Seeking advice from actual survivalists!
Mmkay, this is my first post in a forum like this, and I am a COMPLETE novice at survival. It also covers two separate, unrelated topics, so I put it out here rather than in one of the sub-folders because I knew at least half the post would be guaranteed off-topic, apologies if this wasn't the right way to go about it. I am running a D&D-esque RPG (Different game system, but if you've ever even heard of D&D then you understand the principle at least), and one of the characters is a bit of a survivalist, and had a couple of questions that I thought you all could maybe shed a little light on. I know there really is no definitive answer for these things, because they all rely on a myriad of potentially-unknowable factors, but for the sake of a pen-and-paper RPG, even a vague, not-always-accurate ballpark figure will probably do just fine:
- Firewood/camp fires: How much firewood, in terms of pounds, seems reasonable to keep a fire burning all night, if you set it up correctly? And (obviously, depending on the different styles of fire you could set up) about how big of an area might that be expected to heat? I'm talking about a fire which the character could set up before dark, maybe add wood and stoke all evening until he went to bed, and then leave burning all night to keep wild beasts at bay, and also stand a reasonable chance of not freezing to death until morning. If there's more than one valid answer (like for different climates), that's fine, more detail doesn't really hurt! This is assuming that all the characters in the group are able to acquire or construct adequate shelter for the terrain in question (whether that be a tent, a bivouack(sp?), an igloo or even just hiding under a rocky overhang to escape the rain.)
- Food: According to the system I use, in order for a character to remain healthy and not starve to death, they need 2500 calories a day (though actually, this might be an overestimation in a more relaxed/temperate climate, that number is for survival under great physical stress, in a very hot, swampy climate). I've tried researching energy density, and got nowhere helpful, but is it possible to back-calculate a volume of food to which this is equivalent? Obviously exactly WHAT you take is a factor, so it might be simple to think of a range, in the form of "2500 calories equates to 15-20 pounds of food" (numbers purely arbitrary to demonstrate a point).
Thank you to anyone who's able to offer insights into this admittedly rather weird thread!
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Originally Posted by hunter63
Howdy from Sarge!
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