"the colony" show on discovery channel ?

[Blackbird]

To answer your question MP, in that setting, no I could not do it. If it was in the center of some woods with a landfill half a mile away, you bet! Lol.

Pat, what you said is true, but how long can all that canned store food last? In the middle of the city, you can't grow a field of alfalfa or any feld for that matter, in a cement parking lot to feed some magical goats that you just so happened to find. Goats don't eat tin cans. Maybe if you converted a park perhaps, but parks are limited.

The chances of living long enough to produce offspring to carry on the human race strictly in the middle of an abandoned city are slimmer than in a more rural setting.

I can also say that I would not sign up for the show. I did a little looking, the 'colony' consists of a nurse, a marine specialist, a mechinist, a martial arts instructor, a solar tech, an aerospace engineer, a mechanical engineer, a doctor, a contractor, and finally, a computer engineer. Umm hellooo, does my name scream 'aerospace engineer' to you? The thing is, I think the majority of the people on this site would find a darn stream to bathe in, not actually make a shower 16 days later. The people in the show are trying to create what they had before the 'world collapsed', its like hm.. the world just had an apocalypt and here the survivors are already trying to muss it up! I think most of us would be going backwards in time basically, and doing what comes a little more natural.

 

[FarmerChick]

you made good points there Blackbird

and yes, the careers of this "thrown together group" reads like the Honor List.....LOL

another good point is they are not just surviving, they are trying to re-create what they lost. I never thought of it like that.


Pure entertainment of human drama in the group is what this show is about. Who is going to fight and say nasty things to the others..LOL-LOL

 

[sylvie]

I thought the movie "I Am Legend" with Will Smith did a nice job covering the topic of surviving in an urban area. The adversaries were goofy but not far off the mark for expected behavior.

 

[modern_pioneer]

To answer your question MP, in that setting, no I could not do it. If it was in the center of some woods with a landfill half a mile away, you bet! Lol.

They have one in England where they put folks in a dump to live for 30 days.

Its a team effort, figuring out who can do what and their strong points. I hiked 37 miles with almost no gear, my basic BDUs, knife, p-38, a rain poncho, socks, one can of soup, a pack of crackers, 3 matches, 1 quart canteen and cup, some 550 cord-10 ft, and a compass. Those weren't your average 37 miles, up and down mountains, through rivers, swamps, a real test of ones self being.

By night fall the first day, I could feel my spirit being drained as the rain pounded down through the trees, not to mention the big drops from branches. With little sleep, the next day was getting tougher as I stopped to eat ants, termites, grubs as well as some herbal tea from plants I found. Just like on tv today, I set traps, built fires and so on....

But by day four, I was feeling better, and when I finished, I had a great learning lesson. Oh and I also got an award for killing a squirrel to eat.

I would welcome a concrete jungle, dooms day type of survival condition. The limited power supply hook up was interesting, however, I would have found a better way to move around other than walking. I like how they set up fire/guard duty watches, just like in the military.

Perhaps it isn't everyones cup of tea, but I like these types of shows.

 

[Blackbird]

To each their own. I've never felt comfortable let alone safe in any town or city - except maybe the one a couple miles away with 173 people.

In a group like on 'the colony' any average people thrown in would be pushed aside because of having no 'special talents', except maybe some muscle, cleaning up, etc. In real life, not everyone woud be able to count on having a doctor in the house.

You would simply not find me in a city.

 

[FarmerChick]

To answer your question MP, in that setting, no I could not do it. If it was in the center of some woods with a landfill half a mile away, you bet! Lol.

They have one in England where they put folks in a dump to live for 30 days.

Its a team effort, figuring out who can do what and their strong points. I hiked 37 miles with almost no gear, my basic BDUs, knife, p-38, a rain poncho, socks, one can of soup, a pack of crackers, 3 matches, 1 quart canteen and cup, some 550 cord-10 ft, and a compass. Those weren't your average 37 miles, up and down mountains, through rivers, swamps, a real test of ones self being.

By night fall the first day, I could feel my spirit being drained as the rain pounded down through the trees, not to mention the big drops from branches. With little sleep, the next day was getting tougher as I stopped to eat ants, termites, grubs as well as some herbal tea from plants I found. Just like on tv today, I set traps, built fires and so on....

