The Best Survival Knife

There is a popular saying; “the best survival knife is the knife you have on you.” It is true that in a real-life or death survival situation whatever knife you have with you is going to be the best knife available, even if it’s just a bread knife or a folding Swiss Army knife. As we prepare for a survival situation and practice our survival skills we have the luxury of choosing from a great range of fantastic products that will truly be a good survival knife rather than just something that will do the job.

When you choose a survival knife you will be selecting the knife you WANT to have in an emergency and then it’s up to you to make the relevant preparation to make sure you have it with you when you need it. For this reason, you will see a range of survival knife options in this top ten list from larger ‘one tool’ style knives which could be pressed to do work normally reserved for an axe or saw, and a few smaller options which may not be as powerful when it comes to chopping tasks but which you might more realistically carry with you and actually have at your disposal in an emergency or survival situation.

Whatever your choice may be, a knife is arguably the most vital tool for wilderness survival.  It can help shelter you, help feed you and help protect you.  It is the tool you use to create other tools. Tools that will help you survive.

Almost nobody leaves their house in the morning thinking: “Let me go out for a walk and survive. I’ll just grab the best survival knife I have and take it along.” Having to survive is almost without exception something that is required of you unexpectedly—typically stemming from a much more mundane or routine outing gone wrong.  

This is when you’ll need to call on your skills to survive, and the knife you’ll be using is the one you have with you.

You may go camping or hiking and find yourself lost in the woods after walking to a waterfall somewhere on the map.  Your car breaks down on a remote road with no mobile phone reception.  A mountaineering trip gets interrupted when a massive storm suddenly rolls in, and there’s no time to get off the mountain.  A hunting expedition meets with an unfortunate accident, and you find yourself hurt and unable to walk. A hurricane cuts your house off from all water, power, or food supplies for weeks.

Knife design is a series of trade-offs, and it’s up to you to pick a knife that doesn’t trade off more valuable features for something that sounds “cool” but isn’t of much use. (read: “clever marketing”) You can allow your preferred knife design to be informed by situations that active soldiers may find themselves in during combat, and you never will. Understand that you may be trading off more essential features that you’ll need when you get snowed in at your campsite for two weeks.  

No, the chances of you having to cut through the fuselage of an aircraft are slim.  Yes, you may very well have to dig for roots or make a fire with just your knife. 

Survival situations are, by definition, unpredictable. Because of that, survivalists, preppers, and knife manufacturers often dream up possible scenarios that are highly unlikely, though not impossible, for the average person to find themselves in.  

Survival knives come in all shapes and sizes, and there are several schools of thought on which form factor and size make for the best survival knife.  You need to figure that out for yourself.  Knives that are either too large or too small simply don’t fulfill the utility well. If we were to classify survival knife sizes based on blade size, I’d go with:

• Large: 5.5 – 7 inches
• Medium: 3.5 – 5.5 inches
• Small: Under 3.5 inches

In this guide, I recommend mostly “medium” sized knives.  My main reason for this is that I think medium-sized knives tick almost all the boxes that a large format knife does, yet you are more likely to have them with you during a survival situation.   Few people carry around a huge knife.  Larger knives may be better choppers, but you can process wood with minimal additional effort with a medium-sized knife.  I’d recommend upgrading your survival and bushcraft skills rather than having to need a larger knife. 

I did include knives that would be considered larger survival knives by my criteria above, as I think they merit consideration as survival tools.  

I’m not recommending small knives, and I am not recommending huge blades. If that happens to be all you have with you, work with it!  As you read through this article and consider what role a survival knife fulfills, it should become apparent why I would not deliberately plan for those to be my only knife when confronted by a survival situation.

Again, same as with the size of the knife, the weight plays a significant role in determining the likelihood of you having a specific knife with you when you need it.  Too heavy, and chances are you will opt for a different knife when setting out on an extended hike or camping trip, just to preserve weight. That said, it helps to have a knife with substance for chopping wood, processing meat, and digging holes.  One that won’t break when you start roughing it a bit.

