Response to 'how long could you survive' threads. How long WOULD you have survived.

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nickliv

Settler
Oct 2, 2009
755
0
Aberdeenshire
Without modern tools and advantages, regardless of environment and skills. (Blades are OK, modern medicine and surgery isn't)

I'm facing further surgery on a wrist I broke 3 years ago, an injury I wouldn't have survived in earlier times (Even in the 1800s, I'd have been looking at amputation) so this has prompted me to ponder just how many of us would have made it this far. (I'm under no illusions, I'm 37 now, and I was a 3lb prem baby, and by rights, shouldn't even be here anyway)

Discounting vaccinations, and week long courses of oral antibiotics, who can honestly, hand on heart say that they would have made it to the age they now are without medical or surgical intervention? Even dentistry has, indirectly, lead to greatly increased life expectancy.

It's not intended to be a TEOTWAWKI thread, and I hope it doesn't descend into that, more like a 'before the world as we know it' thread. (BTWAWKI)
 

markie*mark0

Settler
Sep 21, 2010
596
0
warrington
I wouldn't be here for a number of reasons... But i guess those's reasons i.e. motorbikes, scuba diving etc wouldn't have happened in the 1800's so maybe im wrong :)
 
I wouldn't be here for a number of reasons... But i guess those's reasons i.e. motorbikes, scuba diving etc wouldn't have happened in the 1800's so maybe im wrong :)

Same here, adding sky diving to it :lmao:

And to stay ON topic: dunno? Except for the obvious things that were not around in those days (motorbikes/planes) there were other things so... who knows....

BTWAWKI: mmm what knowledge level on what continent are you speaking about to cloud the subject....

Grtz Johan
 

Adze

Native
Oct 9, 2009
1,874
0
Cumbria
www.adamhughes.net
I had pneumonia when I was 25, indirectly caused by some cracked ribs. Doubtful I would have survived that in pre-history, or perhaps even before the advent of antibiotics - even with them I was pretty whacked for the better part of a fortnight.

I had a microdiscechtomy in 2009 - a disc had prolapsed and the pressure on nerves in my lower back stopped me from walking. As a hunter gatherer that would have been my chips I reckon.

It's not so long ago that being my age, 41, made you really quite elderly and more people died in the late twenties and early thirties than didn't.
 

Adze

Native
Oct 9, 2009
1,874
0
Cumbria
www.adamhughes.net
So substitute "the wrong toadstool" for herbal cigarettes, falling from a tree while birdsnesting for a motorbke crash and being run down by the lairds pony and trap for looking left when you should have looked right while on holiday in Marbella... how do you fare now?
 

John Fenna

Lifetime Member & Maker
Oct 7, 2006
23,108
2,838
66
Pembrokeshire
Without modern medicine I would probably be dead - thanks to childhood illnesses that are so easily cured these days.
Without trad herbal medicines I would regularly be in agony as the NHS could offer no help with my Kidney stones - but a foul gloop prepared by my herbalist keeps them at bay, accupuncture sorted out the tendonitis I had in both achilese tendons (accupuncture curtesy of the NHS I will admit) and St Johns Wort keeps my Depression at bay when the NHS "happy pills" made it worse!
Six of one - half a dozen of the other, I would say.....
 

Retired Member southey

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jun 4, 2006
11,098
13
your house!
Yup, and IMO with out modern medicine, but with the same living standard, we would al be better off, and Im not joking!


I think i should explain a little, with out the help off modern Medicine A LOT of people wouldn't have survived birth let alone the first five years of life, and A LOT of people wouldn't survive incidents or illnesses, and MOST people would die at a pretty normal age say 50\60, so surely there would be a lot more food around for every one, not to mention housing and jobs:)
 

rik_uk3

Banned
Jun 10, 2006
13,320
24
69
south wales
I caught Tuberculosis which almost killed me before treatment and its left a cavity in my right lung and I'm very short of breath (hence no more hiking). I finished the TB treatment 11 months ago but without modern drugs I'd not have an easy time breathing now.

