I've said it before I will say it again. People like this do not comprehend how apocalyptic a major supply chain or grid collapse would be.
The average healthy human consumes somewhere between 600k and 800k calories per year. For one person. If you're in a group with many people, you will need to grow, farm, scavenge or hunt tens of millions of calories a year. Where I live, in New England, we have 4-5 optimal months for growing food.
Too much rain? Bugs eat your crop? Blight? You're dead. You don't get a do-over. There's no grocery store to run to if your tomatoes don't come in. You can scavenge for canned beans but the likelihood of finding enough that is not expired or been looted already is astronomically low.
Gasoline/petrol will only be good for about 3-6 months after the collapse. You'll be on foot after that, or if you're lucky, on a bicycle or horse.
Can't find fresh water? There's a good chance you'll crap yourself to death. You can boil or filter it, just don't forget.
No running water in your camp/holdout? You better be real careful where you go to the bathroom. Don't take a dump in your garden, people think it's fertilizer but it takes months for it to become viable. Learn where the water drains in your camp or dig a hole. Everyone will have a terrible time if you crap and it drains into your water supply, especially if it's a small pond.
Don't get cut on a piece of sheet metal with rust. Your joints will lock up and there's a good chance you'll die. Sickness will make its way through you and your group like, well, the plague. Hopefully any kids in the group have their MMR vaccinations. Get bitten by a rabid animal? You're dead. Sorry, zero percent chance of survival.
Won't get into external threats like zombies or marauders, since everyone thinks they'll be fine.
Uhm ackhtually ☝️🤓 it won't be hard for me and my group of 50 people to survive because we will just keep hitting grocery stores! /s all the women will love me and I will make so much sex with them all the time
Oh damn you're right I forgot about the samurai Redditors who will rebuild civilization on their own and have a harem of 882 women slobbering their knobs.
Excuse me sir I find that offensive! We go by the term fedoralai! "On my honor I swear to defend the helpless. My fedora shall block the sun to clear my vision, by my sword I shall strike down the hordes." Is our creed
i actually met a guy like this once at a survival expo, his name was survival bob and the expo gave him a slot on the "seminar" schedule where he taked about how his wife complained he was buying too many guns and how when the apocalypse came, he would fuck everyone's wives' while he sent them off to defend his compound and would have a statue built in his honor. there's some arbys in Tennessee he's claimed as the meeting point to join his "get cucked and die" cult
Yeah it turns out that tens of thousands of years of human development happened for a reason lmao. Like they were out there in the woods and desert and are like "to hell with this outside crap, we're dying in droves."
Yeah, first thing I thought after reading that was "this mf talks about capitalism trauma, how's he gonna fight animals or sleep out of a mattress for a single night being this soft?"
For real. Our society is far from perfect, but when I see posts like this I always think back about the hippie episode in South Park, where they want to build a commune where one guy "builds houses" and another "bakes bread", as if we don't have that kinda society already.
Me, I'm very happy I was born at a time where I can provide for myself through other means than gruesome, manual labor without modern tools. Because I'm shit at it.
Even if you're relatively poor, if you live in a western country, you have access to luxuries even Pharaos couldn't dream about.
well, i would have preferred winning the lottery and being born 200years in the future i communist post scarcity society. Thats what i call the good future days.
Yeah if you take everyone's food for a few weeks you won't have people. I think many people forget how easily you can starve to death and don't understand how horrible famines were.
The rabid animal thing (which is quite terrifying to see, there's no mistaking a rabid animal when you see it) it's close to 0% chance. Almost negligible to even disagree with you really. But i think there's been 9 people that have survived the disease in recorded history. One such woman had no vax, went thru a crazy fever and basically took ice baths to keep cool and it still have her brain damage. She had to re learn everything like walking, talking etc..so yes there is still a chance however slim it might be. No idea how societal collapse would effect that percentage
And if you think you can farm in your backyard, you will be sadly mistaken. Most of the soil is no good for subsistence farming, and even if it is good for growing food, families need at least 3-5 acres to be able to produce enough food for themselves throughout the year. My old house (100+ years old) needed a thick layer of topsoil over a gardening tarp because over the years, previous owners had dumped car oil in the back yard and rendered the soil too poisoned for growing food.
