People Do Not Appreciate How Terrifying The Woods Are
I admit that I have been on a bit of a woods rabbit hole lately thanks to doing Dogwalk with Ed. We've covered people disappearing in National Parks left and right, we did Oniontown NY(above), and the Darien Gap in Latin America. My big takeaway from learning about these places is that the woods are fucking terrifying. So terrifying that I decided to put the woods up against nature's other scariest thing in the world...the ocean. I think you can make a compelling argument for both being the scariest place to be alone imaginable. To me, after listening to the podcasts and doing the research it's almost a toss up. Even a soft lean(shoutout Rico) to the woods. I decided to put it to a poll to see what the people thought
And absolute TIDAL wave of people saying that the ocean is scarier. The responses and the reasoning made sense because ...no shit.
Some people assumed that they were just dropped in the middle of the ocean and had to tread water to live. You know how long I could do that? Maybe three minutes. The deep of the pool is scarier under those conditions.
Other people, like our boy Captain Cons talked about how 98% of the ocean is undiscovered and there are places where no light or oxygen can reach
I am willing to concede that the bottom of The Mariana Trench is scarier than the woods. I mean the pressure down there is so intense that it would LITERALLY crush every bone in your body. That sounds bad. Having said that…that was not the spirit of the argument. No human is even capable of getting to places. You don't need to stay up at night thinking about these things down there
Hand up(credit to me for taking the blame) I didn't frame that question properly. I allowed people to use variables like the Mariana's Trench to skew their opinions which is not in the spirit of the debate in my head. I tried again today to do a better job and…
So far only 7% of the vote has changed. SEVEN PERCENT! You people are sleeping on how absolutely terrifying the woods are. Had a lot of responses like this
Everyone has suddenly turned into Bear Grylls and Les Stroud apparently. In reality, 99.999% of the population is Michael Scott
We are all stupid, doughy, bags of milk, who have no idea how to survive in the wilderness. The idea that people think they can go out there and forage for food and build shelters is ABSURD. You can't. I'm sorry. Maybe Cons can. Maybe a small percentage of the population who are outdoorsmen can. The overwhelming majority of us would just walk around in a circle endlessly until we bumped into something that wanted us dead. Nature wants us dead.
Oh, you're going to forage for food?
Wrong, you gonna die
Oh you're going to hike your way out for MILES AND MILES…?
Wrong. You gonna die.
Oh you're going to pull yourself up from falling and recover from your fall and wait for help?
Wrong…you gonna die
Many people have said that you have a greater chance of being rescued or walking to help in the woods. Sure, that might be true. It is also very true that you could walk into the wrong person and that is the worst scenario of all. That's why I used the snake image last. I like talking about religion and specifically my religion(because it's the one I understand the best). When you hear the story of the Garden Of Eden with Adam & Eve and the Snake tells Eve to eat the apple…nobody in CCD growing up tells you that the snake is really a metaphor for an evil person. That evil person could be a person who lives in the fucking woods
Then you dig a little deeper in that snake metaphor and you realize that maybe there was no snake or no person at all. That story/myth was symbolic of what was going on inside of Eve. You realize that the line between good and evil doesn't run down political aisles, or borders, or groups, but instead it runs right down the middle of your soul. That…is a scary thought too.
I am not trying to down play how scary it would be to be adrift in the ocean. That would be TERRIFYING. Having said that…you pretty much know how you're going to die if you're floating on a boat in the ocean. It will likely be starvation or dehydration or a combination of the two, or you might have a storm knock you off your boat and you might drown. Those are the options. Jaws isn't real life. Marine life isn't going to capsize your boat. You will probably die, but if you do run into a person it's because they're looking for YOU. Specifically you. Coast Guard types because a vessel has been reported missing. You run into a person in Appalachia or the Darien Gap…that seems more WAY more likely to be trouble. In either situation…you gonna die. Death by mosquito, animal attack, human fucking murder, etc seems way way WAY worse to me.
Again, I could understand the ocean argument, but I've had plenty of time this week thinking about it and I am leaning the woods as being a more likely and more painful way to die. Happy to hear the counter arguments again from the people but there's no way that being lost at sea should be at 80%. I need people to consider ALL the possible ways you can die in the woods and how painful that would be. Nothing more malevolent on the planet than a person. And if you watch the Oniontown Ep above or listen to the two eps below I think you'll come around