Given we're an island has anybody factored fish, shell fish and seaweed into the equation? There is more to farm than just the land.
Foraging / surviving from the land
- Thread starter Mouse040
- Start date
Why bother with numbers, data, and reality, when wishful thinking provides all the nutrients a person needs?
Well, I gave you the numbers for sockeye salmon. I'm sure others can provide it for other species. At about 50 to 60 calories per ounce of fish, we can do the math for how much of any particular fish would be needed per day, if it is in season and the particular fishing technique is allowed. We can do something similar for shell fish. We have to just find out what the average amount of meat any particular type produces, and then we can see how many of them we would need.
Health and safety warning:
If you see someone who's just eaten their daily 41 pounds of Lingonberries rushing off into the bushes holding a shovel...... don't follow them.....they need their space.
Cockles :-
60 calories per kilo so about 50kg a day will keep you going
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/ethnic-foods/8095/2
Mackerel
A couple of mackerel will be a much better option
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/finfish-and-shellfish-products/4073/2
Are sheep similar to Deer, nutrition-wise?
What about ducks? They are usually fatty, so I guess they work out well. A goose is similar in size to a turkey.
Your figures me realise why so many tribes in temperate regions became herders. Why forage all day for food when your food will do it for you?
Sorry but I'm having a chuckle at this thread. I'm no survival expert and I don't confess to be one but I don't know a person alive who could consume 9 pounds of parsnips in a week, let alone a day! Well in that case I would need 22 Twinkies a day to survive. Quick order me a case I'm eating nothing else for a month!! I think if I did that then I would be dead or severely ill by then. The human body needs a balanced diet and not just a measure of calories. Slow and fast release carbohydrates and a mix of proteins, vitamins and minerals go to keep us going. The carb GDA for men is around 300g per day (about 10 small potatoes), a bit more if you are going to be doing strenuous exercise. The great thing about the human body is it can store sugars in the form of fat (I know plenty about this, believe me!!! 
), a reserve that can be used up when food is scarce. If you were to eat 4 rabbits a day then you would probably end up with protein poisoning as there is too much in a rabbit to safely eat in large amounts continuously.
You are taking a figure of 3300 calories (the amount of calories a soldier can burn a day while on the march and lugging a fully laden Bergen, ammunition and weapons) and equating them to a particular food item!!! The average person per day should consume around 2500 calories per day, that's a huge difference to the figures you are quoting. I can happily put together a basic meal with a fishing line and a bit of leg work to collect mushrooms and other edible plants and tubers and I certainly wouldn't be using up 3300 calories doing it. That meal would happily last me for the rest of the day. The thing is I wouldn't just get enough for the meal but I would get enough to store to eat for the next few days.
We didn't just get born with an ipad in one hand and a Big Mac in the other. Man has chosen a path where mass production farming means we no longer need to forage for food but rather we need to earn to provide instead. Unfortunately the method which we use to farm means that we have lost a lot of our wildlife and woodland and therefore some great food sources. However, saying that, for those of us with the skills to forage and hunt it means we can still scrape together a meal from the land either by fishing, hunting or foraging.
Do I think I could survive on my own, living off the land? No of course I don't, but I have very little skills in foraging. However, some of the other guys on here could probably do a very good job of it and for a lot longer than I could. Plus we need to establish how the individual was in that situation, if its through choice then I'm sure the person that undertook the task would have enough knowledge to live off the land. If it was through a natural disaster or **** scenario then I'm sure that the population would have been thinned out enough to lower competition on the food sources. I'm positive if it was a do or die situation I'm sure I would try to manage somehow.
Man has generally been a pack animal and we tend to strive companionship. I think if we were thrown into that situation we would probably be with loved ones or friends that would help out with the hunter gathering and home making etc.
