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Almost half of all Americans fear a ‘total economic collapse’ in the next 10 years, new poll shows
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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Foraging for wild plants is a skill you need fully established before having to rely on it for survival, it’s just like hunting, dressing an animal, and meat preservation. Do it wrong and at best you’ll get a little sick, at worst it will kill you quickly.
Also, in a hypothetical apocalyptic situation, you’ll be competing with millions of people who will be eating anything they can. I can’t remember the stats, but I think the Appalachian deer population took something like 40-50 years to fully recover from the Great Depression. A lot of hungry people will do a lot of damage.
Oh, without question. I don't mean to imply it's something all us coddled moderns could just start doing. As you point out, it's like these other things most people (myself included) have no idea how to do. Even people fairly decent at identifying mushrooms sometimes get it wrong.
Yeah, I would think it'd be like catastrophes of old - all the cats and dogs would mysteriously disappear. Again, people have this romantic notion of "living off the land" as a homesteader and "hunting for food" and thinking they are going to bag a deer whenever it's time for lunch and it will be easy and something sustainable and I think it's pure delusion.
Ever watch Alone? Those people are avid survivalists, just doing it for a few weeks and even that looks hard as hell.
No, I watched Frontier House and Survivor Man. Frontier was families put in frontier style homes that were told to work and live like they did back in the land rush days. They had the convenience of most of their log homes being built for them, and an occasional delivery from a mercantile. All period, of course. A very interesting sociological experiment. The results of their labors were inspected by analysts to see if they and their animals would have survived the winter. I think only one family might have survived.
Survivorman? Pretty much learned that surviving in the woods sucks, could easily kill you, he only had to do it for a few days at a time and even he knew he had help just a radio call away.