Waterproof matches will light even if they are wet. Because they are coated with wax and don’t get wet under the wax. And they are easier to use than a flint and steel, and don’t require any tinder. So let’s go out on a cold rainy night, and we’ll both drop our keys in a pile of leaves. You look for yours using a flint and steel. I’ll look for mine using waterproof matches. Guess who wins?
What are you going to strike them on? A rock?
As for looking for my keys, I always have one of these in my pocket as well. 
Mind you, I carry about a dozen different fire-starters in my truck, and at least three on my person if I’m going to be someplace uncivilized. Flint, lighter, matches. Redundency is survival. But janeslogin asked for something that will store for years. Flint and steel meet that in spades.
I was going to use the waterproof striker
I have one on my key chain. But I dropped that :smack:
So do waterproof matches, and magnesium igniters. And I usually have at least 2 butane lighters in my pocket, and I’m never far from a torch either. Wanna go down to the quarry and throw flaming things in?
Kewl! I got some firecrackers…
I’ve got a flint and steel in my toolkit. Had some fun when I got it starting small fire out back (in controlled circumstances). They aren’t that hard to use.
When I was in Camp Fire Girls, I used to coat strike-anywhere matches with fingernail polish. I tried coating them in wax, but in the Texas summers, I’d usually find that the wax melted.
On a somewhat related subject, how does one bank a fire so that it will be ready to burn the next day? I have frequently read about people doing this, but no description is given.
I’m a Boy Scout leader, and we require that all of the Scouts in our troop learn to start a fire without matches or a lighter. We encourage this by making them start all campfires in this manner. The easiest alternate method is flint and steel. All of our scouts carry flint and steel in their survival kits.
Why do we do this? For one thing, matches get wet or run out. Lighters break or leak or run out of fuel. Flint and steel last for years. All you need is some tinder and patience.
The Swedish company Light My Fire makes a great flint and steel fire starter called the Swedish FireSteel. It’s the best I’ve ever seen. I never go into the woods without it.
Me, with my LED flashlight. 
In all seriousness, though, a lit match typically stays lit for only a few seconds before the wood burns up or it blows out. I’ve seen new scouts go through a box of matches trying to start a fire. For one thing, you do actually need tinder, even with matches. You can’t just light a log with a match.
I carry a doan magnesium bar in my survival pouch anytime I go hunting or backpacking. Just be careful to test your magnesium bar in the backyard before you go into the woods. Some cheap, knock-off mag bars are useless.
This video shows how to shave a mag bar and then light the shavings with the striker. They also show what happens with the cheap, knock-off mag bars being sold out there. That’s why you should always test whatever fire starter you pick in your backyard first. Don’t go into the woods with any untested gear.
When you guy say “flint”, do you mean real flint, whose sparks are actually the steel being chipped off, or ferrocerium, the “flint” in lighters?
I suspect that site has invented that term (and maybe the implement as well, for all I know). No dictionary I’ve checked, including the OED, gives any definition for “spall” which has to do with fire-starting.
You make a pile of the best coals on a base of good ash, cover with a light layer of ash to reduce the oxygen, and top with a couvre feu [or even earlier one made of pottery] to keep the coals protected from being uncovered or shedding sparks if a pine knot catches fire instead of smouldering.
So you’re saying that before the Iron Age there were no fires ?
no iron = no steel, no steel= no flint and steel.
I was always under the impression that humans had fire during the Stone Age, let alone Bronze etc.
No other light source except fire, and obviously the sun.* Not *no other way to start a fire.
aceplace57, thanks for that link. My magnesium bar looks suspiciously like the non-starting cheap Chinese-made one in that video…
Just to be different (I have most of the stuff below in my go pack), you could store steel wool (get the non-soapy kind) and 9 volt batteries to start a fire as well (I actually have some of this in storage too…the only problem is the batteries have to be replaced periodically, as they don’t last forever). The reason I like this method of fire starting is that the items are dual purpose…I can use the steel wool and batteries for other things besides starting fires, and in a pinch they make good fire starters as well.
-XT
Good idea. Soft wax like paraffin won’t do the job. The matches I have now are probably coated with some kind of plastic, not actual wax. I recall from my youth that beeswax was recommended. These matches I now have are small. If I were building a survival kit I’d use the big strike anywhere type, and nail polish sounds like a good coating. You need to coat the sticks too, not just the head, because they are absorbent.
Yes, because my LED light is attached to my key chain, which I dropped :smack:
No you can’t light a log with a match, or a spark either. But you can use heavier, even slightly wetter tinder with a match.
My whole point is that waterproof matches are the best firestarter you can put away for a long time. They are quick and easy to use, requiring no special skills or knowledge, can provide a few seconds of light (say to find your flint after you dropped it), and will start a fire more readily with materials that may not catch from a spark.
OTOH, you should put a flint and steel in your kit anyway, because matches are use once devices (although I can show you how to make a match burn twice). Once your matches are used up, you’d be left with nothing. A flint and steel would last a long time.
XT - 9 volt batteries have a pretty short life, and steel wool rusts pretty easily, but it is a handy way to start a fire. You could also use a pencil lead instead of steel wool, and it will give you a good short term light source also.
Yeah, the batteries have only so much shelf life, even if you store them well. Rusting steel wool isn’t really an issue where I live (the humidity here is generally less than 20% except in the monsoon season), and I store both in a water proof kit…along with more traditional stuff for starting fires. I usually store the batteries for about 6 months (not just the 9 volts but the other sizes I use…I have some rechargeable batteries and a hand generator as well) then rotate in new ones and use the old ones for stuff around the house. That seems to work pretty well. You have to change food and such periodically too, so you just get used to it.
-XT
Preparing for that cell phone armageddon?
Naw. My boss is heavily involved in disaster planning and some of it has rubbed off on me. Just have a go kit and the standard 72 hour emergency supplies thing. That’s about as far as I go.
-XT
What he/she/it said.
Flint and steel, tinderbox or slow match, foraged tinder. Given good flint and a nicely hardened steel someone can be taught within an hour to make fire in a couple minutes or less - pretty much whatever the conditions short of monsoon. Give me an extra hour to teach you monsoon. I have used them to light smokes, start fires and light cigars since college so I’m probably about at least 50% as good as your average 17th century person. Those dudes could probably really rock it.
(PS – on char – I use an old round tobacco tin with a few holes in the lid to make mine. Sometimes prefer linen to say average cotton. When the smoke really starts coming out the holes, I use a splinter of burning wood to light the smoke and call it done at that point; pull the tin off the coals. But like a lot of things YMMV.