so you are in a cave or something….
your clickie switch has broken……
how do you hot wire your clickie switch
and turn it into a functioning twistie switch….
with just foil or a paper clip…?
and why didn’t you have a twistie switch
which is more reliable…?
Why don’t you have a backup light or two??
i didnt have a twisty because i despise a twisty.
i imagine you could just bridge it with a piece of foil. just a small disk of bunched up foil big enough to touch the batt - and a bare spot on the battery tube (no anno)
Where’s MacGyver when you need him!
ive had one clickie break, and that was a cheap aa romisen knockoff that i pushed way harder than originally designed. yes it is weaker than a twisty, but im not worried about it that much
I think I would want to have a few lights if I knew I was going to need them to survive.
^ I don’t go on cruises, and when I’m hiking, if my primary light doesnt work I get out my headlamp, or my backup light…
I also have now collected 12 cheap clickie lights and none have failed, and I use at least one nightly…I think you just got unlucky 
You can always buy a light that has a lock-out function, click the switch once and never touch it again, ON and OFF it just by using lock-out :P
keys are made of metal and bendable if your resourceful
wires are also widely distributed and stripping insulation can be done with your teeth and nimble fingers
I just got an idea :D you could try to spit into tailcap and hope that will be enough to close a circuit, but, you would have to carry that light pointing upwards :P
At this stage I’d magically transform into a cat, grow wings and fly home. :bigsmile: That or I’d cry, pray, and wait for the cute guy with a flashlight to save me. It’ll be like Titanic, super romantic. “Rose!! Hang on Rose!!!”
My daughter and I were just talking about Richard Dean Anderson the other night. Apparently he’s dealing with some kind of illness, and has put on a lot of weight because of steroid medication. Too bad :(…
This maybe?
http://web.archive.org/web/20060407072150/http://www.concentric.net/~jjdippel/macisms.html
We used have a saying, "Back up, I saw this on McGyver once."
-Garry
Take a large bowl out of your kitchen cabinette and flip it upside down on the counter and take tin foil and start wrapping it around the bowl covering it completely .. now go into the garage and get a tennis ball and bring it in and put it on the counter next to the bowl covered in tin foil .. break out a very sharp knife ... now take the foil off of the bowl and put it on your head ..Now that you have a tin foil hat to protect you from radiation cut a slit in the tennis ball big enough to slide the tail of the flashlight in .....and squeeze the tennis ball very quickly....Either the light will light up or your car door will be unlocked .
if you just needed to get the light to light up, unscrew tailcap, pull out trusty edc knife/multitool. use knife clip/blade/multitool to complete circuit.
if your really clever, pull out backup edc/keychain light, activate backup……
well if a paper clip from the edge to the back of the battery turns the light on anything like you said ..tin foil would complete the curcuit .. filling the end of your light will turn the light on .. try it ..only problem is tin foil breaks up pretty easy but in an end of days scenario who cares ..
go try it
it works
depending on the construction of the tail cap and light and what you have available to hand, it should be fairly easy, my example showing you just how easy, you need to electrically connect the bottom of the battery to the body of the light.
Assuming you have some means of stripping the tailcap assembly, you could use an appropriate sized penny and the foil from chewing gum or a fag packet. if the light does not have tailcap lockout, you’d have to completely remove the tailcap when you dont want light.
I however would work on the basis of having a back up. I’m sat on the sofa and have two lights on my person, another on my keys, if I was going into a situation like caving, I would probably have a few lights available, the obvious here would be a few lights the same so parts could be swapped to make one functional light.
That said, how often does a clicky that’s functional actually fail on you with no warning?
take a 2 inch piece of tin foil and fold it into thirds so it's about 3/4th an inch wide then start folding the tin foil til it's about a half inch thick .. jam it in the end of your light and you probably have light already .. depending the battery length you may get the end screwed down too .
Don't you use a meter to test amperage on lights ?
same thing as using a paper clip to connect edge of light to tail of the battery