Posted on 04/25/2020 8:09:31 AM PDT by rktman
When I was a young teen, I read a sobering statement – that most Americans would starve to death standing next to a cow in a field of ripe wheat. In other words, most people don't have the faintest idea how to obtain food from elemental sources.
In the age of coronavirus, this statement is coming back to haunt me. The pandemic has caused an interruption in supply lines, and for the first time in decades, Americans may face shortages. We're not used to seeing empty shelves at the supermarket. How secure is our food supply?
For 5,000-plus years of civilization, mankind has honed thousands of survival skills. How to build a home from raw materials. How to make a fire without matches. How to hunt animals with only the most primitive of tools. How to make those primitive tools. How to raise crops, harvest them and preserve them through the upcoming year.
And here's what bothers me: We've forgotten 5,000 years' worth of skills in one hundred years.
A century ago, many of our forebears still lived on farms without electricity. They knew how to get through a year without depending on too many external sources for their everyday needs. The survival skills children learned at their parents' knees were still being handed down.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
I’ll just code a virtual reality where there is plenty of food.
DOH! Why didn’t I think of that? Or just order EVERYTHING from amazon.
Cambodia’s Pol pot would be proud
Bookmark
I would suggest we’ve forgotten the skills learned over millions of years, not just the last 5000.
For a while I taught Anatomy and Physiology for “Pre Nurses”. I was dismayed at the students glee at being told “We won’t expect you to learn how to do or read Peripheral Blood Smears.” I told them they should DEMAND it. After all, they were PAYING to learn it. But the trend has been for decades that “We have a machine for that.” And it’s true. The Coulter counter will give you a bunch of numbers. But you will never be able to glance at a slide and know immediately what all those numbers mean. You will never be able to recognize microcytic anemia or any of a hundred conditions that are recognizable at a glance.
But what happens on the day there is no longer a machine? Will ANYONE know how or what it means? We won’t lose a CENTURY of perishable skill. It will be MUCH more.
You’re aging yourself there WC.
I have been saying this for 50 years!
“Who you talking to, white man?”
Some of us still have this knowledge cus we STILL do this.
(Farmers unite ping)
Self-sufficiency and survival skills didn’t save the Indian tribes here in North America.
The knowledge is not lost. But you must seek it.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=primitive+technology
The problem is most people aren’t interested in learning anything. Sloth and the death of curiosity are the problems. People are lazy and intense curiosity is a rare flame which often burns not at all.
Virtual food is rather bland.
This headline is really interesting, as it could either be an eggcorn, or function just as well *AS* an eggcorn, depending upon whether you swap out ‘death’ for ‘dearth’.
Both actually work for getting the point across.
I maintain a knowledge base that has most of the instructions for those skills if people care to learn about them. You can’t be a farmer in 5 minutes but the site has been active for over a year so you’d be a lot closer than you were 5 minutes ago. I advertise it once a month as a free service to all FReepers. Less than half a dozen on average respond every month. So it’s not that they haven’t had the chance.
I watch videos I like this all the time. Very interesting stuff.
The videos that show how to make things with only what you can find are truly fascinating. They are also not as easy as they look.
Took me a while to figure out how to preserve crops without a freezer or pressure canning. It’s not like you can just look it up.
Think about it Great great Granney knew how to do it, but modern books dont.
What really piqued my interest is that ancient preservation techniques boost your immune system.
She makes true points.
But someone named Donald Trump organized and funded critical suppliers to keep supplies coming. This was done weeks ago and was barely noticed in media reports.
As the Pandemic fades, the deficiencies of present day Americans will be forgotten by most.
A century ago, many of our forebears still lived on farms without electricity. They knew how to get through a year without depending on too many external sources for their everyday needs. The survival skills children learned at their parents’ knees were still being handed down.
—
A Century ago most Americans were farmers.
But that does not mean all Americans could live off the land.
It has not been the last hundred years. The true statement is that city dwellers of any time period did not know how to live off the land. It is just that today we have more city dwellers then farmers.
I had an epiphany many years ago while reading up on early California history. It seems some of the early Spanish missionary almost died of starvation as they explored California. They did not know how to live off the land. While there was wild game to kill and eat and various plants they could eat, there was also fish in the ocean they could catch...if they knew how. They were all educated men that lived in cities all their life.
I would be willing to bet the average Roman would not know how to live off the land either.
So it is not Americans of the 21st Century, it is all humans who live within cities. It is not a practical skill for city life.
This crisis will end, and life will return to be as it was before.
It would not hurt to know survival skills but what are the odds you are going to need them?
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