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Saturday, March 14, 2015

Man saved during Disaster thanks to his Knife!


Argentine carpenter Ricardo Joung was hired by the climber’s club of Bariloche to build a mountain shelter in Cerro Plataforma. The wildfire affecting El Turbio site for several weeks now trapped him and Ricardo went missing for 20 days. He was presumed dead. A rockslide had also fallen on the construction site where he was working. There was little hope of finding him alive until a rescue helicopter found him and sent a team to his rescue.
Quick thinking saved Mr. Joung's life as he signaled the chopper pilot using the blade of his knife. The pilot so the knife’s reflection and alerted the rescue personnel on the ground who later found Mr. Joung, dehydrated and with a wounded leg, but otherwise very much alive and in good health.

Lesson of the day Folks! Black knives may look cool and make sense when taking down sentries in enemy territory, but for a survival knife, get a polished finished blade. Its too bad that most knives offered these days have a dark, textured finish.
A shiny blade can be used for signaling as seen in this recent, real-world incident. It is also much easier to wipe clean. This is important when using the knife to prepare food so as to avoid food contamination, which happens very frequently, leading to food poisoning. This is why a knife intended to be used in the kitchen has a fine stain or mirror polish finish. A polished blade also offers less area for dirt and humidity to hold on to, rusting and pitting the blade.
If you’re looking for a real survival knife, consider these:


The Falkniven A1 is one of the best survival knives, highly coveted by military personnel that want the best.

Ontario 7500 Blackbird SK-5, great 154 CM stainless steel, particularly well-suited for bushcraft.

For a large survival knife, the classic Cold Steel Trailemaster is hard to beat and currently on sale at a 50% discount, making it a pretty good deal.
FerFAL
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've got a Blackbird SK-5 as my hiking knife; it's solidly built, uses a good stainless steel, and has a very non-threatening utilitarian design. There are plenty of comparable knives around, but most of them are carbon steels until you get into a higher pricerange.

The sheath it comes with is tough and quite secure, but not the quickest. I can easily draw and resheath my fixed blade benchmade Bone Collector single-handed; not so for the SK-5. However, if I fell down a mountainside, I'd be more confident in the SK-5 still being where it should afterwards...

Burke said...

How about a simple Buck 119? Where can you get more bang for your "buck"? About $60.00 at Walmart with a good sheath. And if it's lost or stolen, it's not that expensive to replace.