If you and your children were dropped in the middle of a remote area with just a knife would you be able to survive?

[LizaRadleywasonthespectrum]

Following on from an early morning conversation with DP. Obviously this is an unlikely scenario but not beyond the realms of possibility. Can you build a shelter, make a fire, find food and water? Can your (say 8yrs and older) children make a fire or set a snare and skin a rabbit.

It was 36 days!

I was obsessed with the SAS Survival Handbook as a teenager so I like to think we'd survive but its been a few years since I've read it... perhaps I should give it a reread!

My DD learnt what mushrooms and berries are safe to forage in school (its part of the curriculum here, and they go out foraging to test their learning in real life). She also had a lesson in gutting fish in primary school, and I can probably remember from my childhood as my mum taught me as whenever we went to Lapland on holiday we'd go fishing for hours on many days, gut and clean our catch and fry it over the fire - best fish I ever had. Both children have spent plenty of time in nursery and preschool building dens in the forest so perhaps they could build us a shelter.

Not sure about starting a fire though without any tools. I tried as a child, after watching Pippi Longstocking start a fire by spinning a stick, but it didn't work but I suppose desperation would keep me trying different methods until something worked.

Plenty of wildlife in Finland so lots of food opportunities, especially pheasants as they're so dumb they will stand still while you get close enough to kill them. Reindeer are pretty dumb too. But winter would be a problem... and of course we'd have to watch our for bears and wolves.

"Has anyone here actually managed to set a fire with just sticks?"
Just asked DH. He has, using a fire bow. I asked him what the string of the bow was and he said "Baler twine. You can use roots and stuff but fuck that".
He reckons you need wire for a snare, they need to be really strong as the animal goes bonkers. "Not a pleasant way to go"
Even DH would be hard pushed to survive long term with just a knife. Rifle and ammo would increase his chances greatly. In that "Alone" survival show where they get 10 pieces of equipment, 100 days is the longest anyone has managed I think, and a lot of them fail the medical checkins due to weight loss. It's really hard to gather more calories than you spend trying to find the calories, even for wild animals living in their own environment.

It’s just you and your children, no husband/partner.

You can eat worms you know. Capture as many worms as you can and find some water to soak them in. Squeeze them out - do this a few times to get rid of the earth and such like then cook with some wild garlic. My children can identify wild garlic. We’d survive. It wouldn’t be pleasant at but we’d survive.

I have a military background. I can survive in the field. DS is a senior cadet - he’d be fine too. We’d look after DD.

DS and DD can both fish. DS knows how to prepare fish.

DS and I can start fires.

If DH was with us we’d be just fine.

remember you can survive without

air - 3 minutes
shelter - 3 hours (obvs can survive longer but this is to highlight the importance of it)
water - 3 days
food - 3 weeks.

What do you start the fire with TheDefiant?

Absolutely not.

food would be the major problem although shelter would be a big issue in winter.

uk generally has streams and things which if you were dropped high enough (and checked for dead sheep upstream) are reasonably ok to drink out of.

What a depressing hypothetical. I’d have to say not a chance but I can’t feel bad about it. Even if you had all the required skills the odds of survival are remote. You need to first survive an apocalyptic event (with all the trauma responses that would trigger), then be in an area with suitable resources to enable survival, be able to adapt to local predators, weather conditions etc. and manage illness/infection with no resources. Even assuming all of the above were possible you’d need to ultimately find other humans and form a community (unless you’re happy to just grow old and die together) at which point if dystopian literature has taught us anything things are going to get really ugly…

Out of interest have you been reading Hatchet? (Gary Paulsen) :)

There are no remote areas in the UK. I could survive easily just by foraging on farms at night.

In say, Rocky Mountain National Park- yes I could survive off the land so long as I were healthy and managed to avoid the bears and mountain lions.

@minipiewe've got a proper knife! Loads you can do with a knife. Find flint and get a spark going on kindling. I know how to build a fire and protect it.

scavenge for fire making tools.

fire can come later anyway. Survival first. Eat the worms and garlic raw if you have to.

Absolutely not. We’d be on our phones, trying to call an Uber and crying.

I know we’ve been dropped in the wilderness but if UK one of the first things I’d be doing is heading into a city to loot a pharmacy. I’d clean that place out of loads of useful stock before looting food!

My kids and I discuss this kind of thing all the time, but the're still quite young so not sure how useful they'd be. I've watched an absolute shitload of The Walking Dead though, so am deffo well-prepared.

It would mean having to catch enough food for 4, and making all that winter clothing, I would struggle to keep us all alive, while the children learnt skills also

In that situation I am pretty sure my children would reach the logical conclusion that I was useless to them and only keep me alive until they needed me as a source of food

Nope, probably not. How on earth do you even catch a rabbit anyway? I remember when I was little and one of the rabbits escaped from the hutch and they were a bugger to catch. I would totally fail at the killing of a rabbit too. We'd have to eat leaves and any fruit we find I suspect.

"Find flint " First find your flint! If you're not on chalk or limestone they're like hen's teeth.
"and get a spark going on kindling"
again depends on the region and time of year. northwestern bits of the UK...try finding anything dry enough for 90% of the year...it's doable, but difficult, especially off a couple of sparks compared to matches or a lighter.

We had nothing better to do as country kids, no Internet so we did this relentlessly until we succeeded and were dragged home by the farmer for setting a fire in his field.

Yeah, I think the fire starting and cooking would be very difficult. I don’t know about the air crash but I would assume there were some useful things from the plane or luggage - matches, raincoats, some food!

What do you make a snare from? Stalks and branches?

I reckon we could give it a go. The youngest dc would probably rather starve than eat a rabbit though.

My kids would probably kill me tbh

The things I’ve tried that after watching Pippi..😂 Lots of inspiration.

We are farmers so yes i like to think we'd be fine.

We would need to find some discarded baler twine & blue pipe (there's always baler twine & blue pipe) & go from there.

Think it very much depends on the terrain and time of year. Adult kids all into outdoors, camping etc and one is a bushcraft instructor so think we would be ok! I wouldn't risk mushrooms, although I know which sort my kids would be foraging for 😂 DH can definitely skin rabbits and gut fish.