Do you think of feel that you are on top of the food chain?

[Papa D]

I try to eat on the low side of the food chain (for a human) - plant based diet mostly - - lots of raw things - carrots, raw corn, greens - I'm a life-long lacto-ovo vegetarian - - still, it's pretty silly how well we eat as humans - - imagine another animal eating parmesan cous-cous with curry powder, edamame, and hot sauce - -favorite trail meal as of late - - dehydrated some frozen edamame beans.

[Wise Old Owl]

Wait and that was in your pocket? ..... do not pass go - you cannot coolect $200 Dollars. Curry & cous...what?

[verasch]

Most survival stuff caters to the uber paranoid (have you seen people's recommended bug out bags??). But I still think they're fun to look at. Tho yer right most of the skills I mentioned are pretty useless.

Although, one could also say that without remembering those basic skills that were developed early on we risk a reliance on the modern technology to save us. At its basic level, I think backpacking is how well one is able to survive without modern convenience, which in a way is what drew me to this hobby in the first place.

While i am a huge fan of adapting convenience while I'm out there, I am still drawn to ideas of what I could do if I don't have them. It makes me feel more confident when I make a bonehead error like forgetting a lighter or something, which in turn lowers the risk of panicking. At least, that is, to me.

But to your original question, no, i don't think I'm any higher than I should be on the food chain. I think I'm right where I should be.

[Velvet Gooch]

In a few days, WOO will link to this thread on Wilderness Survival Forums so they can all have a laugh. I post there, too... under a different name

[Feral Bill]

3-5 days? Food is not an issue. I carry plenty as a built in supply. In the woods, I would have a lighter or matches on me, so if it's not too wet and cold I'd not die of hypothermia. I'd likely be miserable, and mad at myself for messing up, but I think I'd live, and, with my rare, pidgeon like sense of direction, find my way to safety.

[Double Wide]

3-5 days, no problem. I still have *some* skills I learned as a yoot. A what?

Anyhow, fire and shelter wouldn't be too much of a problem, water another notch up the difficulty scale as long as I wasn't lost in the desert (but here in Tennessee, water's a cinch). Food, well, I'd have to brush up on my edibles, but at one point I had good knowledge of that stuff. Used to be good at navigation and orienteering, too. But 25 years in a cube will rust most of those skills away...

[OzJacko]

I was always taught "it takes weeks to die of starvation, days to die of thirst and minutes to die from lack of air" so I figure we get a day or two no worries. After that whilst it may take some time to die you can get irrational and make bad decisions when you get weak - hypothermia is a classic for that, e.g. stripping off in sub freezing conditions.

I think a lot depends on what you know and have on hand in your surroundings. At the moment, I would be fairly cool with it here in the Australian bush with which I am familiar. I think that in the USA I would be in more trouble. I've never even seen poison ivy yet! I suspect most here on WB would be the reverse.
I do know that I will never reach the point of drinking my urine like Bear Grylls in his Man vs Wild shows. I'd rather die.

[hikerboy57]

He Should have asked 1 of his camera men for water

[coach lou]

best fire starter is (IMO) is a simple white plastic Micro bic... turns out wood matches are for boys..... so they won't play with super light bics....in camp...

There more there ....DWAI
oh why would I say white???? easy to see the butane level...I am just being goofy.

I once gave class to scouts about fire starting. After the tinder-kindling-stick, flint and steel, fire-lays, heat fire/ cooking fire...all that stuff.......at the end of it ...all young eyes on me.....I reminded them that we are all Boy Scouts and are always prepared....as I reached in each pocket, pulled out and started flicking my 2 Bic-Clicks!

[10-K]

I don't even know if I'm on a hiking website anymore! How can I know where I'm at on the food chain???

[hikerboy57]

as long as i have 5 bullets ill be fine.

[Pedaling Fool]

There is no "top" to the food chain, more of a circle. Generally the big eat the small, but the really small eat all.

So how do we protect ourselves from the really small? Well, the conventional wisdom seems to be that we filter our water and wash our hands and don't share gorp. But we also hear problems with this approach in the way of superbugs, so then we hear we got to become less germophobic, but don't forget to wash your hands don't share gorp and always filter your water


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/op...&smid=fb-share


Dirtying Up Our Diets


OVER 7,000 strong and growing, community farmers’ markets are being heralded as a panacea for what ails our sick nation. The smell of fresh, earthy goodness is the reason environmentalists approve of them, locavores can’t live without them, and the first lady has hitched her vegetable cart crusade to them. As health-giving as those bundles of mouthwatering leafy greens and crates of plump tomatoes are, the greatest social contribution of the farmers’ market may be its role as a delivery vehicle for putting dirt back into the American diet and in the process, reacquainting the human immune system with some “old friends.”

Increasing evidence suggests that the alarming rise in allergic and autoimmune disorders during the past few decades is at least partly attributable to our lack of exposure to microorganisms that once covered our food and us. As nature’s blanket, the potentially pathogenic and benign microorganisms associated with the dirt that once covered every aspect of our preindustrial day guaranteed a time-honored co-evolutionary process that established “normal” background levels and kept our bodies from overreacting to foreign bodies. This research suggests that reintroducing some of the organisms from the mud and water of our natural world would help avoid an overreaction of an otherwise healthy immune response that results in such chronic diseases as Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis and a host of allergic disorders.

