I honestly think you’d be able to survive for the most part. You all see Cast Away? Hell, Tom Hanks was an out of shape FedEx guy, and he was on an island with NOTHING, and he managed to become an incredible fisherman, and how to make rope, etc.
Seriously, though, just because you aren’t trained in survival doesn’t mean you all of a sudden revert to being a primitive man. You have several things going for you.
You know what man has created in the past…both modern and primitive tools and inventions…therefore, you don’t need to reinvent anything, just use the surrounding materials to build stuff.
You already know how to use tools. Find a sharp rock, and you’ve got an axe…find a harder rock, and you can start carving, so that you can use plants to bind it to a stick…therefore making a true axe…chop some wood, build a shelter, build all sorts of crap. It’d take a little bit, but once you got the hang of it, you’d be light years ahead of primitive man.
Hi Opal!
You would still be the most intelligent species on the planet. Man didn’t flourish on earth because he was strong and aggressive…Man survived because he was smarter than anything else that he was hunting, or that was hunting him. You already know about fire, about using caves for shelter, about hiding from bigger animals, etc.
Ok, so all 3 can be compressed to: You’re still smart.
I happened to be wandering about in a Canadian forest on Sunday, and came within an arm’s length of the the back end of a moose before it trotted off. Gotta admit that wrestling it never crossed my mind. Those Bullwinkles are really, really big!
About a decade back when I was ski guiding in Temgami, I spent a a few evenings with a couple (sorry, I forget their names) who were preparing to live in the wilderness for a year using only stone technology. At that time they had not yet left civilization, and were starting from scratch in making their stone tools and clothing. They spent a full season cycle before heading off, but once they did, they had a terrific experience living off the land with no contact and only stone technology.
Once on a ten day ski hike my partner and I each though the other had brought the food, so we had to catch our dinner. It was icky, but we gained weight. Catching critters is not that difficult.
I think that with luck in the landing site, luck in the time of year, and a healthy dose of common sense, analysis and creativity, a person should not have too much difficulty surviving. The first few days would be the hardest, but after the first year things should be OK.
I think that you people are missing the big picture… If one were to be transported far enough back in time they would no longer have access to the SDMB and therefore would die a slow excruciating death.
I would have to disagree with most of the optimistic replies. Wander too far even into a modern day national forest and without a specialized knowledge of how to survive in the environment you’ve found yourself in, as well as either the tools to do so or the knowledge of how to make them, and odds are very good you’ll be dead in two weeks. Add into that the fact that you’re naked and without tools in a period no human has ever seen much less spent a few thousand generations culturally adapting to well stocked with very large predators that have no fear of man, and…I wouldn’t take those odds to Vegas.
As far as taking fifty friends prepared friends…there’s a wonderful thread in the threadspotting archive about just such a thing; oddly enough it was reading all the great posts to it that first got me to post here. I’d find it but I’m getting a little tired and crosseyed.
I still have to disagree with Chronos. Nasty critters like ebola and amoebic dysentry show us that virtually anything out there is willing to take its chances against humans, and if it wins, you lose. They lose, too, but they don’t care as much.
There are a lot more of them than there are of us. Our specialized immune systems may not be able to cope with what was once out there. It might be like trying to shoot down a goose with a Sidewinder.
What, were you with one of those groups like my sister’s, “Oh, let’s go camping in your basement.”
Here’s a hint: you’re better off catching varmits than tasting the local flora, unless you recognize something you know is edible. The process for testing a plant for non-toxicity and edibility (and that doesn’t count nutritiousness or digestibility) is very slow, if you want a chance of surviving the bad ones. Like 24 hours to take one taste and see if it does anything.
I think my order of preference would begin with making sure no predator is immediately eating me, then make a weapon (big stick, preferably pointy), then locate water and shelter (i.e. cave or big tree). Then I’d start figuring out how to hunt, make better weapons, and make clothing. Hey, modesty is great, but unless you can weave some big leaves together quickly, worry about something trying to eat you before worrying what it thinks of your aesthetics. (Imagining velociraptor having trouble chasing me because he’s giggling.)
pravnik said:
Hmmm, I take it you’re relying on a general impression about how people have fared in stories you’ve heard on the news, or do you have some other source of info? I have to wonder what are the things that cause most deaths of people lost in the woods. Is it perhaps the method by which they got lost (fall off a cliff and twist an ankle, airplane crash, snowskiing in a blizzard)? I don’t know, but I bet that would be useful knowledge to help us evaluate our survival chances.
Of course if you get to bring 50 friends, then the situation is much better, because according to the time travel literature, any random sampling of American population is full of amateur hobbyists of all sorts of specialties. So you’re bound to have one extreme hunter (aka catching moose with a pocket knife and dental floss), one archer, one model airplane builder, one guy who knows how to make catapults, someone who knows how to make cloth from anything, one fly-fisherman, etc.
