Knives Illustrated – August 2019

SURVIVAL CORE 4

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY EJ SNYDER

EDGE OFSURVIVAL

HOW YOUR KNIFE FACTORS IN TO THE ESSENTIALS OF SURVIVAL

K

nives have always played

a key role in survival,

especially when you’re

talking about the

Core 4 priority survival tasks.

These tasks are shelter/security,

fi re, water, and food.

You need a good edged tool to help

you with all of these tasks, and the

survival knife is the most popular and

desired choice to handle the job. Even

ancient humans knew this was true,

as they quickly saw a need to fi nd a

tool, other than their bare hands, to

make essential survival tasks easier.

These ancient humans broke rocks

into sharp cutting tools, while some

even used objects like shells to help

do the work.

Lucky for you modern cavemen

and women, you have much better

tools to complete these tasks

better, faster, and more efficiently.

The choice of edged tool varies by

each user and their preference, but

the Core 4 tasks do not change.

So, let’s look at the Core 4 and

see how the knife has played a

key role when you need it most,

as knives can definitely make

surviving in the wild a bit easier,

especially when you are on the

Edge of Survival.

Shelter/Security

One of the fi rst things I do when I

am thrown into a survival situation

is get my security up.

Right: A featherstick

can be very useful in

fire building.

80 KNIVES ILLUSTRATED • JULY/AUGUST 2019 knivesillustrated.com