Vegetarians or meat eaters - survival after TSHTF?

[vtsnowedin]

And yet every animal on the farm with the exception of the barn cat and the Shepard dog ended their lives on the table. Perhaps people remember only those occasions where meat was allowed by lords and masters and forget to mention anything that was poached or purloined. If you were feeding your family on just oatmeal porridge and potatoes would any rabbit,squirrel, fish or bird sleep safe?

[Catweazle]

would any rabbit,squirrel, fish or bird sleep safe?

They snooze, they lose. I've eaten all those, and I'm happy to do so again. The problem is that there aren't nearly enough wild edible animals in the UK to support our meat addiction.

[UndercoverElephant]

And yet every animal on the farm with the exception of the barn cat and the Shepard dog ended their lives on the table. Perhaps people remember only those occasions where meat was allowed by lords and masters and forget to mention anything that was poached or purloined. If you were feeding your family on just oatmeal porridge and potatoes would any rabbit,squirrel, fish or bird sleep safe?

Poaching was a serious offence, and most parts of Britain it wouldn't have been very easy to get away with it. If you had enough land to have poachable wild animals on it, then you probably also had enough money to hire gamekeepers to keep the poachers at bay.

[stumuzz]

Vegetarian. The root of the word is Latin. Means bad hunter.

[MrG]

I actually find it odd this idea that veggies have a better chance in the future. Have you ever seen the diet of the average Middle Ages person in Europe? Its all meat, ale and basic veg like potatoe.

When we go back to a agrarian society where heavy labour is typical, having a meat-based diet will be essential.

There were no potatoes in Europe in the middle ages Beria. They weren't introduced until the 16th century. Back then it was all about the parsnips and turnips I believe.

And yeah for most of history meat will have been expensive and a luxury. It's actually ludicrously cheap currently because of the oilification of agriculture.

Woodpeckers right... chickens would be the one, the poor mans occasional meat. I wouldn't know but I'd guess this is the case in third world countries today.

I'm an omnivore, I eat meat, I like meat amd I've no moral issue with eating it at all but all I know is that I used to mostly feed myself from my garden and as a result I actually ate very little meat and I got along just fine.

I did eat a lot of rice though and i obvioulsy can't grow that. And I like fish (and fishing).

When i was doing that though meat was a treat and I could see more people eating like that in the future. Once a week, onece a fortnight is plenty. There weas a thread some time ago when emordnilap was giving examples of his vegan diet... sounded alright to me.

[Snail]

Even turnips aren't a native species.

Pigeons were a popular meat, as they were easy to keep and able to grow so quickly. Probably modern pigeon racing and their nesting boxes are descended from the past necissity of keeping a ready supply of tasty meat. Our pigeons are the equivalent of South America's guinea pigs. Backyard pigeon lofts are like little urban farms.

[vtsnowedin]

And yet every animal on the farm with the exception of the barn cat and the Shepard dog ended their lives on the table. Perhaps people remember only those occasions where meat was allowed by lords and masters and forget to mention anything that was poached or purloined. If you were feeding your family on just oatmeal porridge and potatoes would any rabbit,squirrel, fish or bird sleep safe?

Poaching was a serious offence, and most parts of Britain it wouldn't have been very easy to get away with it. If you had enough land to have poachable wild animals on it, then you probably also had enough money to hire gamekeepers to keep the poachers at bay.

I'm aware of all that including man traps etc. but I expect that quite a few pigeons and rabbits went astray even with the risks involved. When your hide depends on it you are very careful to not get caught. It would take quite a brave Robin hood to be subsisting on the king's deer of course. Did you ever wonder what inspired the game of darts?

[RenewableCandy]

Hmm or the sport of Falconry come to that.

[GlynG]

chickens would be the one, the poor mans occasional meat. I wouldn't know but I'd guess this is the case in third world countries today.

Quite possibly. A fellow student on my agroforestry masters is from Nigeria and on the away trip he was surprised to see a mature chicken wandering around the grounds of the youth hostel. He commented they are commonly loose in the compounds back home, but that they end up in the pot at a young age (and are often stolen) and he'd never seen one so old.

[woodpecker]

In Cuba, everyone outside of Havana kept chickens. Even the national academic institutes (research councils) we visited had their chickens wandering around the grounds.

