Best ecosystem after SHTF

[Duderino]

Hi all,

New here.

Just wondering:

Let's assume you bug out early enough way deep in whichever wilderness and 90% of human beings are wiped out for whichever reason (just assuming).

What would be the best ecosystem for long term survival as a small group with basic bushcraft knowledge (= read a few good books, didn't practice much)?

Would a boreal area with decent wildlife but harsh winters be better than a tropical one with probably more stuff to hunt, but more diseases and poisonous wildlife?

I know people thrived in any environment, so, in a way, it's a stupid question, but I'm just curious what the experts out here think.

Thanks

 

[jontte]

I'm no expert and no question is stupid !!!
all questions are good.

for me, I'd prolly like the boreal,sure winters can and would be hard,but still, less critters that can kill you
but if you are stupid there it will kill you too.

 

[Psalm7]

In most survival situations I look at the area as if it were the early frontier days . How did the early settlers live there .

 

[JackDW]

In the US, I would target the Mid-Atlantic region. The area has distinct seasons. While does get hot during the summer months, does not last long. Can get cold in winter but, again, does not last long. Good growing environment with lots of water including large streams and rivers. I want a place that does not have extremes and lots of natural resources.

 

[Maverick]

I always say, follow the water, it doesn't matter if the climate is cold or hot. The area needs to sustain itself with water even in dry periods throughout the year. I prefer Northwest and Pacific Northwest (politics aside) Each place has its own set of hazards and challenges just make sure you study the area you choose in-depth from foraging to the history waterways including the location of rivers brooks stream and creeks. Look at historical accounts that go back more than a 1oo years (floods drought fires etc..)

 

[DrHenley]

In the US, I would target the Mid-Atlantic region.

My wife was talking about us moving to North Carolina when she retires. So I got on Google Maps to see where there was some remote areas with nobody living nearby.

Nope. They don't exist anymore.

 

[Mountain trapper]

I'll stay where I am; mountains, timber, water and very few people. Cold snowy winter's and mild summers with low humidity, and very few people. Lots of game and fish, and very few people.

 

[tmttactical]

Conditions: 1) no or very limited natural disasters -- no tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. 2) Natural water source all year. 3) Long growing seasons. 4) Isolation from populations centers, large or small. Now that is just for location, the real test will be the skill level of those trying to survive. The settlers had a life time of knowledge to help them. Seed for growing things that could be reproduced season after season. Draft animals, manual ground breaking tools, plows, tillers, etc. and a solid work ethic. Modern folks are lacking in many of these things.

 

[Psalm7]

Conditions: 1) no or very limited natural disasters -- no tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. 2) Natural water source all year. 3) Long growing seasons. 4) Isolation from populations centers, large or small. Now that is just for location, the real test will be the skill level of those trying to survive. The settlers had a life time of knowledge to help them. Seed for growing things that could be reproduced season after season. Draft animals, manual ground breaking tools, plows, tillers, etc. and a solid work ethic. Modern folks are lacking in many of these things.

If you look at the American Frontier. That is the wilderness west of the East Coast . The early settlers had hand tools and fire to clear land and plant crops . After a few successful harvest they may be able to buy a horse or ox maybe even a mule . Anyone today has access to much more information including agriculture methods from around the world . Not to mention that just because there is a shtf or even teotwawki situation going the electricity and internal combustion engines may well be running just fine . That happens somewhere around the World everyday

 

[TexasFreedom]

Look at early settlers & their survival rates. Poor and worse. If you think going out into the wild (even with some knowledge and a few tools) is a good strategy, then the more power to you. And lots and lots of people have the same thoughts... those woods are going to be very crowded and the little wildlife will soon be dead. So people will hunt people. With your premises, that is the reality you will face.

If you do not have a secured self-sufficient homestead to start with, then your odds will sit at the same rate as winning the lotto. I know, lots of people can't afford to have that at the ready. But that is reality.

Someone said follow water. Lots of water also contributes to lots of disease issues. Yes, you want some water. But the more there is, the more problems it brings. And disease for both people and animals. So arid is better than tropic.

 

[tmttactical]

If you look at the American Frontier. That is the wilderness west of the East Coast . The early settlers had hand tools and fire to clear land and plant crops . After a few successful harvest they may be able to buy a horse or ox maybe even a mule . Anyone today has access to much more information including agriculture methods from around the world . Not to mention that just because there is a shtf or even teotwawki situation going the electricity and internal combustion engines may well be running just fine . That happens somewhere around the World everyday

It is the scale of the disaster that will determine the survival rate. Localized disaster and prepper people have a reasonable chance. A national, grid down event and 99% of the population will be history. No water, fuel, food distribution. Farmers will run out of seed because they are using modified seed that does not reproduce. Less than 9% of the farmers produce over 85% of the farm revenue in America. They are not using heritage seeds, they will have one , maybe two crops and then are done producing. No electricity means no fuel of any time, except wood or maybe coal, if it can be dug by hand. No store bought feed for the ranchers, how many grow their own feed? Sanitation, how many homes have septic systems? Preppers and other people talk about bugging out--- to where, how, with what and what can you do when you get there? How long will you survive with a truck load of supplies? How to you prep the ground to grow a crop and what will you use for seed? Did your vehicle carry enough food to last until your crop is ready for harvest? Did the crop come in, no, so what now Cochise?

