Food

Part of Phase 0: First 72 Hours

Food in Phase 0 is the largest hub in this corpus, spanning foraging, hunting and trapping, fishing, preservation, and the practical skills around all four: reading weather and direction before a trip, treating the injuries hunting and fishing cause, and keeping water and storage vessels clean enough not to spoil what you catch.

Finding and identifying plants comes first. Starvation takes weeks but the wrong mushroom takes days, which is why dandelion, cattail, pine needle tea, and leached acorns make the safest starting plants, and cutting at the base rather than pulling leaves the root intact so a patch regrows. A cattail rhizome gives 100-150 calories against a dandelion leaf handful’s 15-20, and raw acorns are loaded with tannins that dissolve out in repeated water leaching. Avoiding what isn’t edible matters more: a bite of water hemlock can kill a healthy adult in under six hours, and it often grows beside the edible wild carrot it resembles, which is why the edibility test runs skin contact, then lips, then a small dose, in that order and no faster. Mushrooms are the sharpest edge of all — the death cap alone causes over 90% of fatal mushroom poisonings, and a stable spore print takes 4-12 hours to develop, time that can’t be skipped.

Traps outperform hunting because they work around the clock, and animals move in a triangle of water, feeding ground, and bedding site, with the trails between them making the best trap sites; placement, not trigger design, decides 80% of trapping success, and a deadfall’s weight must be at least five times the target animal’s body mass. Wood choice alone decides 90% of whether a bow shoots for years or snaps. Once an animal is down, gut bacteria start digesting it within 30 minutes in warm weather, and eating only the meat wastes 40-60% of a kill’s total value.

Passive methods like traps and nets can multiply a catch tenfold over rod and line, and every mesh in a fishing net comes down to one knot, the sheet bend. Light bending at the water’s surface makes a fish look higher and closer than it actually is, the error spearfishing has to correct for. A caught fish starts decomposing within minutes, so gutting within 30 minutes in heat is the real deadline.

Every preservation method below comes back to the same number: food dried below 15% moisture stops most bacteria, and below 10% mold can’t survive. Salt above 20% inhibits even Clostridium botulinum, which is why cold smoking still needs salt-curing first — smoke alone can’t stop it. Fermentation relies on salt-tolerant bacteria dropping the pH below 4.6. Rendering fat eliminates all three spoilage vectors — moisture, oxygen, bacteria — at once. And ground below 1.5 meters stays near 10-15°C year-round, free refrigeration that needs no fuel.

Foraging Fundamentals

Finding, identifying, and sustainably harvesting wild plants.

Edible Plants by Category

What’s actually edible, and the calories each category delivers.

Poisonous Plants and Edibility Testing

Avoiding the plants that kill, and the staged test for anything unidentified.

Mushroom Foraging

The one category where a mistake kills days, not weeks, later.

Hunting and Tracking

Finding and approaching game before a trap or weapon ever comes into play.

Traps

Working around the clock while you build shelter or sleep.

Weapons

Bows, spears, and thrown weapons built from wood, sinew, and stone.

Processing a Kill

What happens in the first minutes and hours after a catch, before meat spoils.

Fishing Gear

Hooks, lines, and nets built from whatever’s on hand.

Fishing Traps and Spearing

Passive traps that work unattended, and the active technique that doesn’t.

Catching and Processing Fish

The minutes after a fish is caught, before it starts to spoil.

Preservation Overview

The moisture math behind every preservation method that follows.

Drying

The simplest preservation method, needing only sun, fire, or time.

Salt Curing

Pulling out moisture with salt alone, no fire or fuel required.

Smoking

Combining smoke with salt, since smoke alone can’t stop botulism.

Fermentation

Letting salt-tolerant bacteria do the preserving instead of heat or dehydration.

Fat Rendering and Pemmican

Eliminating moisture, oxygen, and bacteria all at once by sealing food in fat.

Cold Storage

Using the ground itself as free, year-round refrigeration.

Weather and Direction Signs for a Foraging Trip

Reading sky, animal, and plant signs for weather and direction before heading out to forage, hunt, or fish.

Treating Injuries From Hunting, Fishing, and Food Prep

Fractures, burns, and hypothermia are the real injury risks of hunting, fishing, and cooking over an open fire.

Clean Water and Storage for Food Safety

Filtering water and choosing safe containers, since contaminated water or a dirty vessel ruins food as fast as spoilage does.

Site and Shelter Basics for a Foraging Camp

Scouting a site and building quick shelter during a foraging or hunting trip away from camp.

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