Method 7: Car Battery

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I wouldn’t exactly recommend carrying around a car battery in your hiking pack. But let’s say you’re driving down a remote mountain road and your engine breaks down far from civilization. It might be comforting to know that you can start a fire with your car. All you need is:

• A Car battery – As long as your battery isn’t completely dead, this will work. 
• Jumper cables – You keep jumper cables in your car, right? If not, this is another good reason to do so. 
• A metal object – Any conductive metal will do. This works with a paperclip or the aforementioned steel wool. I’ve also seen a variation of this method that involves splitting open a pencil to reveal the conductive graphite pencil lead within. 

Connect one end of the jumper cables to the metal object and place it on the ground, as far from your car as the cables will reach. Cover the metal object with tinder. Connect the positive cable to your car’s battery, and then touch the negative cable to the ground on your car. The resulting charge should light the tinder. 

A word of precaution: just like when jump-starting an engine, some care is needed to avoid hurting yourself or your car. Make sure there are no loose connections at the battery terminals, and wear insulated gloves, if you have them, to protect yourself. Once the tinder is lit, disconnect the cables as soon as you can. 

Method 8: Glass Lens

Focusing sunlight through a glass lens is a tried-and-true method of starting a fire (remember that kid with the ants?) that mankind has been using since at least ancient Greek and Roman times. The only downside is that it only works when the sun is out. If you need to start a fire at night or on a cloudy day, you’re out of luck. 

This method works by angling the lens toward the sun so that its light is focused onto as small an area as possible, generating great heat. It might take a little trial and error, but once you get the angle right, it works like a charm.