I've only been in a survival type situation once in my life. A friend and I leased some hunting land in South Eastern Oklahoma without ever seeing it from a 96 year old man and all we had was a poorly drawn map. We left about 5am and drive about an hour and a half to go scout it out and about 11:00 we had seen enough of the lease and were getting hungry and decided to go back to the truck. Well, it was overcast and the trees were tall, and we couldn't see the sun and got lost trying to find our way back. We walked all day and had not seen any signs of life and we found a couple of barbwire fences that went nowhere but we were able to get a drink out of a pond, however we hadn't eaten breakfast or anything since dinner the night before and were wearing jeans and t-shirts and it was going to get really cold that night. When night came we were exhausted and starving and getting pretty worried but just kept stumbling along in the dark and finally found a dirt road and walked about 20 minutes and a pickup truck came by and stopped and let us ride in the bed while he took us back to our truck. So if I was putting together a survival kit the first thing would be a compass, then something to eat, then a jacket or heavy duty trash bags to stay warm and dry, parachute cord would be handy but probably further down the list.