After watching cast away I was wondering, if I was stranded could I start a fire?

Yes, with a lighter. But I've never tried with 2 sticks. I get you rub them together and that they need to be dry but is it just rub rub rub or is there something special I need to know.

I would imagine I could build a shelter, raft and hunt for food but without fire whats the point?

So do you think you could survive?

 

Yes. But going insane through the lack of human interaction would be the killer

 

I think I could.

I'd try my utmost to survive. Most of us just do, when it's a question of survival. The issue is when there's always that safety net ready to support you before you get into the survival mode. Such safety net provision refrains you from developing your own survival mechanisms.

There is a stubborn number that just wouldn't befriend the coconuts until they die. Well, they will die sooner than later. The ones ready to make friends with coconuts will survive for longer.

<f1 mode on> Coconuts are more reliable than humans, anyway. </off>

 

I think it depends on the type of wood.... plus I think you need some sort of very light wood chip/shavings/filings which is what catches fire, not the actual sticks you use.

But no, I don't think I could start a fire.... I would hope that there would be at least fruit and coconuts to live off for a week or 2 until someone rescues me!

 

The way that is written it sounds like you want to set fire to your shelter and your raft

 

I'm sort of the reverse: leave me stranded alone somewhere in a jungle/forest/desert island and I'll sort myself out. Building stuff, making fires and gutting animals for food is something I can do. Fire is a hard one but with the right wood and some dry grass I wouldn't see it as impossible (used to try and set fire to grass with flint when I was a kid).

But stick me alone in a city or town in what is normal life and I fall apart. Just basic living I just can't seem to manage without help: tax returns, finances, investments, finding a decent job or managing a business off my own back, maintaining the house, keeping relations/partners happy, I can never do a supermarket shop without forgetting somthing, I can't remember passwords, pin numbers, phone numbers, hell I even forget my next door neighbour's name.

 

Well, one could take a laptop and a wifi stick there, and talk to invisible friends and enemies on Scoobynet- job done.

BTW, to whosoever numptie it may concern, you don't essentially need two pieces of wooden twigs to start a fire. You can do that with two frikking stones, if you like. That's what our forefathers did; in stone age. Of course, you'd need some wood/dry leaves/coconut hair etc. to make use of that spark you created by hitting one stone to another stone. Then fire will take off.

Once all that sorted, you cook your dead rats on fire and then have dinner near the logfire with your coconut.

 

I usey a flint and steel along with some cotton wool soaked in vaseline. Never failed me yet.

Without this - i.e in an emergency situation - its going to be a classic bow fire drill. But even then you need materials esp some para cord or shoe laces and ideally a knife for carving too.

 

Will you all be calling your coconuts Wilson? What if you hate coconuts and raw fish.. Looks like I'll be a gonner.

 

Number one is water.Everything else is secondary.
You will go down hill very fast & die without water.

 

It's fairly easy to do. I was sent on one of those godawful "team building" weeks with work ages ago. Luckily it was an outdoors thing and one day was with an ex-SAS /Ray Mears type. He taught us about five different ways to start a fire from materials around us. Was actually very good fun. That and shelter building etc.

Other few days were crap though but hotel was very good and had an excellent Scotch selection.

 

I could do with losing the same amount of beef that hanks did.

 

Put a match in your wallet!

Les

 

Yiou said what I was more or less thinking, forget taking shoelaces and knives... take a bloody lighter

 

I have wondered what would happen if Earth took a direct hit from a massive coronal mass ejection and electo-magnetic pulse from the sun. Those that survived the massive radiation will find than anything that uses electricity would no longer work and we'd be thrown back to the stone age.

 

...Or wales as it is otherwise known...

I think Id become a veggie, even if the place was coming down with fish and cows.
Salads and making fresh water (as long as I could find a leaf or polythene sheet washed up along with my good self anyway). Dunno if I could live without my semi regular takeaway though.

 

Looking forward to performing one of my own later.

 

Of course, I have a couple of lighters, some waterproof matches etc. But this thread is about getting fire going with nothing - which in reality can be quite hard to do.

 

Sundance Solar Spark Lighter

Simples!

mb

 

Shame you can't use it when you need it most, ie at dusk or night time.

 

I'd be pretty screwed in a jungle. Barely able to put a shelf up so if I ever needed to build a hut I'd be in trouble.

 

You'd have a lot of time to get it right though! I've done it a few times and its not easy.

Done a fair bit military training and quite fit so hopefully that would help. I did eat deadly nightshade aged 18 months old though so I may not be the most useful forager.

 

Sounds like you need to to watch the new J.J Abrams sky show 'Revolution' thats deals with this exact issue

http://sky1.sky.com/revolution/jj-ab...heads-to-sky-1

 

should be pretty good if Lost is anything to go by. Was pretty hooked on that one.