Cholera is something you want to avoid at all costs. But not in the case of this knife from Vulture Equipment Works, which is called the Cholera because the bacteria can actually live in the belly of a vulture.

Badass? Yes, just like this knife.

The Cholera is a modified Japanese gyuto knife, literally a “beef knife” in the language. And yes, it’ll cut up hunks of meat like a champ.

But I was more interested in how it would handle being beaten through logs, hacked through branches like a machete and adjusting the coals of a fire. So that’s what I did, dragging the knife on several trips from Alaska to the Colorado Rockies this summer. I even used it to pry apart the brake calipers of a mountain bike when I couldn’t find an appropriate screw driver — definite abuse of a blade and not recommended.

Turns out, this knife took all my abuse very well.

I spoke with William Egbert Jr., the founder of Vulture and the designer of the Cholera. “I wanted something I could carry to Panama and then come home and use to hunt Elk,” he said. “It had to be stylish and usable. It had to be a tool, and it had to do 90 percent of everything.”

From what I’ve gathered during my months of testing, it does. This is one of the best all-around survival knives I’ve used. But it’s not without compromises.

Read more here