> You don't need a knife backpacking either. I did 200 miles on the PCT without even bringing a knife.
I don't generally need a knife in my daily life either, but I still carry one at all times. In the same sense that I often wear a seatbelt, despite hopefully never needing one, and having driven many hundreds of thousands of miles without one ever proving useful.
It's just when it comes to hiking vs. backpacking, the calculus of what to carry changes significantly because when backpacking you implicitly are carrying much more junk than on a hike.
For me hiking is much closer to a long walk in civilization than backpacking; I encounter more people, and carry my knife just like I do around town. Hiking is actually especially unique since it tends to be done civilization adjacent, and for some idiots that's the most accessible source of cover for criminal fuckery or desperate homeless living.
