When you live in the boonies, convenience stores don’t exist. Sometimes the power or heat goes out when you least expect it and there you are, needing to start a fire but you can’t because your teenager thought it would be fun to use the last of the lighter fluid lighting cow patties on fire on the back 40 last week. Its an hour to town and dinner needs to be cooked.
You could bundle everyone up and go eat in town, which would cost a fortune, or you could put a pot of soup on the wood stove and start a fire the old-fashioned way. We’d prefer to do the later and not reward the teen’s behavior.
There are many ways to start a fire without a match. I will list 3 of them in order of least to most difficult.