I always seem to get a slew of questions asking what are people’s best options for survival food. If you really think about this question then you’d have to realize that there can’t be one single answer. The only true answer is that it’s entirely dependent upon a bunch of factors. Factors that are constantly changing, just as nature itself does. Location, seasons, weather, climate conditions, your physical condition and skill level and even time of day are just a few factors that could impact what might be available for food.If you consider just the time of year – winter verses summer for instance, there’s a huge difference in what’s available to the survivalist foraging for something to fill their belly.
An area that was brimming with delicious edible berries, plants and small game in the summer may turn completely barren during the winter months. For many common and edible plants the difference between being plentiful and non-existence may be just a few months, weeks or even days. That’s especially true for those old standbys -berries and fruits. That black berry patch that was full of juicy and tasty handfuls in late spring will be barren just a few months later.
So what is the answer? How can you always count on finding a dependable source of food year round? The best answer I can give is that you will have to take the time and put in the effort to learn as much about the plants and animals in a given area as possible. You’ll need to learn what edible plants are indigenous to your area and habitat, what times are best for harvesting, what particular part of the plant is edible, how to prepare it safely and how to store it. The same goes for animals. What animals can be found and harvested as a source of meat? Are they available year round, do they hibernate or migrate during the winter etc?
Just as an example of what is possible and what I’d consider traveling the high road – I once read that the Cherokee Indians had knowledge of over 600 different plants. Plants that they used for food, medicines, clothing, fire, shelter, weapons in everyday life.. I’m not saying you need to have that kind of knowledge to survive, but quite obviously, the more you know the better your chances. Like the old saying goes – knowledge is power and in a survival situation – this knowledge may be life.
Another point that needs to be addressed and one that many consider their greatest obstacle- just what can, or better yet, what will you actually consider as food.. Will you be able to wolf down rodents – mice and rats? How about those delightful and plentiful insects. Are those on your menu? Snakes, frogs, worms, birds – does the thought of munching down on any of those sound repulsive and trigger your gag reflexes? If you say, or think, yes; then join the club. That’s the most common response. Few people, that is, few Westerners anyway, consider any of those types of foods as even edible, let alone possibly a main course.
That opinion of food is definitely not true for millions of people in other, let’s say – less developed countries. There are literally millions of people that eat foods we wouldn’t even touch, let alone put in our mouths. Foods that you and I might think of as being completely inedible, disgusting and vile, are eaten on a daily basis. And, you really don’t have to travel to foreign countries to find similar examples. In the Appalachians where I grew up, people still routinely eat opossum, hogs feet, cow tongue, blood pudding, brains and a host of other foods that you ain’t going to find in your local supermarket.
I’m a fan of the TV show Bizarre Foods, hosted by Andrew Zimmern. On each episode he travels to a different country or region and highlights all the different foods that people prepare and eat. On last nights episode he was in North Eastern Thailand ( an area I spent about 3 years in) and showed some of the foods and prepared meals that many of those native peoples eat on a regular basis. Silk worms, grasshoppers, dung beetles, raw pieces of meat from a freshly killed calf, whole rats chopped into small pieces ( I’m talking guts, brains, bones) then stir fried, were some of the more popular meals. Just the thought of eating any of those things would make most of us regurgitate last weeks meal. On many of his episodes he’s shown people preparing and eating animal entrails, brains, eye balls etc. and eating them with zest.
When asked if they would actually eat things like eyeballs, entrails, worms etc., a lot of people answer, that yes, if they got hungry enough, then they most likely would. And that would be true – when we get hungry enough, our perception of what is edible and what we will eat, will definitely change. The problem is, and I’m talking from a true, long term survival situation, continuing to be picky about what you eat until you get so hungry you’ll eat absolutely anything, is not your best choice for surviving a long stay in the wild.