The weight of a knife is driven primarily by the thickness and width of the blade and tang.  Very seldom nowadays will handle material have a significant impact on weight. It sometimes does, but not often. A great example of this is the EESE range of knives.  The ESEE 6P, which made it onto our list as a large knife, has a total length of 11.75 inches and weighs 12 oz.  The ESEE 5P is slightly smaller at 11 inches but weighs 16 oz!  They have the same handle.  The difference?  The 6P has a 6.35mm thick blade, and the 5P has a 4.7mm blade. 

The graph below shows how the different knives that made it onto our list compare in size.  I’ve also added a line to show the weight of each of the knives.

• Fixed blade
• High Carbon Steel
• Full tang
• Synthetic handle
• Plain Edge
• Flat or Convex grind
• Drop Point or Spear Tip
• Protruding tang pommel
• Lanyard holes

I discuss all of these features in more detail in our Buyers Guide at the bottom of this article. For now, as you read through the reviews below, just keep them in mind.

The 10 Best Survival Knives

Buying a Survival Knife – The Ultimate Guide

Although it seems hard to believe, there was a time when there was no such thing as a “survival knife”. Instead, large pattern Bowie knives and other large, ethnic pattern, knives such as the Hudson Bay knife, the Green River Knife, the Enep, the Barong, the Bolo, and the Parang were all termed “woodsman’s” knives or, were sometimes called “camp knives”.

Thus, when the term “survival knife” first became prominent in knife nomenclature, it was commonly associated with knives that had large, clip point, Bowie style blades with round, knurled, hollow steel tubes for handles with threaded butt caps that enabled access to the compartment inside of the handle. However, now that the art of wilderness survival has evolved from an obscure, arcane, art practiced only by Mountain Men, trappers, and intrepid explorers to one practiced by a wide range of outdoor enthusiasts for a multitude of purposes so too has the concept of a “survival knife”.

A survival knife may be part of a survival kit that includes various tools; such as an axe, saw, and multiple knives to give you a larger option for brush clearance and chopping and a smaller option for food prep and camp craft. Alternatively, a survival knife might be a so-called ‘one tool option’ and need to be large and robust enough to perform some of the tasks normally expected of a tomahawk or an axe while still being useful for smaller tasks.

Some key features to consider no matter what size of survival knife you decide best suits your needs include:

Fixed or Folding Blade

There is a saying that the best survival knife is the one you have on you, while that is true and any knife is certainly better than none, it is not necessarily true that the knife you have on you is the best survival knife. It might be the best that you have to hand but if all you have on you is a folding Opinell pocket knife you will not be able to attempt tasks that a more robust knife would allow you to perform.

A folder might be more discreet than a fixed blade, and most places allow the legal carry of folding knives of one description or another and you are therefore almost guaranteed the opportunity to have a pocket knife on you if an emergency was to arise. In your search for a robust survival knife though you should be looking for a fixed blade knife that provides the necessary strength for hard use.

While they are more convenient, and legal, folders are inherently weaker than fixed blades and for this reason, a survival knife always needs to be a fixed blade knife to provide a strong tool for any task and inspire confidence in your tool. Folding knives are inherently weaker than their fixed blade counterparts and there is always a risk that they will fail and fold up on your hand or fingers, or that the knife will break at the hinge. These weaknesses and the slight flexibility of all but the very strongest folding knives do not allow confident use and make tasks much more difficult. So always go for a fixed blade for your survival knife.

There are many places that will not allow the legal carry of fixed blade knives in a public place, this means that you often won’t be able to have your survival knife of choice on you at all times although there are smaller fixed blade options that are more discreet and which might be suitable for every day carry. Larger knives are still often a better choice, especially if you want a ‘one tool option’ but they may need to be included in a survival kit which you can grab in an emergency rather than being strapped to your thigh all the time.

Tang

The tang is the metal portion of the knife that extends from the blade into the handle of the knife, a survival knife must be robust and able to withstand anything you throw at it so it needs a tang that extends the whole length of the handle. Many would argue that a true full tang extends the whole width of the handle too and instead of the handle being fastened in one piece around the tang the handle is fastened in two pieces sandwiching the tang between the handle slabs.

