98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive

by Cody Lundin

  Safety matches are such that you actually need the striker on the box to get them to light. When the manufacturer says, “strike on the box,” they mean it. Not even various grits of sandpaper will work. These are unacceptable in survival situations, as they limit you as to where you can strike your match to create fire.

  The head of a safety match, invented in Sweden in 1855, contains sulfur and oxidizing agents such as potassium chlorate along with powdered glass, fillers, coloring, and a glue/starch binder. Oxidizing agents are chemicals that take electrons from other chemicals and are necessary to keep a flame lit. The striking surface on a box of safety matches contains red phosphorus (formed by exposing explosive white phosphorus to sunlight or heating it under pressure to above 527°F [275°C]) powdered glass, filler, and binder.

  Striking a match initiates a chemical reaction. When a safety match is struck, the friction caused by glass powder rubbing together produces enough heat to cause a small amount of red phosphorus on the box striker to transform into white phosphorus vapor, which catches fire in the air. This tiny amount of heat generates a reaction that uses the potassium chlorate to produce oxygen gas. The heat and oxygen gas then cause the sulfur to burst into flame, catching the wood of the match on fire. In other words, the oxidizing agent on the match head is ignited only when struck on the specially prepared combustible striker on the side of the box.

  The heads of strike-anywhere matches contain phosphorus sulfide P4S3, oxidizing agents, powdered glass for friction, and a glue binder. Since the oxidizing agent and red phosphorus are in the same package, these matches can be struck on damn near anything and are not dependent on the box striker. Because of their potential fire hazard, strike-anywhere matches are prohibited on commercial flights and illegal in many countries.

  One strike-anywhere match, burned clear through, is the equivalent of a BTU, which is the amount of heat required to bring one pint of water up 1°F (-17°C). The average human body generates 300 BTUs per hour in metabolic heat. This means that your body gives off more warmth every hour than the equivalent of an entire box of matches. In cold weather, trapping this heat with insulative clothing helps ward off hypothermia.

  The chemical components in match heads are highly volatile and degrade over time. Even when stored within airtight containers, the heads still deteriorate. Therefore, you must rotate the matches in your survival kit, ideally every year, two years at the most. If you live in an unusually humid or moist climate, you may need to rotate them more frequently.

  The age of a match is also important. If you compare old matches to new ones, which is about as thrilling as watching worms mate, you’ll see that the white or blue tips have noticeably degraded. New tips will be bright white or blue; old ones will be pockmarked and faded. Old matches are much harder to light, if they light at all. They typically sputter, smoke, and put themselves out after a few striking attempts. Rotate your matches and this won’t happen.

  After buying matches, paw through the box, picking the ones with the biggest, fattest heads and most muscular bodies. (Sounds like some folks I know at the gym.) This is anal-retentive but worth it. Matches are not lovingly created by hand by dozens of Old World craftsmen. They’re churned out by the millions with little regard as to how they look when they come out. Open a box and see for yourself. Some are a sorry excuse for a match, and look more like a punk-rock toothpick.

  After you pick the winners, and there are more winners than you’re going to carry in your match safe, put them by the stove and break out the old candles. Melting down candles and coating your matches with paraffin creates a match with a longer burn time and a larger flame. The more heat you have when lighting a fire, the more you can get away with using inferior or damp fuels. Coat the entire match, a few at a time, using something other than grandma’s prized cookware. While this doesn’t truly make the match waterproof, it does help it repel moisture. Melted paraffin is combustible, so be careful and use a double boiler if necessary. After a few seconds, remove the little guys with tweezers and dry them head up, their bases stuck in a piece of Styrofoam or other suitable substance to keep their heads free from drips. Big, gnarly globs of wax on a match tip may put it out when being struck, or worse, prevent the match from striking at all. I’ve coated matches once, twice, three times a lady. Anything more than once in the wax seems to be overkill (no pun intended.)

