How to Use a Magnesium Fire Starter
RealitySurvival 07.25.13
Magnesium fire starters make a great addition to a survival kit and they are fairly simple to use. One of their great benefits is that you typically have a large amount of material to work with and they can be used over and over again. Magnesium fire starters do burn for a short period of time, but they burn at very high temperatures. Typically a magnesium fire starter can be acquired for as little as two or three dollars and at most 10 to 12 dollars.
The quality of a starter goes hand-in-hand with its price–you typically get what you pay for, and some work better than others. The softer the magnesium and the more pure it is, the better it will typically work. The brand I used in the video below is called the “Survivor Fire Starter” and can be found here. Watch the video below to see how I recommend using a magnesium fire starter to get your fire going.
Which fire starters do you use in your survival and camping gear?
While serving in the USAF I became a Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) Instructor (class 97-02). As a SERE Instructor I was trained to survive in all types of environments: Temperate, Arctic, Desert, Rain Forest and Mountains. The basic instructor training course was 6 months long of fairly intensive training, followed up by an additional 6 months of OJT training. After graduation I attended the USAF Arctic Survival School in Fairbanks, AK and the Water Survival School in Florida. While at the SERE School I instructed 36 different field training classes at Fairchild AFB and up in the mountains North of Spokane, WA in the Colville National Forest. On those trips I would take groups ranging in size from 6 to 10 USAF Aircrew members out into the field for six days and teach them the basics of being able to survive and evade in both combat and non-combat environments.
I also had the opportunity to serve as a SERE Instructor OJT trainer as well. During the summer of 1998 (or 99?), I also had the privilege of teaching at the US Air Force Academy, Combat Survival Training (CST) Course in Colorado Springs, CO for a summer rotation where we taught about 400 Air Force Academy cadets wilderness survival and evasion. I was also fortunate enough to participate in several Joint Search and Rescue exercises at Fairchild AFB and Fort Polk’s Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) with multiple high speed Army and Navy units. After about four years in Charlie Flight in the field training section (teaching exclusively combat wilderness survival and evasion) at the SERE School, I decided to retrain into another position within DoD and subsequently separated from Active duty.
Currently I author www.RealitySurvival.com to try and pass along a little of the info I picked up as a SERE Instructor and other useful tips and tricks I have learned over the years. I also enjoy doing outdoor gear reviews and shooting as frequently as I can.
