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SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

Wilderness survival is something anyone who spends real time outdoors should know a thing or two about. I took a course for my degree which was learning hard and soft skills for an emergency overnight in the Canadian backcountry in February. We were then driven out to a wilderness park in the mountains and left to spend the night alone with only enough supplies to fit in a coffee tin, a liter of water, and the clothes on our back.

We had to fast for 24 hours and then were given a mock emergency scenario to respond to in the morning, which proved to be a shitshow because we were so tired and starving. But a good learning experience on how difficult it can be to comprehend an emergency situation and think of solutions when you're not in your best shape.

If you take part in backcountry adventures, it doesn't hurt to take some time to do some learning in the event you might need it someday. And admittedly, there's a lot of really cool stuff out there that wouldn't really apply to you, but it's still awesome to learn about!

I love the Youtube channel Primitive Technology.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA/videos

They post a lot of fantastic bushcraft of everything from weapons to traps to containers to houses. It's only been active for a year but post frequently, so I expect many more videos in the future.

For people to follow, you can never go wrong with Ray Mears. He's my favourite wilderness survival guru by far. Les Stroud is my second.

So go ahead and post videos, resources, stories, favourite people, any and all!

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Dr Cox MD
Sep 11, 2001

Listen Up, Newbies.

Picnic Princess posted:

I love the Youtube channel Primitive Technology.

Seriously that guy is the best.

Survival Lily is pretty cool (https://www.youtube.com/user/alonewolverine1984)

As is ReWild University (https://www.youtube.com/user/ReWildUniversity)

Nothing I've found compares to Primitive Technology, tho.

Most people out there are just doing poor imitations of PT.

Edit: Better links

Dr Cox MD fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Apr 13, 2017

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
My favorite survivalist story is the guy who died, cuz he figured the way to go is to learn on the fly without a safety net.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/survivalist-richard-codes-final-hours/article1210260/?page=3

It also pairs nicely with this first hand account of a brush with freezing to death

https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death

meselfs
Sep 26, 2015

The body may die, but the soul is always rotten
Steal little things frequently:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/books/the-stranger-in-the-woods-for-27-years-maines-north-pond-hermit.html


Go wildernessing with an old IBM laptop computer. When things get cold and wet, shave some magnesium off the case and make a fire.

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

Picnic Princess posted:

For people to follow, you can never go wrong with Ray Mears. He's my favourite wilderness survival guru by far.

Same here, he's very practical and his shows and books are about the culture, practical uses, and history of man and it's beginnings and glory days.

Do a YouTube search for "Ray Mears Bushcraft"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR7N5zuC8WI or "Ray Mears Wild Food" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5pG_CMAAQk. Some are a bit more focused on nice pictures and good vibes, others have a lot of information you can actually apply. I would say wild food has more useful things worth researching, but I just really enjoy even the filler shots of suns setting and Ray paddling a canoe. The Sweden episode has a nice simple little method for cooking fish over fire without a pan to get people started.

extra stout fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Apr 14, 2017

SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

We watched so many Ray Mears video in my survival class. There's no drama, no lovely sensational music to create tension, and very little fakery for ratings, unlike some celebrity survivalists out there.

ASSTASTIC
Apr 27, 2003

Hey Gusy!
Joe Robinet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?josephallen19

He was the contestant on Alone that lost his loving firesteel the first season and tapped out. Hes been making a ton of videos recently, and really entertaining. High quality videos, but really interesting to see his approach. Recently, hes been shilling for TheHiddenWoodsman outdoor gear, and it actually worked! I bought the Haversack and haven't had a chance ot try it out yet.

I had no idea this forum existed. I'll use it a lot more now.

Rime
Nov 2, 2011

by Games Forum
Two dudes from Ontario don't succeed at casting for Alone, repeatedly, and finally decide to head into the woods for a few weeks and film their own series to demonstrate that "living off the land" as hunter/gatherers long term is functionally impossible for modern humans (at least in the west) and no better than fasting:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuoSzo6nnDLKOiZ_rXHE6Gw

I won't spoil how it pans out, it's very well done and really shits via science on the hardcore bushcraft crowd. Also has some other great videos such as attempting to eat lilly root.

Rime fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Apr 20, 2017

ASSTASTIC
Apr 27, 2003

Hey Gusy!

Rime posted:

Two dudes from Ontario don't succeed at casting for Alone, repeatedly, and finally decide to head into the woods for a few weeks and film their own series to demonstrate that "living off the land" as hunter/gatherers long term is functionally impossible for modern humans (at least in the west) and no better than fasting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=channel?UCuoSzo6nnDLKOiZ_rXHE6Gw

I won't spoil how it pans out, it's very well done and really shits via science on the hardcore bushcraft crowd. Also has some other great videos such as attempting to eat lilly root.

