I have somewhat of a penchance for Tom Hanks Survivor-type scenarios, and I got wondering about the modern US and how it seems to be substantially more difficult to find abundant wildlife than it used to be. As such, if I were to find myself on the coast of, let’s say, California, and discovered the state to be suddenly empty of both people and commercial products, what would I want to do in order to feed myself? Should I trek inland and hope that I can find enough roots and small game, or am I safer staying on the coast and fishing?
How long will it have been empty of people? In pre-columbian days, people around here (the East Bay) could just waltz over to the beach and pick up as many shellfish as they wish to eat. But the only native grain here is acorns, which require a complicated soaking process to leech out the toxins in them.
But if we include wildlife depletion and non-native plants, of course, the answer will be different.
Why do you assume that there is less wildlife in general than there used to be? I have no doubt the composition has changed but here in the East, wildlife runs rampant. In particular, species that can become adapted to man and the abundant food supplies that we throw away do quite well.
You will find that white-tailed deer, squirrels and raccoons around in unprecedented numbers along with lots of coyotes and wild turkeys and those are all good game animals.
On the West coast, there should be a ton of game animals like walruses that are plentiful around former human habitation and lots of seafood even if it isn’t prime.
I would stick to the coast.
The weather is going to be better right on the coast. I am not a survivalist, but it’s seemed to me that fishing might be somewhat easier than hunting, until you come up with proper weapons. Fresh water will be a slight problem, especially in Southern California, but there could be natural springs and ponds that we don’t ordinarily go looking for. Feral dogs, feral cats… squirrels, opposum, raccoons… anything for the stew pot, if you’re hungry enough… pigeons…
After you get a toehold on survival, venture inland and look for any left over agricultural fields, especially fruit trees and, ah, vineyards. If you find any, maybe settle there a while. Don’t try to cross the southern deserts - and certainly not during summer - until you’ve really got a good feel for what you’re doing. It’s also been famously reported that you shouldn’t try to cross the Sierras during winter on a whim.
It’s a game I’ve played in my own mind, sure.
A sidenote, but am I the only one who found that priority list a little bizarre, you have to be hungrier to eat a pigeon thana a feral dog? The only remotely edible thing on that list is pigeons and squirrels, I’d start with those first.
All those things are equally edible, provided you discard the carnivore livers.
And in a survival situation you go for the biggest meal first, especially if you can’t afford to waste bullets, arrows etc. Unless I was trapping or using a sling pigeons would be on the bottom of my list. There’s just to little food for the effort involved in the hunting. A dog will provide you with food for a few days, a cat with one day’s food, a pigeon is less than one meal.
I don’t know, I’m probably very shitty at survival, but I’d probably eat human before I’d touch dog or cat. In general eating carnivorous mammals seems… just wrong somehow, ethically, morally and gastronomically.
Plus a random person probably can’t take down an 80-100 pound dog without a real weapon, rocks won’t help you much. While you can get a bunch of pigeons or seagulls with rocks with a bit of practice.
Tidepools are your friends. Mussels are all over damn near any structure that touches water, at low tide you can scrape them off. Even if you don’t like or are worried about safety to eat they will make a ready bait source for fish and or crabs.
With no people around critters will start to encroach on the city areas pretty darn quick, great shelter, covered areas, orchards of fruits and nuts.
I have often pondered what the world would be like after something like the epidemic in The Stand. For several years most of us would have little worry about food and such due to canned stuff. Given a little inspiration, someone might even be able to get enough people together to harvest some crops and find a way to get a cannery of sorts up and running. A small town with a functional cannery or food processing plant could easily become an agricultural hub and be able to feed thousands of people year round by preserving food products.
Although many technologies would obviously languish for quite a while, we can still read, figure out how to operate machinery, and slowly rebuild society based on the tools left behind.
Just to run with the story a bit, Bakersfield, CA has gasoline production and a massive agricultural base. That alone could serve admirably to jumpstart society since if you can get fuels, you can generate power and transport products across long distances via truck. Say you only have a couple hundred people…fine you can life for as long as canning products can survive with a little fresh fruit for vitamin C now and then.
