The gurgling sound of death!

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I would definitely vomit.

 

[Luminus]

I can grow vegetables just about anywhere. Even a city has soil, and seeds are easy to acquire.

But you wouldn't be able to, in this scenario. Crops take time to grow. This is 1 day to 1 month after the catastrophe. Where are you getting these seeds, anyway?

Though I would rather eat a farm animal if it came to it I would eat my cats. However I do know where some cows are, they are not my cows but perhaps I would be a bad person and go slay one, drag it back to my house and spend a few days processing it. Of course I would need help, they are heavy.

I do have 40 kg of dried beans in my garage though so I think it might take a while to get to that. Of course I might not choose to use so much clean water cooking them if water was scarce. Still it rains all the time here so let's just pretend water isn't too scarce, though no bathing except for standing in the rain naked.

I would immediately start planting stuff, traveling far and wide to obtain canned food and stripping the forest bare of bush food. I would probably do the cans first, plant at night and only do the forest if I had no can runs for the day as there are only so many ferns you can eat.

Wow, you'd eat your cats? I'm surprised to hear that. How long before you break their necks and drink the blood from the wound? In all seriousness, I couldn't kill my cat and eat him. He's family.

As for traveling far, you need food to travel. How are you going to make that journey, especially if everyone else is driving around trying to escape/find food?

Ah right, got ya. So you're thinking of some form of global catastrophic event?

Watch this film then to find out what would happen.

I was wondering about that movie. I didn't rent it, because it didn't look that good.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Well as I said I have food. I would eat a big bowl of beans, take a water bottle, and go look for cans. I am thinking they would disappear VERY quickly though so I might end up in the forest, with some big canvas bags, harvesting fern fiddleheads. I have eaten these before, they are quite nice and there are an abundance of them. I would be more worried about how to preserve them. I might try drying them out, over fire or in the sun depending on the season of this catastrophe. Obviously if we had electricity I would parboil and then freeze them.

So I have ferns, snails and beans. It would be quite a while to get to the cats. I would also try catching birds, maybe I would lure them in and then throw a sheet over them and snap their necks. I'm talking mainly about ravens and magpies which are big and come right up to you. AND of course I have possums, HUNDREDS of possums and I reckon I could eat a couple of those a week quite easily. Easy to catch. Harder to kill because while seemingly docile if threatened will turn into vicious whirlwinds. I might have to resort to drowning them.

 

[Luminus]

^So people who live near the forest are okay. It's us city folk who face Armageddon?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

You have pigeons. It will take quite a while to catch all of them.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

It's also my understanding that McDonald's uses worm meat in their burgers

Not true.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Seriously if you are in the middle of a big city figure out what you are going to catch your pigeons with, huge butterfly net would obviously be ideal. I'm thinking you could make one out of any kind of netting from curtains, tutus etc.. and a hula hoop. Then you need bags to carry your dead pigeons in. Go to wherever pigeons congregate, take some food that's gone off because of the catastrophe to lure them. Snap their necks quickly. I would also suggest going to parks and getting ducks but some smart person will probably already be bbq'ing the last duck by the time you've finished making your pigeon net. Catch as many as you can, if you have electricity freeze them after cooking.

 

[Luminus]

...Snap their necks quickly...

Yeah, therein lies the problem. Like I said, chickens are delicious, but the death of that chicken is sort of haunting me. Could you really just catch a pigeon and snap its neck, a day or 2 after the catastrophe? Remember, this is something you've never done before. I wouldn't even know how to snap their necks quickly, let alone stomach the idea of doing it in the first place. By week 4, I'd probably be indistinguishable from Wolverine, but not before that I don't think.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

But don't you want to get ahead? You don't want at week 4 to be competing with all the other desperate people who ran out of cans, you want to be eating protein every day you can and saving your cans for emergencies.

Now actual disaster where you expect the government to show up in a week and give you food, sure I would live off what's in the house. I wouldn't kill anything. I don't need to eat meat. But enormous catastrophe where you think no one is ever going to come, I would have zero problem snapping a pigeon's neck on day one. Every day I could bring in food for my family and not eat what I had stored would be a good day.

As to how to snap their necks, well you break chicken wings when you're eating them. It's probably easier than that.

 

[Luminus]

But don't you want to get ahead? You don't want at week 4 to be competing with all the other desperate people who ran out of cans, you want to be eating protein every day you can and saving your cans for emergencies.

Now actual disaster where you expect the government to show up in a week and give you food, sure I would live off what's in the house. I wouldn't kill anything. I don't need to eat meat. But enormous catastrophe where you think no one is ever going to come, I would have zero problem snapping a pigeon's neck on day one. Every day I could bring in food for my family and not eat what I had stored would be a good day.