Link not working?

CrazySalamander
Nov 5, 2009
Link doesn't work.

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer

Rime posted:

really shits via science on

Daddy want

ephphatha
Dec 18, 2009






The youtube auto-parsing breaks channel links. I ended up watching a couple of videos from Joe Robinet the other day and thought they were entertaining, certainly a lot less cringy than other channels that take themselves more seriously.

Rime
Nov 2, 2011

by Games Forum
Thanks, didn't notice it was broken. Tossed that post out and went straight to sleep.

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
Checked out the wooded beardsmen some. They're alright, but science is a bit soft. I'd say it's more of a canadian, rather than scientific, take on jerking off in the woods.

Just to play their game (and I didn't watch enough to know if they covered this): The idea of having to fully sustain yourself, not just last until you get back to taco bell, is cool. But presumably whichever paleo people you're trying to eat like didn't have 400 horsepower turbo vet bodies, like today's jerk off in the woods crowd tends to build theirs into.

ASSTASTIC
Apr 27, 2003

Hey Gusy!

Epitope posted:

Checked out the wooded beardsmen some. They're alright, but science is a bit soft. I'd say it's more of a canadian, rather than scientific, take on jerking off in the woods.

Just to play their game (and I didn't watch enough to know if they covered this): The idea of having to fully sustain yourself, not just last until you get back to taco bell, is cool. But presumably whichever paleo people you're trying to eat like didn't have 400 horsepower turbo vet bodies, like today's jerk off in the woods crowd tends to build theirs into.

Yeah I've been watching his videos too and its really interesting the concept of "starvivor" where its true as gently caress, battle of the fattest wins. I'm really surprised the 2 woman lasted so long on the last season of Alone. Now there is a major trend of the "fat ones win", I'm curious how some people's approaches to these contests are going to shape out. Come in 200lbs heavier than your natural weight and then get the excess skin cut off after you win the $500k competition. Only issue would be that if you lost and now you have a debilitating eating disorder.

Going back to the bearded guys, it almost seems to me that they need to find some sort of spice or process to give their food more flavor. I know its giving them sustenance, but they are struggling eating Pike all the time.

Rime
Nov 2, 2011

by Games Forum
The series really lead me to question whether modern agricultural diets have had long enough to alter humans such that switching back to hunter-gatherer mode is simply no longer possible for our metabolisms, at least in the relative my short timespans portrayed in series's such as Alone.

Refined carbs are a hell of a drug, basically.

I very much enjoyed their standalone experiment on eating Lilly root. That was great.

Levitate
Sep 30, 2005

randy newman voice

YOU'VE GOT A LAFRENIÈRE IN ME
Probably more about the advent of agriculture and mass production of food and crops. Of course it's going to be ridiculously difficult to go into the wild and maintain your body composition in that kind of situation, the point would probably be that you could survive but you're not going to have the extra calories we all eat because food is so easily available

meselfs
Sep 26, 2015

The body may die, but the soul is always rotten

Rime posted:

The series really lead me to question whether modern agricultural diets have had long enough to alter humans such that switching back to hunter-gatherer mode is simply no longer possible for our metabolisms, at least in the relative my short timespans portrayed in series's such as Alone.

Refined carbs are a hell of a drug, basically.

I very much enjoyed their standalone experiment on eating Lilly root. That was great.

I don't think we're altered yet, but holy poo poo are we taught to be soft from the beginning.

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

Rime posted:

The series really lead me to question whether modern agricultural diets have had long enough to alter humans such that switching back to hunter-gatherer mode is simply no longer possible for our metabolisms, at least in the relative my short timespans portrayed in series's such as Alone.

Refined carbs are a hell of a drug, basically.

I very much enjoyed their standalone experiment on eating Lilly root. That was great.

It's a good question that almost no one can answer, my personal idea of an in between somewhat plausible idea would be people who mostly grow food on their own land, keep some chickens if you'd like, and then learn foraging skills to supplement that food, function as a pretty interesting and useful hobby and then rarely if ever truly help you survive if you end up in a survival situation. There will probably always be grocery stores and fast food near where you live if you're in a modern city or town, but it'd be nice if there were less of them and if less people needed them to prepare their meals for them every few hours of their life. If people weren't giving billions of dollars to big agriculture they wouldn't have the money to continue with lobbying in politics, the news, and generally every aspect of life. Teach even 50 million Americans some basic backyard skills, forget even needing to identify mushrooms on trails or know which tree stumps you can find water in, just get a lot of people a chicken coop and some carrots and the mentality of having your own knowledge and choice could sway the world back a bit.

