Rocket science, no but it’s a lot more complicated than it seems on the surface.
Let’s look at Bob Smith. The apocalypse caught poor Bob by surprise and now his kids are hungry. Bob gets an idea: he’ll go hunt for some food!
But Bob doesn’t even own a gun. So, first things first: He goes down to his local (miraculously unraided) sporting goods store and looks at the selection. What kind should he buy? He never watched hunting shows. Shotgun or rifle? Once he’s made a choice, what sort of ammo does he put in it? He’s leery because he’s heard vague urban legends of guns blowing up because of improper ammo. The tag on the gun is merely the store tag, and doesn’t have that kind of information on it (or he can’t decipher it.) So let’s say he chooses one and manages to get the right cartridges.
He walks out into the woods, looks around, and doesn’t see any deer. He proceeds to wander around for hours, stomping around like an ignorant city-slicker, unaware that every deer for five miles knows he’s out there. After thinking about it for a bit, he realizes he should sit on a log and wait. Now, let’s say a deer happens to wander by, and that Bob remembers to click the safety off and that he actually aims a kill shot on the very first try.
Now, lying before him is a dead deer that weighs about as much as he does. He can try to drag it back, but amazingly, he thought to bring a sharp knife and some bags in which to transport the meat. He hacks off a few haunches and heads home.
When he arrives, his wife reminds him that the stove doesn’t work. (No power.) Bob’s house doesn’t have a fireplace. He decides he’ll light a fire out back, but there’s no fire wood. He and the kids spend hours gathering branches from the conveniently located park next door. (Bob decides he needs to cut down a tree next week for firewood, leading to all sorts of adventures with a chainsaw. Stay Tuned!)
They finally get a fire going, a process which required copious amounts of lighter fluid (which he luckily had on hand) since he’d never started a fire before and didn’t know about using tiny slivers of wood, then working your way up to the big stuff. He and his wife take turns standing by the fire holding the haunch out over it on a stick. (Having never seen a tripod cooking aparatus.)
Now, lets assume that they got it cooked over the fire and didn’t drop it or otherwise ruin the meat. The family has a great meal. Bob goes back out to get some more of the deer tomorrow, but the carcass has been taken by wolves or feral dogs. His only option is to trounce through the woods again. (If he ever does drag back a deer, it will spoil because he has no idea how to preserve it and the meat will get tainted from punctured organs.)
Bob doesn’t know that some of the plants he’s stomping underfoot are edible. He recognizes morel mushrooms, possibly, and raspberries, but most people have no idea that acorns and cattails are edible. Even if they did know, they’d probably have no clue how to prepare it. (Who has a mortar and pestle anymore, anyway?)
Nor does he realize that creatures like opposums and groundhogs are edible (and often easier to hunt than deer.) Hopefully, if he realizes it, he’ll use a smaller ammo. But Bob will be competing with feral dogs and cats for these small creatures. And it’s possible that some of those dog packs might get desperate enough to try hunting* him* while he’s out there.
Bob and his family are likely fucked. They may have had a little garden out back, but they don’t know anything about wide-scale farming. They won’t realize how much wood they’ll need to survive winter, so in some climates, they could actually freeze to death in their own homes.
Let’s assume these are smart folks who decide to find a book that’ll teach them what they need to know. Further assuming that the library is still standing and unlooted (books make pretty good makeshift firewood, or so Hollywood says) and they find what they’re looking for without assistance (which any librarian will tell you is an epic struggle these days for many people), it will take them a while to acquire these skills and the supplies they’ll need. They’ll also likely fail a few times, and if they don’t have backup supplies, it could be tragic.
We’re really far removed from “living off the land” these days. Hell, I’ve talked to some people who had no idea that french fries were made from potatoes and adults who didn’t know how to cook more than warming up what came out of a can.
