Will our Bushcraft and Survival skills be put to the test

[wingstoo]

Guess that you have decided that the post has beaten you and that you cannot stay with the topic in question, you have come up with some good answers, but I will be making sure that I do more studying into this subject, and would highly recommend that others do so as well.

It has been a great debating session, thanks folks.

Keep lucky and keep well.

LS :You_Rock_

 

[Toddy]

You've tried to start a hare that won't rise.
Several times over in fact, on different forums, and had the same result.
I think it might be a good idea if you listened to what has actually been said instead of constantly paraphrasing alarmist literature.

Toddy

 

[Stuart]

Guess that you have decided that the post has beaten you and that you cannot stay with the topic in question

I dont think so LS, I think we just got tired of it!

 

[Neil1]

LS,
The definition of a survivalist - well having been one for a very long time I feel I can answer this one fairly confidently (see my article "All Kitted Out" on the Outdoor Magazine Forum). I have lived thru the nuclear threat of the 60-70-80's, roits, the days of SWAT, AIDS, EBOLA, SARS, Y2K, several crime explosions, fuel shortages and of course - John Prescott.
The definition - ah yes - a survivalist, someone who is prepared (NOT preoccupied) . All preparations should be based on a threat analasys, weighing up how much of a threat things REALLY are (how many people have been killed worldwide in RTA's in the time that the media has been doom-mongering the bird flu) it may be a more efficient use of calories to remember to buckle-up your seat-belt.
Y2K is a case in point, the world was going to melt-down according to the media, and an awful lot of peole on the other side of the pond wasted a huge amount of money and a big proportion of their lives because they became preoccupied with one aspect in a huge picture (a simple experiment with a modern digital watch, moving the the date forward, proved that Y"K was'nt going to happen, so I did'nt waste time and energy on it.).
The biggest threat to mankind is the planet itself, the second biggest is mankind and its gullable nature and the media who exist to make money not inform.
Anyway, as the others have hinted this thread is better suited to a survivalist forum, not a bushcraft one, so this thread ends here. Nice to debate with you, but this is'nt the place.
Neil

 

[bushwacker bob]

if it tastes like chicken,dont eat it.

 

[Toddy]

Heard a story about that.

Sometimes police investigators/ archaeologists find bones so small that identification is impossible. If human remains are found, in unusual circumstances, that are less than 100 years old, then potentially it's a crime scene. Neo natal bones don't survive well, and can be so fragmentary that it's impossible to tell if it's baby or chicken. Nowadays it's relatively easy, if still expensive, to do dna analysis but it wasn't always. Quick diagnosis could be made by putting one of the bones in the microwave and heating it. If it smelled like chicken it was a hen; if it smelled of bacon, it was human. I doubt this practice is still used, but it's not the first time I've heard references to humans and pigs sharing the same type of smells from cooking.

Now I've put everyone off their breakfasts , does anyone on the list grow/forage/hunt *all* of their own/family's food?

Cheers,
Toddy

 

[wingstoo]

..........

 

[redcollective]

Must be pretty miserable, waiting for TSTHTF all the time.

Bushcraft for me is an inherently more positive thing - it's the 21st century, I don't NEED to know how to light a fire with friction - but it's fun trying. It's fun discovering new things by accident, learning techniques from other people, reading about long forgotten crafts, and getting to know nature a bit more intimately. To me, that's what this forum is about - and there are other place (you've made one yourself) where the 'inner circle' of doomsday enthusiasts can go and play armageddon til the cows come home.

Crikey my hands are shaking I'm so miffed - I think I'll go out for a run. Seeya folks. Mods feel free to delete this, I'm ventilating.

 

[bambodoggy]

I know he was, the doc also said it was like no other flu virus he had come across, in reply to the comment it was just like "ordinary flu" and as "ordinary flu" kills tens of thousands every year, and this doc reckons that we will "probably" get infected, "probably get very ill" but "probably" wont die, just who is he trying to convince, so if 25% of the world population gets this virus they "probably" wont die but if the get "ordinary flu" will they possibly die? :sad6:

LS

Talk about blatant picking and choosing which bits suit your arguement........and from your own source too! lol Brilliant, you couldn't make it up

LS, while you've got us all on the subject of "Survivalists", can you answer me a question or two please?

