Yeah, for sure. People in cool, wet climates never made clothes from animal hides. Those areas were uninhabitable until thinsulate and gore-tex were invented.
These are all good points and they get at my feelings that it’s fairly hard to tell how well I’d make it.
On the issue of clothing: since the OP was so generous with things like matches, knives and water, I felt like I could assume clothes would not be a big problem initially. You’re obviously correct, though: there’s a huge difference between the survivability of different “casual” outfits.
They wore furs, though. You can’t really make furs from pigskin because it’s not hairy. Rabbits, sure.
Assuming you really want to live, you might try something really crazy like making pigskin outer garments to help protect your bought clothes. Or, lining the pigskin with the rabbit skin. Or several other possibilities. People have survived very harsh environments for some time. Consider this: simply greasing yourself and your hide garments with as much fat as you can save and render from the pigs you harvest will help.
People in cool, wet climates had generations of knowledge on hand to draw from, and quite a few more large, hairy species to choose from than rabbits and pigs.
I don’t know your skills, but I’m ignorantly assuming that any clothing you (or I) would manage to assemble sewing 4" scraps of rabbit hide together with bone needles and strips of crudely tanned pig hide are not going to be suitable for the climate.
If you are washed ashore wearing a cotton sweatshirt and khakis, you probably won’t live long enough to do any of those things.
Right. And if you are washed ashore with one of your legs bitten off mid-thigh by a shark, you probably won’t survive to do any of these things either. If we are going to begin with non-survivable conditions, why even bother having a discussion?
Yeah, on second evaluation, the climate of this particular island seems somewhat harsh. It is not like the island in Castaway (a tropical location with plenty of coconuts). With that in mind, shelter and warmth become more critical. If you cannot get yourself dry and warm, you wont live long enough to hunt/forage for calories. If I could survive the first few days to a week, and get things sorted-out somewhat, then I might be able to last a while. That first few hours and days are going to be more critical than anything else.
Matches? A knife? Luxury!
I’ve spent a lot of time camping in wilderness situations, including in subantarctic parts of New Zealand, so it wouldn’t be an unfamiliar environment.
The Auckland islands have nesting penguins and other seabirds that would be relatively easy to catch. They also have sea lion colonies, and during the right time of year pups could be caught to provide food and hide. There are trees to provide firewood, and tree ferns to provide tinder. Besides birds and sea lions there will be edible mollusks on the coast.
I agree that the wet cool climate will be the greatest threat to survival. However, provided that I came ashore near enough to a patch of trees I should be able to build a fire soon enough to get my clothing dry. If there are penguins or other seabirds or sea lions near at the right time of year, that should solve the food problem immediately and clothing within a few weeks.
Being cast away in a barren part of the island or at the wrong time of year would be more of a problem, but with reasonable luck I think I could survive indefinitely.
You’re assuming that you won’t be able to get out of the wind. Here’s what the landscape looks like on parts of the Auckland Islands.That vegetation is dense. Here’sa forest interior. I’ve been in similar area on Stewart Island south of New Zealand. If you can get to a patch of vegetation like that, you wouldn’t be impacted much by the wind. With a knife, you could make a thatch out of the grassy vegetation thick enough to keep the rain off. Here’s an image of castaways’ huts in the Aucklands made out of thatch.
These are rata trees (Metrosideros). The inner bark is peelable and usually dry, and makes good tinder. The wood itself is very hot-burning firewood. In a rata forest with a knife and 40 matches, you should be able to build a fire and keep it going.
I’ve spent wet nights out when it was in the 50s. While hypothermia is a risk, and it certainly wasn’t pleasant, if you can get out of the wind it’s hardly a death sentence.
That was my point in my first post. The enemy is hypothermia; it is an insidious killer that takes most of its victims not in blizzards but in places like Auckland Island.
However, in this situation you can prevent it with shelter. It’s cold enough to kill you but not so cold you can’t beat it with some clever DIY.
The thing is YOU NEED HEAT AND SHELTER FIRST. I think a lot of people would go for the food first. Big mistake. You don’t need food right away, and the OP gave us some water. The priority has t be getting out of the wind and getting a fire going, or you’re dead in a day or two.
If I can find freshwater, maybe 2 months.
Without that, maybe a week.