A few people can survive in the cities but they will need to know a ton of stuff and be real lucky. Suburbanites no chance, they will be over run by the fleeing dregs of humanity. Rural, they will bite the bullet because they depended on mechanical equipment to harvest the crops and used non-reproducing seeds. Only the isolated rural preppers will survive in any measurable numbers.

 

[lonewolf]

most modern population will be history post collapse, modern people do not know how to grow their own food, once all the services are down, electric, water, sewage, food deliveries, trash removal, they wont have a clue what to do without their internet, mobile phones , ipads and the like. most do not know where their food comes from or how it is grown, they just expect it to be in the stores 24/7/364.
the survival rate post collapse will be very low.
as for ecosystem you will need good growing land, not all land is suitable, how big an acreage depends on how big your family or group is, how much you can comfortably work and how much you can control, enough sun and rain to enable the growing of crops, some forest or woodland for firewood and timber and hopefully some hunting and trapping, I like a mild climate not too cold but not too hot either with a long growing season. somewhere that dosent have hurricane's, tornadoes, earthquakes and dosent have too many other natural disasters either.

 

[JackDW]

Urbanprep, I agree with you. That is why I try to stockpile seeds more than the actual food. Seeds do get old, so try to rotate them as much as possible. I currently plant a small garden area but if things get bad, I can turn my whole back yard into a garden. I just need to make sure to keep some of the resulting seeds to start the next crop. What I am weak on, is determining what will be best for prepping the soil. Currently using conditioners from the store. I should research how best to condition the soil using natural elements and best rotation practices. But, at least, I have a starting point.

 

[jontte]

JackDW,
.. saw a documentary about the amazonas,where they have this "black soil", turns out it's totally man made, it contains bio-matter like bones from fish and wild game, charcoal from burnt trees, and they only partially used burn-clearing so the trees wouldn't totally be burnt to ash but also charcoal and they mixed it with the exicting soil,even hundred years after it's fertile like hell where "black soil" is, wonder if this could work in other places too?

 

[Psalm7]

It is the scale of the disaster that will determine the survival rate. Localized disaster and prepper people have a reasonable chance. A national, grid down event and 99% of the population will be history. No water, fuel, food distribution. Farmers will run out of seed because they are using modified seed that does not reproduce. Less than 9% of the farmers produce over 85% of the farm revenue in America. They are not using heritage seeds, they will have one , maybe two crops and then are done producing. No electricity means no fuel of any time, except wood or maybe coal, if it can be dug by hand. No store bought feed for the ranchers, how many grow their own feed? Sanitation, how many homes have septic systems? Preppers and other people talk about bugging out--- to where, how, with what and what can you do when you get there? How long will you survive with a truck load of supplies? How to you prep the ground to grow a crop and what will you use for seed? Did your vehicle carry enough food to last until your crop is ready for harvest? Did the crop come in, no, so what now Cochise?

A few people can survive in the cities but they will need to know a ton of stuff and be real lucky. Suburbanites no chance, they will be over run by the fleeing dregs of humanity. Rural, they will bite the bullet because they depended on mechanical equipment to harvest the crops and used non-reproducing seeds. Only the isolated rural preppers will survive in any measurable numbers.

There are commercial seeds that do not reproduce but any seeds you plant are someone's hybrids . Even if by accident with cross pollination . I keep seeds Generation after generation . They will become hybridized from your own garden or someone else's . As far as old seeds Iv used sime that were several years old but recently saw where a explorer foud a cave that had Indian (native American) artifacts that were hundreds of years old including squash seeds . Scientists planted these seeds and got large reddish colored squash that no one knew ever existed . And there's the wheat from Pharoah's tumb in Egypt .

 

[Duderino]

What I am weak on, is determining what will be best for prepping the soil. Currently using conditioners from the store. I should research how best to condition the soil using natural elements and best rotation practices. But, at least, I have a starting point.

Maybe permaculture doesn't require much soil maintenance. I'm reading Gaia's Garden at the moment, very interesting. I haven't read much about the soil so far, we'll see.