In everything I've ever read and been taught with the army about survival it is pressed into us again and again about the important of keeping a PMA (Possative mental attitude). There have been a number of cases where people have been quite well equipped but have still perished as they were not mentally able to keep possitive and force themselves to stay alive. I heard another story last weekend about a young lad who had somehow lost his leg....so he grows himself another one....nobody had told him that it was impossible to do and he firmly believed he could do it...and he did much to the amazement of the whole medical world. There have also been cases where people had no survival kit or training whatsoever but just refused to lay down and die and so have made it out alive.
I don't think there is any arguement that PMA is the all important survival nesseccity, although obviously kit and knowledge is handy

Now, my question is, bearing the above in mind: Why are all Survivalist so desperate to be so negative about Epidemics, Pandemics and other EOTWAWKI senerios. Why would you pick out the negative points in the Doctors statements and scorn the possive comments? Why so doomy and gloomy about numbers killed/ill and the repercutions from that? Why the constant scare mongering and continual prophercies of death and destruction?

Surely that is so far from a PMA as to actually be bad for you?

It just makes no sence to me how all the evidence and research points to needing PMA to make it through a tough time and yet all survivalist are at their happiest when they are predicting doom!

I'd appriciate a serious answer if you have one as all I can think is that these misguided survivalist think they will survive and are are simply and gleefully just smuggly mocking the rest of us non-survivalists....and that's just not very nice now is it

Many thanks,

Bam.

 

[leon-1]

Guess that you have decided that the post has beaten you and that you cannot stay with the topic in question, you have come up with some good answers, but I will be making sure that I do more studying into this subject, and would highly recommend that others do so as well.

It has been a great debating session, thanks folks.

Keep lucky and keep well.

LS :You_Rock_

I thought about this question a long time ago and came to one decision, that it was pointless thinking about it.

The picture that you paint of having to live off the land, although it is possible, is not very likely to happen. In the event that people had to live off the land, the land mass in the UK cannot support the number of people that it has anyway.

So your pandemic would then be followed by levels of civil unrest between the have's and have nots which is the struggle for food. A lack of food then lowers the threshhold of your immune system and the pandemic grows further as people grow weaker and more susceptible to infection.

In this scenario no level of skill will make life any easier and it doesn't matter how you look at it, because the strong will take from the weak, it is human nature.

In the global pandemic scenario the main factor will be your health before it strikes, if you are strong, fit and recover from illnes quickly (have a good immune system) there is a good chance that you will survive, if you are a sickly, weak or have a weak immune system there will be an increased chance that you will die, it is that simple. Infections do not pick and choose, they will infect as many people in a room and the people with a better immune system will beat it.

If you can train your immune system great, but Anti-bodies doing fire by friction ain't gonna help either.

The reality is, "IF" it should reach Africa where it has a greater chance of mutating then there is a chance that it "MIGHT" become a problem. Keep fit and eat well / properly now as it most definitely is a better and more constructive than worrying about the "POSSIBILITY" of something that "MAY" happen in a future which is "UNCERTAIN" and the neccesary skills that you don't have to fight a virus.

 

[wingstoo]

Talk about blatant picking and choosing which bits suit your arguement........and from your own source too! lol Brilliant, you couldn't make it up

LS, while you've got us all on the subject of "Survivalists", can you answer me a question or two please?

In everything I've ever read and been taught with the army about survival it is pressed into us again and again about the important of keeping a PMA (Possative mental attitude).

Positive Mental Attitude, So I am being negative about this?, Surely the fact that I am reading about the subject is showing that I am doing something positive, if I have a food store and water filters, masks and the etc's and that I am talking about it and putting across my views (whether guided or misguided) means that I am taking the risks as a possibility and not just dismissing them out of hand, When I cross the road I look left right and left again, if it is okay I cross if a car is coming I wait, in effect I am doing a risk assessment on the situation, something we all do many times every day. So I have a positive attitude, I prepare myself to survive, I do not look at it and think that I will do nothing cos I am going to die sometime anyway.


I don't think there is any arguement that PMA is the all important survival nesseccity, although obviously kit and knowledge is handy

Now, my question is, bearing the above in mind: Why are all Survivalist so desperate to be so negative about Epidemics, Pandemics and other EOTWAWKI senerios. Why would you pick out the negative points in the Doctors statements and scorn the possive comments? Why so doomy and gloomy about numbers killed/ill and the repercutions from that? Why the constant scare mongering and continual prophercies of death and destruction?

Survivalists (as some like to call them) look at as much information as is possible and make their own minds up as to what they think the risk is, then they take positive steps in an attempt to protect themselves and their families/friends from those risks, if one looks on the more bleak side then things can only get better. EOTWAWKI scenarios can be anything, loss of a loved one, losing your job, losing your house etc, to the person it affects it is the end of the world as they knew it.

