Family died in Rockies after trying to live ‘off the grid,’ official says
Family died in Rockies after trying to live ‘off the grid,’ official says
Two sisters and a teenage son moved to a Colorado campsite last July, living off canned food. They had wanted to take a break from a world that distressed them, a local coroner said.
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Once I watched a season of alone I dropped all illusions about running into the woods to live the naturalist life.
If anyone is thinking "lol I could do that" just watch alone, it is HARD out there in the wilds.
In the show Alone the take away is that fat beats skills. All of the super fit "survival experts" with 5% body fat are being carried out on stretchers in a couple of weeks. The 300lb dude with minimal skills out lasts all of the experts.
The environment just doesn't have enough fat calories available. Skill won't change this.
For the first few seasons sure but that Jordan guy that won season 6 was all skill and attitude.
Is he the guy that killed an elk?
If you can’t at the very least identify what mushrooms you can or can not eat in the forest, you should not go out there to live. I 100% can not, so my dumb ass will never try to go live off grid out in the woods. I can’t find food and I acknowledge that. More folks need to realize their limitations.
For most of us, going to live in "the wild" is as preposterous as us returning to the oceans we crawled out of eons ago. We've evolved past that, and are no longer suited for that environment, at least not naturally anyway.
I built a submarine, would you like to go
dieexplore the depths of the ocean with me?Sure, I'll bring the chips to go with the human salsa we'll turn into.
I don't know, man. There are Amazon tribes who do perfectly well without iPhones. I think what you mean is, we, that is, you and me didn't get to learn how to survive in those environments naturally and organically, simply because our societies don't need those skills. But of course we are suited for that environment. We have opposable thumbs!
For real though, they are straight up experts, and after 60 days, 90% of them are on the verge of death lol
Bullet points of what's the ass kicker?
- Maintaining a balance of calories in vs out is really hard. In particular fats are extremely difficult to acquire.
- Getting almost anything done requires hard manual labor, which means you need even more calories.
- Harsh winters mean food scarcity and burning even more calories just keeping warm.
- You're completely fucked if you get sick or injured.
- Boredom, loneliness and stress could drive you insane.
Can you expand on why fats are harder to acquire? The most immediate method I can think of is from hunting and trapping. Is this very difficult to do from a practical point of view?
Do you know how to hunt or set traps? Do you know how to butcher an animal without nicking a bowel and tainting the meat? Most folks don’t. I know I don’t. I would die if left out in the woods and having to fend for myself.
I can do most of that. Still would probably die due to falling from a cliff or shit.
Also tbh I'm highly pharmacodependant.
It's weird to me people who think they could or want to attempt to survive doing those things every. single. day. by themselves. I've done everything you've mentioned, as well as foraged for whatever couldn't kill me or eat me first, bugs included. It's not fun, it's fucking brutal work and you spend most of your day hungry unless you find a good, consistent source of calories and clean water. You're still fucked though if you live anywhere that gets a real winter, break a bone, get an infection, run into an animal that's just as hungry as you are. Humans aren't equipped to survive alone for very long.
Fair enough. Even if you do end up killing something, you might not have the skills to safely prepare it for consumption.
Unless you are a skilled and experienced hunter and trapper, game is quite difficult to acquire. Especially if modern hunting and trapping equipment is not available.
All the bullet points, there's a reason we've moved society in the direction we have. Everything from shoes to showers makes life tolerable.
People like to idealise primitive lifestyles. But when actual primitives are given a choice, they always choose civilization, despite the drawbacks.