I think if I did that then I would be dead or severely ill by then. The human body needs a balanced diet and not just a measure of calories. Slow and fast release carbohydrates and a mix of proteins, vitamins and minerals go to keep us going. The carb GDA for men is around 300g per day (about 10 small potatoes), a bit more if you are going to be doing strenuous exercise. The great thing about the human body is it can store sugars in the form of fat (I know plenty about this, believe me!!! ), a reserve that can be used up when food is scarce. If you were to eat 4 rabbits a day then you would probably end up with protein poisoning as there is too much in a rabbit to safely eat in large amounts continuously. You are taking a figure of 3300 calories (the amount of calories a soldier can burn a day while on the march and lugging a fully laden Bergen, ammunition and weapons) and equating them to a particular food item!!! The average person per day should consume around 2500 calories per day, that's a huge difference to the figures you are quoting. I can happily put together a basic meal with a fishing line and a bit of leg work to collect mushrooms and other edible plants and tubers and I certainly wouldn't be using up 3300 calories doing it. That meal would happily last me for the rest of the day. The thing is I wouldn't just get enough for the meal but I would get enough to store to eat for the next few days.
We didn't just get born with an ipad in one hand and a Big Mac in the other. Man has chosen a path where mass production farming means we no longer need to forage for food but rather we need to earn to provide instead. Unfortunately the method which we use to farm means that we have lost a lot of our wildlife and woodland and therefore some great food sources. However, saying that, for those of us with the skills to forage and hunt it means we can still scrape together a meal from the land either by fishing, hunting or foraging.
Do I think I could survive on my own, living off the land? No of course I don't, but I have very little skills in foraging. However, some of the other guys on here could probably do a very good job of it and for a lot longer than I could. Plus we need to establish how the individual was in that situation, if its through choice then I'm sure the person that undertook the task would have enough knowledge to live off the land. If it was through a natural disaster or **** scenario then I'm sure that the population would have been thinned out enough to lower competition on the food sources. I'm positive if it was a do or die situation I'm sure I would try to manage somehow.
Man has generally been a pack animal and we tend to strive companionship. I think if we were thrown into that situation we would probably be with loved ones or friends that would help out with the hunter gathering and home making etc.
If this reference is accurate http://www.shellfish.org.uk/files/32571SAGB cockles factsheet final lo-res.pdf
then 100g of cockles provides 22% of one's daily protein requirements plus masses of B12 and other goodies. Certainly very healthy additions to the diet and ones that early and even more recent farmers tended to miss out on.
Of course mackerel would be good and if therefore sea resources were permitted then making a living from the wild is certainly possible. I was even bored typing that as it is so blindingly obvious.
then 100g of cockles provides 22% of one's daily protein requirements plus masses of B12 and other goodies. Certainly very healthy additions to the diet and ones that early and even more recent farmers tended to miss out on.
Of course mackerel would be good and if therefore sea resources were permitted then making a living from the wild is certainly possible. I was even bored typing that as it is so blindingly obvious.
A simpler way of thinking of it would be to take a hunter gatherer and see how they did in modern urban living, where they were plucked from their bountiful forest and plunged into having to survive by finding a job and earning a living, no charity just getting on with it. They couldn't do it if their life depended on it. It's arrogant to think we'd do any better trying to make a living in their environment.
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What would you get foraging off the land now (within legal limits) skills or not ? Even a group of you would struggle or die in the effort. You need group work and farming...farming would be vital to long term survival and this is how we are all here now; the past efforts of the hunter/gatherer moved on to farming and group/community work and shared skills and goods.
Its not just a matter of filling bellies with fish and meat/some greens, its a matter of sustainability.
A lot of 'preppers' (certainly new ones) seem to think they and their loved ones will survive the 'big kill', the magic virus that wipes out 99% of the population and they will rise like Phoenix from the ashes and fill a role they can't do now in real life by become the provider, the leader, the all wise one; its fantasy land stuff.
As someone else said, its easy enough for any of us (certainly if we are a tad over weight ) to spend a week or three slowly starving so long as we have access to water but long term foraging/surviving in the UK as it is now is ...the stuff of dreams.
Its not just a matter of filling bellies with fish and meat/some greens, its a matter of sustainability.
