which idea do you find more radical, the idea that you can eat your neighbor or the idea that you can eat your neighbor’s dog?

Neighbor’s dog. But you haven’t met my neighbor and his dog.

Then, on to the funny story- A friend of mine, during this training, was “evading” from one “partisan camp” to another. His party got lost. When you get lost, you’re supposed to just walk East and eventually you’ll hit a dirt road, then you sit and wait until a roving jeep comes and helps you out. I guess this happened a lot. Anyway, they walked East, and walked right over the road without noticing it(!). So they kept on walking East looking for this dirt road. They walked for about 6 hours, until one of the party collapsed from dehydration. My friend kept walking East, leaving the third person in his party to stay with the dehydrated guy. He kept walking East until the next morning, and then he found a road–except it was a 4-lane highway. Now, it’s important to remember that my friend was in full camo, with camo make-up, branches and other woodland debris attached to him, and having spent the past week in the woods. So he sticks out his thumb, and tries to get a ride. Next (in classic stereotypical fashion), an old VW bus pulls over and offers him a ride in their smoke filled interior. Long story short, their next stop is about half an hour away at a gas station, so my friend makes a collect call to the training command post, and tells them to come to the “Loaf-n-Jug” to pick him up.

So yeah, I’d agree with your assessment of SERE: I’d probably give the advantage to the Boy Scouts…

I’d say it’s (very) roughly 50,000. At lest 1,500/year go through essentially the same course that I took, which is the baseline survival course.

I’ll admit that I’m not very impressed by many SERE graduates (Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape). Most of the skills they are taught are for evasion and stealth. Any survival skills they are taught are engineered towards surviving until… fill-in-the-blank, be it a rescue or reaching a safe-house, not longterm wilderness living. Of course, they may have an edge, but it’ll be a razor’s edge.

The only other training course that I can speak to is the Boy Scout’s “Wilderness Survival Merit Badge,” which I also have earned.

WOO HOO! Man, that brings back some fucked up memories! Makes me want to throw on the khakis and jump back into it all.

- Chuck

Dying for honor has been largely out of fashion for some time now.

Not among the rich.

And large numbers of poor urban people who know that they are poor already exist.

Urban poor and rural poor are worlds apart, and they like it that way. No, the urban poor tend to define their self-worth in terms of not being rural poor.

All they will need would be a few right ideas, and they will spread as everyone with the wrong ideas starves quickly.

Exactly what I’ve been saying. But those “few right ideas” are incredibly rare. Starvation spreads much more quickly.

And the formerly rich will be ashamed when their children are starving to death as their formerly poorer neighbors are eating something.

Didn’t change anything for all the other aristocracies who collapsed.

Many people will think “easy come easy go”, and revert back to being poor in a short time.

Ummm … no way in hell. Have you ever spent any amount of time with America’s wealthy?

Maybe you should try it again after you finish your wilderness training program. Cities have lots of food.

And it takes lots of food to feed someone, too. I counted up all the wild edibles and animals that I could snag, and I figured that if I just ate everything, I could probably feed the entire Tribe of Anthropik (all four of us) for about a year. Doing so, though, would probably wipe out what carrying capacity is left.

It’s the same ecology I’m training for, it’s just trying to spring up between cracks in the sidewalk. No, I’m about as worried as people becoming foragers in the city as I would be of an alien invasion.