You know, anyone who reads this is going to think, “No problem. That’s easy. Why even Tom Hanks did it!”
Well, I dunno… Tom Hanks once sucked face with Meg Ryan too & none of you have, so maybe this might be a lot harder than it seems…
There’s a lot of lovely, waterproof fur to be had on Auckland Island.
And pigskin isn’t hairy? Have you ever seen a real wild pig? It’s not fur, true, but neither are they “not hairy”
Speaking of pigs, you’d have to be careful you did not become their prey.
I haven’t drank water in 20 years. If I can’t get coke I go without.
I’ve been wet in 50 F temperatures for very long periods of time before, I didn’t die. Based on how many times I’ve been out doors and cold, I think some of you are overestimating how quickly one would die in 50 F weather while wet. I mean, football is played in downpours at those and lower temperatures and no one dies of hypothermia. 50F is basically the extreme edge for hypothermia, and if you’re active and wearing clothes it’d not be super likely (but possible.)
Assuming it’s not actively raining my actions would be:
-
Strip naked and ring my wet clothes out (I’ve just survived a shipwreck.) Put them back on.
-
Survey the immediate area and look especially for natural shelters. If I find a natural shelter, survival just got immensely more likely. Natural shelters can be caves, hollowed out trees, or even trees that have fallen in a way you can easily build a shelter around. If there’s no immediate natural shelter I need to decide on shelter versus fire, a question that requires you to stop and think about your surroundings and what’s likely to happen in the next 12-24 hours, and additionally how hard it will be to create the fire.
If I didn’t have matches, or flint and steel, and was on Auckland Island, I’d set about building my shelter first. Because while I do know some techniques for wilderness fire building, they all take a long time and a well built shelter can keep you alive even in very cold weather with no fire at all. But we have matches in this scenario so…
-
Build a fire, ideally in an area that has natural wind breaks. I will first build wind breaks using foraged sticks and such to supplement natural wind breaks or replace them if I couldn’t set up camp in an area with natural wind breaks.
-
Build a very simple debris shelter. I know some good techniques for building nice shelters, but a simple debris shelter made with limbs/forage sticks and covered in leaves and debris is highly effective and easy to make. I actually can build log cabins and that’d be a long term project obviously.
-
Depending on time of day, after building my simple debris shelter it will probably be bed time. On the off chance it isn’t, I’ll look around for natural water sources. If I don’t find any, that’s probably okay. I’d also keep my eye out for useful trees and other things in the area. I don’t know much about the plants of Auckland Island, in North America I’d particularly note birch trees, as birch bark has a lot of good survival utility. Even across the world I’m assuming I will find some downed trees, and soft bark from a dead tree I would harvest some of–you can make strips out of it and wrap it around a coal from your fire and it will smolder for a long time and you can use that to restart your fire in the morning if it’s gone out completely.
-
The next morning I make sure the fire is in a state where it needs to be (it’s a lot of work to keep one roaring, I’m just checking to make sure there is enough heat that I won’t have to start over from scratch, and I may restart the fire with my smoldering coal if I need to.) My goal today is to ascertain if I can find a water source. But first I’m going to decide about my clothing, do I have multiple layers? If so I’ll probably take something like a single sock or my t-shirt (I can make insulation for my shoes to replace a sock pretty easily) and I’m going to go collect dew by sopping dew up with a piece of clothing and wringing it into my water bottles. Long term a dew collector can potentially be made. After making sure my water bottles are filled I basically survey the land for useful things and then just start looking for natural water sources. If I find one, then I no longer worry about water. Considering it’s supposed to rain a lot here, I expect I’ll find a natural cistern somewhere if not a stream or something.
-
I now have shelter, water, and fire. Time for food? Probably not, I’m probably going to work on collecting materials to start making an even better/more livable shelter. Or hopefully I find a cave, a cave is like a Hilton in a situation like this and makes survival far more likely long term. Cave men were in the caves because they were smart, incidentally.