There are many stories of people actually slowly starving to death even though they had available, what by all reasoning, should have been adequate enough food. Early accounts of N. American pioneers and settlers make mention of Whites starving while their Native American counterparts , sharing the same food resources, managed just fine. Speculation is that while the whites would eat only the choice, lean parts of meat, the Indians consumed “all” of an animal, even down to the bones in some cases. They actually thrived eating what the white man discarded as being “inedible”.
In more recent times, there’s the story of Chris McCandless , a young man that decided in the Spring of 1992 he’d walk into the wilds of Alaska and live off the land. As the story, and the movie; “Into The Wild” goes, he was able to hunt and forage what should have been more than enough food, but still ended up dying from starvation in less than four months time. It was later determined that the major contributor to his death was lack of nutrition. Although he was consuming enough food, by volume, his diet lacked the proper nutrients to sustain life. Basically, his picky eating habits caused, or at least greatly contributed too, his untimely and tragic demise.
His journal states that he killed a caribou. Now that’s a lot of meat, but, he didn’t know how to preserve it and the bulk of it rotted. He mentioned killing squirrels, rabbits and grouse. All those are excellent sources of bulk food but very short on some very essential nutrients. It’s a known fact that anyone trying to survive on “lean” meat alone is not going to last very long. Our bodies need that fat, that greasy disgusting stuff, to survive. If Chris had known that and if he had also known how to make something as simple as pemmican, chances are he would have walked out of there in fine shape.
So what’s the moral, or lesson to be learned ? How could you, cast into the wilderness to fend for yourselves, survive a prolonged stay? First of course is to be prepared. You’d be wise to study what our early ancestors survived on, how they prepared their meals, what parts of meat they used, ( just about everything is the answer), how they supplemented what little meat they had with roots ( starch) , homemade breads ( carbs) . A lot of these folks lived completely off the land using only what nature provided. And they lived well.
You certainly better get over that “picky” eater thing. You’d be well advised to seek as varied a diet as possible – roots, nuts, greens along with whatever meat you could find. You’d better learn to like, ( well maybe not actually like these things), things like liver, brains, hearts and fat meat- all the fat you can get, even if you have to scrape it off the hide. And you’d best, and very quickly, come to the realization that you now have a new, and very essential , full time job – finding food.
An area that was brimming with delicious edible berries, plants and small game in the summer may turn completely barren during the winter months. For many common and edible plants the difference between being plentiful and non-existence may be just a few months, weeks or even days. That’s especially true for those old standbys -berries and fruits. That black berry patch that was full of juicy and tasty handfuls in late spring will be barren just a few months later.
So what is the answer? How can you always count on finding a dependable source of food year round? The best answer I can give is that you will have to take the time and put in the effort to learn as much about the plants and animals in a given area as possible. You’ll need to learn what edible plants are indigenous to your area and habitat, what times are best for harvesting, what particular part of the plant is edible, how to prepare it safely and how to store it. The same goes for animals. What animals can be found and harvested as a source of meat? Are they available year round, do they hibernate or migrate during the winter etc?
Just as an example of what is possible and what I’d consider traveling the high road – I once read that the Cherokee Indians had knowledge of over 600 different plants. Plants that they used for food, medicines, clothing, fire, shelter, weapons in everyday life.. I’m not saying you need to have that kind of knowledge to survive, but quite obviously, the more you know the better your chances. Like the old saying goes – knowledge is power and in a survival situation – this knowledge may be life.
Another point that needs to be addressed and one that many consider their greatest obstacle- just what can, or better yet, what will you actually consider as food.. Will you be able to wolf down rodents – mice and rats? How about those delightful and plentiful insects. Are those on your menu? Snakes, frogs, worms, birds – does the thought of munching down on any of those sound repulsive and trigger your gag reflexes? If you say, or think, yes; then join the club. That’s the most common response. Few people, that is, few Westerners anyway, consider any of those types of foods as even edible, let alone possibly a main course.