In the Army did they not have a contingency plan "B" in case plan "A" did not work out as hoped? Some civilian people have plan "A" and plan "B" should anything major happen in their world, "hope for the best, but plan for the worst" is something I believe in.

I have insurance on my home my car, it doesn't mean that I am expecting to have a crash or have my home destroyed, it means that I have taken steps just in case it does happen, that is in some ways what "survivalists" are doing, is it not.

Surely that is so far from a PMA as to actually be bad for you?

So bearing in mind what I have written, have I got PMA or am I a person who is looking at the possible risks and shrugging and saying it wont happen to me so why should I be worried about it.


It just makes no sence to me how all the evidence and research points to needing PMA to make it through a tough time and yet all survivalist are at their happiest when they are predicting doom!

Not so much predicting it but preparing for events that could be just around the corner or twenty years away.


I'd appriciate a serious answer if you have one as all I can think is that these misguided survivalist think they will survive and are are simply and gleefully just smuggly mocking the rest of us non-survivalists....and that's just not very nice now is it .

I try not to mock you guys, I try to get people to be aware of what others are predicting, I used the one reference in an answer to someone else's comment that it was "just flu", and then the doc said it was like no flu he had ever come across in all his years. I could have used a hundred and one other references, but that would have taken to long to select. I try and point readers to places where the information is so that they can draw their own conclusions, the World Health Organisation, Centre for Disease Control and the United Nations to name a few.

We have come a long way since I ask the original question, and have probably said way to much, I am sorry that a lot of you have not liked some of the things I have said, but I do hope that you will not think of me as a doom and gloom merchant, more of someone who feels that there is a risk and is trying his hardest to do some small thing to protect himself and his family the best way he feels he can.

When my daughter died sixteen years ago it was one hell of a shock, those sort of things happen to other people not to me, but we made things better for other future grieving parents by having the Local Authority create a childrens burial area, we could not stop childen dying but we sure made things a lot easier for grieving parents.

LS

 

[bambodoggy]

LS, I might not agree with all or any of what you've said but I do thank you for answering my questions as best you can and as honestly as you can.

Nice one

Bam.

 

[Lithril]

Well I've always been of the opinion that there is no use worrying about something if you can't do anything about it. If I worried about every possibility that could happen I'd be either totally paranoid or a nervous wreck. There is a likely probability that in all honesty I'll die in a car crash judging by the amount of miles I clear in a year, I've survived one and yet I still drive. There is also a possibility that I could be hurt in nearly all every day activities, again there is no point worrying too much if its going to happen it will. I also regularly climb, do I want to die no but I'm also not going to stop climbing and doing the things I enjoy just because "something might happen".

A bird flu pandemic is actually only a possibility and not a certainty, i for one don't have space to stock pile months of food and water and there is no certainty that if I did it would protect me... so why bother? At the end of the day its needless panic to get a kick out of being morbid, I'd rather live life for today and see what happens.

Matt

 

[spoony]

Being the worst flu he has had to deal with means that he is too young to have dealt with the other outbreaks. That is all.
Who will watch us ? The ones with respirators, of course.

In the UK, around 1200 die a year from "normal" flu. Compare this to the spanish flu in 1918. 200,000 died in the UK in a matter of months... Estimates are that between 25 and 100 million died globally.
The thing is, that strain died out in 18 months,because of the build up in immunity and any variants that reappeared were mild in comparison. And that 18 months was with little or no knowledge of modern medicine. You can reduce that down considerably with modern methods.
I'm certainly not going to lie awake at night worrying about it. I'm lieing awake because i have just had a wisdom tooth out and my face hurts.

There was a program on telly the other day about the spanish flu, Spread by the soldiers returning back from the war, the rate it killed was bloody scary, caught it one day, few days later and they were dead, floods your lungs drown in your own fluids. not nice

 

[wingstoo]

Hi Folks,

Hmm, will probably get some comments in reply to this but having had a look at the statistics on this posting it has amazed me, 53 posts (some of which are my own) and 902 viewings, apart from "Free Nikwax" and "What's with the spam", it seems to have been something of quite an interesting thread, if of course "interesting" is gauged by the number posts and views.

Mods/Admin, feel free to delete this, it is after all just an observation.

LS

 

[Toddy]

Contentious and prideful.
LS many posts get a great many readers, many topics are very well discussed, many threads diverge into others.
Your "observation" smacks too much of self righteousness.
No one else resurrected this thread; you did it yourself.
Time to let it lie.

Toddy