You have a knife, 1 quart metal canteen and 50 foot of paracord. Sustain life.

[Krill]

Knife: For this purpose let's say it's a Fallkniven F1. 3.75 inch blade.
Paracord: 550 cord. High performance levels/breaking strain.
Clothes: 1 plain beige T-shirt. 1 pair of plain beige shorts. 1 pair of wool socks. 1 pair of ankle high walking boots. 1 Baseball cap. 1 pair of boxer shorts.

How would you do it? I'm not talking about surviving, when I go into the bush I don't like to survive, I like to live. Naturally there are times where you scrape by, but let's focus on living.

Go into as much detail as possible if you have the time. I think this could be a learning experience for us all.

Some topics you might consider;
Shelter(Also clothing) - What kind?
Water - Gathering/harvesting/what you do with it when you have it?
Fire - How would you make it? How would you prepare a long-term settlement?
Food - How would you go about sourcing your food? What would you do with it then?

[Krill]

Let's say for 5 years. So you have to use what you know to sustain life for a long-term scenario. The climate is your local climate at this time ( I guess it's for people to look and read and get different views from different environments ". Terain; Again, your local, so please explain :) Why are you in the situation? Nobody knows, freak accident I suppose.

As for the 1 quart bottle, that's 2 imperial pints.

[feebullet]

Well lets be honest, with the cord you have the following options : Stitch (awl from wood) Fishing line (gorge from stick or hook from stick / thorn, lure from boxers, sating = high class and usually coloured), can make string for the bow drill your going to need for fire, satin makes an ok char cloth too in a pinch,

standard bark vessels etc for containers, spose you can even use a mugs metal / cups canteen as a shovel for a gypsy well, bah its utilitarian..... lets be honest, if you've got this and a few brain cells in a pinch you would be able to work out your priorities and start to remedy a solution rather quickly, I was going to bang on about what you can do, but lets all be honest, what can't you do with a good quality knife and paracord? you could stone boil water in a bark container but you have a metal cooking implement, its going to be rough but you will be fine

[Metal mug]

Clothes: 1 plain beige T-shirt. 1 pair of plain beige shorts. 1 pair of wool socks. 1 pair of ankle high walking boots. 1 Baseball cap. 1 pair of boxer shorts.

Oh that look is soooo five minutes ago. :D


I suppose you could boil water in the canteen, so long as you kept the lid off and it didn't have any rubber seals.

[CheddarMan]

Find a shop selling a decent range of clothing and stuff, like Trago Mills or similar. Hold up the staff at knife point, tie them up and live comfortably for a while. After a few weeks the staff will become your friends (Stockholm syndrome) and a small community will soon develop.

A couple of years will go by and you will all have reached a time of self-actualisation and so scaled Maslows hierarchy and all with a small knife and a bit of paracord!

**This is probably not the best idea if you live near Waco in Texas

[OakAshandThorn]

Arise, ye old thread! :rock-on:

I guess it would depend on the environment and season in this case, and to an extent, the immediate weather conditions. Also, it would depend on how long you intended on living under those circumstances.
Even in my own environment (sub-temperate), I doubt I would last a month unless I raided supplies from other people...perhaps I'm being a bit too critical of my own ability to live with practically nothing, but I try to be as blunt about my capabilities as possible. I am very very far from a Cody Lundin primitive-minimalist.

I shall put forth that I have at least 4000 acres of land (mostly forest, some open meadows) and resources...considering the environment, I would choose sub-temperate because that it what I am most familiar with. Season to begin? - mid spring. Duration of experiment? - a few weeks, let's say 3...seriously, I have no hunting experience/skills aside from animal tracking and fishing. If I had no food to start out with, I would be in a problematic situation. It would be too early in the year to source carbohydrate-rich plant foods, so I would be limited to mostly greens, cambium from trees such as aspens/poplars, berries, some roots (probably limited to cattails), and if I got really lucky, a few fish, and you can bet I would use the entire fish for food, saving the bones and scrap bits of meat for a soup stock. Grubs and pillbugs in decaying logs are fair game for me...in the pot they go! Still, I would lose a lot of weight in 3 weeks because sourcing calories to keep up with daily requirements would be quite challenging.