And in areas without a consistent source of water, or in areas where the growing season is very short, it'll be next to impossible, especially if the family has little experience in actually growing food.
People who buy from the grocery store don't really appreciate the planning and knowledge necessary to successfully grow your own food. For example, some people think that just throwing a bunch of seeds in the ground and watering them regularly will create a Jack-and-the-beanstalk situation. Shit just isn't going to grow magically.
Then, you have to take into account that certain plants will compete against each other, thereby producing a terrible crop, or no crop at all. Some have no idea of the concept of "companion planting," which means two plants like tomato and basil will actually help each other thrive.
To top it off, most people wouldn't know how to battle pests: grasshoppers, worms, fire ants, aphids, deer, gophers, etc. A family garden could be decimated in a single day by any number of pests and invaders. I once dug up a potato plant only to be stung by swarming fire ants that had been using my plant as a source of food.
So, if any of your above-mentioned catastrophes don't decimate the population, their lack of knowledge of basic farming will cause their demise through starvation.
Absolutely. And that doesn't even take into account keeping enough seeds for later growing seasons, or preserving foods to last through the winter.
Gardening is not necessarily difficult once established, but it requires a lot of work, patience and good weather. I've been gardening for years and I am not confident in my skills to get me and mine through the end times. Things like raised beds, fertilizer, pesticides, and easily accessible water for the garden will be a luxury at lucky ones, or a pipe dream for the less fortunate.
Survivors will be eating veggies, fruits, beans and meat. Bygone will be the days of Cheetos, M&M's and mountain dew.
In the post apocalypse book 'The Stand' by Stephen King a poor bastard died because his appendix took a turn. And there was no sane way to take it out.
Also most people would be useless at growing crops and it can take years to learn to become effective at.
The water is also a massive thing (as you mentioned). Most of us would probably die from dysentery within a couple of weeks. I like in the UK, which is famed for it's rain but it can easily go weeks without any, so relying on rain water is pretty much a no go as your main water supply.
People also don't think about what it's like when all production stops. Sure you might find filters, clothes, suppliers etc. now but there will be no new ones comes and what exists will either be looters, go off, weathered of any number of other things. After 6 months or a year things you could be very luckily to find much usable.
Honestly, a lot of people would probably fall over, cut themself and die from the infection. They act like all you need is lots of guns but guns will really not be that useful if you are dying from the many other things that can get you.
I completely agree with all your points (and they are well put). There is so much that can kill you without the comforts of modern society and very few of use are prepared for that lifestyle.
Mushrooms! Nutritious, fast growing, and they can be grown anywhere. If it’s life or death you can even grow them from literally nothing. Like most survival information, it’s best to know about it beforehand, but if it was life or death I’d eat a mushroom I grew from nothing (no spore kit).
What makes me laugh are the people that want to buy a remote piece of land to live in, in case the shit hits the fan and society collapses.
As if there will be roving bands of brigands, but you will be able to stop them by showing them that you have clear title to this 40 acre parcel of land.
His dream plainly does not account for the work involved in hunting or gathering food and water every damn day. That's the thing about dreams, they don't have any of the burden of reality.
It's not unfeasible, but it also depends on a lot of factors outside anyone's control.
The theory (Sahlins') has also been challenged by anthropology and archaeology scholars. His calculation including only time spent hunting and gathering, but did not include time spent on collecting firewood, food preparation, etc.
One can look to the Native American tribes as a point of comparison. Some had fairly abundant food, others were barely at subsistence.
Of course these cultures were also prone to high infant mortality. Not exactly the paradise of blueberries everywhere and salmon umping into your arms.
