re: If you & your family were dropped in the middle of the late Cretaceous time period.....

quote:

---

I think we could find shelter, build fire, make weapons and tools, and look for food.

---

Building a fire wouldn’t be the hard part. I don’t believe I would be capable of fashioning tools and crafting vessels capable not only of holding water but withstanding prolonged heat such that I could use it to boil water, before I would dehydrate to the point that I could no longer do meaningful work.

As a bit of a spin off, I’m genuinely curious to have the true hardcore outdoorsman on this board explain in detail how they would handle that problem. Remember, there are no discarded glass bottles to scavenge. No metal tools to work stone.

My best working plan would be to use basic rock chip tools to carve out a crude wooden bowl, fire that bowl a bit, then let the fire reduce to coals, and either place the bowl of water directly on the coals, or try to build a crude platform just over the coals with stones. And frankly, I don’t think I could manage that before I was so exhausted and dehydrated that I just drank the water straight, got myself insanely sick, and died of dehydration while shitting myself delirious.

But again, I’m not even kind of an outdoorsman. If there’s someone with a better plan, I would be genuinely fascinated to hear it

quote:

---

We happen to have tried this before, lol. Some options...
you can of course find some bamboo, hopefully, and use that. You can hollow out a piece of wood by carving or burning. You can dig a hole into clay, fill with water, and drop heated rocks into it. You can use some leaves to make a bowl, but I cannot basketweave like that. And so on.

I think you'd be surprised. But, the taste would be shite.

---

As a percentage on this board, I would say that maybe 15% wouldn’t see clear water and immediately believe it was safe to drink, maybe 5% would be able to come up with any of those options under stress, and significantly less than 1% would be able to execute that plan before they got so dehydrated they couldn’t function

quote:

---

see clear water and immediately believe it was safe to drink,

---

I see people doing this on hiking trips. They may stop while crossing a river/etc, and just take a sip. I'm like duuuude... even if there's not human feces in there, there's deer shite, bear shite, fish shite, raccoon shite, dead animals, and so on.

I used to drink from a natural spring we had on the farm, and didn't die, but I shudder to think what I drank lol.

quote:

---

Ark Survival Evolved,

---

Possibly the most addicting game ever created.

I played it so much a couple years ago, I'm confident I could pick some narcoberries and make a bow and arrow to knock out and tame a t-rex... Or at least a triceratops. And don't even get me started on the badass shelter id build, all you have to do is punch some trees and collect the wood

Probably wouldn’t last long because COVID-BC would do us in without jabs and boosters.

quote:

---

What's the point of surviving in this scenario? Reproduction is off the table (not a Bama fan). Might as well all of us jump off a cliff.

---

how does op propose we get back in time?
if we last a year can we get back to 2023?

no small family group lasts more than a few generations even if theres incest.
too many things go wrong without big numbers.

so the question is if you will choose a spiritual practice and really do it.

no one gets out alive.

quote:

---

I would say that maybe 15% wouldn’t see clear water and immediately believe it was safe to drink,

---

Would it be unsafe? There were very few promo-mammals and no primates then, much less people.

Would the existing microbes back then be dangerous to people? Not talking about good old poison in the water.

ETA-- I guess my real question is would it be more or less dangerous back then?

Feel free to explain why I am stupid.

Don't get me wrong. I'd boil the water unless I was about to die from dehydration.

I backpack a bit, and I won't even touch my eyes with hands that touched water until I rub them with hand sanitizer.

Yep. I'd attempt primitive fire, but I'd probably fail and die.

Everything else around you doesn't need to a adapt. They also haven't been living plushy lives like all of us have.

The only thing that humans have going for them are intelligence and (for some of us) incredible endurance. If you're fat and sucking wind because you're not used to having half your regular O2 availability, that endurance is gone.