That opinion of food is definitely not true for millions of people in other, let’s say – less developed countries. There are literally millions of people that eat foods we wouldn’t even touch, let alone put in our mouths. Foods that you and I might think of as being completely inedible, disgusting and vile, are eaten on a daily basis. And, you really don’t have to travel to foreign countries to find similar examples. In the Appalachians where I grew up, people still routinely eat opossum, hogs feet, cow tongue, blood pudding, brains and a host of other foods that you ain’t going to find in your local supermarket.
I’m a fan of the TV show Bizarre Foods, hosted by Andrew Zimmern. On each episode he travels to a different country or region and highlights all the different foods that people prepare and eat. On last nights episode he was in North Eastern Thailand ( an area I spent about 3 years in) and showed some of the foods and prepared meals that many of those native peoples eat on a regular basis. Silk worms, grasshoppers, dung beetles, raw pieces of meat from a freshly killed calf, whole rats chopped into small pieces ( I’m talking guts, brains, bones) then stir fried, were some of the more popular meals. Just the thought of eating any of those things would make most of us regurgitate last weeks meal. On many of his episodes he’s shown people preparing and eating animal entrails, brains, eye balls etc. and eating them with zest.
When asked if they would actually eat things like eyeballs, entrails, worms etc., a lot of people answer, that yes, if they got hungry enough, then they most likely would. And that would be true – when we get hungry enough, our perception of what is edible and what we will eat, will definitely change. The problem is, and I’m talking from a true, long term survival situation, continuing to be picky about what you eat until you get so hungry you’ll eat absolutely anything, is not your best choice for surviving a long stay in the wild.
There are many stories of people actually slowly starving to death even though they had available, what by all reasoning, should have been adequate enough food. Early accounts of N. American pioneers and settlers make mention of Whites starving while their Native American counterparts , sharing the same food resources, managed just fine. Speculation is that while the whites would eat only the choice, lean parts of meat, the Indians consumed “all” of an animal, even down to the bones in some cases. They actually thrived eating what the white man discarded as being “inedible”.
In more recent times, there’s the story of Chris McCandless , a young man that decided in the Spring of 1992 he’d walk into the wilds of Alaska and live off the land. As the story, and the movie; “Into The Wild” goes, he was able to hunt and forage what should have been more than enough food, but still ended up dying from starvation in less than four months time. It was later determined that the major contributor to his death was lack of nutrition. Although he was consuming enough food, by volume, his diet lacked the proper nutrients to sustain life. Basically, his picky eating habits caused, or at least greatly contributed too, his untimely and tragic demise.
His journal states that he killed a caribou. Now that’s a lot of meat, but, he didn’t know how to preserve it and the bulk of it rotted. He mentioned killing squirrels, rabbits and grouse. All those are excellent sources of bulk food but very short on some very essential nutrients. It’s a known fact that anyone trying to survive on “lean” meat alone is not going to last very long. Our bodies need that fat, that greasy disgusting stuff, to survive. If Chris had known that and if he had also known how to make something as simple as pemmican, chances are he would have walked out of there in fine shape.
So what’s the moral, or lesson to be learned ? How could you, cast into the wilderness to fend for yourselves, survive a prolonged stay? First of course is to be prepared. You’d be wise to study what our early ancestors survived on, how they prepared their meals, what parts of meat they used, ( just about everything is the answer), how they supplemented what little meat they had with roots ( starch) , homemade breads ( carbs) . A lot of these folks lived completely off the land using only what nature provided. And they lived well.
You certainly better get over that “picky” eater thing. You’d be well advised to seek as varied a diet as possible – roots, nuts, greens along with whatever meat you could find. You’d better learn to like, ( well maybe not actually like these things), things like liver, brains, hearts and fat meat- all the fat you can get, even if you have to scrape it off the hide. And you’d best, and very quickly, come to the realization that you now have a new, and very essential , full time job – finding food.
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