NT 021 - Wilderness Survival

All right, we're back again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Oh no.

And actually, I will bring this up on the podcast.

We were just saying before the recording, we should come up with a fun name for our listeners,

like non-topicans or something.

I don't know.

I don't know what it would be, but it'd be fun to have a nice name for, you know, our listeners

and maybe to come up with like names of people.

Like for very important question.

Yes.

What listener?

Actually, being that kit brought that up, please, if you do enjoy anything that you hear from us,

share it with people because we are not going to spend advertising money with Google or Microsoft or Apple or any of these.

What money?

Yeah, exactly.

What money?

So if you do like what you're hearing, please share it with people.

On average, we get about 12 to 20 unique listeners per episode in the time that it is launched, like within the first month.

So if we could increase that, that would be great.

But if not, we saw fun doing this.

Me.

Me.

Last time.

So by the way, this is episode 21.

We didn't say last time that it was episode 20, which is a pretty significant milestone.

This is episode 21.

And there's enough episodes that the podcast can drink.

Yes.

Yep.

Except that it's not 21 years old yet.

So no, no, we're not even one year old yet.

All right.

So last time, we took a little bit of a different approach to the podcast and I think we're going to continue that for a little while at least.

Kit brought up that this is not supposed to be a quote unquote topical podcast, meaning that it's not always going to be we're creating a movie or TV show.

Or whatever.

We kind of got into that groove.

Yeah.

We're trying some different things.

There will be occasionally movies and TV show and web series ideas that get sprinkled in as they naturally come up.

But really, the premise of the podcast is usually we're walking and just chatting and stuff comes up.

In fact, with some episodes, it's like it takes a while for us to get to the creative bit that's actually good, which is part of the process.

Mm-hmm.

And last time, Kit presented me with a particular scenario that he wanted me to go through.

So I am going to turn the tables on you, sir.

Yes, I'm going to turn the tables on you and I'm going to be I'm going to be more specific in this scenario because you guys don't know Kit like I do.

Kit will limit his response to as few syllables as possible.

If if we watch a movie and he is laughing hysterically at that movie like he's actually enjoying it and I say to him afterwards, hey, Kit, what did you think of that movie?

He won't even speak.

He will lift up a thumbs up without even saying anything and then put it down.

If I say, what did you like about it?

He'll say it was good.

So for that reason, I'm going to say to you, sir, you can't do that here.

You have to actually think this through.

But I will also provide you with enough information that you have all the details that you need.

So last time the question was if an assassin Android is coming after you, what do you do?

And I asked a bunch of questions up front about that.

This time I'm going to ask you what would you do in a wilderness survival situation?

Now that's not enough information to go off of because there could be a million.

Like I've seen Survivor Man.

All right.

I know there could be well and I've seen dual survival as well.

Those I enjoy watching those kinds of shows, but I prefer Survivor Man because he filmed it himself and actually

had to go back and pick up the cameras as he's going.

Like that's crazy to have to film something like that yourself.

But anyway, I will provide you with the best chances for success here.

Okay.

You are going to be stranded.

I'm going to say mid spring early summer.

All right.

So it's not yet like 90 degrees out, but we're not dealing with winter like temperatures.

You're dealing with maybe like 40 to 50 degrees at night and like 70s, 80s during the day.

So it's not wildfire season.

It's not wildfire fire season.

Secondly, the conditions of your stranding.

Again, to give you the best chances of success, I'm going to go with environments that you are used to.

So it is going to be in a very large wooded area in a climate similar to ours.

Unlike ours though, there's not going to be like a minor highway or road within a thousand feet of anywhere.

So this is a much larger space.

The reason that you're out there is you were going camping with some friends.

And friends.

Okay, fine.

But you're going camping.

You're your friend, you're camping and you have ATVs, all terrain vehicles.

You didn't use all of your supplies for the camping trip.

Actually, what happened was a buddy of yours broke their leg and so they had to be hauled out.

And in the process, you decided to keep yourself busy by kind of wandering around a little bit

and you get a little bit lost.

But you know that that buggy is still nearby.

You don't know if or when your friends are going to come back.

And in fact, I'm going to say that due to a road being washed out and keep in mind, the road is like miles away.

So something happens, the road crashes and the path that you took in is not a well worn path.

Even though you guys used ATVs on it, maybe it rained one of the nights that you were there,

rained the night that they left and there's like very little path to go off of.