We ate an awful lot of chicken in the space of a few weeks, as chicken was invariably what was offered to guests.

[mobbsey]

Hang on...

A lot of people I meet who call themselves "vegetarian" live on Linda McCartney's, Quorn or equivalent forms of condensed fossil fuels -- they are going to be no better off.

The "real" vegetarians I meet live of raw beans, pulses and grains and could quite happily live on what's in their larder (most of them bulk buy through food co-ops too) for a few weeks. From experience they also tend to be better stocked-up on jumpers and solid fuel stoves.

Let's be more realistic: WTSHTF who will last better -- (i) "consumerised" meat eaters, (ii) "consumerised" vegetarians, (iii) "permaculture/self-sufficient" meat eaters, (iv) "simple" vegetarians, or (v) bushcraft trained foragers?

Obviously (iv) will fare better than (i) and (ii), purely because their provisions will last longer without refrigeration. Ultimately though, as (v) is a more adaptable extension of (iii), (v) will survive far better than all the others because they can "retire" to the sticks whilst the "excess population" (to use that old Scroogism) thin themselves out.

In any case, this whole argument is bullshit because of the inherent complexity of modern society and what happens when its support systems contract --

# Without power for the pumps and leachate treatment all our "dry tomb" landfills will start to leak contaminants into the environment;

# Without continuous power for cooling (why didn't those idiots design them with passive cooling??) the high-level radioactive waste storage containments from fuel reprocessing at Sellafield, in France, Russia, and China -- any single one of which has a contaminative potential far greater than Chernobyl -- will overheat (they're actually a far greater problem than reactors which, to some extent, are able to passively cool from their stable temperature -- Fukushima failed because it was on-load when the power failure happened);

# We have a legacy of chemical facilities which need management and which might have a nasty habit of spontaneously combusting or exploding as their contents degrade/react with their environment.

I could go on, but it's gets rather repetitive and esoteric -- e.g. have you ever thought about the inherent flaw in needing a complex technology, like a computer, to maintain a less complex technology, like a car or a manufacturing process? (in the absence of the required energy or natural resources, our technological state will always tend to revert to its lowest maintainable metastable state).

If you want the best TV programme I've seen to date on this subject you have to go back to 1978 -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcSxL8GU ... 14F872B80D


Basically, this whole "WTSHTF" concept is flawed because it's so selective in it's principal variables. It takes one dimension of our existence and extrapolates that beyond any objective reality. Let's start with the basic premise -- "WTSHTF":

a. If the excrement really does hit the air conditioning then it's already too late -- if people are crapping into their hands and throwing it around the room then they're already past the point of no return

b. More realistically, WTSHTF the electricity will have already failed -- it's just going to gloopily fall to the floor

But seriously...

If you want to make it past the end of "normality" there is no "bunker down" option (e.g. survivalists, self-sufficiency, etc.) -- if the marauding chavs in search of a meal don't get you then, after a few years, the landfills, chemical works or nuclear facilities will. There is no "reasonable incremental revolution" either (e.g. lobby groups, business-oriented peak oilers like ITFOPO, etc.) -- since getting past these problems won't be the nice incremental process because we're talking about fundamental changes within a dynamic not a static process.


OK, back to reality. Why is group (v) above better off? Because they're the most adaptable. In the best Darwinian sense, those able to adapt to changing circumstances will fare the best. In terms of a general solution for everyone the only way to engineer a way out is to build-in simplicity and adaptability -- and even those people "on our side", but who believe there's a consumerist way out for our present problems (like 10:10, FoE, even a few transitionists, etc.) are going to obstruct those types of reforms because it inherently compromises their current affluence.

So that's the REAL debate we need to have -- how to cross-wire the basic biological adaptability of bushcraft with the technological society and create a sustaining synthesis for the future. We don't just have to create a new future to supply our energy, natural resource and food needs; we must as a priority also defuse those ticking landfills, chemical plants and nuclear facilities of the past as well because otherwise we'll lose a lot of the land and water resource we'll need to sustain ourselves in the future.

[DominicJ]

Meat has always been a part of the UK's diet.
Seasonaly, perhaps, but present for all levels of society.

Every household kept chickens, mostly for eggs, virtualy every household raised a piglet every year, abny family who could kept a cow, mostly for milk, but a calf born in spring would be slaughtered around Halloween.