Water shouldn't be too difficult because of frequent spring rains. Assuming I was able to pick my own clothing, I would definitely take a waterproof shell to keep myself from getting soaked, and from this I would collect the rainwater. Storing it would be difficult. If by some extremely good fortune I was able to create fire, I would hollow out a seasoned log to store some of the water. Otherwise, I would have to find a spring or two, which shouldn't be too difficult in an area 4000+ acres. I would set up my camp within easy walking distance of said water source.

For clothing, I would take a waterproof shell for sure as already stated, probably my German Army sympatex parka. One pair of gloves (my down insulated ones), two sets of base layer uppers (one kept as dry as possible to sleep in), poly-cotton trousers, my boots, 3 pairs of socks (one set kept as dry as possible), two fleece midlayers (one kept as dry as possible), a lightweight long-sleeve shirt, a shemagh, my Tilley T3 bush hat, and a lightweight beanie hat. Shemagh would serve several purposes, from a scarf to keep the bugs off my face to a carrying sack for collecting food.

My external shelter would be a rock overhang or shallow cave if one was available....assuming said 4000+ acres is within my region, it is very likely that I would find one because of all the rocks stirred up by the glaciers. For an overhang, I would prop up several poles vertically with a weaving of vines (Asiatic Bittersweet primary choice) to make a sort of wattle. Thatch would be dead leaves, inside would be plastered with mud to make an adobe mix. This, if I made it right, would keep the rain from drenching me in storms. If no overhang or shallow cave was available, I would set about to make a laavu shelter from dead fall, with a woven structure, dead leaves, and mud, exactly as stated above. The very top of the shelter would be left open to let smoke escape and for ventilation, as I would have a fire ring in the middle of the shelter. In case of wet weather, I would have to build a sort of cap to put on to shed the rain. The entrance I would make very small, just big enough for me to crawl in and out of to minimise heat loss. This shelter would take several days to build....I built one just for fun which took around a week at a relaxed pace.

As for fire, I could spend hours trying to make an ember by friction fire, something I have yet to be successful with, or I could try a flint-and-steel method which would be easier. I'm assuming ferrocerium rods are out of the question. That said, my knife of choice is my Martiini Arctic Circle - a small blade, but carbon steel, and one heck of a slicer. All that's left is to collect tinder and find some quartz or quartzite. Sourcing tinder would be a bit difficult...I haven't made amadou from False Tinder Fungus/Horse's-Hoof fungus, so I wouldn't know how to make that. Milkweed is out of he question....wrong time of year to collect the fluffy stuff. I would be limited to inner barks....Eastern Red-cedar (a Juniper) may be my best bet, but that would require a lot of fiddling around to get the fibres fine enough to catch a spark. If, by a blessing of Nature I could create fire, I would do everything I could to keep the embers alive...one, for cooking foraged foods, two, for heat/warmth at night, and three, for smoke to keep those blasted biting mozzies and black gnats at bay.

All this said, I still think I would be malnourished by the end of the experiment, so in a way it could become a survival situation after the second week.

[FishyFolk]

For 5 years?
Nope, I'll stick to my current plan which is to go home...there is 2-3 meters of snow and -15*C in the hills right now. And you want me to be out there wearing shorts and a friggin' t-shirt...I'd be dead from exposure before I could find the fire wood to keep me warm...

But give me proper clothes for for my climate and a shovel instead of that sharpened crowbar of a knife and I might have a chanse.

[OakAshandThorn]

BLIMEY!! 5 years?????? :shocked:
Yep, I'll be :zombie-fighting:
I guess I'm out LOL :happy-clapping: