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Hopefully quite a while. I'm regularly in the wilderness, a holiday is 2-3 weeks off-grid. The only thing I use electricity for is lighting (torches and camp) and music/radio, powered off battery's that are handled by solar.
I aim to extend food by fishing, which usually is week 2 after my stored meat is gone and I need more protein. I have a couple of different weighted bows, but rarely hunt as it requires extra licensing. Lots and lots and lots of expedition-level outdoor/survival gear.
Combine that all with still having a house for shelter, should be fine. Love a book and crosswords for non-electric entertainment, otherwise mountain biking or rock climbing. I won't get bored.
I think fish wouldnt be as available as you think, since tons of desperate people will use less than ethical means to harvest every edible, living thing from the river systems.
Leaving to massive ecological damage, and possibly massive contamination as well.
maybe for the first few weeks but most of the population thinks fish comes from a can, and beef from the store. most people dont have the ability to live off the land - they're just walking sacks of fertilizer
I think you misjudge, considering how massively popular fishing became during covid, as one of the only hobbies you could do that was outside and solitary.
perhaps. still, to do it properly you'd need a boat & the ability to preserve the fish (salting station or smoker/smokehouse).
You are thinking like a fisherman, and not a throng of panicky, starving masses.
I bet most the fish wont even be cooked before being consumed.
Nor will care be given for any toxins dumped into the water to try and scoop every living organism out of it in the starved panic.
oof, raw fish? most fish have parasites (which is why sushi/sashimi has to be frozen or chilled to a certain temperature). no, you're right of course but those folks wont last long enough for it to matter.
and if, just spitballing here but lets say 75% of the population succumbs to this hypothetical disaster, then the remaining population will have significantly lower impact on the environment, giving it a chance to recover. if anything, it'd be a net gain as there's a lot of intentional dumping of toxins right now.
Assuming an intentional EMP sent America back to the stone age, then America would respond in kind to China, N.Korea, Iran, Pakistan and Russia. England, continental Europe, Turkey, India, Israel, Japan, S. Korea would all have been hit with the same at the same time. If somehow we all just traded queens and stopped there, or if a prolonged solar storm hit the planet repeatedly accomplishing the same, I really think your optimistic limiting global losses to 75%
After the first northern winter I would assume 90-95% of humanity is gone. Those that can hunt are the most likely to survive. Seafood increases your odds of survival by orders of magnitude, as it requires some skill, but much less caloric investment before reward. By and large we've lost the ability to farm without fertilizers and pesticides, many will try but one early freeze will kill off dependant communities. Climate change making weather less predictable def does not work in our favor.
After the first winter I wouldn't be afraid of strangers. Another person is far too valuable, when you remember that there are lots of things outside that will happily kill us. We only have strength when we're in numbers.
oh I agree, if a military attack/emp were to occur we'd use our mutually assisted destruction weapon systems (military hardened bases, not susceptible to emp) & wipe them out. it'd be the literal end of the world over there.
yes, it was very optimistic. 5 to 10 percent of the current population of America (the rest of the world wouldnt matter at that point) is still 15 to 30 million people. even spread out there's still a good chance to develop small kingdoms, and those would specialize as they always do. trade routes would organically develop over time. it's true that we do get a lot of things from overseas but the North American continent has loads of untapped resources, it's just cheaper to get them from somewhere else in the world right now (take coal for example over in west virginia - they'd specialize in coal extraction, processing, chemistry, industrialization).
personally, I think the climate would stabilize fairly soon after such a catastrophe, probably within just a few generations - and if not, so what? no one is going to be living in cities that are underwater anyway.
Depends if you're fishing off a river or ocean/lake. Could easily see goofs just throwing a net across an entire river.
Even lakes, I wouldn't be sure about in the long term. Every boomer with a fishing pole is probably headed to a lake if they can...
oh yeah lakes/parks that the noaa/fish&wildlife departments stock up would be emptied soon enough. a fisherman needs patience though - and as fish stocks dwindle, you have to be patient for longer and longer...
I think your point would be true in a high population city in a high population nation where most of it is accessible to the average person.
I live in Australia, though.
Fishing requires gear, skill, and knowledge. For much of our fish abundance the average person wouldn't survive getting to the area or know what to do once they got there. This is why they have untouched abundance.