In a world of hand sanitizer and wet wipes (not to mention double tall skinny soy vanilla lattes), we can scarcely imagine the preindustrial lifestyle that resulted in the daily intake of trillions of helpful organisms. For nearly all of human history, this began with maternal transmission of beneficial microbes during passage through the birth canal — mother to child. However, the alarming increase in the rate of Caesarean section births means a potential loss of microbiota from one generation to the next. And for most of us in the industrialized world, the microbial cleansing continues throughout life.

Nature’s dirt floor has been replaced by tile; our once soiled and sooted bodies and clothes are cleaned almost daily; our muddy water is filtered and treated; our rotting and fermenting food has been chilled; and the cowshed has been neatly tucked out of sight. While these improvements in hygiene and sanitation deserve applause, they have inadvertently given rise to a set of truly human-made diseases.

While comforting to the germ-phobic public, the too-shiny produce and triple-washed and bagged leafy greens in our local grocery aisle are hardly recognized by our immune system as food. The immune system is essentially a sensory mechanism for recognizing microbial challenges from the environment. Just as your tongue and nose are used to sense suitability for consumption, your immune system has receptors for sampling the environment, rigorous mechanisms for dealing with friend or foe, and a memory. Your immune system even has the capacity to learn.

For all of human history, this learning was driven by our near-continuous exposure from birth and throughout life to organisms as diverse as mycobacteria from soil and food; helminth, or worm parasites, from just about everywhere you turned; and daily recognition and challenges from our very own bacteria. Our ability to regulate our allergic and inflammatory responses to these co-evolved companions is further compromised by imbalances in the gut microbiota from overzealous use of antibiotics (especially in early childhood) and modern dietary choices.

The suggestion that we embrace some “old friends” does not immediately imply that we are inviting more food-borne illness — quite the contrary. Setting aside for the moment the fact that we have the safest food supply in human history, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and food processing plants and farmers continue to take the blame for the tainted food that makes us ill, while our own all-American sick gut may deserve some blame as well.

While the news media and litigators have our attention focused on farm-to-table food safety and disease surveillance, the biological question of why we got sick is all but ignored. And by asking why an individual’s natural defenses failed, we insert personal responsibility into our national food safety strategy and draw attention to the much larger public health crisis, of which illness from food-borne pathogens is but a symptom of our minimally challenged and thus overreactive immune system.

As humans have evolved, so, too, have our diseases. Autoimmune disease affects an estimated 50 million people at an annual cost of more than $100 billion. And the suffering and monetary costs are sure to grow. Maybe it’s time we talk more about human ecology when we speak of the broader environmental and ecological concerns of the day. The destruction of our inner ecosystem surely deserves more attention as global populations run gut-first into the buzz saw of globalization and its microbial scrubbing diet. But more important, we should seriously consider making evolutionary biology a basic science for medicine, or making its core principles compulsory in secondary education. Currently they are not.

As we move deeper into a “postmodern” era of squeaky-clean food and hand sanitizers at every turn, we should probably hug our local farmers’ markets a little tighter. They may represent our only connection with some “old friends” we cannot afford to ignore.

[Lemni Skate]

Finding water being priority one and if I were somewhere where "down" doesn't inevitably lead to water, I think I'd be in trouble. I also would be in trouble in very wet, cold conditions like freezing rain.

[Wise Old Owl]

I read the posts and Lemni Skate brings to the table the sore subject of Hypothermia which has taken a lot of hikers lives, right up there with heart attacks. We as a group do not take enough to be warm when wet, a balance of weight of gear to comfort in the rain. I still go to the park on some nasty days to do a five or ten in the spring and fall. Its a circle hike it brings me right back to the car.

John Gault Brings to the table of foods with Pathogens - ecoli and things that make you sick... reminded me of a story where a friend visited a family in the woods and they plucked the chicken right there for dinner and undercooked it. They were fine and drunk and she was so sick as a dog for a few days. It also reminds me why Lone Wolf may be immune to Cryptosporidiosis Giardiasis . I am just saying I get it.

[10-K]

I'm doing my part by not filtering my water.

Plus I ate a BUNCH of blueberries off that toxic waste dump mountain outside of Palmerton but I don't think that counts.

[Feral Bill]

I don't even know if I'm on a hiking website anymore! How can I know where I'm at on the food chain???

It's easy. You are just below ticks and mosquitoes, among others.

[Whack-a-mole]

Could I survive ok in a wilderness emergency? Yes. Am I at the top of the food chain, NO. I had a friend stationed in Alaska for a while. He learned real quick what is at the top of the food chain, and it ain't us!

[Pedaling Fool]

John Gault Brings to the table of foods with Pathogens - ecoli and things that make you sick... reminded me of a story where a friend visited a family in the woods and they plucked the chicken right there for dinner and undercooked it. They were fine and drunk and she was so sick as a dog for a few days. It also reminds me why Lone Wolf may be immune to Cryptosporidiosis Giardiasis . I am just saying I get it.

Pathogens are very much a part of the food chain, they're not just simple diseases, that's just the way we look at them in our highly sterile environment we live in, thanks to society, even in the wilderness, that's one aspect we seem to take in with us from society, so if you're talking about how to survive in the wilderness it must be factored in, not just the macro world of lions and tigers and bears, oh my

Do you really believe that raw chicken is not something we can not condition our immune system to deal with?


If someone wants to prove that they can survive in the wilderness separated from society, yet brings certain things in from society, such as a filter or some type of chemical purifier, then are they really surviving in the wilderness. I say not, they're just fooling themselves.

[Wise Old Owl]

can't argue with that.

[attroll]

Moved to the "General" forums.