Just another incel fantasy of a nuclear war putting “strong men” in charge again

The irony is that if a nuclear war did/does break out, incels would probably be among the first casualties.

I had to be the one to teach my husband how to catch fish, and the first time I showed him how to skin a deer he nearly vomited. Yes, this was the sniper marine. I’d like to see any of this pansy ass incels do that.

I mean, do you have to gut an animal to be a survivalist? I can persuade a plot of land in Zone 12 to give up enough calories to sustain a person without doing that, I imagine it must be easier in more hospitable climes. And I’m not even a survivalist, I just like to grow interesting plants.

Oh, certainly not, realistically. It would be possible to be a vegan survivalist, even, if you planned well…corn, beans and squash, the “Three Sisters” of the native peoples, together provide a complete set of the necessary amino acids to make all the proteins we need. Meat should not be necessary for someone who ate those three as staple foods every day, IF you prepare the corn properly with nixtamalization to free up the niacin and amino acids. Then, just supplement with greens and whatever fruits can be found to cover the vitamins and minerals – tender young dandelion greens are a surprisingly rich source of vitamin C to prevent scurvy, among other important nutrients – and you have a complete People Chow.

But these guys are Big Men (Temporarily Embarrassed Action Heroes…. I love that, lol), and such truly quality males eat manly things like MEAT. Salad is for women! And for people who don’t want scurvy, obvs, but… whatever, action heroes don’t die of scurvy. Big damn hero Jordan Peterson is a manly man carnivore, so they can be, too! *gag*

@seth : from a survivalist viewpoint, I would rate “being able to prepare animal corpse into non poisonous food” rather high. Not because it’s impossible to go vegan ; but because the main hypothesis is that you don’t have backup to explain you what to do in case of a new vermin cratering a specific crops, or simply if you can’t go to a place where theses crops can grow.

Most herbivorous animals are opportunistic meat eater ; like deers will eats eggs and baby birds to supplement their diets. Not because it’s necessary in their diets, but because it’s a very low cost way to get calories. If you want to maximize your survival odds, it’s a seriously good thing to do.

That’s even more necessary because you would need several month before your crops, and it’s not a given you can tend to enough crops for yourself either, since presumably you don’t have modern tools and might not be very experienced in that either.

(of course, you could decide to take the risk to starve rather than go non vegan, no shame in that)

Also, gutting animals is a rather advanced thing, and not the immediate first thing to know to survive in the wild. I mean, you don’t need it for eggs, and only need a very basic understanding of that for smaller animals, which are the one you’ll try to trap or hunt if alone in a survival condition. Butchery is useful once you’re talking about boars or horses or wolves or other big animals, and I seriously advice against hunting any of theses if you’re not at least half a dozen.

In short, if I would rate skills for survival after apocalypse, it would be water filtering > gathering/knowing how to not poison yourself with fruits > basic animal/egg huntings > craft > agriculture > domestication > butchery > beermaking.

“We need real problems”
Jumps right to WW3 for problem level.
WTF.

@Ohlmann

main hypothesis is that you don’t have backup to explain you what to do in case of a new vermin cratering a specific crops, or simply if you can’t go to a place where theses crops can grow.

The botanist James Wong talks about this a lot, mainly because he has lots of organic food “we should all just forage” advocates having a pop at him when he discusses the miracle of modern farming. A kitchen garden is a wonderful thing but extremely unreliable and subject to the vagaries of nature, and people wouldn’t have starved throughout history if growing your own was easy to do. It would be especially hard under the pressures that any post-apocalyptic world is going to throw up.

The sad truth is most of us would die if society collapsed. There’s so many of us we’d eat out any natural resources within months, like people eating all the frogs during the famine in North Korea. I guess the survivors would be anyone who could hide out the chaos long enough that the human population collapses and nature has time to bounce back. Which is a pretty horrible thought!

@ opposablethumbs

isn’t that pretty much what “small beer” was?

Good question.

There was certain some contemporary thought that small beer was healthy. But that was mainly for its nutritional content than the water purity thing.

“For the drink of the more robust children water is preferable, and for the weaker ones, small beer …”.

Communities throughout history have managed to obtain clean and safe drinking water. It just seems that for a lot of people, they just preferred beer to water. As the kids say, relatable.

Later it became a cost thing. Small beer was cheaper than regular beer; and it attracted lower taxes.

It was also considered socially acceptable to drink. See for example Hogarth’s comparison of small beer drinkers to gin drinkers.

Another woman here. I only grow a small patch of rosemary, thyme, and lavender (planning to add jalapenos and cilantro next year), but I can spin, knit, and weave (though I’m better at the first two). I figure I’m better off trading fiber goods for food in whatever post-apocalyptic future I live to see, or joining whatever local community is set up … and considering I live in an area where a lot of hippies settled back in the day, I figure my odds are pretty good.

One thing I’ve noticed with these incel fantasies is that they tend to assume that a post-apocalyptic future will be triggered by a Big Event. Carrie Vaughn’s Bannerless series would disagree – her post-apocalyptic setting is triggered by an epidemic, which leads to a decline in infrastructure, which leads to a more general decline. I find that more believable, especially given what we’ve seen with the pandemic. That slow gradual change isn’t something incels can shoot their way out of.

@galanx

You had a lot of these guys infesting fansites when The Walking Dead first came out (back when it looked like it might develop into something good), gun-nuts boasting that they didn’t need no cooking or laundry, they’d just run naked through the trees with their guns, while the snooty feminists who had rejected them would beg for protection.

Used to find these types from time to time in the more isolated parts of Iraq and Syria during sweeps once the ISIL lot had been forced out or left. We invariably found them gutshot, stripped, and left by the road to die by the locals they were going to live off.

Sort of related. Well, it’s food and clothing in desperate times.

I just found out today about this.

In the 30s some flour mills found out mothers were using the sacks to make clothes for their children. So they started making the sacks in different patterns so the kids could have nice clothes.

That’s both heartwarming, and sad.

So many people in the comments though saying how their parents would take them along when they went to buy provisions so they could pick out what dress they wanted.

@ Vicky P

They even made cuddly toys! Now I am gonna cry.

(It’s like the Shelterbox teddybears thing; just hits you with the reality for the kids)

@Seth S
Your description of nightshade berries led me to try and identify the nightshade-like plant growing in my yard, which has bright red berries. Looks like it is bittersweet nightshade, which is not as poisonous as famous nightshade, but still nothing you want to eat. I had been going to rip it up, but the bumblebees love the flowers so much I couldn’t bear to.