 

[lonewolf]

compost is good for the soil, leafy material nothing too woody, veg peelings and the like.
nitrogen can be obtained from urine of which we have an unlimited supply.
horse and cow manure if it can be obtained .
some people in the past have used seaweed as a soil enhancer.
ash from a fire and soot from a chimney are all good additions.

 

[GaRp58]

Good morning Duderino, welcome, I am also new on the forum. You opened a BIG can of beans today. Everybody here has their ideas, plans, experience and maybe a few failures...but they all have a good piece of advice. Write some of it down and read it again and again. The one and only real thing you can count on in the SHTF or ANY scenario, is YOU. The plane crashes, you survive. The car breaks down, you. SHTF, you. If you bug out, you must learn to live in the new place. Bug in, ditto. Life is changing daily, adapt. Life will change faster when SHTF, adapt faster. Only you can change your situation, if it is just losing you job, divorce, or hemmoroids. Learn to accept that which you cannot change, make the best of it. Do change what you can. Be able to recognise the difference. Read, practice till it is instinct. Store enough for yourself/family.
Get ready for the worst from any movie you have ever seen, the materials you need are there. Clothes will be in abundance from those who did not survive. Food will be scarce fast. Like Texasfreedom said: the hunting will be scarce too. The Indians in America were usually hungry. Even with crops, other thieving tribes were lazy. They had to follow the food, find the water and adapt constantly. We have almost lost these abilities. Get to know yourself better, what can you eat raw? How dirty can the water smell before you cannot drink it? On the first day of jungle training, the trainer for the Green Berets shot a monkey and let it lay there for 3 days. Needless to say, it smelled, got bloated, was infested with maggots and looked like ****. On the fourth day, it was cooked and they had to eat it, just to prove to them that it was edible, (if cooked quite through and eaten IMMEDIATELY) it will fill your stomach and it is Sterile... You will almost never meet a Green Beret without his Tobasco though.
Read, learn, practice, try new things, learn to farm, hunt, clean and gut, smoke food, fish with minimum, wash without soap, fix/repair things, small medical abilities, cooking and baking on an open fire, learn to walk barefoot to save your shoes/boots, plants knowledge, trail animals/persons, camoflage yourself, read the weather, and maybe the most important: Learn how to take a tool, object, machine or item and use it for something that the builder NEVER thought it could/would be used for!!!
Live Free, GP

 

[lonewolf]

there is only one way a person can sustain life post collapse and that is by controlling our food supply, that means growing and rearing our own food.
hunting/gathering was always hit and miss at best, even the best hunter has off days, that's why humans became farmers.

 

[GaRp58]

Hi bigpaul, I guess we said the same thing. You used less words with as much wisdom. I just gave him some motivation and goals to shoot at...GP

 

[Kevin L]

I would go with boreal forest, or even subarctic.

1) The harsh environment will tend to weed out stupid, dangerously passive people.
2) People often seem willing to put aside differences when confronted with a harsh environment. Arctic people seem to have a sense of community.
3) Less disease than the tropics.
4) Sparsely settled, so troublemakers are spread out more.
5) Arctic communities are insular, and tend to take care of their criminals in their own way.

The arctic environment--paradoxically--has rich food sources. Animals tend to be bigger in cold environments (this is because of a specific mathematical law about the relationship between volume and surface area.....that was pointed out by Gallileo in the 1600s*), there are an abundence of edible plants during certian times of the year, and the harsh environment offers a kind of natural barrier to the starving hoards that will overrun areas further south.

I'm sure people will disagree with me, and that's fine....as long as everyone can see my points.
_____________________________

* This relationship between surface area and volume is the reason why the giant spiders and insects of the 50s era "B" films are biologically impossible. If you increase the size of a cube from 1 inch on a side to 2 inches, you see something interesting. A cube 1 inch on a side has 6 square inches of area, and one cubic inch of volume. A 2 inch cube has 24 square inches of area, and 8 cubic inches of volume. So, a 1 inch cube has a 1:6 ratio of area to volume, while a 2 inch cube has a 1:3 ratio of area to volume.

A giant insect is impossible, as there wouldn't be enough surface area in it's organs to absorb oxygen, or give off wastes, or shed excess heat, and so on.

So, animals are bigger in the arctic simply because being big helps conserve heat regardless of insulation.

 

[GaRp58]

Very interesting thoughts KevinL. With a few bitter truths. I prefer the cooler areas also. It is easier to get warm with a fire/house or more blankets and clothes; than it is to try to cool off at over 100 degrees temps. Like you said, the passive will be sorted out of the gen pool. GP

 

[Kevin L]

Very interesting thoughts KevinL. With a few bitter truths. I prefer the cooler areas also. It is easier to get warm with a fire/house or more blankets and clothes; than it is to try to cool off at over 100 degrees temps. Like you said, the passive will be sorted out of the gen pool. GP

Thank you.