What hasn't been mentioned yet is the possiblity of simply stealing either by stealth or by strength that which you need to survive. Throughout our documented history, and presumably beyond that, we have been stealing or taking from each other simply because we wanted to. If you make that "want" sufficiently demanding, such as the starvation of your kids, you will see people doing it all over again. The "want" must overide the perceived risk which is why in our modern society there is very little of that going on. But reduce the amount of food available to people and the glue that binds our society together will start to unravel and quite ordinary people will start to do extraordinary things to survive.
yeh all them fat hunter gatherers and skinny under nourished farmers your average farmer provided for many people a hunter gatherer for them and a little extra . plus your HG diet is fairly low calorie so needs a large qty you need to be very effecent to dig up roots to get a Plus on the energy recouped etc espesialy if its 10miles in hot weather from your dwellingWe have also discussed before that the hunter-gatherer in a rich environment, or even the Kalahari Desert, does not normally work nearly as long hours as the farmer. After all why do they need to? Nature does the replenishing while the other must
" plough and sow, to reap and mow,
And be a farmer's boy,"
yeh all them fat hunter gatherers and skinny under nourished farmers your average farmer provided for many people a hunter gatherer for them and a little extra . plus your HG diet is fairly low calorie so needs a large qty you need to be very effecent to dig up roots to get a Plus on the energy recouped etc espesialy if its 10miles in hot weather from your dwelling
yeh all them fat hunter gatherers and skinny under nourished farmers your average farmer provided for many people a hunter gatherer for them and a little extra . plus your HG diet is fairly low calorie so needs a large qty you need to be very effecent to dig up roots to get a Plus on the energy recouped etc espesialy if its 10miles in hot weather from your dwelling
Comparing our own knowledge with the knowledge our distant ancestors had can lead to false assumptions, our ancestors were able to read patterns in their natural surroundings that only the most dedicated forager could come anywhere near, the distractions of modern life mean we spend little time trying to understand our natural environment or passing on skills. If you could put together a group of experts in several bushcraft practices, you could come close to the knowledge that a tribal or family group had, I believe today you could survive off the land if you were in the right location, but if you wanted to take it beyond mere survival you would need to be part of a group. The optimum population for England is 30 million, in terms of self sufficiency, if everyone was to live off the land it would be much lower, tens of thousands rather than millions.
Stealing like non-cooperation is a dead-end. Sooner or later other groups will stop you. Unless you can make yourself king of course.
There is also evidence that hunter gatherers had much the same problems we have or had, cancer, scurvy, calcium deficiency el al. With this wonderful diet how come the majority of hunter gatherers died so young? I'm old enough to remember seasonal shortages especially with different fruits, thankfully my children are not. To be absolutely honest sod going back to the old ways, I want my range of food all year round and so long as Tesco can fly it in I'll be buying it.
...And that's why until globalisation, everyone died every Christmas! I understand what you're saying, but the fact remains, that the existence of human beings now means that there has to have been a way around it. Canning was commercialised around 1811 by Bryan Donkin, whose works until recently still stood in my home town. Pickling admittedly has been around much longer - maybe 4000 years, so long after settled agriculture, but cannot have accounted for all food consumed in winter. Crops which historically filled the hungry gap, like kales, have fallen out of use to a large degree, because with global production the juicy summer crops are more palatable or cheaper. Similarly, fruits like quince or medlars, have fallen into relative disuse because fruit that must blet before consumption are unattractive in shops and probably suffer in transport. (I see I have made this point before).
From a hunter-gatherer perspective in Northern Europe, I suspect that lots of people died during winter, because cold is a lot more difficult to bear when hungry. But seriously, it sounds like people on here can't imagine what we did before supermarkets were invented. The case cannot be made that it is impossible to live by foraging, because historically people did and in some parts of the world, they still do.
For an introduction to survival by foraging, specifically in Northern Europe, try the book Survival Advantage by Andrew Lane. I think it is recently back in print. I believe that the author lived for some time by using the methods described in the book.
It's interesting that the latest diet fad is called the caveman diet, as for prehistoric life spans, skeletons have been aged at 70 years of age, the only thing we can be certain of is that we will never know how comfortable or uncomfortable life was for our ancestors. Our minds are full of useless knowledge, our brains are smaller and we have lost touch with our natural environment, more bushcraft skills and plant knowledge have probably been forgotten than most of us will ever know. If we had the same knowledge as our ancestors I'm sure living off the land would be possible in a temperate area.
My arguments the best, it wins and is the only one there is. So there !