  How to Coat Your Matches with Paraffin Wax

  Choosing the best matches.

  Removing matches from liquid paraffin wax.

  Drying coated matches “head-up.”

  Placing finished matches in match safe.

  A plain, strike-anywhere kitchen match in a windless environment has a burn time of approximately 30 seconds. Coat it with wax and the burn time increases to nearly 60 seconds. Wax-coated matches carried in a hot environment have the drawback of melting to each other. Regardless of this, I feel the pros far outweigh the cons.

  After you’ve waxed your matches, put them into a match safe. Pack in as many as you can, but not to the point where they can’t be removed smoothly when needed. It’s easy to get greedy, cramming so many matches into your safe that you’ll need a pair of pliers to get them out. This turns the task of obtaining a match into a fine-motor skill, which we know should be avoided. To remove a match, sharply strike the top of the match safe (cover off) into the palm of your hand. This avoids littering the ground with precious fire starters. If you’ve packed the right amount, this action will usually dislodge one or two from the bunch. If matches are packed too loosely and rattle around as you hike, over time their heads will start to wear down. This is especially true of unwaxed matches. Carrying loose matches while spacing out the need to rotate your stock is a great way to create toothpicks.

  Match safes consolidate matches for greater visibility. They also keep matches waterproof, prevent breakage, allow them to float, and protect them from abrasion, wear, and oxygen degradation. Match safes also prevent against a lesser-known occurrence. Every year, seven Canadians die of strike-anywhere matches striking anywhere. Some dude with loose matches in his pocket busts a few moves to impress a babe and before he knows it, his clothing is on fire. Burn enough of the body’s largest organ—the skin—and you’re vapor. This is a Canadian statistic, so the incident rate is probably higher in the United States. Your match safe should be obnoxiously visible. For God’s sake, don’t buy one that’s camouflaged. They look hip on the bar next to the cheap can of beer but have no place in the field.

  How can you tell if your match safe is waterproof? Unfortunately, you have to buy the safe, throw in a match, and submerge it in a glass of water for 30 minutes or so. If your match is dry, it works. Use rubber cement to glue a piece of 400- or 600-grit sandpaper to the bottom of the safe, creating a striking surface. Some people think it’s cool to put the striking surface on the inside of the match safe’s cap in order to keep it dry. Unless you point the match heads south of the cap, friction could cause one of them to ignite in a closed container with limited oxygen. In other words, you’ve made your own pipe bomb, minus the pipe. Choose a match safe that’s easy to open with cold hands or when wearing heavy gloves or mittens.

  There are several specialty matches on the market, including varieties of wind and waterproof, waterproof and paper. Most cost $1.50 or more per box for 20 matches. All of the ones I’ve checked out must be struck on the box. In other words, if you follow my recommendation of putting your matches in a match safe, you’ll need to remove the striker from the box and cart it along with the matches. If you choose to put the striker in the match safe itself, make sure no match heads come into contact with it and consider the fact that you’ve limited your striking options to that particular striking insert. Imagine having dozens of matches and not being able to light any of them because you forgot to bring along a tiny piece of striker material.

  While impressive at first, after a few seconds most windproof and waterproof matches become as hot as the sex drive of a 90-year-ol
d man. Most specialty matches are flat-out anemic looking, causing one to wonder when the manufacturers are going to get a clue and beef up the size of their product. One specialty match that’s worth checking out is the REI (Recreational Equipment Incorporated) Storm Match. The Storm Match is oversized, even larger than my beloved strike-anywhere kitchen match, and burns like a blowtorch. The box says for outside use only, and they aren’t kidding. I struck several indoors and felt similar to what one might feel sniffing lacquer thinner. Once lit, this little beauty can be quickly plunged in and out of water, and more times than not will relight itself and continue burning. Impressive. They are marginally waterproof and can easily handle a few minutes in the drink and still light. Longer soakings require the match to be carefully dried out, as the match head itself starts to become mushy, although this is true of most matches under such conditions. Drawbacks to the Storm Match include the fact it must be struck on the box or on one of the striking inserts included. The match is longer than conventional matches, requiring it be cut down to fit into a traditional match safe. The Storm Match does have its virtues, but the choice is yours. You might consider carrying a few of them along with your strike-anywhere matches.