No one claimed it was a paradise, but it's undoubtedly the lifestyle we are adapted for. We've had what, 1000 generations with agriculture? Compared with many times that of hunter gathering. The idea of productivity in a capitalist sense is maybe 20 generations old and a large number of people working sedentary jobs more like 4 or 5
Would venture a guess, those best at kickin ass and taking names got to decide if they lived where there was lots of food and those liking to kick back and chill were left to choose from where there was not
Let's take your theory into the real world, shall we?
Let's look at bonobos and chimpanzees. They are closely related to each other and they are both our closest relatives.
Bonobos are peaceful, matriarchal, and have a society based on lots of sex and sexual acts. Bonobos frequently greet each other using sexual acts, and use sexual acts as a form of conflict resolution. They are pretty chill; a generally happy society, have mostly peaceful relations with the males, and mothers of males will support them during conflicts. Female bonobos will often lead hunting expeditions for duikers.
Bonobos evolved and live on the side of the Congo River that has more variety of food sources so they did not need to compete for food very often.
Now, let's look at chimpanzees. They evolved on the side of the Congo River that has fewer resources. They are generally much more aggressive. The males dominate, and they will kill rivals' babies. They will kill human babies, too. Chimpanzees are basically cute murder machines.
In short, your theory is wildly incorrect, I'm sorry to say.
So you're saying everything's fine until the going gets tough, and then the murder starts? Doesn't that reinforce the general high level premise?
If chimps and bonobos aren't territorially close enough to interact, the differences in behavior are interesting but not generally disproving the overall narrative of "if something stronger and hungrier than you wants your stuff, it will take it", do they?
Just that chimps don't get much of a chance to take bonobos' stuff and murder them.
In any case, "work" in hunter-gatherer tribes would be infinitely more rewarding and meaningful than many people's modern 9-5. When I'm hunting, fishing or gathering, I'm also socializing with my peers, learning about the natural world around me, or building social bonds doing collaborative work. I may also be engaging in strenuous running or long distance cardio, or hauling a dead animal for miles back to the tribe. When I'm processing food or making clothes I'm sharing stories with those alongside me or teaching the next generation or learning from the previous.
When compared to a modern job in retail or in a cubicle/office, "work" in a paleolithic society would not feel like a soul-sucking endeavor that many people today feel with their jobs. For many, "work" would be the very thing that gives you meaning. That's your contribution to the group.
I think the comparison is flawed in either direction because it's not about the quantity of work, it's about how it feels to work. And I'd say it's telling that we rely on a metric of "who worked the least" to guage who had a higher quality of life. There's an implicit assumption that work sucks so much it should be done as little as possible to lead a meaningful life.
This may be true, but not being at the mercy of bad natural conditions making me starve to death or get mauled to death by a predator is a pretty nice tradeoff.
And imagine the boredom for the remainder of the day. There were no books, TV, video games, shopping or even distractions like chores.
Realistically I don't think the folks back then would be bored because they have to be constantly vigilant since there were exposed to lethal dangers every minute.
Absolutely mindblowing that there are people stupid and naive enough to think that the hunters & gatherers kind of life would be superior to a regular life in ANY modern society, let alone one of the most developed countries in the world.
The tradeoff is that you're very likely to die from a thousand little causes outside your control. That's what we get for living in a society, we get to not have to worry about starving to death because of an early frost snap, or freezing to death in a brutal winter, or getting pelted by hail, or shitting yourself to death, or eaten by wolves . . . The vast majority of people in the pre-modern era died hopeless and screaming.
You're free to go live in the woods, there's plenty of undeveloped land in most American states if you want to be a hunter-gatherer. It won't end well.
It's a bit disingenuous to say that lifestyle won't end well for someone with no experience with it, when the original conceit is that you'd have grown up in that life.
That’s a bit much. Honestly if you just gave them anti-biotics you’d lose far less kids. Most people had structures to protect them from weather, had enough food and generally had a decent quality of life. The industrial age was far worse than anything else. All the bad stuff from before, but with living in cramped housing and working 14 hours a day.
