Survival skillsSurvival skills are techniques used to sustain life in any type of natural environment or built environment. These techniques are meant to provide basic necessities for human life, including water, food, and shelter. Survival skills also support proper knowledge and interactions with animals and plants to promote the sustaining of life over time. Survival skills are basic ideas and abilities that ancient people invented and passed down for thousands of years. Today, survival skills are often associated with surviving in a disaster situation.
Fire strikerA fire striker is a piece of carbon steel from which sparks are struck by the sharp edge of flint, chert or similar rock. It is a specific tool used in fire making. Before the invention of matches, percussion fire making was often used to start fires. Before the advent of steel, a variety of iron pyrite or marcasite was used with flint and other stones to produce a high-temperature spark that could be used to create fire. There are indications that the Iceman, also known as Ötzi, may have used iron pyrite to make fire.
TinderboxA tinderbox, or patch box, is a container made of wood or metal containing flint, firesteel, and tinder (typically charcloth, but possibly a small quantity of dry, finely divided fibrous matter such as hemp), used together to help kindle a fire. A tinderbox may also contain sulfur-tipped matches. Tinderboxes fell out of general usage when friction matches were invented. Throughout prehistoric Europe flint and iron pyrites (commonly known as fool's gold) were struck against one another in order to create a spark for firelighting.
MatchA match is a tool for starting a fire. Typically, matches are made of small wooden sticks or stiff paper. One end is coated with a material that can be ignited by friction generated by striking the match against a suitable surface. Wooden matches are packaged in matchboxes, and paper matches are partially cut into rows and stapled into matchbooks. The coated end of a match, known as the match "head", consists of a bead of active ingredients and binder, often colored for easier inspection.
LighterA lighter is a portable device which creates a controlled flame, and can be used to ignite a variety of flammable items, such as cigarettes, butane gas, fireworks, candles or campfires. A lighter typically consists of a metal or plastic container filled with a flammable liquid, a compressed flammable gas and in rarer cases a flammable solid i.e. rope in a trench lighter, a means of ignition to produce the flame, and some provision for extinguishing the flame or merely controlling it to such a degree that the user may extinguish it with their breath.
PrehistoryPrehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared 5,000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century.
Fire pistonA fire piston, sometimes called a fire syringe or a slam rod fire starter, is a device of ancient Southeast Asian origin which is used to kindle fire. In Malay it is called "gobek api" . It uses the principle of the heating of a gas (in this case air) by rapid and adiabatic compression to ignite a piece of tinder, which is then used to set light to kindling. A fire piston consists of a hollow cylinder sealed at one end and open at the other. Sizes range in length from 3 to 6 inches (7.5 to 15 cm) with a bore about 0.
Control of fire by early humansThe control of fire by early humans was a critical technology enabling the evolution of humans. Fire provided a source of warmth and lighting, protection from predators (especially at night), a way to create more advanced hunting tools, and a method for cooking food. These cultural advances allowed human geographic dispersal, cultural innovations, and changes to diet and behavior. Additionally, creating fire allowed human activity to continue into the dark and colder hours of the evening.
FerroceriumFerrocerium (also known in Europe as Auermetall) is a synthetic pyrophoric alloy of mischmetal (cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, other trace lanthanides and some iron – about 95% lanthanides and 5% iron) hardened by blending in oxides of iron and/or magnesium. When struck with a harder material, the mixture produces hot sparks that can reach temperatures of when rapidly oxidized by the process of striking the rod. Striking both scrapes fragments off, exposing them to the oxygen in the air, and easily ignites them by friction heat due to cerium's remarkably low ignition temperature of between .
FlintFlint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fires. Flint occurs chiefly as nodules and masses in sedimentary rocks, such as chalks and limestones. Inside the nodule, flint is usually dark grey or black, green, white, or brown in colour, and has a glassy or waxy appearance.