So you're in the wilderness, you've got some camping supplies, you still have some food

and you do not have any direct like weapons.

You do have a pocket knife and you have anything that you can strip off of the ATV to help you.

I'm also going to say that you have some fire starters.

You have a Flint and Flint and steel.

You have Flint and steel so that do I have any flares or no?

I'm going to say that you have a couple of flares, but they're not like flare gun flares.

They're more like road flares.

So they will help you to light stuff on fire if needed.

But in the middle of the woods in a circumstance where you've lost your path and

other such things, they're not going to necessarily do you much good.

I will also say that there is indigenous wildlife.

Some of it is not harmful to you at all.

You know, squirrels, raccoons, birds, that type of stuff.

There's also deer.

But there are some deadlier things if you're not careful.

So there are timber rattlesnakes, which are native to our area, by the way.

There are bears, bears, bear or bears.

I don't know.

There are no bear cops, though.

So these are not sentient bears.

These are not these are not in hyper intelligent bears.

These are normal bears.

What else could we throw in there that might be more dangerous to humans?

I mean, there are coyotes.

Folks.

Foxes and deadly to humans.

And you know what?

Just for the heck of it, just to throw a curveball, there may or may not be a big

foot around.

I don't know anything about the rattlesnake thing, by the way.

Oh, well, timber rattlers are in fact native to our state.

So you have to be careful during the summer, especially because they like

to, you know, go up onto rocky areas and sun themselves, which snakes

generally do.

So if you're hiking and you don't keep an eye out, they they they will

bite you if you're I mean, generally they're going to run away.

But if you like get them in a position where they were in your boot in

the middle of the night and then you go to step on them in the morning

accidentally because they were in your shoe trying to keep warm.

I want to know the obvious answer to that.

What?

Never take off your shoes.

Well, that can cause other problems, but yes, I would rather have like

foot fungus of some kind than be dead.

Yes.

You do want to, well, you do have, again, you're on a camping

trip, you do have some clothes and stuff that you can rotate

through.

And if there's any rivers nearby, you could try to clean them up.

So again, let's just presume you're stranded in woods.

There's nothing for roughly 25 miles around you.

You don't have a radio.

You don't have any signaling methods.

You have some food except for the road flares.

You have some food and you have the ATV that you can scavenge

for parts to make weapons and things like that.

How much fuel does it have?

It would be enough that if you were able to find the path,

which you can't, I'm just going to say, no matter how hard

you try, you can't find the path you came in on.

I would say half a tank.

Do I know like where on a map, like what direction

we had been camping?

Unfortunately, they took the map with them.

You might have a compass, but you don't have the map.

I mean, who needs a compass anyway?

You can figure out north, east, west, south anyway.

How would you go about that?

I mean, you can just look at where the sun is.

This is obvious.

Okay.

But the first thing you did to do whenever this type of

thing happened is to climb a tree.

Are you good at climbing trees?

I can climb trees.

All right.

So being a good DM, I'm going to say, you climb the tree

and you see woods as far as the eye can see.

Can I see any rivers or anything?

In every direction.

Any notable landmarks?

Um, okay.

So to the north, there is a mountain in the far, far distance.

It's really hard to tell, but there's definitely like what

looks like a river cutting through the area going as

rivers typically do from north to south.

And also there appear to be a couple of like areas that

are less dense that are a bit west of your position.

And actually the river is a bit west of your position as

well from what you can see in the trees.

Do I know what mountain the mountain is like or it would

be relative to the camp?

You know, I'm going to use the name of a mountain that

actually exists but not in this fiction like not not in

the position that it does.

I'm going to call it Mount Tom, which is an actual mountain.

So there are actually mountains, several Mount Tom.

So it's Mount Tom.

You do know that that's what it is.

Yeah.

But do I know like where it is in terms of where we were

camping before?

I mean, you know, it is generally north of where you

were camping.

Like you're familiar enough that, you know, oh yeah, like

in this state Mount Tom is roughly here.

I'm saying like, could I tell if we were east or west of it?

Like I said, it's north of you.

So you're south of it.

I'm saying could we could I tell like which way the

camp was from it?

East or west?

Um, because if we could see it from the camp, you would

be able to tell which side of it you were you were closer

to.

I would say yes, you could use it as a landmark in that

regard.

So you may be able to find your way back to camp, but

even if you find your way back to camp, you're not

going to find the road out.

Yeah, but do I do I know like, like which way it is

from there?

I already answered that question.

I said yes.