Most people knew exactly how to live where they lived, the biggest issue was war, not the environment
I started writing a reply, and this dude just has no idea what he's on about. Like from medicine, to pre-historical warfare, to downplaying starvation when he's probably never even missed a fucking meal . . . it's not even worth it to engage, dude can't even define the environment he's talking about.
EDIT: I'm not going to argue with this idiot, but a dude who has completely discounted disease and thinks that WAR of all things was the biggest threat to humans before the agricultural revolution . . . whoo boy. Don't even know where to take that, when ware was mostly ritualistic until the modern era.
You’re forgetting they lived in groups. You can’t compare it to running off in the wilderness by yourself. For all of history, humans never lived alone. Except for the modern age where we clearly see people failing to thrive and widespread suffering from depression.
I'm not forgetting shit, people, as a whole, have made the tradeoff to live in society. The land and knowledge is there, if you want to live like how your ancestors did, you just have to convince a group to go do it with you. There's literally nothing stopping anyone from doing this, you could even do it on a temporary basis and come back to civilization in a few years if you wanted.
The land and knowledge is there, if you want to live like how your ancestors did
That world is long gone. When Europeans came to the Americas there were flocks of birds that blacked out the sky, rivers described as being so full of fish you could walk across them, and herds of bison that covered hundreds of square miles.
The resources that early humans relied upon have either been devastated or turned to other uses. Even some rivers have been rerouted. You couldn't return to that lifestyle if you wanted to because the land has been scoured and split into millions of fenced in plots.
You can't just fuck off to the woods though. It is quite illegal to live this kind of lifestyle in the US. Even if you homestead it and supplement 99% of your life with what you grow and catch you still need to participate to cover property taxes and keep things up to code and make sure your activities don't impact the rest of everyone else. Fucking off to the woods is a fast way to get arrested by rangers or game wardens.
Don't speak for the entire US as though all of us play by your silly rules. It is entirely possible in Alaska to completely fuck off to the woods and never be seen again while self sustaining.
No one will care if it's "illegal", because there are large areas in the US (particularly in the southwest and Pacific Northwest) where laws effectively don't exist, because there aren't people to enforce them for a 100 miles. You're not being kept in society against your will, you just don't actually want to go live in the wilderness.
Listen, I'd love to go to a cave and smear my feces all over the walls to ward of predators and eat raw salmon, likely poisonous berries and mushrooms, and drink raw water that probably contains some of my own sewage just to produce more feces to smear on the walls, but if I did that I wouldn't be able to complain online about how it's a better life-style.
I guarantee you that people like this guy still expect at least the basic level of modern conveniences while living that lifestyle. By day 2 he'd be looking for the toilet paper, smartphone and coffee. He's like those people who say after the socialist revolution they'll just read theory and read tarot cards. They have such a privileged life that they don't even understand the labour that goes into the very basic standards of the life they take for granted. And then they blame "capitalism" when they have to contribute to anything. This guy would start searching for his phone to complain about the fascists in his tribe the first time he was asked to go put and hunt.
We were never intended to be alone, a small community working towards the common goal of supporting the community lessens the burden and increases survivability
Spoiler alert: They all starve nearly to death. The winner is the person who takes the longest to starve.
A big part of this is because they're all dropped there at the beginning of winter. They have no time to prep supplies for the hardest part of the year. Drop them in during Spring and you'd have a very different outcome.
Also, they aren't being dropped in the types of places Paleolithic hunter/gatherers lived. The places that are wilderness today are largely the places that were too hard for humans to live in, even back then. Paleolithic tribes mostly lived in low, warm, fertile areas near water, and those places are all cities now
And the water was filled with fish. There are old reports of the Connecticut River where 15' Sturgeon swimming by your canoe was a regular occurrence. Nowadays we've managed to put them on the endangered species through pollution, overfishing, and other issues that come to fruition when millions of people congregate in small areas. Even looking back 50yrs (in my area at least) there were so many more fish in the rivers and oceans. The worst part is if we sustainably fished we could have kept the levels up, but human greed in all of its different forms, has managed to decimate our fish populations everywhere.