A lot of 'preppers' (certainly new ones) seem to think they and their loved ones will survive the 'big kill', the magic virus that wipes out 99% of the population and they will rise like Phoenix from the ashes and fill a role they can't do now in real life by become the provider, the leader, the all wise one; its fantasy land stuff.
As someone else said, its easy enough for any of us (certainly if we are a tad over weight ) to spend a week or three slowly starving so long as we have access to water but long term foraging/surviving in the UK as it is now is ...the stuff of dreams.
Not arrogant at all, there are many many ex-hunter-gatherers or their children earning a living by working at jobs. Quite often miserable because of low pay or bad living conditions but they manage. This was the error of Toffler's book Future Shock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock in that he saw the bewildered Indian looking in at a lighted store window as suffering from an overload of information leading to despair. Actual nonsense, the nose pressed against the window belonged to a body short of the cash it knew well how to spend. Absolutely no problem with information overload.
Of course the new hunter-gatherer could just sit and die with open mouth hoping for food to hop in or they could set to work armed with knowledge and the all important nouse.
Of course the new hunter-gatherer could just sit and die with open mouth hoping for food to hop in or they could set to work armed with knowledge and the all important nouse.
Whats not so obvious is that the total UK fish quota for 2012 was roughly 350,000 tones (40% or so of it Mackerel), thats about 5.8kg for every man woman and child in these islands, to last the year. There's plenty making a living from the wild, because there's a culture and knowhow of it (eg the fishing industry). But those figures above give a hint at just how finite these resources are.
However, if one was dropped on a beach in the gear they stood, with a knife and a fire steel, and had no choice but to make a go of it or die, they'd perish. There's just no escaping the reality of it. There isn't a course you can attend to learn the skills and tricks you'd need, those skill are acquired from the cradle with the nurture mentoring and support of a culture adapted to that particular type of environment. Hanging up ones iPad and taking up the boomerang doesn't an aboriginal make
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There is a strange arrogance shown on this topic in that people are pronouncing on the ability of others to live in a certain way. Why would the subject have minimal equipment for a start? And, why would they not be equipped with some of the skills they needed either?
The proposition was living by foraging etc not with any extra constraints. I would think that using discarded items except for food from civilisation was legitimate if that was the case.
I wonder if we are seeing people who regard the proposition as impossible actually revealing their own fears of the outside or even of a fear of general inadequacy.
The proposition was living by foraging etc not with any extra constraints. I would think that using discarded items except for food from civilisation was legitimate if that was the case.
I wonder if we are seeing people who regard the proposition as impossible actually revealing their own fears of the outside or even of a fear of general inadequacy.
You may 'survive' for a while but you'll die...simple. Get a 'tribe' and start working as a community and you have a chance slim as it may be in 2013... This thread is full of wooly headed dippy types; no offence meant.
Sorry but I'm having a chuckle at this thread. I'm no survival expert and I don't confess to be one but I don't know a person alive who could consume 9 pounds of parsnips in a week, let alone a day! Well in that case I would need 22 Twinkies a day to survive. Quick order me a case I'm eating nothing else for a month!!
You are taking a figure of 3300 calories (the amount of calories a soldier can burn a day while on the march and lugging a fully laden Bergen, ammunition and weapons) and equating them to a particular food item!!! The average person per day should consume around 2500 calories per day, that's a huge difference to the figures you are quoting. I can happily put together a basic meal with a fishing line and a bit of leg work to collect mushrooms and other edible plants and tubers and I certainly wouldn't be using up 3300 calories doing it. That meal would happily last me for the rest of the day. The thing is I wouldn't just get enough for the meal but I would get enough to store to eat for the next few days.
We didn't just get born with an ipad in one hand and a Big Mac in the other. Man has chosen a path where mass production farming means we no longer need to forage for food but rather we need to earn to provide instead. Unfortunately the method which we use to farm means that we have lost a lot of our wildlife and woodland and therefore some great food sources. However, saying that, for those of us with the skills to forage and hunt it means we can still scrape together a meal from the land either by fishing, hunting or foraging.
Do I think I could survive on my own, living off the land? No of course I don't, but I have very little skills in foraging. However, some of the other guys on here could probably do a very good job of it and for a lot longer than I could. Plus we need to establish how the individual was in that situation, if its through choice then I'm sure the person that undertook the task would have enough knowledge to live off the land. If it was through a natural disaster or **** scenario then I'm sure that the population would have been thinned out enough to lower competition on the food sources. I'm positive if it was a do or die situation I'm sure I would try to manage somehow.
Man has generally been a pack animal and we tend to strive companionship. I think if we were thrown into that situation we would probably be with loved ones or friends that would help out with the hunter gathering and home making etc.
The required amount of daily calories for a person living in the wilderness was provided by Samuel Thayer, author of the books Forager's Harvest and Nature's Garden. The numbers are confirmed by the reccomendations in Michele Grodner's work Foundations and Clinical Applications of Nutrition. The numbers are further confirmed by most long distance backpackers who calculate their daily caloric requirements using the same numbers.
The 2,500 daily caloric requirement that you mention is calculated for a person sitting in an office most of the day. People who practice most of their bushcraft from behind a computer screen often assume that living in the wilderness is the same thing. It is not. Wilderness living has very high caloric requirements.
Even if we go with your numbers however, just for reference porposes, instead of 25 squirrels per day, you would need 19, or 3 rabbits instead of 4.
The other nutritional requirements and restrictions which you point out actually make the task of living off the land harder, not easier. I only addressed the basic caloric requirements, whichbis challenging enough. Of course when we add additional constraints posed by the need for other nutrients, "living off the land" becomes even more of a challenge.
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How is it that these hunter gatherers will pay for the land they are supposed to forage on? Presumably they will also pay income tax on the income to earn the savings on the thousands of acres they will need to buy? I suppose they will also have weapons to fight off social services who will scoop up their children for not attending school? These are the realities of modern living. Pretending that "hunter gatherers" do not have to obey the law is a huge fudge - of course they do - and those laws (e.g. theft, hunting laws, welfare law) makes the existence impossible. To pretend otherwise is simply delusional.
Point taken boatman, so I'll rephrase; in my opinion "foraging to live", I'll quite happily assert that "I" (me) wouldn't make it if my life depended on it. But then I'm almost 50 so I've actually had my innings, so if I did die it wouldn't be that much of a big deal.
Personal experience and education have shown me that I don't have whats needed to do it, without recourse to some type of agriculture and a means of storage for my produce and fodder for my livestock and self, a place to store my black current jam, I wouldn't survive 6 months foraging alone. I've caught and foraged more "natural" food than I can possibly list here (due to forum rules) so I know that I can't do it from forage (I prefer the term "wild harvest" myself) alone.
If I started in the spring with a reasonable patch of ground, a cow (or several goats), seed and tools, plus a three month store of oat meal 50kg of rock salt a couple of barrels and some fat, just to cover me until my cow started producing (I prefer goose fat personally) then I'd have a go at doing a year and would figure I could do it without losing too much weight. Between what I could catch forage and produce, I'd say that whilst marginal, it's doable. Take away the home bulk staple produce though, and it's a death sentence, for me. I'm a non nomadic subsistence agriculturalist fisher by culture, I don't have the cultural knowhow to survive by H&G.
I've spent quite a bit of my time outside, I've even spent quite a bit of time outside with nowhere else to go, by myself. So I know how it feels and I have to say I have the mental fortitude to handle my own company in reduced circumstances, personal experience has taught me that.
In the past I was always more scared of the "what if", than the "this is it", perhaps you have a point as perhaps that comes across in my narrative in this thread. I'm quite good in a crisis as it turns out, I wouldn't have thought that about myself but for my behavior under difficult circumstance showing otherwise.
So it's Thai curry tonight, going out as I'm in the big smoke of Stornoway this evening and I've got to make the most of the city, sea trout for tomorrow night mind, caught two today and turned a salmon, fortunately my life didn't depend on it so I can live with the missed opportunity.
The good new is I managed to score a new HH oil skin jacket at the fishermans coop so I'm ready as a non nomadic subsistence agriculturalist fisher can be for winter. If I was a want to be neo hunter gatherer, I'd die before my next birthday.