There is certainly nothing wrong with this type of handle but my personal preference is for a full-length tang that is not full width so the handle can be of one piece. I prefer this because I often use my knife in cold conditions and prefer that my hand isn’t chilled by coming into contact with the steel while I work. A narrow tang is insignificantly weaker than a full-width tang as long as it goes the full length of the handle and will be perfectly robust enough for survival tasks.

A few popular knives used for survival are not full tang but these are in the significant minority although they are very popular and when their limitations are respected they perform excellently. They are of course the Mora range of knives, although they do now also produce the full tang Garberg model.

As a general rule though you should pick a survival knife that has a full tang, at least one which extends the whole length of the handle if not the full width.

Blade Steel

There is often fierce debate about which blade steel is best for a survival knife, ultimately it’s the qualities of the steel that are important rather than the kind of steel. If you are unfamiliar with the topic, check out our Beginners Guide to Blade Steel. There are lots of myths that stainless steel can’t be used to strike sparks from a ferrocerium rod and that carbon steels are easier to sharpen and somehow superior for bushcraft and survival knives. Neither of these things is necessarily true and instead of getting carried away with the type of steel instead focus on a few characteristics of the steel as you make your choice of knife.

Edge Retention

This refers to how well a knife holds its edge, you want a knife that will not become blunt after only gentle use. This needs to be balanced against the need for a knife to still be relatively easy to sharpen and toughness, ie; a blade that is not brittle. Very hard blades may keep their edge a long time but they may also be brittle and might chip or crack if they are abused.

The ‘hardness’ of a blade is measured on the Rockwell Scale, which measures hardness by applying first a small load and then a larger load to the steel and measuring the difference between the indentations. When testing knife steel the Rockwell hardness is denoted by the letters ‘HRC’ and the indentations are made with a 120° spheroconical diamond indenter.

Knives will generally have an HRC of between 55 and 65, the higher the number the harder the steel, but my recommendation for a survival knife is the 58-60 range. Much harder than that and although the edge will be very hard and won’t dull quickly it will be more likely to chip under hard use. Much softer and rather than chipping it may roll and blunt very quickly. Knowing the Rockwell hardness of a knife is important so you can pick a knife that is in this ‘sweet spot’ to avoid picking a knife that blunts too fast and or is too hard to sharpen in the field or that is so hard it chips.

Ease of Sharpening

Remember that although sharpening at home using large bench stones is relatively easy even with hard steels you will be maintaining the edge of a survival knife in the field with easily portable sharpening equipment such as a Fällkniven CC4 sharpening stone or a Lansky BladeMedic or even an improvised sharpener, so selecting a knife that is not too hard is important.

‘Hardness’

If a knife is too soft it will blunt more quickly and mean that you have to sharpen it too often. A knife that is too hard may be brittle and although the edge will stay sharp for a long time it might chip, a chipped blade is much more difficult to repair than a blunt blade as the edge of a blunt or rolled blade can quickly be realigned and sharpened, even with basic equipment in the field while a chipped blade has to be ground down to remove the chips and re-sharpened from there. While you do need to select a knife that is robust and which carefully treads that line between having good edge retention and being easy to sharpen the grind of a knife is an important contributing factor in this too.

With these factors considered you can make your choice of blade steel but remember that most blade steels used by reputable manufacturers will be absolutely fine in a survival knife as long as the criteria for hardness, ease of sharpening, and edge retention have been met. I have a few favorite steels for knives but can recommend any of the following blade steels;

• O1 tool steel
• N690Co steel
• D2 tool steel
• VG10
• Sandvick stainless or carbon steel
• 440C stainless steel
• A2 tools steel
• 1095 chromium-vanadium steel
• S30V
• Niolox

Although visually you can’t tell anything about the heat treatment from looking at a knife it is important that your survival knife has been properly heat treated. Heat treatment or tempering is the process of hardening the steel of a blade and removing the brittleness, steel is often annealed (softened by heating and allowing it to cool very slowly) to be ground to shape and then hardened once finished. This hardening process should bring the blade to a condition where it is strong but not brittle.

Some blades have what is called a differential heat treat, where the edge of the blade is harder than the spine so the edge can be very sharp with good edge retention while the spine is a little softer and more forgiving to allow the knife to stand up to more abuse. Most makers will temper a blade so the tang is softer than the handle so the tang is less likely to break when the knife is abused.

