Survival 101 tip of the day: Know what vegetation in your area is edible and what is poisonous. But Jon.... I didnt think anything would ever happen so I disregarded your advice and now Im slowly starving to death in the wilderness. (or getting gout, since I have only eaten meat.) No worries patriot, with luck in selection we will have you eating some delicious foliage, roots, leaves, berries or seeds within a day! (Disclaimer: they are not actually delicious, no matter how much Bear Grylis wants to lie to you) Lets begin our selection process. Look for a plant that is abundant in your area. Steer clear of anything with milky or discolored sap. Avoid anything with beans, seeds or bulbs in a pod. Also avoid plants with spines, fine hairs, or thorns. Due to my hatred of poison ivy, I automatically bypass anything with 3 leaves. Yes there are many edible plants that still have these characteristics. Now is not the time for inefficiency. Using this criteria to rule some things out will increase the likelyhood that the plant you have selected is edible. Now that we have selected our plant, we need to see if it is edible. Our main priority here is ensuring we do not poison ourselves. This could become life threatening quickly, as we are already operating on limited capacity. STEP 1: Rub plant on inside of wrist, wait 1 hour. If you have no irritation, rash, redness, itchiness, or other abnormalities continue to step 2. STEP 2: Rub plant against outside of lips. Look for any abnormalities. Burning, itching, anything out of the ordinary. If nothing then continue to step 3. STEP 3: Put a small portion of the plant in your mouth, hold it there for 15 minutes. Be careful not to swallow any. If you dont notice nothing abnormal then on to step 4. STEP 4: Chew up what was in your mouth, still no swallowing. 15 minutes again. Nothing abnormal happens and its on to step 5. STEP 5: Swallow that little chunk you have been chewing on. This time we give it 8 hours. Anything bad and we induce vomiting, in addition to drinking lots of water. If it passes the test then on to the next step. STEP 6: Eat approximately 1/4 cup. Same procedure as step 5, wait 8 hours. If we pass then the plant is safe to eat. Now that we have established the plant is edible its up to you to find the best way to prepare it so it tastes somewhat acceptable. Some plants will have parts that taste better than others. Its on you to decide which parts you can stomach. As you can see, it is far better to see what plant life in your area is edible before you need to know. There are extensive data bases online. If you are not confident in your ability to remember then print some pictures off the internet and keep them in your bug out bag. It is very important that we only test one potential food source at a time. Otherwise we increase the probability that one fails the test and we will have to waste more time, when most likely the other one would have been edible. Remember, smart lives, careless dies. -Jonathan
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 20:43:27 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015