Why is a fixed blade knife such an important piece of kit to keep with you? The fixed blade knife provides a lot of advantages compared to a folding knife. A folding knife is great for simple cutting tasks and can be carried discretely with little difficulty. However, it is not the best choice for many emergency survival situations. Obviously, having a quality folding knife is better than having no knife at all. As is the case in many situations, having a piece of kit that is always on you is better than something that is stowed away in a bag or left in a vehicle.
One of the dangers of utilizing a folding knife, is that it could collapse on your hand causing a serious injury when you are doing certain tasks. Having experienced the pain that is caused, it is not pleasant. Most of the time an injury of this nature will require you to get stitches.
A fixed blade knife provides many advantages over the folding knife. It is more rigid for prying, chopping and other bushcraft skills. If the knife is constructed of high carbon steel, like many of the MORAKNIV manufactured blades, it can also be used in conjunction with flint to start a fire in a worst case scenario situation. Multiple videos exist on YouTube, showing people putting MORAKNIVs to torture tests, and these knives really shine.
These knives are also a great self defense tool that can be drawn directly from the sheath without first having to open the knife to expose the blade.
Finally, because many of the MORAKNIV blades are relatively inexpensive, you can easily equip yourself with multiple knives, following the philosophy, "two is one, one is none". Having a backup knife available if your primary knife is lost, is obviously beneficial. It is also a lot less painful to lose a $15 knife, than a $100 knife.