"Yup, and IMO with out modern medicine, but with the same living standard, we would al be better off, and Im not joking!" Thats a crazy and ludicrous comment Southy and I really hope you are joking.
 

mountainm

Bushcrafter through and through
Jan 12, 2011
9,990
12
Selby
www.mikemountain.co.uk
Without my tablets my GERD brings on Asthma - over time I develop a chocking cough where I literally can't breath and suffocate for what seems like an age - not sure what the logical conclusion of this would be. I guess I could munch on limestone and chalk when out in the woods.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
I expect this to be contentious,since many now refuse to have them, but.......the biggest single improvement in modern health is vaccination for childhood diseases.

The documents of the earlier centuries express the astonished delight and heartfelt gratitude that smallpox vaccination actually works.
Parishes that lost 100 'souls' a year, lost none after vaccination against smallpox. It was commonly accounted to take a fifth of the human race, and left those who survived scarred and frequently blind and deaf.
Diptheria killed infants with horrendous efficacy. Scarlet fever had them hospitalised for months. Measles left many sight and hearing damaged. Polio killed or so terribly damaged the survivors that they were left permanently crippled.

Cholera, typhoid, parasite infestation, bubonic plague......and this is before the accidental injuries, broken limbs, burns, etc., that now are healed and leave no permanent damages....all killed with and did so with impunity.

In the West, none of these diseases are common now. Smallpox is eradicated and we don't even vaccinate children for it anymore. No more scars on upper arms. Polio is still common elsewhere, but when did you last hear of someone in an iron lung or see a child lurching along on callipers on a polio wrecked leg, here ?

The other huge improvement is in clean water and decent sewerage systems.
The Victorians were the ultimate capitalists, but they were also the ultimate public services proponents :)
Clean water, freely available, and efficient municiple sewage systems improved health across the nation. A process given impetus and determined effort after Prince Albert died of typhoid.


I had flu, real flu, in my mid 20's. I have nearly a month missing from my memories, and it was four months after I finally was well enough to be out of bed, before I felt like me again. I lost 2.5 stones that I didn't need to lose then, and really don't think I would have survived without modern medicine.
Paracetamol is a much under valued drug :)

cheers,
Toddy
 

Retired Member southey

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jun 4, 2006
11,098
13
your house!
Nope its a simple fact Richard, I of course use modern medicines and every advancement on offer(or that I could afford) that would give me the edge over any illness or injury as I'm not a fool, but if there were less people there would be more things to be owned\used\eaten\drunk therefore we would be all be better off, not healthier, not living longer but better off:)
 

oldtimer

Full Member
Sep 27, 2005
3,185
1,801
82
Oxfordshire and Pyrenees-Orientales, France
You don't have to speculate about how things used to be. Even a cursory look at the news shows that the life all of us would have lived in the past is what millions still live today. Famine, pestilence and war may be less common in the West, but they are an everyday fact of life, and death, in much of the world. Don't look at the past, look to today and how tomorrow could be.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
You don't have to speculate about how things used to be. Even a cursory look at the news shows that the life all of us would have lived in the past is what millions still live today. Famine, pestilence and war may be less common in the West, but they are an everyday fact of life, and death, in much of the world. Don't look at the past, look to today and how tomorrow could be.

Oh well said :approve:

M
 

MartiniDave

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Aug 29, 2003
2,355
130
62
Cambridgeshire
With out "modern " medicine I quite simply would NEVER have existed, because my father would have died from Wiels disease back in the early 50's. He was only saved by the then very new and relatively untried penecillin. I beleive it was so new at the time they nearly didn't get to try it. I'm a bit sketch on exact times and events because it was something he didn't talk about unless really pressed, and sadly I can't ask him now.

Other than that I'd have probably been crippled when I had a class 1 bend as a result of a diving misshap, and without modern dentistry it would be baby food all the way.

Dave
 
Nov 29, 2004
7,808
22
Scotland
"...Diptheria killed infants with horrendous efficacy. Scarlet fever had them hospitalised for months. Measles left many sight and hearing damaged. Polio killed or so terribly damaged the survivors that they were left permanently crippled..."

Nearly half of the children in this picture died of diptheria, scarlet fever and other diseases within a few years of the photograph being taken...

Ittnw.jpg


...my father, who sits at the front on the left survived. Looking at this photograph when he was eighty-two he could name every child.

(St James Square, Edinburgh c1928)
 
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