So you could figure it out sort of you're still going

to have to wander a little bit, but generally speaking,

you know that where you were camping was like

the mountain was roughly at this angle for whatever reason

because your friends had the map at the time.

So they were like, oh yeah, look, if you look at the

map here, you could see like off at this angle, that's

where Mount Tom is.

So you may be able to at least find your way back

to camp sort of using that as a guidepost.

Yeah, so it's direction is it?

I don't think that that actually matters.

You just need to know that it's you'll be able

to find the camp.

So all I'm telling you at this point is this, you can

see the mountain to the north.

You can see a river going from north to south, but

it's to the west of your position.

And let's just say for the sake of argument, your

original camp is slightly east of your position.

I guess the main thing would be to get there then,

right?

Okay.

In theory.

So you get back to your camp and you do see that

some animals have looted some of the food, not everything.

Oh, okay.

So the people I was with were idiots.

Okay.

Yeah, they didn't put stuff up in a bear bag.

So some of the food got looted, but a lot of the

stuff that is remaining is non perishable.

So it's stuff that's like or maybe not non perishable,

but stuff that's like individually wrapped some

canned food, some beans, etc.

Do I have a bag?

Well, given that you were camping, I would say that

you have a normal sized like hiking backpack.

So not like a like a camping backpack where it's

like huge ones.

I don't have a tent store there.

Both tents are there.

Okay.

Can I cut off part of one and turn it into like a bag

sort of thing?

If you needed to, yeah.

Yeah.

So you have a normal hiking backpack that you could

store like it's a size of a school backpack, but more

rugged, like a little bit bigger than average like

school backpack and there is there isn't enough size

in it to put all the food in it though, right?

Right.

Yeah.

So then to be safe, I would cut off part of one of

the tents and like string it up like a bag.

Okay.

Although I'm not good at tying knots.

So.

All right.

And where do you go from here?

How are you going to find your way out now?

Well, if I found it to camp, the best thing to do would

be to climb a tree again and see what there is to see

now.

I mean, you're going to see the same thing that you

saw before only Mount Tom is at a different angle.

So you got Mount Tom to the north, but like you

could see again, there's a river going from north

to south and that's to the west of you.

And also there looks like there's like some clearing

off to the west as well.

So I don't know generally where the road is.

Right.

Did I did I ever notice what side of the road Mount

Tom was on?

I again, you might have glanced that from the map

when it was there, but you don't have it anymore.

And clearly you don't have a cell phone at this point.

Like we're presuming cell phones dead or can't get signal.

Or I just didn't bring it because that sounds like

something I do.

Yeah.

All right.

So you've gotten the lay of the land.

What is your decision here?

I mean, you could choose to stay in camp, but I've

already told you that.

I mean, you wouldn't know this, but chances.

So let's just say you stay in camp.

No, you see, I already have a plan.

Okay.

What's your plan?

So I take some of the food.

If I can figure out how to do it, I would make like

something similar to a spear either with a rock or with

like a sharp piece of metal that I ripped off of the

ATV that isn't necessary for it to work.

And then the logical thing to do is follow the

river in one direction or one of the two directions

I don't know which that is that sounds like a good

plan.

So and then I get my own firebear and then you die of

dysentery.

Actually, that's the smartest thing that you could have

done.

I mean, generally speaking, people say to stay put in

a survival situation.

That sounds stupid.

Well, no, in reality, that's the smart thing to do

because then you're not wandering off compared to

like where people might be looking for you.

But in this case, we're going to say that you stayed

there for like a few days and it's clear that your

buddies can't get back to you or haven't.

You can't find your way out.

So the smartest bet is to hike over to the river

because as I pointed out, rivers generally flow

from north to south and civilizations tend to spring

up around rivers.

Yeah.

So that's generally the best move to do provided

that you can ration your food and you have enough

food and water.

Well, we see this is this is why you need to make it

something like a spirit because then you can just

have the fish if need be.

No.

Delicious fresh fish and you do have some camping gear.

I don't like fish that much.

But still, I mean, you do have camping gear.

So like it's not to say that you don't have the

ability to start a fire or boil water like you have

basic camping gear.

Also, I don't know if I can actually get sawdust.

But can I get sawdust?

So you have a pocket knife if we presume it's a Swiss

Army knife.

Swiss Army knives do have like a little saw to be able

to cut like really thin twigs and stuff and that

could produce some sawdust.