I didn't see their video yet, did they not find or bring some dill weed to throw on that fish? Works every time

Chillbro Baggins
Oct 8, 2004
Bad Angus! Bad!
The Egyptians figured out bread and beer 4,000 years ago, I think we're pretty much set as a species. There may be another Toba bottleneck event, but we're like cockroaches.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004


Out here, everything hurts.




extra stout posted:

It's a good question that almost no one can answer, my personal idea of an in between somewhat plausible idea would be people who mostly grow food on their own land, keep some chickens if you'd like, and then learn foraging skills to supplement that food, function as a pretty interesting and useful hobby and then rarely if ever truly help you survive if you end up in a survival situation. There will probably always be grocery stores and fast food near where you live if you're in a modern city or town, but it'd be nice if there were less of them and if less people needed them to prepare their meals for them every few hours of their life. If people weren't giving billions of dollars to big agriculture they wouldn't have the money to continue with lobbying in politics, the news, and generally every aspect of life. Teach even 50 million Americans some basic backyard skills, forget even needing to identify mushrooms on trails or know which tree stumps you can find water in, just get a lot of people a chicken coop and some carrots and the mentality of having your own knowledge and choice could sway the world back a bit.

I didn't see their video yet, did they not find or bring some dill weed to throw on that fish? Works every time

Find 50 million Americans that live somewhere they -can- keep chickens, and you're doing good.

ASSTASTIC
Apr 27, 2003

Hey Gusy!
Anyone gently caress with seed banks? Recommendations on some?

Morbus
May 18, 2004

Rime posted:

The series really lead me to question whether modern agricultural diets have had long enough to alter humans such that switching back to hunter-gatherer mode is simply no longer possible for our metabolisms, at least in the relative my short timespans portrayed in series's such as Alone.

Refined carbs are a hell of a drug, basically.

I very much enjoyed their standalone experiment on eating Lilly root. That was great.

I don't think the problem is that modern metabolisms have changed to make living in the wilderness impossible, I think the problem is they tried to eat berries and tiny fish all day and somehow not starve.

I mean, a single mature deer could have provided them both with >3000 calories per day for at least a week or so. Actual hunter gatherers in North America relied heavily on hunting large and large and/or fat animals (buffalo, seal, whales), fat fish (salmon), or in some cases energy dense nuts/seeds (pine nuts, acorns), and these served as staple foods. These jokers are fooling around all day harvesting plants and berries and small fish and started this whole endeavor with bodies that had been supported for years with cheeseburgers and refined grains. I mean these guys probably spent their adult lives eating like >200 lbs of meat a year and now they are on the wild berry and dinky low-fat fish diet. Of course they are going to lose weight.

I don't mean to suggest that their basic thesis--living off the land is very hard for modern people--is wrong. But I think if you actually wanted to give yourself a reasonable shot you would have to focus on a strategy where you could reasonably harvest high energy foods and they did the opposite of that.

I think part of the problem is the misconception that our hunter gatherer ancestors just dicked around wherever eating whatever was around them in the forest and somehow thrived. Whereas actual hunter gatherer societies tended to be very efficiently specialized around a few critical high energy food sources specific to their region. And even then the land only supported very low population densities clustered around areas with abundant food. Many of them were extremely skilled hunters who had to reliably take many large game animals every year to provide enough food. If you took one of those people and just dumped them alone by some random lake to eat whatever fish happened to be there they would probably starve too.

A Festivus Miracle
Dec 19, 2012

I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

Keep in mind that for a very large chunk of human history, human society was focused solely on hunting and gathering. That skill set and the practical knowledge of the land that evolved was extremely specialized, because it had to be. When modern anthropologists study remaining hunter-gather societies, they often find that those people are really, really good at finding calories because they would have otherwise disappeared a very long time ago. And of course they are. If you and your forefathers had spent hundreds or thousands of years hunting and gathering the relative same areas, your society would build an incredible stores memory of which places to fish, what plants are edible or usable, and which animals are good and bad for eating.

And that is the large part of the reason why the average layman would be terrible at surviving in the wilderness. Without those practiced skills and stored knowledge of how to survive in certain landscapes, no way are you going to succeed in the long term.

Finally, there's the problem of recognizing that hunter-gather societies managed their lands to maximize the output of calories that were available. The reason why you find circular religious faiths in hunter-gather societies (those that remain) that emphasize a revered role for nature is that that religion is hedge against greedy or overproductive land use. In essence, the cultural practices that arose from these hunter-gather peoples is that which is most harmonious with their land use. If it wasn't, that society would've starved to death a long time ago.

wesleywillis
Dec 30, 2016

SUCK A MALE CAMEL'S DICK WITH MIRACLE WHIP!!
We should also keep in mind, that even as good as the various native tribes are at hunting, fishing, foraging, they still starved to death a lot.

