See, this is why exercises like this make my face hurt.
The man in his OP listed "survival" as 1/3 of his parameters. The other two being bushcraft and no longer than 4 inch blade.
Survival at it's core means "life and death".
I think we (myself included) have become so soft as a society, even in our circles, that the term "survival" no longer carries the weight it once did. It's become a buzzword to categorize a functional characteristic of a knife or gun.
Weekend outings where we can whittle some feathersticks so you can be the cool dad at the boyscout campout and then regale the dads from town with stories about our equipment and how cheap it is but still gets the job done is barely bushcraft, certainly not survival, and your life is not gonna depend on that blade.
Nobody believes you
@Average Joe! LOL! Do you believe it yourself? That the knife you're discussing can make the difference between whether you live or die??!!
Seriously, if we were online talking to an Alaskan bush pilot who doesn't know much about guns, who had came on the forum to ask "What would be a good gun to keep in my survival kit in case I have to walk out and it takes me 4 weeks to reach civilization but due to weight restrictions it can't weigh more than 2 pounds?" would we really be talking about Hi-Points and Heritage Arms? Get a Jimenez, they're so cheap you can buy 4 of them, just shoot one empty and move on to the next one! LOL
Go to Walmart. Get a Chinese made one. Go cheap cause ya might loose it. What in the world?
Not picking on anybody in particular. It's all of us. It's the way we think. Saving money was built into the equation ala post #3.
If it really could be a matter of true survival, that wouldn't have been mentioned. We're on a gun forum where a lot of us spend maybe tens of thousands of dollars to have nice firearms for every conceivable use, real and imagined.
I've got some of the $25 Chinese knives that are way nicer than the price would suggest. Survival? No. You aren't sharpening D2 with field expedient materials. Same goes for anything from Gerber, Kershaw, CRKT, Cold Steel (except Carbon V which I don't think came in folding knives) and all the other "mainstream" mid-priced brands. And if you don't pick your steel carefully, the same thing might certainly apply to high end knives as well.
Knives don't have to be expensive to have a steel type that would suit your needs for survival. But as mentioned above, self defense changes things. You're asking a lot when you want that one tool to be really good at multiple things. We all know about the compromises involved with that line of thinking.
If it REALLY could mean life and death, choose wisely.
If not, throw a dart and pick whatever disposable "box-opening, steakhouse man-signaling" thrifty but "good enough" blade suits your fancy.
And once again, if you can't sharpen a knife at home with a degree of skill, you aren't gonna be able to do it in the field either. If you aren't gonna be in the field long enough to have to sharpen the knife, it's not a "survival" situation anyway.