I want to live in the woods!

A few days ago, I was reading a book (Eating Animals, by Jonathan Saffron Foer) that said our world is overdue for a major pandemic. I figure that I would have a better chance surviving this pandemic if I lived in the woods, away from people who could transmit their illness to me. But, I'm probably not going to live in the woods. More likely, I would be prepared to move into the woods at the first sight of a world wide disease.

To prepare for life in the woods, I need to be able to identify edible plants. But I don't know where to find this information! I've tried to google it and everything, but I feel like I need some real life experience. I sent an application to the US Forest Service so that I can volunteer, and hopefully someone I come in contact with will help me out!

It really bothers me that as a species, human beings have lost contact with the natural world. Where does food come from? To the majority of Americans, it comes from the supermarket. How do you get to the supermarket? Drive in a car. Why can't we at least walk places, or use our own energy to get around? Then we would all be healthier and in the case that our car broke down, our lives wouldn't come to a complete standstill. And if we still had the knowledge to find or grow our own food, then our food supply would be a lot more stable. As it is, the world population is growing unsustainably, and it's only a matter of time until we overgrow our capacity to produce food.

They say that the hunter gatherers of our past had a better quality of life than people who produce food today. And this isn't a radical claim. This is a widely accepted statement throughout the scientific world. My anthropology teacher said that a family of four can collect enough wild growing wheat in 2 weeks to feed them for a whole year. That is definately a good deal compared to the daily watering, weeding, and tending needed for a garden or farm. And when you add in the possibility of a drought or other weather conditions that can compromise your crop yield, hunting and gathering start to look pretty good.