I've been to various native gatherings on local reserves (I'm a white guy) where they let in other people and I watch the dances, ceremonies and whatnot, and hear some of the stories. In addition to the tales of great battles, and hunts there are a lot of those stories that start off "During a/the time of great hunger......."

These were people who were pretty much born and bred to live off the land with hundreds of generations of knowledge about plants, animals, hunting strategy, building tools out of whatever they can find, and even then they still starved to death sometimes.

SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

It is actually annoying how there's this exoticism of Native people being so magically in tune with the planet to the point they're essentially viewed as these mystical demigods that have secret knowledge of the planet that the White Man just needs coaching in order to tap into as well. I know a lot of non-Native people who almost obsess over the beautiful and mystical Native people to the point of idolatry and honestly it's kind of creepy. My great-aunt will sometimes share posts from a Facebook page called "I love Native People" and it's pretty hosed up because it's seriously objectifying and putting these people on this pedestal of, as said so many times, mystical creatures rather than human beings.

thatguy
Feb 5, 2003

Picnic Princess posted:

It is actually annoying how there's this exoticism of Native people being so magically in tune with the planet to the point they're essentially viewed as these mystical demigods that have secret knowledge of the planet that the White Man just needs coaching in order to tap into as well. I know a lot of non-Native people who almost obsess over the beautiful and mystical Native people to the point of idolatry and honestly it's kind of creepy. My great-aunt will sometimes share posts from a Facebook page called "I love Native People" and it's pretty hosed up because it's seriously objectifying and putting these people on this pedestal of, as said so many times, mystical creatures rather than human beings.

So you have absolutely no problem anthropomorphizing wild animals to the point of absurdly concerning yourself over whether or not a genuinely dangerous grizzly gets shot, but people assigning a mystical connection with nature to natives is creepy idolatry and nature is actually a cold uncaring beast. 100% logical

SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

What

meselfs
Sep 26, 2015

The body may die, but the soul is always rotten
Not bushcraft, but close to prepping: I wrote an html file which uses Openlayers together with about 20 GB (growing) of tiles downloaded by a Python script for totally offline map browsing. I got NAIP and USFS of the PNW so far, basically everything reachable by two tanks of Diesel. Even with an internet connection I just use this now, because it's extremely fast and directions just annoy me anyway. Good stuff!

bringer
Oct 16, 2005

I'm out there Jerry and I'm LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT
If you're Canadian there's a free app called Topo Maps Canada that lets you download whatever areas you're interested in. Even has trails on it.

Morbus
May 18, 2004

I use caltopo.net for everything in the US and it's pretty great. I think it includes data for Canada too but I've never tried.

Some of the features like custom slope angle / DEM shading are really useful for both pre-trip planning and routefinding once you are there. Being able to layer MODIS satellite and weather data on top of the map while planning is also cool. The MODIS overlay in particular is one of the best ways I've found to easily see if an area will be affected by smoke from wildfires. You can generate printable maps, or digital files that work with most GPS units or apps. I particularly like that last bit because I can generate a custom map for the trip I'm taking, and have the map on my GPS match exactly the paper maps I'm carrying, including any custom layers.

I really can't emphasize enough how much I love slope angle shading for both planning and navigating cross country. For example, instead of having to squint at the spacing between lines, I can instantly see if there is a contiguous route < 35 degrees steep down a particular slope.

On the down side these features have totally spoiled me and I end up grumbling whenever I am outside the US.

meselfs
Sep 26, 2015

The body may die, but the soul is always rotten

bringer posted:

If you're Canadian there's a free app called Topo Maps Canada that lets you download whatever areas you're interested in. Even has trails on it.

Yeah, there are many apps like that, but I A) don't use a smartphone, really B) plan to eventually horde at least 100GB of imagery.

Caltopo is awesome! I love the new MapBuilder layer.

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

Liquid Communism posted:

Find 50 million Americans that live somewhere they -can- keep chickens, and you're doing good.

They can have all of NYC and the island too, done

I forget if there is still a knife thread open, but has anyone here used the Mora eldris knife? Think I'm finally going to buy one, I worry the blade is not long enough for a lot of uses and that it might be too thick to be any good for detailed whittling, but still a short cute looking fixed blade for $23 is hard not to beta test.

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wesleywillis
Dec 30, 2016

SUCK A MALE CAMEL'S DICK WITH MIRACLE WHIP!!
Guitar strings can make good snare wire.

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