Some knife manufacturers will provide details of the heat treatment of their knives, TOPS for example often mention the differential heat treat of their blades, and ESEE knives are made by a company called Rowen Manufacturing who are so proud of their heat treat, quite rightly as they are excellent, and assembly of ESEE knives that their name is etched on the blades.

Grind

The grind of a knife blade is the cross-sectional shape of the edge, the way that the blade steel bevels towards the edge of the blade, to fully understand this you need to understand the anatomy of a knife.

The bevel of a knife is the part of the knife blade that slopes from the flat part of the blade to the sharp edge. The knife pictured above has what is called a Scandinavian grind or scandi-grind, which is a single angle normally starting anywhere from a quarter to a third of the way up the blade to the edge. This grind is preferred for working wood and is often found on specialist wood carving knives and light use bushcraft knives.

Other popular knife grinds which you might find on a survival knife are the sabre grind, convex grind, hollow grind, and full flat grind. Most of these feature what is normally referred to as a secondary bevel or a secondary ‘v’ edge. These secondary edges are added for strength and sometimes a secondary edge is even added to a scandi-grind as they can be fragile if they are abused.

A sabre grind features a flat portion of the blade before the first bevel begins and then a secondary bevel at the edge for strength, this secondary bevel is important on a sabre ground knife as a Casström Roger Harrington design woods knife rind starting that high would be too thin and fragile if it went directly to a sharp edge like a scandi-grind.

A full flat grind has no flat portion and instead bevels all the way from the spine to a final secondary bevel at the edge. I like a flat grind for carving and woodwork but for survival tasks, it is not as good as a sabre or scandi-grind for splitting wood apart with a baton for kindling.

The slightly steeper angle and flat portions on the blade of a scandi or sabre ground blade act as a better wedge for splitting wood. Be aware if you are going to use your knife in this manner though that it really is an abuse of your knife, although modern knives are strong enough for the task an axe is really the tool for the job.

Covex ground blades are some of the strongest grinds available as they are basically two curves starting at the spine and meeting at the edge. The shape of this grind means that there is a greater thickness of metal behind the edge than on the finer edges of some of the other grinds. This makes a convex ground knife extremely strong and less likely to chip or blunt even after heavy use. For this reason, convex grinds are often chosen for knives designed for chopping.

Convex grinds are however difficult to produce to a high standard and I wouldn’t rust all manufacturers when it comes to convex grinds, you are safe with Fällkniven and Bark River when it comes to convex grinds though. Because convex grinds are so robust they can be tempered to a higher Rockwell hardness without too much risk of them chipping or breaking.

Hollow grinds are featured on a very few survival knives, normally budget knives, and while these grinds are excellent for some tasks, particularly slicing and processing meat they are not very robust. A hollow grind should have a secondary bevel on the edge to make it stronger but it still has less metal behind the edge than any of the other grind options making it less robust for heavy tasks such as chopping or batoning. Because of its relative fragility, hollow ground blades should not be tempered to an excessive Rockwell hardness to avoid chipping the relatively fragile edge.

There are a few other grinds styles but they are very specialist and I’m not aware of any production survival knives which feature any of these more unusual grinds such as chisel grinds or asymmetric grinds such as the ‘yakut’ style grind from Russia which features a convex grind on one side and a flat grind with a large fuller on the other.

Blade Style

While grind is an important consideration when you select your survival knife blade style is less important, not irrelevant but less important than other factors. Much of it is down to personal preference although there are a few useful features to look for in a blade;

Ricasso

The ricasso is an unsharpened portion of the blade between the handle and the edge, I prefer that this is as small as possible or even better completely omitted from my knives. It puts distance between your hand and the sharp edge of the knife and reduces the control that you have over the blade for fine carving and meat processing work.

Choil

A choil is a notch between the blade edge and ricasso or handle, the primary reason for this is to allow the edge of the blade to be sharpened along its entire length. An edge that starts directly from the ricasso or handle is impossible to sharpen because you can’t reach that last portion of the blade with a sharpening stone. A sharpening choil takes away that problem and is a very useful feature to look for in a knife.