Game laws pushed winter meat into the hands of only the rich, and no animals were kept over winter to be slaughtered in spring, but summer and autumn, meat was usualy plentiful.

Not to mention river and sea fish.

[vtsnowedin]

Hang on...

A lot of people I meet who call themselves "vegetarian" live on Linda McCartney's, Quorn or equivalent forms of condensed fossil fuels -- they are going to be no better off..........
.....................
So that's the REAL debate we need to have -- how to cross-wire the basic biological adaptability of bushcraft with the technological society and create a sustaining synthesis for the future. We don't just have to create a new future to supply our energy, natural resource and food needs; we must as a priority also defuse those ticking landfills, chemical plants and nuclear facilities of the past as well because otherwise we'll lose a lot of the land and water resource we'll need to sustain ourselves in the future.

Quite the rant there. Feel better now?
You have forgotten a couple of groups of possible survivors, they being American hillbillies and American redneck farmers. No they are not the same. There are not as many true hillbillies as there once was, the welfare state has made it much easier to move down to the trailer park and digress to trailer trash but the ones that remain are used to fending for themselves in everything from growing their own food to making their own whiskey. They never were much on making or wearing shoes though. Like the neolithic tribes in central New Guinea these people might not notice if the rest of the world went lights out.
The Redneck farmers of America's hart land got the name by driving large tractors for days at a time wearing a baseball cap and a buzz cut hair cut.
The term is meant to be derogatory but just like Yankee Doodle it has come to stand for people that can and do conduct agribusiness with a hands on "I can fix it myself "attitude. Making a profit and surviving at the prices commodities have commanded over the last thirty years has been no small feat. Change the rules and circumstances all you want these people will adapt and survive and you will pay them dearly for the crops they bring to your market in the future.
I'm not sure why you are so paranoid about landfills. Most of what is in them is household garbage and it rots. I wouldn't want to drink the leachate of course but I doubt if the total gallons of that given where it might leach to is a earth threatening event. Worry about wars over food and oil. they are much more likely to kill you and yours.

[mobbsey]

Quite the rant there. Feel better now?
You have forgotten a couple of groups of possible survivors, they being American hillbillies and American redneck farmers.

Yeah, but you've completely missed the point dude...

I'm not sure why you are so paranoid about landfills.

If you don't know that, I suggest you go back to basics and look at the whole human ecology issue, and stop following the headlines on Peakoil.net

The USA has a larger-scale history of landfilling and chemical works -- not to mention the nuclear facilities -- compared to the UK, which means that they'll suffer just as great a problem over there as here (if not more). Even out in the sticks, across large parts of the USA, there's a whole variety of water and land contamination problems, from gas fracking to large-scale mountain-top removal (that's what happens when corporations write the law!) that will restrict future land use.

This isn't an issue of "the last redneck standing". In fact the USA, with its easier access to weapons and military hardware, is probably going to have a much greater problem than most (e.g. look at the effect of surplus Balkan war equipment on eastern European gangs and its associated political violence). That's an illustration of the complexity issue, which you've also ignored.

You might try and console yourself with the idea that by surrounding yourself with a few technological trinkets (it doesn't matter whether that's guns or a global carbon trading market) you can "save the few" -- especially in the US that idea fits in well with the whole Revelations/'Rapture' idea. In reality the only way to save yourself is to ensure that as many people as possible are also involved in that same process. Not in the green lobby/transition sense of "everyone agrees a plan for change". What will make this work is people progressively opting out of what we today consider "normal", one person copying another (like all the best fashions... yeah, OK, child of punk!) and adopting radically different lifestyle objectives in order to circumvent the problems energy and resource depletion create.

[vtsnowedin]

Mobbsey You do realise that arguing against modern complexity on the Internet with someone on another continent is a bit silly!
Whether our complex technological civilization will be saved or doomed by its level of complexity remains to be seen but being a bit of a red neck and more then a bit hillbilly in a Yankee farmer sense of the term I plan on surviving come what may. If the Internet or the grid goes down I will have more time to weed the carrots in the garden, cut wood by hand if necessary and guard the garden with rifle in hand to intercept the wood chucks and deer that occasionally help them selves to my veggies. That's about as simple as it gets.