I love the REI emergency matches, which light when wet, keep on burning and burning and are impossible to blow out. With those, the horrific Jack London scenario in "To Build a Fire" is just about impossible. I always have some of these and an Esbit tablet (which burns long enough to dry out quite a bit of soggy tinder) in my emergency kit that goes with me on every trip. I see no reason to resort to primitive measures for survival when more efficient technology is available! I save 150-year-old technology for my other hobby, Civil War reenacting.

I also take a dry base layer and sleeping socks to wear inside my sleeping bag. They and the sleeping bag are carried inside a waterproof dry bag at all times, so even if I fall in the drink while fording a stream (yes, it has happened!), I have a warm/dry layer, plus the sleeping bag, to change into once I've set up my tent. If it's an emergency (i.e. the air temp is 10*F instead of 60*F as it was when the dunking actually happened), I can do this really fast, before I get too chilled, if necessary just wrapping up in the tent to keep dry instead of pitching it. Under such circumstances I doubt if I could build a fire before succumbing to hypothermia even at 10*F, much less -40* (thinking Jack London here). I would save the fire-building tools for after I get warmed up and want to start drying out the wet stuff.