Their problem wasn't an impossible scenario, but they were unprepared, lacked the know how. They had some romantic notion and failed because they had no idea about the reality of out. And even theoretical knowledge is useless if one have not tried to put that into practice in an environment where failure doesn't mean death.
There are those people who collect books about outdoorsmanship , survival, and these informationals they can find online/imageboards and they never actually read or try what's written in them, but think when they need it they'll just look it up how to do. And all of these stuff aren't whole information about the topic some detail always missing in a way, that one has to figure out when trying to do the actual thing. But in a "survival sitchuayshun" one has no time to experiment.
Unless one has a stove in real tent can't make fire and will die the same.
This discussion reminded me of the story of a schizo woman who lost on the Appalachian trail, her corpse was found an months later in her camp 200 meters away the aforementioned trail.