…And more importantly, some one who knows who to dirt farm. Maybe someone who knows something about largepscale acriculture, someone with some medical knowledge, a few folks with basic engineering expereince…
After the initial challenge of basic survival, I don’t think you would be that bad off with another fifty folks. Things might seem a bit promitive, but you could adjust.
I am reminded that our ancient ancestors were, in fact, moren humans in almost every sense of the world, and look what they accomplished: huge cities, mighty empires, they tought the aliens how to build pyramids…and in fact, are still accomplishing today.
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You would still be the most intelligent species on the planet. Man didn’t flourish on earth because he was strong and aggressive…Man survived because he was smarter than anything else that he was hunting, or that was hunting him
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Man also survived because he stuck together and supported his fellow man. One of my psychology professors once asked the class “What do you feel on a Saturday night when you are sitting at home alone”?
“Loneliness”? asked this girl.
“No, loneliness is loosing touch with yourself, but we won’t get into that right now. The answer is Fear, because an early man out there by himself would die. Mankind survived by sticking together in a community.”
You’d be better off with your 50 friends, and some sort of garments to avoid exposure those first few nights.
We’re assuming that the 50 friends would all get along and remain friends while they’re starving, arguing over who-stole-who’s only flint axe, who took a dump in the river upstream of the water supply, whether the women should get pregnant or not and by whom, what to do with the weak or sick who can’t pull their fair weight, and being chased down by dinosaurs in the mean time, right? Somehow I’m picturing a pig’s head mounted on a stick right now…
(ok, the head of a creataceus pig-equivilant)
My guess is: your chances of survival: poor
*some peoples* chances from the group of long-term survival: higher but still low... and there'd be absolutely no remaining trace of any of you today.
Shelter, water, and then weapons, and the latter only for hunting. If it’s cold enough to need clothes, that counts as part of “shelter”. If it’s warm, don’t bother (but be prepared in case it gets cold later). If a predator is already after you, you’re screwed anyway, so don’t worry about it. Exposure will kill you overnight, dehydration will kill you in a few days, hunger will kill you in a few weeks, but predators might take a very long time indeed (especially if your shelter is good).
Environment, environment, environment. On some tropical island paradise with with an active reef I think that our odds would be about 40-60 against. As the environment worsens (i.e. less gathering and more hunting, less temperate climate, etc.) our chances drop rapidly. It is not that it is impossible but the learning curve is so high that we wouldn’t survive long enough to learn how to survive. Making a stone tool, killing a game animal, tanning a hide, and making clothing and shelter are infinitely more difficult than most people think.
See Chronos, I figure it wouldn’t take me long to find a big stick. I might not have to do much to make it pointy, either. Big sticks can come in handy, not the least of which is keeping things off you. So that’s why I picked it first. Pretty much as you’re looking for shelter, pick up a handy stick.
Next, shelter and water are kinda simultaneous, but you’re right, shelter is probably more immediate a need. Preferably a cave or big tree. Something defendable.
I imagine fire might be pretty handy, to help with environment and to help ward off predators, as much as to cook dinner. But fire takes more specialized knowledge, effort, and materials. That’s why I didn’t mention it.
A nice tropical or semitropical night would be much preferred over an icy Alaskan winter. Land would be preferred over buck naked in the ocean miles from anything. Though if you trust literature, all you have to do is find a floaty thing, then pass out and you will wake up on a beach.
As for the weapons only for hunting, certainly don’t go looking for predators with only your pointy stick and fist-sized rock. And if you’ve got good shelter where they can’t get you, stay in it. I’m thinking about the ones small enough to get into your cave, but large enough not to be frightened by you and think you might be tasty. I want to make them work for their dinner.
About clothes, I’m not particularly fond of “hanging free”. And shoes of some sort would be pretty nice, even if my feet weren’t cold. (Heck, my feet get cold easily, so I’d want socks, too. ) Plus, clothes can help against stickers, scraping on rocks and bark, etc. Also, I’m a pale guy and the sunburn would not be pleasant.
Ol’Gaffer, you’re thinking of more highly developed clothes and shelter than me. Though come to think of it, I’m not really sure how I would go about making clothes and shoes. sigh
I’ve read lots of “how to” wilderness survival books; but how successfully I’d be able to do any of that stuff? I shudder at the thought of my survival depending on my dexterity, as evidenced by my experience with “some assembly required”.
Oh, and there are no contact lenses available in the Cretaceous. If I bring eyeglasses, their average duration until lost or destroyed? Maybe a couple of years if I’m lucky. Ok, so I’ll spring for the Lasik surgery before I go. That way, only my kids will have to survive in a wilderness nearly blind.