But by day four, I was feeling better, and when I finished, I had a great learning lesson. Oh and I also got an award for killing a squirrel to eat.

I would welcome a concrete jungle, dooms day type of survival condition. The limited power supply hook up was interesting, however, I would have found a better way to move around other than walking. I like how they set up fire/guard duty watches, just like in the military.

Perhaps it isn't everyones cup of tea, but I like these types of shows.

You sound like SurvivorMan.....Lee sure puts himself in some pickles to survive...those are good shows.

He has done tricks with so many small objects that are seemingly useless in a no city situation, that I thought of him as a McGuyver also..HA HA HA

You sound like the adventerous type and maybe should apply for a show like this...what fun it would be for you to try this type of thing. Well, most of us couldn't due to real life time restraints etc...but it would be cool to do if you are into that type of thing.

 

[Wifezilla]

I saw part of an episode the other day. I'll watch future episodes. It was pretty interesting.

 

[patandchickens]

Pat, what you said is true, but how long can all that canned store food last?

It depends how many people are around eating it. And *willing* to eat it, for that matter - I think there are a lot of people around these days who would just not grasp the utility of a sack o beans or a can of saurkraut, frankly. But, canned (and any other form of storage) is just one of many sources of food, though.

People really DO grow quite a lot of food in cities, in other parts of the world, hard though this may be for Americans to envision. Again, how much of your diet this can supply depends radically on what climate you're in, but at a minimum you can do pretty decently during the growing season.

In the middle of the city, you can't grow a field of alfalfa or any feld for that matter, in a cement parking lot to feed some magical goats that you just so happened to find.

No, but feeding chickens and rabbits on the things that can be easily grown in an urban location isn't so hard - and even goats do pretty ok on weeds and brush, which I don't know if you've seen a semi-abandoned part of a city but those things still grow real good there.

Also, there will always be trade with other areas.

This is not an abstract theory thing -- people DO these things, have done, still do, not by choice but by necessity of being born in a really messed up part of the world. Sarajevo not too long ago, Darfur and a number of other cities right now, parts of the former USSR or WWI-WWII Europe, lots of examples. You can look at what people actually have DONE, and DO.

The chances of living long enough to produce offspring to carry on the human race strictly in the middle of an abandoned city are slimmer than in a more rural setting.

Well, you can certainly believe that; all I'm saying is that different, at-least-as-sensible opinions are equally possible. Particularly if you've seen fewer movies, read less sci-fi or have an interest in history and current events of less photogenic parts of the world

JMO,

Pat

 

[Blackbird]

I do see where your coming from Pat, but I'm going by the show - have you seen the previews? I haven't watched it, so I'm not certain, but it seems pretty restricted.

People DO do that, but the ones in the country often seem better off, whether because of fresher foods/water, lack of lunatics, or what have you. That is my opinion. If it happens, stay in your city if you like. =P

 

[modern_pioneer]

You sound like SurvivorMan.....Lee sure puts himself in some pickles to survive...those are good shows.

Although this type of situation is extreme and I have trained in some adverse situations, I have never had to survive in such conditions. A safe house where were staying once did get compromised, but we escaped without detection and waited in a unsecured location for orders to find a new safe house where we could continue to gather intel and not contact the enemy.

IE: A training scenario, live

We were to do an extraction, where we we caught by the enemy but not captured. The enemy, a drug cartel had taken a high profile business man as a prisoner and was holding him for ransom. We set camp just a click away and went to meet with them everyday to work out a solution. On the second day, the man who said he was in charge wanted us to kill a pig he had. As I talked with the other men in my team, I didn't want to kill the pig for them to eat, they could have done that for themselves. I felt something odd about killing the pig, him wanting us to do it.

The next day, during a meeting another cartel member showed up. We learned that he was the leader and the pig the so called leader wanted us to kill was the leaders pet. If we had killed the pig, when the leader returned we would have been killed. After six days of meetings and hours upon hours of being unsecured, we traded the cartel a 40k speed boat for the business man. After they took the speed boat, we got our target, they were ambushed by another unit and the speed boat was taken back. The driver of the boat was killed by a sniper who was part of the ambush team.

Rangers are trained for many situations, I would also bring forward other skills that I learned as a civilian. But I think I would be a good team member in one of these shows, attitude and all. However, I also would be the one to split the team if some one else was as strong headed as myself, so maybe not.