Urban Survival Tools - Knives re-visited

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received the following comment: "Anonymous said.....Hey Urban Survival Skills. Thanks for the education. Do you have a Survival Knife recommendation? If so you can write about it on this web site?"

I have written an earlier post on tactical folding knives, you can see it here. In that post I favor the Columbia River Knife and Tool products, because they are both well made and inexpensive. I own several of them. I own one Benchmade tactical folder as well.

However, the knives I mostly carry each and every day are fixed blade knives. The advantage of fixed blades knifes are they are usually stronger, available for one handed use, and you eliminate the opening the blade sequence which often leads to sliced fingers. Sliced fingers in a Survival environment may mean infection which most of us could not afford with reduced available medical services and anti-biotics.

I carry a couple of custom fixed blades. For off the shelf fixed blades knives, I would recommend two types: one with a small, say 2.5 to 3 inch blade used primarily as a utility knife and a longer 5 to 7.5 inch blade to be used as a field knive.

Ontario Knives, makes a RAT-3 knife, 3 inch fixed blade, full tang, micarta handles with suits my needs. Another choice would be the Gerber LMF-II Infantry fixed blade. I have seen the Gerber LMF-II but have never used one.

For the larger knife I have both a SOG Specialty Knives SEAL Pup Elite, with a 4.85 inch blade, which is just a hair too short as a primary field knife especially when you carry a smaller fixed blade. My primary field knife is the excellent SOG Specialty Knives Agency Hardcase, which is designed like a Randall Model 1 Fighting Knife and has a 7.5 inch blade. Both SOG knives use AUS8 Stainless steel for the blades.

You can see these knives by clicking here