If I last long enough to have kids. I’m currently 50 pounds overweight (after dieting for six months!!), and can’t run more than twenty or thirty yards. So the food problem would in a sense solve itself- I wouldn’t be fast enough to catch anything until I’d starved enough to be thinner. (Provided the “food problem” isn’t avoiding becoming something else’s food).
Ok, how about my intelligence/problem solving skills? Yeh, right. Last weekend I spent half an hour trying to start a rototiller until I figured out that the choke needed to be open, not shut.
My social skills, and ability to fit into a closeknit tribal society? Let’s just say that my nickname would become “Piggy” in short order.
In short, I’m pretty much the most useless person who’s stayed alive on civilization’s support systems imaginable. In the Cretaceous, I might last the aforementioned two weeks or so.
Pick up a big stone. There, you’ve got a stone tool. That was easy, wasn’t it? Tanning a hide: Scrape all the meat off, and wear it continuously for a few days. It’ll stink to high heaven, but it’ll work. And it takes about a half-hour to learn to build a simple shelter, and maybe four hours to build it. Yes, I’ve done it, and slept in it, in the rain. It’s even easier if you happen to find it already there (a cave or the like).
As for the game animals, remeber that nothing is going to recognize human scent. Hunting will be much easier for the first few years, and by that time, you’ll be better at it.
Well… when talking about stone tools I don’t think we mean a rock to crack open coconuts. Finding and shaping stones to cut things (or scrape all that meat off the hide ;)) is more like it, and maybe fastening them onto a handle and keeping them there while hacking away at something - that’s easier said than done.
Will a hide not start getting brittle and deteriorating fast if you don’t rub some oils or something into it and/or stretch it (I’m not up to speed on hide tanning, but I thought it was more involved than ripping it off the animal and wrapping it around yourself still dripping). That being said, where do you find large mammal hides in the creataceus… better learn how to prepare huge lizard skins before the journey.
Simple shelters are easy to build, but there’s a difference between surviving under it for a few nights as opposed to living there for several months after the leaves/needles fall off and the wood starts drying, shrinking, and leaving big gaps that require maintenance - yes, better to find a cave.
It’s not so much a matter of a game animal recognizing human scent as it is any foreign scent that makes them nervous, not to mention all the other things like seeing you sneaking up on them and rustling around. A lot of present-day game animals in remote areas haven’t ever had contact with humans either, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stand there scratching their heads while you throw spears at them.
What exactly are you planning on doing with the aforementioned big stone? Bash in some animal’s brains? If you were Roger Clemens with a handful of baseball sized river cobbles, I would give you a fighting chance against rabbits, birds, lizards, and other comparably sized game. Larger game? I don’t think so. Hunting with a non-projectile weapon, i.e. a big stone, requires that you be within arms reach of the (hopefully) soon-to-be meal. For small game this is not so much of an issue, other than the obvious problem of actually getting within arms reach (more on scent in a bit). Larger animals tend to have teeth, claws, antlers, hind-leg/hoof combinations, and a marked aversion to being hit on the head. The higher value (amount of food, tools from the bones, clothing from the hide) of the animal may make them worthwhile, especially if you’re really hungry. But, can you afford to be hurt while hunting? No. Will you be hurt while hunting large game with a big stone? Definitely.
First, how are you going to butcher the animal? Meat has a strong tendency to remain with the hide to which it is attached and a big stone doesn’t lend itself easily to this task. One possibility, if hunger dictates, is to gut the animal with your teeth and to eat it from the inside out, leaving the hide intact. This brings up the second problem. The reason for scraping the hide clean is not the stink, granted it would be considerable, but rather that those remaining bits of flesh will quickly begin to rot and decompose, taking the hide right along. Incidentally mmmiiikkkeee, one common mixture was brains and urine.
I fully agree. However, it may not be as comfortable if we leave the full Gore-Tex rain suit in the 21st century (see OP). And may your cave be uninhabited!
I agree that if you go back far enough, nothing will recognize human scent. That is exactly the problem. A game animal that does not flee from an unfamiliar scent and/or sound posesses a distinct evolutionary disadvantage that would undoubtedly be selected against. Prey animals are successful because they flee at the slightest provocation. Larger predators, with few or no natural enemies, would undoubtedly be more curious but do you really want to be tangling with them? I don’t think so.
Again, I reiterate what I said in my previous post. Its all about the environment. If the land provides most of what you need and hunting is a supplement then our chances, as 21st century humans, is okay. As the environment becomes less inhabitable, specialized knowledge of animal behavior, weather patterns, edible plants, shelter locations, etc. become more and more crucial. Obviously we have the capability to learn these things, we just wouldn’t have enough time.