Just know that that sawdust might not be as flammable

because it's coming from a live tree unless you're

using the little saw on something that's dead already

in which case the sawdust is nice and dry.

Okay.

Yeah, I would do that because I have a plan if need be

if I need to scare away something.

I have a dumb idea.

So I would like take more of that other tent because

I don't need two tents and try to make a bag.

I'm just thinking about logically what I could do

if I had any skill at surviving.

Okay.

So like what would you be doing?

So encountering an animal of some sort.

So let's say you're getting a sense that, you know,

as you've been walking down past the river or following

the river south, you're getting a sense that there's

there's a bear that's a little bit curious about the

smells that it's been smelling.

I mean, like you've been cooking fish.

Bears like fish generally speaking.

So what's your plan for dealing with bear?

I mean, it generally won't attack you, but it's

it's smelling the food.

So so so you remember Mithbusters, right?

Yes, I'm aware of the show.

Do you remember the episode where they take some

sawdusts?

Oh wait, no wait.

Oh no, I can't do that.

I was gonna say, where are you going to get compressed air

from?

No, I'm remembering that you need ice for it.

Oh, piecrete.

No, no, I'm thinking of the time where they put

ice and then sawdust and then you stick a flare in it

and it makes a huge explosion.

I forgot you need ice for it though.

So I can't do that.

No, no, you're mixing up two different episodes.

The ice and sawdust was to make piecrete, which is

like was supposedly stronger than normal ice.

The episode where they have the giant fireball is

literally they put a flare in a barrel of sawdust

and then have compressed air shoot up from under the

sawdust to shoot it up into the air and then that sets

on fire.

Oh, I thought I thought it was just.

But either way, you don't have the resources to do

either of those.

You don't have compressed air.

I mean, I have sawdust and flares.

So yeah.

I mean, bears generally keep away from fire too.

So you could always just use the sawdust as a fire starter.

Yeah.

Or like you could put a ring of sawdust around your camp

and then if you hear something in the little night like

light that from your fire and depending on how much of the

fuel from the isn't the ATV I could use some of that to.

So you're going to take the ATV with you.

You're going to be like kind of driving that as you go.

We're pulling it.

We're pulling it.

Depending on which would be better.

But long story short, your survival instincts are

actually good.

Now granted, I don't know if I believe that you could put

together a spear.

I don't know if I could put together a spear.

I mean, I might be able to like I have a general sense of

how to do that.

I was in Scout.

You know, you know, you could just cut off piece of the

ATV and basically make a crowbar.

I mean, not like crowbar.

Well, again, if you have like a Swiss army knife, you can

actually unscrew things from the ATV because you have a

Phillips head and a flathead screwdriver.

So but generally speaking, I'm going to say in this

situation you escape and the reason is if you're

following a river, chances are that you're eventually

going to come across civilization and obviously with

rivers and moisture come more opportunities for

potentially wild plants that you can eat.

Animals tend to come by to rivers to be able to drink.

So you might be able to set up traps and stuff if

you can figure out how to do that.

So generally speaking, I would say that because

you found the river and you followed it, you're

you're going to escape.

So congratulations, sir.

Yeah, we.

That was that was a good scenario.

I think all things considered, I probably couldn't

do any of those things.

So except I can kind of climb trees.

Oh, so just like last time the answer is he would

just sit there and die.

I'm just saying I don't know if I can do any of

that.

I suck at time knots.

I have a very important question though.

Sir, you've just been rescued from from having spent

a week in the woods.

What is the first thing that you're going to want to

eat?

Cheese quesadilla cheese quesadilla.

We have to shoehorn it in somehow.

Of course.

Yes.

It must be done.

Anyway, I know that this might not be as quote

unquote fun as some of our other episodes, but you

know what?

This is this is stuff that we're playing with.

We can do whatever we want with our podcast.

Damn it.

You can't tell us who the best us is.

Only we can do that.

So if you like or dislike what you're hearing

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This man has not seen any Sean Connery movies and

yet he pulled it off nicely.

Anyway, yes.

So the place to do that is ko-fi.com/nontopical

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That could be $1, $5, $10 or hypothetical $1,000.

Yes, exactly.

So we do appreciate your support.

We do appreciate that you're listening and.

Yeah, I mean this is 21 episodes in seven episodes

to go and we will officially be or unofficial be

basically a full year since we started this show.

Anyway, thank you again for listening.

Have a great whatever it is.

So weekday weekend, whatever it is.

Bye.