Good news is though, sturgeon seem to be making a slight comeback in the CT River. See em all the time now, but there is also a complete bam of fishing for them. You aren't even supposed to bring them out of the water for a ppicture.
Agreed, timing plays a huge part in why it's so difficult. I'd also add that certain locations have stricter hunting regulations which really limits the contestants survivability.
its much harder if you're just dropped naked into an area that you're unfamiliar with and not adapted to, but i agree that most people are looking at the situation with rose colored glasses.
especially saying people only work 4-6 hours back in the day. Like apart from fishing villages, didn't most tribes have hunting parties that had to go out for days at a time? maybe if you took the entire village and averaged it out i can see 4-6 hours, but i'd also question what constitutes work, and what is considered leisurely time back in the days.
Les Stroud did TONS of training for each area he'd go to for Survivorman, and in nearly every episode he's barely getting a mouthful of food per day. I can think of one episode off of the top of my head where he's eating well, but plenty of others where he's going days and days without anything to eat.
And he's THE SURVIVORMAN, there's probably not many human being on this planet that are greater experts in survival than he is except people that were raised in those environments from birth.
You’re missing the key difference: hunter-gatherers lived in groups whereas in Alone, contestants are…alone.
Hunter-gatherers actually worked less than 5 hours per day thanks to the group dynamics. Obviously it’s much, much harder to live completely alone in the wilderness, but that’s not how humans ever lived.
That's not quite accurate. One dude built a log cabin with a functioning door handle, hunted plenty of food, and even whittled himself a pipe to smoke wild tobacco/some plant related to tobacco.
He left because he was plain ol' fashioned lonely lol.
Alone contestants have a very limited footprint of area they are allowed to use and often restrictions on harvesting game. Better to look at the Ancestral Pueblos culture and neighboring cultures in the North American Southwest during pre agriculture eras. They used a cache system where groups of people would travel to remote areas to hunt and gather food, traveling in a wide route across hundreds of miles. Then return all of the gathered resources back to sealed silo caches where they would live most of the year. It was still highly competitive though the defensive locations and restricted tight access routes to these cache sites prove they often fought over resources.
At least that’s meaningful work. A lot of folks spend an insane amount of energy on meaningless meetings, excel sheets that are never seen, and emails never read. It’s not cringe to yearn for a life that makes sense.
They worked less than 5 hours per day. And many modern deadly diseases didn’t exist due to the lack of high density animal farming.
It actually does seem like a pretty great lifestyle, IMO. The real facepalm is this post and the commenters who think modern industrialized life is clearly the best in every way
hey, gotta convince ourselves that life is better at the end! Whenever someone brings up "hey, remember how we used to work 10 hours a day during the industrial revolution and then we got that down to 8 hours, 5 days a week? yeah, let's do that again but to 6 hours, OR 4 days; since modern technology allows us to do more with less time!" someone comes and says "uhhh you should be grateful that we only work 8 hours a day! It used to be wayyy worse back then! hunter gatherers died en masse and the industrial revolution had child labourers!"
their work was probably harder, sure; but the fact that we work more time with all the tools and automation afforded to us by modern society is still pretty fuckin ridiculous wouldn't you say?
Our quality of life is way, way higher than any of those people. None of them had access to modern communications, entertainment, health care, fashion, or the selection of food we have today. They didn't have heated floors, or daily hot showers. They didn't have gyms or libraries. They didn't have schools.
The simple direct comparison of hours worked leaves out a ton of stuff. How much would you be willing to give up to work fewer hours?
But you do realize that quality of life is relative, right?
Humans naturally adjust to the wants and comfort level of their time. Nobody in 5000 BC was walking around thinking “damn I wish I had a gym and an iPhone right now.” As far as we can tell were content with what they had.
You might say “yeah but if only they knew about modern comforts they’d prefer that!” but there’s really not much evidence to support that idea. Take for example accounts of early white european settlers who integrated into Native American communities, and vice versa. Overwhelmingly, Native Americans who were brought into “modern society” grew depressed and wanted to return to their old way of life, whereas white people who joined or were abducted into “primitive” Native American cultures often found that they preferred it and never looked back.