Some knives feature an oversized choil large enough for your index finger, the idea behind this feature is to move the weight of the cutting edge out to the front of the knife and allow you to have a full grip on the handle for chopping while allowing you to coke up on the blade and bring you hand closer to the edge using the finger choil for finer work.

Finger choils have become quite popular on larger knives but I personally wouldn’t recommend them, they bring your finger too close to the edge of the blade and are generally very uncomfortable to hold. The reason for having a handle on a knife is to allow you to grip it comfortably and use it for long periods of time, bringing your hand forward onto a section of the knife without a handle for finer work such as carving and making feather sticks is very uncomfortable.

Serrations

Serrations are featured on some knives and while they do present advantages for cutting rope their uses other than that are fairly limited. They are also difficult to sharpen and useless when it comes to working wood or processing game and food, two particularly important tasks in a survival situation.

Blade Shape

There is a multitude of blade shapes to choose from but a few are particularly useful for a survival knife. Drop point, spear point, clip point, and strait-backed blades are the most common types featured on survival knives. Other blade shapes such as wharcliffe, tanto, and trailing point blades are useful for the tasks they were designed for but are fairly specialist and don’t feature on any popular survival knives. Another aspect of blade shape to consider is the angle of the spine of the blade, some knives feature nicely rounded, smooth, aesthetically pleasing spines but this is not always a desirable feature, a sharp 90°spine is sometimes useful for scraping things, either to produce fine shavings of wood or bark for fire lighting and to strike sparks from a ferrocerium rod.

Another feature of the spine of a knife is often something called ‘jimping’ or ‘knurling’, which is texturing which potentially provides a better grip on the blade. While it does provide better grip when holding the knife in some positions it can also cause discomfort if it is too heavily textured.

Handle Material

Above all a knife handle must be comfortable and strong, popular materials include micarta which is a composite material made of fabric saturated with epoxy resin and then hardened, it can be made from a range of materials but popular options include canvas, linen, and paper. G10 is a similar material that uses fiberglass as a base material. These modern handle materials have become at least as popular as traditional wood and bone handles and offer significant advantages in certain areas, particularly in that they are non-absorbent so they don’t soak up moisture, blood, or other contaminants.

Wood has been ‘modernized’ in recent years though and is often stabilized with resin and cured in a kiln which makes it as hard and impermeable as micarta and G10.

Other knife handle materials include various plastic and rubber compounds which offer great grip and are impervious to moisture. Traditional antler and bone handles are of course still an option but bone can be fragile and sometimes the texture of an antler handle can be uncomfortable. A few knives have metal handles which are very robust but can be very uncomfortable to use in the cold.

Sheath

A sheath is a part of the ‘package’ when you buy a knife and you will need to consider the best option for your survival knife, either because you want to pick a knife that comes with a good sheath or because you may need to consider having an alternative sheath made for a knife with an unsuitable sheath. Leather is the traditional choice but does absorb moisture and can retain water and promote rusting of some blades if they are stored in a wet sheath.

Plastics such as Kydex are a great modern option that can be formed and fitted to a blade and which provide safe and moisture resistant storage for your knife. Nylon sheaths are very hit and miss, some are excellent but others are very poor and offer no security in retaining the knife in its sheath, others are sloppily secured with Velcro and are noisy or are much too large for the knife.

I would always recommend leather or Kydex for a good sheath but with the qualifier that a knife intended primarily for hunting and meat processing has a plastic sheath so it can be properly sanitized and cleaned after use. Leather can harbor bacteria but for a survival knife where game preparation will be a small part of its job, this is not so important.