  Disposable butane lighter

  (brightly colored, nonopaque,

  adjustable flame, non-childproof):

  Super-fast flame from the field to

  the heavy-metal concert tribute.

  Although most folks consider lighters as trappings of a modern society, the concepts by which they operate—flint, steel, and fuel—have been around cross-culturally for thousands of years.

  Lighters, like anything mechanical, are prone to breaking or in some way screwing up. The more moving parts, the greater the chance for error. Yet when they work, they produce our much sought-after flame in one easy-to-do movement. In essence, lighters are fairly simple. One of their inherent beauties is their ability to produce flame with one hand, a gross-motor skill requiring a minimum amount of coordination and physical dexterity. Even when the butane supply is spent or lost, in the hands of a knowledgeable person sparks produced from the striker wheel can be used to create fire, although this is not an option with a piezoelectric type. While lighters are not exactly waterproof, quickly running the striker wheel several times across a flat, nonslick surface should produce enough heat to dry out the element, thereby putting you back in business. Butane lighters will not work if they become cold. Try it yourself. Take your lighter, throw it in the freezer for a couple of hours and you tell me. It doesn’t take much to warm the little guy up, but it would suck to find this quirk out in the middle of a snowstorm.

  All lighters are not created equal, as there are several on the market, each possessing its own unique attributes. What every good survivor wants is radiant flame—good old-fashioned flames in the campfire. It is an art to take a small amount of heat, a spark or an ember, and baby it into the flame most of us are so familiar with. I love tools that provide radiant flame right off the bat. Matches and lighters tend to do this. For this reason I shy away from fancier windproof lighters that produce heat but no flame. I also shy away from paying 40 bucks for a lighter.

  Zippo-brand lighters are quaint, but I don’t like them for emergency field applications. Their main advantage is hands-free operation. Once you spin the striker wheel and ignite the fuel, you can set the lighter down and it will continue to burn. On the flip side, they are heavy, they smell, and they require too much fiddling. Zippos remind me of an old car. You have to kick the tires a few times to see if they’ll go down the road. While I deeply respect a piece of gear that can be reused, thus saving our landfills from more junk, the biggest reason I dislike Zippos for emergency use is the fact that you have to keep refilling them with lighter fluid. In Arizona, for example, a full Zippo can completely lose its fluid to evaporation in a few days. To make matters worse, the lighter has no visible fuel supply. There are two ways to check if a Zippo has lighter fluid. The first involves trying it out. It should light up by the third try or better. The second method is unique to the Zippo. If it smells like a gasoline-soaked rag behind the seat of a seldom-used 1953 farm truck, it has fluid. How much fluid, God only knows. (I’m not a Zippo hater. The Harley-Davidson collector series is too cool.) However, unless you’re willing to babysit and frequently check its fuel level, in my opinion, this lighter has no place in your survival kit.

  The average Bic lighter contains 61 minutes of flame with another 90 seconds of residual popping, small blue flame. Don’t operate butane lighters for longer than 30 seconds. If you do, the continuous heat will fry out the element. My lighter experiment took several hours to perform, and involved timing the flame, letting the lighter cool down, then timing the flame again. (It was a long night and gives you some insight into my social life.) While the Bic brand is a quality lighter as far as disposables go, I don’t carry them. The main reason I don’t is that they lack the option for creating an adjustable flame. In other words, you can’t make the flame any bigger.

