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I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?

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Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?

#41

Post by a-priori »

adrianwaj wrote: post #38
a-priori wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have no idea how to get back to civilization, your best strategy is to wait for search and rescue. Wandering aimlessly is the worst thing you can do.

Also, you want to try and make a signal to any rescuers or passers by. Try chopping down trees in a pattern so planes can see the pattern. Have a bonfire ready that can be lit in less than a minute if you hear a plane or helicopter, or see a boat. A mirror too can be reflected out to people.

Yes, the universal symbol is to make an X in an open area with branches or something. A smoky fire is also a good idea.

Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?

#43

Post by whyenot »

fernando wrote: post #13

My all time favorite answer for this question is from a book I read in Brazil. It was a jungle-survival guide from a Brazilian military: First of all, find a monkey. Follow the monkey, and eat everything the monkey eats. If possible, eat the monkey too.

This seems like a really bad idea to me (except for the last part).

I've seen capuchin monkeys eat the fruit of Strychnos, the genus that strychnine comes from. That could be a fairly risky thing for a human being to consume, especially if you happen to eat any of the seeds, then all bets are off.

Many monkey species, especially those that eat leaves (these would be the most common species you'd encounter, at least in the new world) walk a very fine line between eating enough of a given plant to satisfy their energy budget and eating too much and poisoning themselves. A human following their example is likely to end of with a stomach full of undigestible fiber, get sick, or worse. Energetically, you'd probably spend more calories following the monkeys around than you'd gain from any food you'd collect.

Now eating the monkeys, that might be a good idea, but the primates you'd most likely encounter would be in social groups, and once you kill one of them, it will be very hard to kill another from the same group.

Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?

#44

Post by whyenot »

reginaldo wrote: post #15
fernando wrote: post #13

My all time favorite answer for this question is from a book I read in Brazil. It was a jungle-survival guide from a Brazilian military: First of all, find a monkey. Follow the monkey, and eat everything the monkey eats. If possible, eat the monkey too.

There are of course variations of this trick. If you can't find a monkey, either a quail or a toucan will do just fine. I have some friends who were in a military survival training mission in the Amazon.. For many days all they were able to find was swamp cabbage (palmito). Then they found a toucan... The monkey trick didn't work because the trees are very very tall.

Energetically, I bet you'd spend more calories following the bird than any calories you'd gain from food you collect. On the other hand, I've been told that toucan is quite tasty.

Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?

#45

Post by TrevorJ »

whyenot wrote: post #44
reginaldo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are of course variations of this trick. If you can't find a monkey, either a quail or a toucan will do just fine. I have some friends who were in a military survival training mission in the Amazon.. For many days all they were able to find was swamp cabbage (palmito). Then they found a toucan... The monkey trick didn't work because the trees are very very tall.

Energetically, I bet you'd spend more calories following the bird than any calories you'd gain from food you collect. On the other hand, I've been told that toucan is quite tasty.

Although, once you found the locations you could remember them or map them and then later trips would be more efficient.

Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?

#46

Post by TrevorJ »

forinti wrote: post #4

There's a show on the Discovery Channel about people who get lost in the wilderness. One thing I've noticed is that they spend all their energy and time trying to get back to civilisation, so they very rapidly get worn down. I think a good strategy when you are lost in the wild is to immediately start keeping an eye out for shelter, food, and water. The article gives some good tips, but they take time if you want to…

You are correct, there is a doctrine that prioritizes those things, immediate survival is more important than eventual rescue.

Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?

#47

Post by adrianwaj »

rdtsc wrote: post #39
fjabre wrote: post #27

Even with a survival manual it's easy enough to get one harmless food source mixed up with another look-alike harmful one. It's widely speculated that this happened to Chris McCandless aka Alexander Supertramp, who hiked into the Alaskan wilderness back in the 90s to get away from it all but ended up dying from either starvation or eating something poisonous which contributed to his starvation.. I guess the point is…

Wiki page on McCandless: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless The speculation is that he died either from eating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedysarum or Hedysarum with "Black Patch Desease" fungus : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizoctonia_leguminicola I just watched the movie about him "Into The Wild" -- pretty interesting.

He died in the Denali National Park:

"Wild blueberries and soap berries thrive in this landscape, and provide the bears of Denali with the main part of their diets. Over 450 species of flowering plants fill the park, and can be viewed in bloom throughout summer.

Unfortunately, the spring and summer months are short."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denali_National_Park_and_Preser...

Edit: his journal was called "Beautiful Blueberries."

Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?

#48

Post by whyenot »

TrevorJ wrote: post #45
whyenot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energetically, I bet you'd spend more calories following the bird than any calories you'd gain from food you collect. On the other hand, I've been told that toucan is quite tasty.

Although, once you found the locations you could remember them or map them and then later trips would be more efficient.

Yes, but that probably isn't enough of a savings. We don't have a toucan's digestive system, and can't process large amounts of fruit quickly through our digestive tract like they can. It's a case of starving with a full stomach.

Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?

#49

Post by whyenot »

Boil it, if you've got the means. The army disparages this practice, saying boiling doesn't destroy all toxins. Maybe not, but it'll destroy some toxins, and at the same time get rid of the tannins that render foods like acorns unpalatable.

Boiling doesn't get rid of tannins. Native Americans poured boiling water over ground acorns to leach out some of the tannins.

Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?

#50

Post by RS14 »

joelhaus wrote: post #40
lacrossegm wrote: post #22

Water is more important than food. A person can go a long time without food, but will die without water in just a few days time. I would observe what the local animals seem to be eating. Another trick is to take a sample and rub a bit of it on of your skin. If it causes irritation, its probably bad.

Here's an unpleasant thought; what are the rules for drinking your own urine? Some apparently do this for fun, but what about for survival situations? If you're able to find enough edible plants (via watching other animals), it might also be worth trying to cultivate them, but this depends on your broader circumstances.

Don't expect to stave off dehydration by drinking urine. Your body expels salts (and other substances) through urine. Thus you'll die from hypernatremia drinking urine or seawater, just as happens if you don't drink water at all.

Apparently blood and alcohol are also bad. They are processed as food, which requires large amounts of water from your body. Thus while they're both fluids, they result in a net loss of water.

Fish apparently have a column of fresh water near their spine. You can cut them open and drink from this. You can also suck fresh water from their eyes.

Edit: Oh, hey, a citation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urophagia#Attempting_survival

Everything else is from "Complete Survival Manual," Michael Sweeney.

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