From top to bottom:

• CRKT Saker: Walnut handle, leather sheath, high Scandinavian grind, 1095 carbon steel blade and spear point.
• Eickhorn Nordic Bushcraft Knife; Aluminium handle, leather sheath, full flat grind, Bähler N695 steel and clip point.
• Handmade Bushcraft Knife: Bone handle, leather sheath, standard scandi-grind, O1 steel and drop point.
• Camilus Bushcraft Knife; micarta handle, leather sheath, standard scandi-grind, 1095 steel and ‘nessmuk’ style modified trailing point blade.
• TOPS C.U.B; micarta handle, featuring a divot for bow drill fire lighting, nylon sheath (an example of a very bad nylon sheath), scandi-grind with secondary bevel, 1095 steel and clip point.
• Real Steel Bushcraft Knife; Micarta handle, kydex sheath, standard scandi-grind, D2 steel, drop point blade.
• EKA W12 Knife; G10 handle, kydex and leather sheath, scandi-grind with secondary bevel, drop point blade.
• Mora Companion; plastic handle, plastic sheath, scandi-grind, Sandvik stainless steel, slight clip point.
• Steel Will 205 Mini Druid; Rubberised plastic handle, leather sheath, sabre grind, 9Cr18MoV stainless steel, clip point.

Blade Size

There are different schools of thought when it comes to the size of your survival knife, between four and six inches is commonly accepted as a good size. Some would disagree and say that survival knives don’t start below six inches and that the larger knives are a definite requirement so they can be used for splitting larger logs for firewood and for heavy-duty chopping tasks. My preference is for a knife around four inches in length which is more nimble and useful for fine tasks and I would either select the material of the right size for the smaller knife and couple it with an axe and saw for heavier work.

Blades much shorter than four inches are generally not large enough to be versatile survival knives, another dimension to consider is the thickness of a blade as well as its length, although blades designed for skinning game, and filleting fish are designed to be thin, this is particularly important in a filleting knife as a degree of flexibility is desirable but a good survival knife will need a robust blade and I would recommend a thickness of at least 3mm and if you are planning on doing much batoning with it 4mm is preferable. Blade thickness is also often measured in fractions of an inch with some very robust blades featuring 1/4inch (6.35mm) thick blades.

As long as you use a knife within its design capabilities though the thickness is less important, Mora Companions are among the most popular knives in the world and feature blades of about 2mm in thickness and are capable of a wide range of tasks and are very useful knives for survival.

Blade Coatings

Some manufacturers coat their blades, there are a number of reasons for this generally, blades for tactical applications are often coated, blued, or blackened to avoid reflection in a situation where that glare might give away your presence. Some survival knives are designed with escape and evasion and military applications in mind and so do have a non-reflective coating, generally, though your priority in a survival situation is to be found and rescued so unless you are a member of the armed forces and are looking for a survival knife you probably don’t need a non-reflective coating.

Another reason to coat a blade is to prevent rust and corrosion, some blade steels such as 1095 are very susceptible to rust and might benefit from a coating to prevent this. However, very rough coatings especially if they come all the way to an edge can really hamper the ability of a knife to carve and slice and I prefer not to have them at all. Stainless steel blades suffer less from rust, although they aren’t immune to it, even a carbon steel blade if properly maintained can be kept free of rust with regular use and proper care including oiling it and sharpening it. So from a maintenance perspective coatings are not vital but often useful to prevent rust.

Lanyards

I use a lanyard to keep my pocket knife from being lost if it drops out of my pocket, a lot of fixed blade knives also have a hole in the handle for a lanyard but I tend not to make use of this feature unless I am carrying a knife in a very deep carry sheath and then I add a small lanyard to help me grip the knife and draw it. I don’t like wrist loop lanyards, people often use them when they are chopping with larger knives so the knife doesn’t fly off if it slips out of their hand or to give a bit of extra purchase on a knife if they are gripping the back of the handle for more effective chopping. The danger of this is that if a knife does fly out of your hand and is attached to your wrist it will bounce back and swing around, potentially with some force, and probably injure you.

Conclusion

This one-tool approach to survival is quite popular nowadays and many knives are marketed as a one-tool solution to a survival situation. However in a real emergency, unless you carry your knife with you at all times, you are no more likely to have your survival knife on you than you are an entire survival kit.

Yet, the philosophy of a one tool option, and the assumption that you will have that tool on you when you really need it, is somewhat flawed. For this reason, it is just as important to consider smaller survival knives that you are more likely to have on you at all times compared to larger knives which might be too heavy, uncomfortable, or illegal to carry with you as a matter of routine.