Here is an interesting article by someone who has been doing what a lot of us will be doing before long.

http://207.82.250.251/cgi-bin/linkrd?http://www.pioneerpc.com/wildernessway/Pages/realities.htm

David "Your old life was a frantic running from silence" Rumi

-- David Hammer (davidone@worldnet.att.net), January 11, 1999

Answers

Very cool article. Reminds me of Tom Brown. Wonder if the forest can support 250 million people living like that though.

-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), January 11, 1999.

Whoops. To make it easier, just use this: http://www.pioneerpc.com/wildernessway/Pages/realities.htm

-- David Hammer (davidone@worldnet.att.net), January 11, 1999.

??? I can't get anywhere with either of these URLs. For the first, I get the message "You are visiting a site outside of Hotmail. Close this new browser window to return to Hotmail." .. ???

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), January 11, 1999.

No, the forest won't support that many people...but that many people don't know how to do it. Most backpackers who get lost end up starving in the woods, even though they're surrounded by edible plants. If you think you can just eat anything that looks good, or "test" plants for edibility, you're probably going to die of poisoning. And how many of you can make fire when your matches run out? I can, but it takes some fairly specific techniques and some practice. In short, if you were an expert at these things and set up shop in the deep woods somewhere, I don't think you'd be likely to get overrun.

-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), January 11, 1999.

One and a half years in the Oregon Cascades (93-94) taught me that there are very few places where you can go and not encounter other people. If they don't have 4X4 vehicles, they have horses.

These days, they all carry guns...even the families that are out for a day's horseback ride. Didn't used to be that way, but it is now.

Few leave the forest without using those guns, often with no regard to where the bullet goes after it misses its intended target.

Can the forest support hoards of people? No.

seasoned

-- seasoned (soldog@hotmail.com), January 11, 1999.

Shimrod, would you do us all a favor and once and for all either writ the definitive guide to starting a fire in the woods without modern apparatus, or point us to where this is described on the web ?

-- Vronsky (vronsky@anna.com), January 11, 1999.

You got it, Vronsky. I don't know of any links but I'll see what I can put together, and post it on a new thread. It might be tricky without diagrams but I'll make it as clear as I can.

-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), January 11, 1999.

Yes, please do this Shimrod, I've searched on the web and not found this described adequately and comprehensively anywhere.

-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), January 11, 1999.

How to make fire
http://members.home.net/shadow-scout/fire.html

-- Jon (jonmiles@pacbell.net), January 11, 1999.

Shimrod, you mentioned this in another post, but would you do us the favor of describing how to make cordage. I know it's fairly simple once you get it, but i've practiced from directions in books, and not gotten it right. I would appreciate any descriptions you could give that might help.

-- Damian Solorzano (oggy1@webtv.net), January 12, 1999.

Thanks, Shimrod,

This article will help me to refute those who parrot Hobbes' assertion that primitive life was "nasty, brutish and short." It's amazing, even when confronted by the evidence of modern anthropological research, how many people still believe this.

Hallyx

"We are stardust. We are golden. We are billion-year-old carbon. And we've got to get ourselves back to the Garden."---Joni Mitchell

-- Hallyx (Hallyx@aol.com), January 12, 1999.

You're right, Hallyx. In a group situation where you can share labor, wilderness survival only takes a couple hours work each day, after the first few days which are pretty busy. It takes some more while you're preparing for winter, but generally there's a lot of free time. Even the Kalahari Bushmen, who live in a pretty sparse environment, get by on roughly four hours a day.

There are also a lot of naturally available medicines around, if you really know what you're doing. And given that you get a lot more exercise and the diet you were made for, life don't have to be that short either.

Cordage instructions coming up...

-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), January 12, 1999.