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Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not saying your argument is incorrect but I think the way your trying to explain it is pretty poor and almost sensationalism. As I said I wouldn't have a chance and would probably only serve to prolong my death by maybe a few weeks. There are guys on here that would have a better chance than me and some may have a very slim chance of success but there would have to be other human contact. I accept I was wrong with my figures (confirmed by my wife who is a GP) and I have never found myself needing to get every scrap of food from natures larder (a good majority of it comes from co-op). You do have to agree though that if you were living on your own you would set snares and bird traps, build fish traps and leave lines in the water and even plant edible food near your home. You could never survive on your own in a nomadic existence unless you were in a tribe or you were prepared to trade labour or goods for food.
In 2013 there would be very little chance of success unless a catastrophic even wiped out most of the UK's population and it became a Neolithic situation where it was every man for himself, national laws were abandoned and land ownership was abolished. If you just wanted to live "off the grid" (which is down right impossible in the world of technology we live in) then would have a better chance of success in places like the forests Russia.
I can see both sides of the argument and I can also see that neither side is entirely right. The reason for me posting was to voice my opinion (isn't that what these discussions are for?) on the way you presented your evidence.
Now where is that order of Twinkies... I'm starving!
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not saying your argument is incorrect but I think the way your trying to explain it is pretty poor and almost sensationalism. As I said I wouldn't have a chance and would probably only serve to prolong my death by maybe a few weeks. There are guys on here that would have a better chance than me and some may have a very slim chance of success but there would have to be other human contact. I accept I was wrong with my figures (confirmed by my wife who is a GP) and I have never found myself needing to get every scrap of food from natures larder (a good majority of it comes from co-op). You do have to agree though that if you were living on your own you would set snares and bird traps, build fish traps and leave lines in the water and even plant edible food near your home. You could never survive on your own in a nomadic existence unless you were in a tribe or you were prepared to trade labour or goods for food.
In 2013 there would be very little chance of success unless a catastrophic even wiped out most of the UK's population and it became a Neolithic situation where it was every man for himself, national laws were abandoned and land ownership was abolished. If you just wanted to live "off the grid" (which is down right impossible in the world of technology we live in) then would have a better chance of success in places like the forests Russia.
I can see both sides of the argument and I can also see that neither side is entirely right. The reason for me posting was to voice my opinion (isn't that what these discussions are for?) on the way you presented your evidence.
Now where is that order of Twinkies... I'm starving!
Perhaps I am failing to address your concern because I don't understand what the issue is. Are you speaking about my actual post to which I linked, or the summary I posted here?
In my post I made it very clear that there are other nutritional requirements that would have to be satisfied along with acquiring the caloric minimums necessary to live in the wilderness long term. I specified that I am focusing on the data for caloric intake, and calculating how much of each resource it would take to satisfy that minimum. If you then wish to pile on the other nutritional requirements, then the task of procuring enough food in the wilderness will become even more difficult than what I outlined based just on calories. Is the problem that I made the task of procuring sufficient food in the wilderness seem too easy because I did not discuss vitamin intake?
In my post I considered the availability of the food both without legal restrictions and then with the legal restrictions. I am not sure which part of that offends you.
As far as trapping, it should be noted, that if one attempts to do it in a legal way, most of the forms of trapping you mentioned are illegal just about everywhere, and trapping is generally restricted to furnbarers and varmint. Fishing with traps is also most likely illegal in your area.
If you believe my post is poorly explained, and as a result you do not understand it, perhaps a better way to approach the issue would be to ask for clarification rather than rant about it online.
I am not sure to which two sides of the argument you are referring. Perhaps you could clarify. So far I have presented data about what it would take to procure sufficient calories from wild food in the wilderness, and you have countered with the assertion that other nutrient will also be needed in addition to calories, and that a person can not survive living a nomadic lifestyle.
Again, I believe my failure to address your concerns properly is that I have simply failed to understand them. Perhaps you could elaborate.