As to how to snap their necks, well you break chicken wings when you're eating them. It's probably easier than that.

It's not about what I want, though. It's easier said than done. It's like saying I'll stop a crime in progress, but when faced with the actual situation, it's not so easy.

 

[J.T.B.]

Could you really just catch a pigeon and snap its neck, a day or 2 after the catastrophe? Remember, this is something you've never done before.

Well, I could do it, I've done things like that myself or seen it up close and you get over it. Second, there are few motivators as powerful as extreme hunger; if they're starving, everybody can do it and will do it.

I wouldn't even know how to snap their necks quickly, let alone stomach the idea of doing it in the first place.

You "wring their necks," like a washcloth.

 

[Sector 7]

I would just go to a farm and buy it there.

Or it would be like before supermarkets and we'd have butchers, bakers and candle stick makers!

Yes, but those things take time to come about. These are the initial weeks, after supermarkets have been destroyed. I guess this is a Katrina level event, we're talking about here, which would mean no farms either. No one's going to be hunting for you.

Then, grow a pair and do it yourself. In such a catastrophic event as you describe, you either do what has to be done or you depend upon others. I prefer to do things myself.

p.s.- Post military combat, I hunt only with a camera. However, should it become necessary, I can hunt and prepare my own food. The alternative is to depend upon others and hope they are clean and honest... yeah, right.

 

[Pegaritaville]

Since I don't live in a city, I'd have better choices of protein. And I wouldn't have any problem with the killing and cleaning of animals since I'm kind of used to it. Growing up, we often had wild game and I also had to help when we butchered chickens. Sure wish we had the "funnels of death" then.

This fall, I helped a friend butcher chickens and I loved those funnels:

We also butchered the rabbits:

Rather gruesome, but they do taste good.

Still, I suspect my diet would change to include a lot more fish and veggies.

 

[Amaris]

I can grow vegetables just about anywhere. Even a city has soil, and seeds are easy to acquire.

But you wouldn't be able to, in this scenario. Crops take time to grow. This is 1 day to 1 month after the catastrophe. Where are you getting these seeds, anyway?

So this is me getting dropped down into a scenario where there are no supermarkets? If so, I can easily scratch by for the first month or so. I know a number of edible wilds I can eat, so along with scavenging, I can eke out something for a month, and by that time, I can have veggies such as spinach, carrots, radishes, and lettuce. From that point on, it's about sustaining them.

Seed availability, where I live, is plentiful.

Also, Pegaritaville, I'd like to ask if you could spoiler those images, please. I don't mind saying that they're more than a bit disconcerting, especially when I'm having dinner.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

It is hard to grow enough vegies to sustain yourself without a fairly big plot of land. It's one thing to have lots of 'em but it's another if they are your only food. Of course though, grow vegies in this scenario. I was also going to suggest coverting a room in your house, the one with the most light, into a vegie growing room because people will steal your vegies outside. Certainly any farms would be stripped bare.

Isn't it the Mormons who suggest everyone have one years supply of food stored at home?

 

[Luminus]

So, taking what everyone said into consideration... the rural people will survive on vegetables and forest game, suburbanites will eat grubs, while city folk will cannibalize their pets and/or pigeons but all most likely because they happen to be military, hunters, or survivalists. Basically, these are the same people who are capable of cutting off a limb, if they get trapped by a rock somewhere and can't get help.

I'm not sure regular folk will just switch and do any of this stuff in the early days of this catastrophe. People go crazy just from misplacing their cell phones.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I am just regular folk but I would eat my cats and cut off a limb.

Really. Most people will. You don't know how strong the survival instinct is until you actually have to survive.

 

[scotpens]

. . . Eating stray pets, squirrels and pigeons is not the only alternative! There are ... other ... options.

Squirrels is tasty!

 

[Luminus]

I am just regular folk but I would eat my cats and cut off a limb.

Really. Most people will. You don't know how strong the survival instinct is until you actually have to survive.

Regular folk aren't going to eat their cats. No way. You'd have to give me several examples of that happening for me to believe it. I'm not talking about the kind of people who abandon pets, when they get bored of them. I'm talking serious pet owners. As for cutting off a limb, I can't imagine a situation where I would ever be able to do that. I think I would just die, but stranger things have happened.

Squirrels is tasty!

Okay, that's a new one for me. Yuck.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Seriously you would just die if your limb was trapped in rocks in a desert like happened to that guy? You wouldn't cut off your hand to be free? WHY NOT? It saved his life. Plus the hand was obviously dead anyway.

As to pets, it would take starvation first but sure. People have done this, people trudging through the arctic have eaten their sled dogs. Do you have any children? Would you let them die before you fed them your cat?

And squirrels are no more yuck than delicious chicken.