-
Once I have a nice camp/shelter more fully fleshed out (I expect this could be day 3 or so) I start to really worry about food. My understanding is Auckland Island actually has a lot of sea lions that come on shore, and that would be a large amount of calories and also probably some useful bone/skin etc I could maybe work with. But they’re also biggish animals, I’d probably see what pickings were like along the shore as mentioned upthread some aquatic life is unbelievably easy to harvest. Maybe I find some seaweed too. I’d be cautious around unknow plants. If there are indeed sea lions around I’ll probably fashion spears with my knife and tree limbs, as I’d want a spear to take on one of those guys so I could stab it repeatedly from a distance versus have to be up close with a powerful mammal with only a knife.
Anyway, as a general rule survival is going to be based on the conditions in this potentially cold environment. If it’s very cold when I land, it’s raining and never stops, it’s going to be very hard to survive if I can’t find natural shelter. If it’s just cold but not raining, things are a lot more feasible.
If you’re on a boat in subantarctic waters, you’re not going to be wearing a cotton sweatshirt and khakis. You’re going to be dressed appropriately for the climate, unless the ship goes down while you’re in your bunk, and so quickly that you don’t have time to toss on your clothes.
If I were on a ship in subantarctic waters (and I have been) I would probably be wearing wool pants, cotton undershirt, wool longsleeved shirt, wool sweater, windbreaker (and in stormy conditions, if that’s what caused the ship to go down, raingear), wool socks, and heavy shoes. That would be “casualwear” for that kind of environment, so I’ll presume that’s how I’m dressed, with the exception of the raingear.
[QUOTE=Mr. Kobayashi]
Based on your physical and psychological health and survival knowledge and experience, how fucked are you?
[/QUOTE]
Bolding mine.
The OP is asking your survival skills and physical/mental capabilities, not how lucky you are. In the worst case scenario, if you come ashore in light clothing, in a snowstorm, on a barren part of the coast without shelter or food, you’re screwed no matter what your abilities are. So I’m going to presume the best case scenario: that you come ashore in decent weather for the Aucklands (which still isn’t that great), reasonably near to forest or or other shelter, and not too far from a penguin, sea bird, or sea lion colony.
Agreed.
My course of action on coming ashore would be:
-
Head as directly as possible for the densest patch of forest or scrub I could find to get out of the wind.
-
Build a thatch lean-to from branches and grass to keep out the rain, using the twine if no other fibers are available.
-
Use the knife to get the inner bark of rata trees to use as tinder, then make a fire building up from small branches to rata logs. Keep the fire going continuously, banking embers in a dry place when away from camp.
-
Dry out my clothes. They will probably dry fastest by keeping them on while I sit near the fire.
-
Find a water source. This shouldn’t be a problem in a place as rainy as the Aucklands. Collect rainwater in a pit or in the plastic bag. Running water is usually OK to drink except where there are humans or domestic animals around. (I’ve used untreated water from mountain streams while camping in Panama without problems.) You probably should be able to drink from streams in the Aucklands without ill effect.
-
Find food. The easiest to gather at first will be edible mollusks along the coast (abalone, snails, mussels) and maybe crabs. You can eat them raw or steam them by placing them near the fire.
-
Make some kind of rain gear so your clothes don’t keep getting wet when you forage. Initially you could make a crude version of this grass cape using the twine, and a grass hat.
-
In the longer term, you can hunt penguins, seabirds, and sea lion pups for food and hides to make better clothing. (A lot easier than either rabbits or pigs.) Penguins and nesting seabirds can be clubbed, and you can collect eggs and chicks in season. Sea lion pups will be defended by their mothers, but you may be able to find orphaned pups or cut one out from the group. Pups can be clubbed, or you can make a spear with the knife, a straight stick, and the twine. Fur seals, reasonably enough, have fur. You might be able to tan hides using tannin from a bark solution. You could sew them together using sinew or plant fibers.
There’s no need for that. Mammals always have a convenient source of emulsifiable fats from which to make buckskin-type hide, right in their skull. I’d go the brain-‘tan’/smoking route.
Failing that, you don’t need a bark solution (I imagine you’d need boiling to get a strong solution), you can achieve quite a good tan with just pounded bark chips, layered with the cleaned hides (or rolled-up single hide) - this is the traditional tanning method the San Bushmen use, combined with red ochre.
A really interesting thread. What about collecting and storing water? I doubt the plastic bottle or plastic bag would last very long - would it be possible to make a suitable container out of any kind of bark, or does it have to be birch bark?