small vs. large people in survival situations

Oh, forgot to add. The Australian Aborigines, as well as the Aetas of the Philippines, are descended (as we all are) from the early humans out of Africa. Over the many years of nomadic wandering over the Asian continent, over land bridges to finally reach where they reside now, they grew much smaller in stature compared to their African ancestors.

Agriculture wasn't in fashion yet back then, and after stripping bare the food sources in one locality, the only thing to do was to move someplace fresh. Conditions of food scarcity and constant travel made things very slightly more difficult for the larger specimens. The smaller ones were able to better care for their offspring, so the "small" genes tended to get passed on to the next generation a little bit more effectively. A tiny statistical advantage compounded over many millennia tends to produce very profound effects.

You see this difference also between African and Asian elephants, which are descended from a common ancestor.

Long story short, natural selection has figured it out already. Small is the way to go, when there isn't much to eat and you have to keep moving. But the advantage isn't that big a deal, it takes thousands of years to notice.
 
Or you could notice it right away if cast adrift with people of varying size. Big guys (I´m in this class at 6 ft 193 lbs) suffer for lack of food. (Big) Mac
 
I cannot believe that margior part of people here thinks that small compact and devout resistant to survival.... (( Inappropriate language. ))
 
I read something on this a few years back. They did some reaserch, and it seems like the averidge graduate from the navy seal schools are 5'9' and 160 pounds. Alot of the big athletic college jock guys don't make it through. Maybe its the small mongrel dog/bushman thing at work?
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I fall into the 5'9" 160 group, although I'm not a SEAL (worked out with a few but I wasn't motivated to go all in). This is a mid-size. Too big and you burn a disproportionate amount of calories just moving yourself; too small and you can't do necessary work. Smaller definitely does better on fewer calories, bigger can do more work but at a high cost. It seems to me that the middle ground is a good place to be -- not too big, not too small. This great insight from my very biased middle-ground point of view :)
 
I don't believe it's so much size.

I would put mentally stable first and strength second.
 
pict said:
To suggest in such a situation that food should be rationed in proportion to body mass and workload does not fly when everyone has a vote. It is logical to say that a male 20-something who made three heavily laden trips over a portage should get 3x the ration of a 12 year old kid who merely walked the distance once carrying a load of paddles. Try suggesting it and see what happens to the morale of the group. Mac
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Now that is pretty interesting to ponder
 
Not just interesting. Life or death, maybe. :)

Actually, I had to discuss this question as a management training exercise: if a group of people were cast adrift in a small boat with limited rations, who should get more or less, the old, the infant, the young and strong, and so on. There are many different valid answers, in part because you really don't know till everyone is either rescued or dead if you made a good decision.
 
Many small lean people have high metabolisum and require a high amount of calories . Some one carrying around some extra fat might last longer on equal rations before reaching starvation status.
 
pict said:
I think the smaller person would fare better. I base that on two things.

Here in Brazil we have lots of stray dogs. One thing you notice is that there is a certain "breed" of small semi-wild stray dog that survives very well. They are small, short haired, very fast, and resourceful. At the same time you run across larger strays and they are universally bone thin. For that small dog a half a ham sandwich is a meal, for the large dog it is just a light snack.

I went through an ordeal in Canada in which 26 of us were reduced to starvation rations for more than a week. This was a mixed group, male and female, large and small, young and old. When it comes to dividing up food humans are very democratic, everyone gets the same portion. When it comes to dividing up the work humans have greater expectations for those who are larger/stronger. The idea is, you´re a big guy, you should be able to handle it. It was my observation that the larger more muscular guys were suffering from starvation more than the smaller, less worked members of the group. I´m not saying that everyone wasn´t giving it their all, the smaller members were working hard too, but at their capacity. Some of our guys would portage a canoe and then return for packs or another canoe, but at meal time everyone would get the same half cup of macaroni. Some of our guys must have been burning 10x the calories.

To suggest in such a situation that food should be rationed in proportion to body mass and workload does not fly when everyone has a vote. It is logical to say that a male 20-something who made three heavily laden trips over a portage should get 3x the ration of a 12 year old kid who merely walked the distance once carrying a load of paddles. Try suggesting it and see what happens to the morale of the group. Mac
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This was clearly a poor choice by the group. The food allocation should have been apportioned according to a ratio of lean body mass. Plus I can't believe they made some folks work harder without consideration of food ration. I take it the leader was a small guy/girl who didn't do much work.
 
