Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
longed period of time, remember these results. Cleanse your colon, and you may be able to per-
form remarkably well for prolonged periods without food.
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I heard this story from a man who taught survival classes in Arizona. He talked about the experience of a group of
college-age men and women taking part in a wilderness survival class in which they had to forage and hunt for all of
their food and water for three days, using their bare hands or what simple tools they could fabricate from found mater-
ials. He said that their experience was pretty typical of what most participants experience in their classes. On the first
day, the group divided into men and women. They each discussed their game plan. The men's group decided to focus
on hunting and trapping to find their daily food, while the women's group chose to pursue foraging for their sustenance.
After the first day, none of the men had been successful at hunting or fishing for food, while the women had found a few
berries and edible roots. Both groups chose to continue with their individual game plans. By the morning of the third
day, the men's group had not managed to kill a single animal for food and hungrily shared the roots and other edible
plants that the women's group had to offer them.
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Basic Guidelines
• Don't spend more energy looking for food than you get from food.
• Avoid scurvy, which is caused by vitamin C deficiency. Scurvy is characterized by
swollen or bleeding gums, followed by weakness and bruises or wounds that won't
heal. For a natural source of vitamin C, chew on wild rose hips or green pine needles
(or make a tea out of them). The bright green, fresh pine-needle tips are the most pal-
atable. Vitamin C plays an important role in the immune system and is a natural de-
toxifier.
• If you are dehydrated, do not eat unless the food contains a significant amount of wa-
ter. Since water is required to digest and metabolize food, when you are suffering
from severe dehydration, if you eat food that contains no moisture, the consumed
food will not provide you with a source of energy and will only make the dehydra-
tion worse.
• In most locations, there will be some kind of vegetation that you can eat to sustain
yourself. The trick is to identify and prepare the local edible vegetation.
• Trim moldy areas off food before eating. My mom used to say, “It's just penicillin,”
but don't you believe it. Molds manufacture aflatoxins, which are extremely poison-
ous substances. Penicillium is one of the few molds not harmful to most humans.
Discard grain that shows signs of mold.
Plants
I highly recommend that you pick up a field guide to edible plants in your area (see
appendix