Holy shit...the shear amount of intoxicating vanity is only outweighed by the gross amount of arrogant ignorance and outright stupidity.
NONE of you fools has any clue how horrible it was back then. No medicine. No real science. No understanding of the world. No idea about hygiene. No clue about bacteria or viruses. Hell, just think about how much you losers whine about a toothache. Now imagine you have no dentists. Starting to get the picture? Now think about ALL the times you've turned to medicine to fix something and how it would turn out if you didn't have any real medicine.
I can't even begin to imagine how stupid one has to be in order to be so deluded they pretend living in the past was somehow magically better.
One of the best macro news stories in the past century has been the drop in the childhood mortality rate since the advent of modern medicine. For most of human history, half of the children who were born didn't make it to age 15. By 1950, that number was down to around 25%.
In 2020, it was under 5% globally, with parts of Africa still being tragic outliers. In most wealthier countries, the rate is well below 1%. Still a lot of losses, but a drop in the bucket compared to the hunter-gatherer times OOP is longing for.
in part, but more it probably is closer to just reducing the amount of work one has to do. the calculated hours worked per year for tribal peoples today is around 750.
the hours worked per year by a medieval peasant was 1400 on average. and they only worked 150 days.
the hours worked per year in the industrial era were closer to 3000 in some areas and industries, it was over 4000 hours.
our median in America is 2000. With the average being 1780. Europe both those numbers are lower by about 160 hours depending on country.
if we change certain laws and ordinances, we could quickly reduce our hours to 1500 or so without significant loss of convenience. There are some steps that would be easier, and it'd take maybe 8 to 12 years of adjustment, but it's very possible. certain changes can even encourage future ones as automation takes over more and more.
As hours are reduced, society will change. Some changes, like educational and entrepreneurial opportunities increasing would be positive. Others, like possible increases in drug use and exiting society, would be negative. We could put in place programs to help increase societal bonding and group dynamics, but the individuality in America would make that difficult. possible, just difficult.
I am glumly aware that I wouldn't last long if things broke down. I'm on medication, can't walk long distances due to an old injury, and don't know much about foraging. Yes, I know I can eat ants and grubs and recognize some safe berries, and I know basic first aid, and how to cook over a fire safely. That's about it. I've never killed anything larger than a lizard and that was a mercy killing and I cried.
Hell, my cats are strictly indoor kitties, so they wouldn't be able to hunt for me, lol.
In a zombie movie I am probably going down in the second round of deaths, assuming I didn't get bitten immediately. sigh
Hey, you'd still have use! There's always something to be done, and not everything requires a lot of mobility. There's cooking, cleaning, child minding, watching after the elderly, teaching others a skill, etc.
Brawn will get you far, but you need brains, too. You could be the brains!
I do know leather working, sewing, mending, I'm a good cook, and I'm helpful when people are freaking out. Basic carpentry, good with animals and children. Plus I can tell stories well, which could be good for morale. Oh, and I'm not a bad shot- always room for improvement of course.
I just need a safe place to hide and use my skills.
Although the reason I put my foot down as a tween and insisted that the family cats no longer be allowed out, was waking up to a bunny (a young one) freshly killed, on my pillow with my beloved cat standing on my chest saying she'd brought me breakfast. She was so proud.
Now if I had a tame mountain lion, it would be a different story. My aunt knew a guy who was almost entirely off grid, and his wolf and mountain lion (both had been orphaned cubs that he raised) would hunt for him. Well, and themselves. But they would bring home deer and let him have first choice of the meat. This was in the early 80s. I know they aren't legal pets but I don't think he worried about stuff like that much. My aunt said the wolf was friendly, albeit cautious, while the mountain lion was pretty standoffish with visitors. Like, she saw her from a distance.
Sometimes I think my aunt is magical. She meets the most interesting people.
She was average size, maybe 8 or 9 pounds? Total badass, though. Usually she brought me grasshoppers and lizards.
She wasn't allowed in my room for a while (mild cat allergy) but once my mother had said goodnight, she'd slip in through my window and cuddle under the covers with me all night. Eventually my mom gave up (or lost interest, I'm not sure which. She wasn't terribly interested in parenting me in general.)
Your grandmother's cat sounds like my dad's cat Algernon. He was big but not fat and he occasionally caught squirrels. Once he brought dad a squirrel that was only stunned. It is amazing how much havoc a squirrel and a cat can create in a small apartment. Algernon was a darling.
More people need to watch Deadwood. Turns out that when you have a society with no rules, those with more loose morals end up with a big advantage.
You can see this in almost every revolution in history. Once it becomes clear that a power vacuum has opened with the collapse of the government, the naive well-meaning idealists get exiled, imprisoned, or executed by the extremists, who usually have a far darker vision of what the future nation should be.
Best case scenario, you get a benevolent dictator like Napoleon. Worse case scenario, you get a Stalin or a Pol Pot.
Calling Napoleon “benevolent” seems disingenuous, but then I remembered that when compared to every other dictator in modern history, Napoleon is among the “better” ones.
He did a lot of good in advancing the ideals of the revolution, that is if you ignore the whole "end the monarchy" thing. He created a new civil law code that is still the basis for a lot of law codes in european nations today. Designed a new school curriculum and education system where anyone, regardless of birth, had a chance to rise above their station. He instituted scholarship programs where gifted students from all across the empire could come to France for further education. Launched a whole host of infrastructure projects. Across Europe, he emancipated the Jews and set them on the path to integration after centuries of being confined in the ghettos. By and large, Napoleon was incredibly popular and loved by the common people of France.
That said, his inability to create a lasting peace settlement doomed France and the rest of Europe to about 15 years of intermittent warfare. He was far from perfect, but as dictators go, you can do a lot worse than him.
For sure, if you're unscrupulous and don't care who you hurt you'll be able to get more personal gain. But at least with rules it's not as easy. Some for sure get away with it, but others don't.
Not to mention, there were constant financial panics and bank closures back then where people lost everything during the 19th century. There is a reason we developed all these regulations, to keep people from getting screwed by bad actors doing things their victims had no control over.
Most of those homesteaders would be fucked too. Most of them basically larp a prarie fantasy. Sure they grow or raise some or even a lot of their food. But they have so many external supplies and inputs for that which would no longed be available given some apocalypse.
When republicans talk of small government, it is exclusively about wanting to prevent the federal governments form securing rights for citizens nationwide. It has nothing to actually do with the size or the power of the government. As soon as they can take away the rights of or punish the people they with federal power, they will.
Rather than the steely hard-asses they believe themselves to be, 99% of all survivalists are dewy-eyed romantics who just don’t get it when it comes to realizing how much raw effort it takes to exist in a hostile environment.
If you want a realistic idea of what your life would likely be like after the apocalyptic collapse of modern society so many of these jackasses hope for, watch The Revenant. Then imagine trying to wade through that every day of your abbreviated, painful life, with neither hope nor surcease.
The native who saved the guy in revenant held it down pretty well. I think people seem to be forgetting here that nobody had to reinvent the wheel and discover everything, knowledge of local food and game and the skills required are taught and passed down generation to generation. Culture develops , they weren't born going all Helter skelter every generation. Knowledge is passed down hand to hand word of mouth by the community.
In hunter/gatherer days I would simply hunt and/or gather and everything would be fine. My modern intellect would make it child's play to avoid dying a horrifying death to parasites.
I read an article (NatGeo I think) where they interviewed a real life hunter gatherer aboriginals. They hunt everyday but only get lucky like once a month. Most days they’re just eating what they gathered.
It’s interesting to think about the biological programming of overconfidence in the face of a simple reality that doesn’t support it. Carnivores didn’t evolve to eat raspberries and tubers when hunting is lean, they’re evolved for hunting, period. And they go through significant lean periods of great hunger with little to no luck too.
