Originally Posted by Amnorix (Post 14267367)

Anyone else watch "Naked and Afraid"? It's eye-opening how much even somewhat reasonably trained humans suck at surviving without all the amenities of life.

Basically, two people (one male and one female) get dropped off somewhere, and get to bring ONE thing each (often a fire-starter, or a fishing net, or whatever) and a knife. That's it. No clothes, no blanket, NOTHING.

The challenge is to survive 21 days. The number of tap outs, due to injuries or the miserable conditions (cold, lack of food, whatever) is pretty high, but what is universally true is NOBODY truly thrives. EVERYONE loses alot of weight (usually 10% or more of total pre-challenge weight) and it's clear that if it was a, whatever, 50 days challenge, pretty much nobody would make it.

And sometimes the conditions are full of food -- at least in theory. People even complain -- we're in a RAIN FOREST. We can hear creatures everywhere. There's all kinds of plants. Why are we starving? Why can't we catch anything?

Originally Posted by scho63 (Post 14267397)

The start of the NFL season can't come soon enough.....

Originally Posted by Rain Man (Post 14267403)

If you were feral, you wouldn't even know when it started.

Speaking of seasons, I wonder if the required acreage would need to be large enough that a person could migrate to different areas that have different plants to harvest over the course of the year. That would mean a pretty big territory.

Originally Posted by TinyEvel (Post 14267087)

Interesting fact: the term "caveman" is actually a misnomer. They didn't live in caves. Well, not for extended periods of time. They were actually migrant and followed the seasons and the food. So, you may need quite a long stretch from North to South. The no planting/farming is quite a restriction. So you'd have to leave to go follow herd of buffalo/cattle etc. I imagine.

40,000 acres? I'm an "ask for your desired outcome" type person.

Originally Posted by ptlyon (Post 14267430)

Are you saying coconuts migrate?

Originally Posted by patteeu (Post 14267244)

This thread got me thinking... how do you buy netflix videos if you're off the grid?

Originally Posted by Rain Man (Post 14266955)

I was thinking the other day about cattle, and what a pasture must look like to them. When you're a rancher and you open the gate for your cattle, they're essentially walking into a field of pizza, right? Their food is just lying there on the ground for them to take, and it's food that they really like. I guess more accurately, they're walking into a field that's mixed with pizza and broccoli and the occasional cookie, but that's fine.

So that got me thinking about how cool it would be as a human to experience this, and I suddenly realized - wow! That's how it was for humans for 99 percent of our history. We got our food by walking around and finding it. Sometimes it was on a bush or in a root and sometimes we had to kill it, but the truth is that for most of our history, the world was a big buffet and we wandered through it with a fork, a spear, and an atlatl.

So that got me thinking again. Could a person do that now? We talk about living "off the grid", but that's kind of a fiction. People living off the grid are still importing goods from civilization. They're buying canned goods and shotgun shells and Netflix videos. They're using agricultural techniques that were developed in Mesopotamia and optimized in Kansas.

So instead of that corrupt modern version of "living off the grid", let's go with a purist approach. You've got XX acres of land, and after a polite ramp up period to get it ready, you're going to be a hunter/gatherer. No growing crops allowed. You're going to wander the woods and valleys and plains, and you're going to hunt creatures and pick berries from wild bushes, and drink from streams. You'll only make clothing and tools and cups and netflix videos using local sources and materials. Nothing enters or leaves your property, ever.

How many acres of land would a person need to do this? I'm considering it as my next career.

Originally Posted by Amnorix (Post 14267367)

Anyone else watch "Naked and Afraid"? It's eye-opening how much even somewhat reasonably trained humans suck at surviving without all the amenities of life.

Basically, two people (one male and one female) get dropped off somewhere, and get to bring ONE thing each (often a fire-starter, or a fishing net, or whatever) and a knife. That's it. No clothes, no blanket, NOTHING.

The challenge is to survive 21 days. The number of tap outs, due to injuries or the miserable conditions (cold, lack of food, whatever) is pretty high, but what is universally true is NOBODY truly thrives. EVERYONE loses alot of weight (usually 10% or more of total pre-challenge weight) and it's clear that if it was a, whatever, 50 days challenge, pretty much nobody would make it.

And sometimes the conditions are full of food -- at least in theory. People even complain -- we're in a RAIN FOREST. We can hear creatures everywhere. There's all kinds of plants. Why are we starving? Why can't we catch anything?