Oops - didn't see that last paragraph pict...

I guess it depends on the makeup of the group and whether they have logic or not.
 
jackknife said:
I read something on this a few years back. They did some reaserch, and it seems like the averidge graduate from the navy seal schools are 5'9' and 160 pounds. Alot of the big athletic college jock guys don't make it through. Maybe its the small mongrel dog/bushman thing at work?
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Jackknife, I think you are onto something there, as is Mac in Brazil. I remember reading someone's comments elsewhere several years ago concerning the size of the US cavalrymen in the Old West. They, as well as the relay riders Wells Fargo hired, were all small, wiry, lightweight young fellows, too. That's why the Colt Peacemaker that came out in 1873 often seems a bit small in the grip and trigger reach for some of us today. Sam Colt designed it and its cap-&-ball predecessors to fit the hands of the men of his time. Nutrition then was not at all what it is today, so most kids didn't get fat and sassy back then. They were lucky just to get enough to live on in many cases.
 
If I may be permitted one more cockeyed opinion, I think much if not most of what's necessary for survival under harsh conditions can be condensed down to the old principle of Conservation of Energy. Henry David Thoreau understood this, too. He once, in his book about the time he lived on Walden Pond, commented on a farmer he knew who needed to "eat hard" because he worked hard, while Thoreau usually took life easy and he didn't require a lot of of food, often being quite content with some wild greens he picked.
 
kgd said:
Plus I can't believe they made some folks work harder without consideration of food ration. I take it the leader was a small guy/girl who didn't do much work.
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You know the old saying?

"As long as the bosses pretend to pay us,
we'll pretend to work." :D
 
KGD,

That was my suggestion and I still have some folks mad at me because of it. The guys doing extra work wern't forced to do it, they did it because it needed to be done, and they had really good attitudes about it. I think if it had gone on longer people might have seen it clearer. Nobody was getting enough. At one point we had to get everyone together and really talk it out. That night we decided to just stay put and camp on the island we were on for another full day and night (against park rules). We pulled the canoes up into the bushes and had a great day. We scoured the rocks for crawfish, caught 8 walleye, roasted chipmunks (also against park rules).

This whole thing was due to an outfitter error. They had sent our food (for 26 people) with another group that had gone out just before us. We got their food (13 people, but missing all protein) and a good portion was destroyed on the first day (1 dunked pack, 1 fuel bottle left open saturated the food in that pack with white gas). We had enough food for about 8 people divided between 26. I lost 17 lbs, a week after we got back I was still 10 lbs under my pre-trip weight. Mac
 
Thanks for the added details Mac and glad everyone made it out safe. Twenty six people is a lot of mouths to feed. Glad your supplemental foraging helped some. Although 8 walleye for 26 people is still a little shy. With a group that size there probably were a lot of crowd control issues - like people wanting to stake out on their own and such. I hope the outfitter was made aware of their mistake and compensated - although I don't know how.
 
KGD,

The situation didn't dawn on us the first day. IIRC it was the second night that we started to figure it out. The first night our camp cook asked for all food packages marked Meal#1 and made the meal. It was a bad joke in terms of quanity.

"OK, so there must be a few packages marked Meal #1 that got left in a pack somewhere, we'll figure it out tomorrow night."

Night #2 was a repeat, and nobody had been conserving food as until then we didn't know we had a problem. We got all the food from all of the packs and it was a shockingly small pile and by then we were two days into the bush. We held a group meeting and everyone got their say. It was unanimous to continue the trip and ration the food that was left rather than go back. Some of it like trail mix we just divided up and gave everyone a portion. We had 3 fishing liscenses in the group. I wasn't the leader BTW. My wife and I had been asked to go last minute.

We found out what happened when we got back and talked to the other group. Someone asked them if they had enough food. "Enough! We had so much we couldn't carry it! We actually ended up tossing it to lighten our load!" Imagine their situaton, 13 people with food for 26 and all of our meat.

Such is life. I think it was a good experience, one that could never be planned. Mac
 
If I was stranded with a smaller person on a wilderness adventure/ tragedy...I would live longer. As long as it took to eat said smaller person.
 
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