log cabin, window frames, door, locks for the door, etc all with the equipment I described above. He also has an old movie camera with him, and he recorded his entire story with this. When he returned to civilization, he donated the film to the Canada`s museum of history? I think, and after he died, they put his cabin on the National Historic Registure, for all to see.
   If anybody else seen this program, it was very interesting, and I may have got some of it mixed up, but that was the jest of the program.

bullet maker :D
Logged
I like to make bullets, handload, shooting of all types, hunting, fishing, taking pictures, reading, grandchildren, 4 wheeling, eating out often.

Offline Turtle

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Avid Poster
  • **
  • Posts: 112
If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #21 on: March 01, 2006, 02:54:51 AM »
From what you're describing that sounds like the movie about Dick Proenneke.  He went to Twin Lakes Alaska in the spring of 1968 (before it was a National Forest) built a cabin and lived there until 2002 I believe.
Logged

Offline slink

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Avid Poster
  • **
  • Posts: 129
some form of water treatment, filter, straw, pills.
« Reply #22 on: April 18, 2006, 01:31:50 PM »
You'll have to drink water, or you'll die in 3 days. I can improvise the only other things likely to be needed (ie, protection from the elements and bugs), assuming that I have normal clothes to stand in.  I could boil the water, too, if need be, but obtaining-making containers is a big PITA.  In really bad bug country, I'd take enough bug-netting to cover me completely, instead of the water treatment.  

It's not hard to make a fire with a fire-bow, using shoestrings and local wood.  It's also easy to make a debris hut, using bark, pitch, clay, woven grass or reed mats, and playing with the pitch of the roof to make it shed water.  A week is nothing, in mild weather. You can easily do completely without food for a week of just lying around.  Plenty have gone a full month or more without eating at all.


Wth would you need all the tools FOR, for a mere week of lying around, anyway? You can find or break off branches for shelter-firewood. It isn't like you have to be constantly on the move. You oughta try keeping bugs off of you with nothing but a knife or an axe sometime!.  :-)  Smoke is as irritating to you as it is the bugs, and it floats with the wind, just like the skeeters do. Some species of skeeters can't fly more than 10 ft or so above the ground, and the breezes tend to be more active above the ground, so sometimes you can sleep relatively bugfree in a tree-platform.
Logged
Deactivated 04-22-06 for rules violations after repeated warnings.

Offline jdt48653

  • Trade Count: (1)
  • Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 372
  • walk softly and carry a 264
Re: If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #23 on: August 12, 2006, 02:54:46 PM »
bullet maker,the name of that film was (alone in the wilderness)turtle is correct.
you can get that video from p.b.s.
Logged

Offline Plainsman

  • Trade Count: (5)
  • Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 302
  • Gender: Male
Re: If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #24 on: August 16, 2006, 03:08:28 PM »
After much thought...Knowing that it would only be one week, I'd have to say an MFS (Magnesium Fire Starter).  Given one week, I can make/scrounge enough to get a comfortable shelter if it rains/blows.  A knife would be my second choice in this scenario.  IF the time was unknown, then a knife would be #1.  Another choice that would be in the top three would be a POT.  With a pot, water can be boiled, food cooked, etc.  It's tough to make water containers that can take boiling in the wild, unless you have a lot of time and some knowledge!  Skins, clay, bark, etc. can be used to make those containers, in the long run!

Yep, an MFS would be my choice today!
Logged
Plainsman :)

plainsmanscabin@yahoo.com

"Aim small, miss small!"

Offline Dee

  • Trade Count: (2)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 23870
  • Gender: Male
Re: If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #25 on: August 16, 2006, 03:21:30 PM »
After rethinking my first choice (a fixed blade knife) I am re-nigging and saying a 24-7 Taco Bell. All I would have to do then to meet all my needs would be to RUN FOR THE BORDER ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Logged
You may all go to hell, I will go to Texas. Davy Crockett

Offline S.S.

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2840
Re: If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #26 on: August 28, 2006, 09:31:48 AM »
If I knew I would only be there a week,
Sorry folks, But I would take my WIFE !!!
Very warm and Entertaining... Not gonna starve in a week.
I have made fire with a bow and drill.
Shoestrings can be used for all sorts of things..
Deadfall traps can be made with no tools at all.
A hard thrown rock or what we used to call
Whoopin' Sticks will easily kill birds or rabbits.
(a broken off tree branch an inch and a half or so in diameter
and about a foot and a half long)
A fractured stone chip can skin what you catch.
a lean-to shelter can be made with no tools also..
Break a tree climbing vine such as a Wild grape or
Muscadine and it will drain water for hours and sometimes
days depending on the diameter of it. I have drank it on many
occasions and am still here so I guess it is oK.
So Yep' It would be my wife !
Logged
Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit
"A wise man does not pee against the wind".

Offline Dee

  • Trade Count: (2)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 23870
  • Gender: Male
Re: If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #27 on: August 28, 2006, 10:49:31 AM »
She MUST be standing behind you while your answering this question. ::)
Logged
You may all go to hell, I will go to Texas. Davy Crockett

Offline S.S.

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2840
Re: If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #28 on: August 30, 2006, 09:52:14 AM »
Actually Not...
We Do everything Together...
She is a Country Girl and the term
"Ain't skeered" applies to her completely.
She has broken more bones doing stupid
things than I have  ;D People she knows still talk
about how badly she whipped a boy in high school!
Tough but very comfortable to have around !
My answer stands,
I would take my Wife !
Logged
Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit
"A wise man does not pee against the wind".

Offline Dee

  • Trade Count: (2)
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 23870
  • Gender: Male
Re: If You Could Only Take One Thing With You?
« Reply #29 on: August 30, 2006, 01:38:08 PM »
Well, ok I guess I'll have to accept that as the truth. But, one more question. Have ya'll been married long? ;)
Logged
You may all go to hell, I will go to Texas. Davy Crockett
Pages: [1] 2   Go Up
« previous next »