I thought this was an interesting and well-written article about survival strategies.
Popular mechanics article

"MYTH: TRAPPING DINNER

Animal snares? Leave all that to Grizzly Adams. “Search and rescue rarely finds a victim whose cause of death was starvation,” says survival instructor David Arama."

Very interesting article. I like the fact that they point out you will most likely not starve to death. This is something I'm trying to drill into my nephews head!

That was one of the best articles to come out last year in Popular Mechanics. I liked it alot.

True enough, but I have a hard time believing that a person going without food for 3 days is as capable physically as the same person who has eaten. And while I have yet to see any studies done on what effect, if any, lack of food has on hypothermia, I'm betting that eating something helps ward it off.

Presumably this article is aimed at people who do not know much, if anything, about survival. To then suggest that they not bother to learn about potential food sources is, IMO, a mistake. By all means, teach people to stay put, make a shelter, build a fire, and set out signals. But to then tell them to sit there while the fish are jumping yards away in the lake? Or to watch the squirrels running up and down the fallen pines while you wish you had some snare wire and the knowledge to use it? Not good advice in my opinion. A few fish hooks, some line, and some snare wire take up little room, and will always be found in my kits.

Good article otherwise.

While I don't know if there has been a formal study, there is plenty of documented evidence of reduced mental ability and fine motor control if you are sucking on internal reserves. Sure, you might survive if you just sit still and have enough water, but if you break your neck going to get water because your brain is fuzzy due to lack of food, you're still dead. You can get used to it, but lets face it, most of us are used to three or four meals a day, and that is what our body expects and it takes a while to adapt.

I'd call the several weeks on body fat a semi-myth. That is for people sitting in a rubber life raft, waiting for the PBY to spot them and hoping it really is a PBY and not the Japanese, while sucking on a pint of water a day under the sun. (To give you an idea of WHEN the figure comes from.)

The only saving grace I can give to that statement is that most people are found in under two days.

Absolutely. I also don't know the exact physical figures but I know digesting food alone warms a person up.

Before my last physical exam the doctor made me fast for the entire day before. My last food was Sat. evening & by mid afternoon on Sunday I felt chilled. Without the calories coming in it had a an effect on me & I was sitting in my house watching football. How much worse would it have been if I had been hanging out in a snow cave?

Shelter/Water/Signaling come first for sure, but hunting & foraging should be part of our plan.

Amen. ....and, as you mentioned, what will you do with all that time on your hands? After the basics are taken care of, just sitting and watching (or realizing they're there) potential dinner entrees without some kind of effort seems naive and (like so many who depend on Government to wipe their rear ends) pitiful.

I particularly liked the shelter suggestions. I carry a Coghlan's Survival Bag. It can be used as an immediate shelter; hop in and pull it over your head. It can be set up as a closed end tube tent. I liked the idea of building a debris hut and having the bag inside. Also having some hot rocks inside is a great idea! I have read of a fire bed but not of semi hot rocks used above ground to heat a debris hut. I also liked the suggestion of using a space blanket to line the top of a debris hut and having the shiny side inside to reflect heat from your body or a fire. I wonder if the heatsheet works as well as a space blanket for this application?

Good info!

I agree 110% with Norad. While it is usually true that you can survive for 3 weeks (+/-) without food, such a survivor will be extremely weak and his mental capacity will be seriously compromised. He then makes poor decisions and if he dies from them, then technically he did die as a result of no food intake although folks like Cody Lundlin (sp?) won't put that in print.

The "don't worry about procuring food" advice is really for those who don't know much and don't practice their skills ahead of time, IMO. If you know how to gather & cook some fish or small game IN AN EFFICIENT WAY then you are in a much better position to make good decisions & have the physical energy to execute them.

If I decide based on the situation to not try to procure food, them I'm certainly in no worse position than the guy who doesn't know how in the first place.

A very informative article projected to a mainstream audience who probably would never have thought about carrying this gear or adopting the right mentality about a subject most of us take for granted and are constantly prepared for. Whilst we huff and puff about eating about local wildlife, lets just give them the time to digest these bite size pieces of information that come after the kim tragedy and when their awareness grows, then you can provide or fine tune them for a better state of readiness.
Nonetheless, a good starter read for a vast subject. Thanks for the link