Bakersfeild, CA, post apocalypse capital of the US 
You will change your mind if you haven’t eaten in a week.
With some heavy clothing or even long heavy leather gloves a dogs main weapon is almost worthless.
Weapons should be easy to come by since there are little if any police and lots of guns and ammo. Hardware stores ripe for the picking…
Nice doggy pat, pat, pat. WHACK goes the hatchet…dinner!
The list was just a try at brainstorming, not intended in order of preference.
…ducks, any ducks around?.. geese?..
The survivalists here can probably tell us whether it’s easier to put together a fishing net, a fishing line and hook, a spear for fishing, a spear for hunting, or what… …sure, throwing rocks is the simplest…
…damn, that’s one big buffalo herd right over there… wish I had something to use as a knife… but taking down a buffalo with just a hand knife is still going to take some major cojones… and if I do manage to take one down, what will I do with it?..
Why is that? If I have, say, a spear, and I’m a novice hunter with lousy aim, it’d probably be easier to bring down a dog than a pigeon. And assuming it wasn’t a tiny breed, the dog would yield a lot more meat. And it might even come to me if I call it.
Oh, but eating a human is somehow **less **wrong to you?
Hey, I actually understand that sentiment. At least a competent, adult human has a chance to fight back, or at least make peace with the end. They aren’t blindly trusting children, as domestic dogs are.
That said, I don’t think domestic dogs would still exist in the proposed scenario. I think feral dogs and wild dog-wolf hybrids would exist.
They would still be pretty much what we know for many generations…its not like the whole dog world is gonna go cujo overnight.
I love all of these silly little bits of sentimentality in survival. Great movie fodder, but bad ideas. People have no problems killing pidgeons (vicious creatures they are) but the cute puppy effect somehow prevents one of the easiest meat sources around for quite a while. Go throw rocks at pidgeons, the dog adobo will be ready in 20 min.
Where the little chef smiley when you need one.
I have no recollection as to where I came across the quote, but “mankind is never more that 2 meals away from barbarism”.
Or something along those lines.
If it was eat or die, gimme dog, gimme squirrel, gimme possum, gimme roots and twigs, hell… If I were starving I bet a pinecone would taste just dandy.
I’ll save cats for the last on the menu. But I’ll eat one if it was me or them.
Can’t pussy out, you know…
For you vitamin C needs I’d journey down to Orange County.
I’m guessing if you take out the animal on the rung of the food chain below you (or above you!) you make it easier for the other animals below to breed and give yourself more food.
Physically, perhaps, but mentally? Wouldn’t all the dogs not feral die off within a few weeks of no humans around to care for them?
I’m picturing, for this scenario, a handful of months to maybe a year of no human presence in the majority of the North American continent. In other words, enough time for any food not canned to rot away but not near long enough for most tools, vehicles, buildings, or roads to seriously decompose. I’m also not picturing bomb damage or severe human-caused damage: Maybe a very large-scale epidemic killed over 99% of the inhabitants before serious civil unrest could set in while leaving the majority of the animal population untouched.
(You can tell I spend time thinking about doomsday scenarios, don’t you? ;))
I’m pretty sure they would turn on smaller domestic critters like cats and other sutff like rats, squirrels, etc. There would be some dieoff and dogs will eat other dogs if they are really hungry. Remeber there are going to be at least a certain percentage of dogs that survive for another 3-5 years who were pets and any surviving humans are probably going to take in a few as pets. So domestic dogs will probably survive right along with us, an expansion of the existing symbiotic relationship between dogs and humans would be even more important under the circumstances.
For at least the next few years there will be tons of harvestable food just have to sort through the weeds for it.
I do but just for academic pondering, I used to work as an EMT so mass disaster situations are always in the back of my mind. Stuff like what happened in New Orleans create a little intro to what the first few days or weeks of such an event might be like.