  I carry the flatter profile, no-brand lighters for the following reasons. The slimmer profile fits more easily into my kit, especially my mini-kit, which is illustrated later. These lighters typically have the adjustable-flame option and come in a variety of bright colors with nonopaque bodies, so you can see the butane supply within. Many outdoor stores sell this type of lighter right next to the cash register. Try out every brightly colored one they have, looking for the flame that looks like a blowtorch while on the “high” setting. When the chips are down, it’s nice to have the option of creating a lot of heat in order to light fire with inferior or damp tinder and kindling. If you can’t high grade the best of the bunch from the store, try the following. First, temporarily remove the metal shield from around the mouth of the lighter to expose a small wheel. (Buy the lighter first!) This wheel has many little cogs on its perimeter, and looks much like the tiny gear it is. By turning it gently one way, you can influence how much butane is released, thereby affecting the flame’s height. If you’re greedy and turn the wheel too much, it won’t light, so go easy on the modification. Using this method, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to replace the metal shield, so spend the time looking for the winner that needs no modification.

  Add brightly colored tape to the middle of the lighter to increase its visibility while leaving the top and bottom untaped to allow for visual inspection of the butane level. Don’t count on being able to perform the shake-and-listen routine to see if it still has fluid.

  If your lighter is childproof, give it to a child to de-childproof it. Manufacturers have crippled the lighter’s simple, gross-motor operation, causing you to have to hop on one foot and sing a song to get flame. I’m aware of three styles of childproofing and all are fairly easy to disable. An 11-year-old kid showed me how.

  Aside from visual inspections before each trip to check the fuel level, operate the striker wheel every few months to see if it still lights. Once you’ve found the lighter of your dreams, put it in your survival kit and don’t mess with it. In all the years I’ve carried lighters, I’ve had only two that for some reason lost their butane. In both cases, I wouldn’t have known had I not left the bottom untaped to allow for visual inspections. Even in arid climates, lighters corrode around their tops. This is typically just surface corrosion, but why take chances since we are dealing with a mechanical object. If you live in the Northwest or other humid places, you might have to rotate lighters more frequently than I do. Regardless, even if your lighter looks like it’s in shipshape, retire and replace it with a new one after a few years.

  Lighters can act like small bombs when they are exposed to extreme heat sources like sparks. Two deaths I know of regarding rogue lighters involved separate individuals who both happened to be welding at the time. The moral of the story is, for God’s sake don’t weld with a lighter in your pocket. While the little buggers can be heat sensitive, they’ve ridden for years in the glove box of my black, non-air-conditioned Jeep with no troubl
e. Lighters are cheap, multi-use, easy to operate, lightweight, commonly available, and compact. While not a panacea for all problems, they provide a fairly reliable way to instantly create fire, but, like any tool, use them with a healthy amount of respect and common sense.

  Magnesium-block fire starter

  with hacksaw blade striker:

  Getting the most from your

  5,400-degree wonder tool.

  Fire is one hot commodity and should be studied inside and out, as it creates, sustains, and transmutes, providing incredible power and options for the survivor. There’s a reason it’s one of the four sacred elements. Of all the multiuse tools available, virtually none eclipse the adaptability and usefulness of fire. That said, it should come as no surprise that I carry several ways to create this awesome element.

  I recommend you carry on or around your person three different methods for lighting fire in three different locations. My choices are strike-anywhere kitchen matches in a waterproof safe, a lighter (modified as described earlier), and a magnesium block with striking insert. The magnesium block is a remarkable little tool. It consists of a silver-colored bar of magnesium with a black, cylindrical mish-metal striking insert partially imbedded into one side. Magnesium has the unique ability to reach combustion temperatures of 5,400°F (2,982°C)! This is quite good considering that the radiant heat from an average flame burns at approximately 2,000°F (1,093°C). It even burns underwater! The challenge is figuring out how to light the stuff. In block form, magnesium poses little threat. Reduce it to small shavings, however, while adding an ignition source, and it burns with a white-hot fury. Old Volkswagen engine blocks were made from magnesium, and posed huge hazards when they caught fire because water intensified the blaze rather than put it out.