Prepare: Flick your Bic

Check your pockets, purse, car, etc. Do you have a way to make fire? You know, like a camp fire, or light a candle, or some other way to make heat and light without batteries, electric this or that.

Go back 30, 40 or 50 years ago. Almost everyone carried some form of fire making capability either matches or a lighter. It was standard equipment for daily living.

Why?

Well, certainly, years ago, many more people smoked and needed a way to light their tobacco. But people used to carry fire around because it was normal and expected.

I remember growing up and my parents had a plethora of firemaking equipment about the house. A huge basket of paper matches, king sized boxes of safety matches, my father had no fewer than a half dozen Zippo type lighters with company logos and suitable for lighting the boss's cigar at a moment's notice.

My spouse carries a lighter. When they pull it out, they get the immediate comment:

"Do you smoke?" - while my better has never had a cigarette in their life. Why the lighter? Because it comes in handy so often. To light candles at a birthday party, to provide light in a pinch, etc. However, the general public has a tendancy to think a lighter or book of matches is akin to carrying around a vial of plague.

Today's family is more likely to only have one of those giant butane lighters for the outdoor grill and for lighting decorative candles around the house. You know, those foot long fire sticks. You can't carry that around in the back pocket or purse.

Paper matches, once the most common advertising item, is a thing of the past. Restaurants and bars no longer hand them out as they might be miscontrued that they advocate smoking in spite of the fact that so many people collected match books as a souvenir. What do they take now?

Matches are not often found in the home as parents worry that kids may get a hold of them and burn down the house.

I pick up a three pack of butane lighters at least once a year and keep them here and there. There are three in my emergency bag, another three in the kitchen cabinet and some more about. I don't keep them anywhere my kids can get them. I also have numerous boxes of safety matches, the big ones, in plastic bags, for emergencies.

I have a drawer full of those jumbo butane sticks, but they are useless outside of the house.

So why fire? What you are going to do if the SHTF and you are on foot? No fire and cold weather means death. How are you going to light candles or see in the dark with a burned out flashlight? How will you light that Sterno can to heat food?

There are lots of uses for fire on demand. And your survival kit demands that you have mulitple ways to make fire. So don't overlook the need for matches or lighters or dismiss them in favor or more primative firemaking capability.