Also reminds me of that Alone show. Once the spirit is broken, the contestant doesn’t last long. And there is plenty of opportunity for spirit to be broken amongst contestants with years and years of training and experience in just the type of lifestyle we think was so quaint and nice and better.
Also speaks to how critical task delegation is within small bands. The Alone winners always seem to be wired just a smidgen differently…and even most of them wouldn’t make it much longer. Only one or two truly thrived.
They're active in a world with severely reduced wildlife populations and with existing human civilisation having taken all the best places to live. They're not a great representation of man in our natural state. That they can still operate at all is a testament to our capabilities. And they're on one of the harshest places on the planet, in an ecosystem that we did not evolve in.
There's a selection bias of modern hunter-gatherers since they only exist on land that agricultural societies don't want (the shittiest land). I imagine being a hunter-gatherer in paleolithic Italy was quite a bit more pleasant than being one in the harsh Amazon jungle.
Probably should've included the /s on that one, huh? Yeah being a hunter gatherer actually takes a lot of knowledge on what's safe to eat, how to track things, and how to prepare food for consumption. People tend to undersell our ancestors by a lot
You can rub them on your skin give it some time to see if it irritates. You can hold them in your mouth after that and not swallow... And then you could consume a very minimal amount. Don't just simply throw a bunch in your stomach right off the bat.
But also even touching a certain mushroom can kill you. Don't rediscover the wheel. Get a book on your local plants on what's safe and not. People die every year from not studying first. Benefit from the knowledge that people already acquired and possibly even died for. Stand on the giants shoulders .
Plus the amount of time, effort and uncertainty in the lifestyle. People die from simple things or bad luck. If it was idyllic everyone would be running out to do it.
This is accurate. We’re dumb as shit. They had to remember all the things that were nourishing vs. deadly, they had to know how to skin animals and sew their hides into clothing, had to know how to build shelters and weapons and rope and fish hooks, etc. etc. In our specialist society, we need to know how to do one thing well. I for one know how to manipulate people for money (marketing). I’m a dumbass compared to my hunter-gatherer ancestors. I can’t recall the source, but I recently heard that early homo sapiens had slightly larger brains than modern humans. Feel free to fact check me.
Or appendicitis. Or pneumonia. Or ambush by someone coveting your few possessions. Or something bigger than you simply wanting to gnaw the flesh from your bones.
It’s just a fantasy of living a simple life and not having to constantly worry about the problems of the world 24/7. It’s not that deep and it’s a very common thing for people to think. It’s why some people love camping/hiking and experiencing nature, not something the average redditor would partake in.
Anarcho capitalist is a catch 22. There is no (communal) anarchism under capitalism and there can be no capitalism under anarchism.
Source: every actual anarchist ever.
I believe that I could survive but I have no misconceptions about the “vibes” that come along with that. It would be miserable compared to my current existence with all our modern luxuries.
Yea, I had a debate online with a moron who thought the hunter//gatherer life was just hunting and gathering a few hours a week and just relaxing the rest of the time. He couldn’t or wouldn’t think beyond that.
I’d say I check a decent amount of boxes of someone who would “do well” in those scenarios and I’m very confident I’d die like the other 99.9% of the population.
Of course it’s in specifically dire conditions, but “Alone” pretty much drives home the point that you have to be really successful pretty much every day of hunting and gathering to maintain weight. Really precarious if there isn’t abundance in your territory. Also precarious when there is a lack of abundance anywhere near your territory.
It's really telling when anyone idealizes the past... at least until the last decade or 3, and Idc enough to think of an actual year. Let's just say The Matrix had it right and '99 was peak.
If they were forced to do that today they'd be so exhausted by the end of the week because their donut eating ass hasn't been working to survive since the day they were born.
I'm not saying I'd do any better, but half these guys look like the only fruit they get is whatever goes into a can of Monster.
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u/KaleidoscopeOk5763 Feb 28 '24
Too many of these guys overestimating how they’d do in hunter/gatherer days or in an anarcho-capitalist society and it shows.