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Comment by jongjong | Hacker News Reader

Part of my motivation for moving back to Australia was because the low population density means I could potentially survive on a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

In the event of an apocalypse, I would probably move back with my parents as they live near a beach in Queensland which is a really good fishing spot. My parents catch big fish from the beach every week. They never buy fish. The area has lots of mango trees. Also, there are kangaroos in the area so there is no shortage of options.

I remember I was surprised when I moved to The Netherlands for a while and one of my colleagues said something along the lines of "As humans, we can't survive without each other." I was thinking to myself WTF? Of course you can. But in retrospect I think maybe Europe isn't quite in the same situation. Low-density nations with good weather like Australia and New Zealand are actually quite unique in that way.

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Hunter gatherers live in a small village (the village moves, but it is still a village) and depend on other people in the village for things. There are only a tiny number of people ever who have lived all along for long.

Survival is not the problem if the land provides abundant resources. The limiting factor is procreation. Hermits don't tend to have children so they 'die out' as a species but they're fine as individuals. In reality there needs to be a balance; enough people to procreate but not so much as to take resources faster than surrounding nature can produce.

Of course, in densely populated parts of the world, society is completely dependent on modern farming because the 'surrounding nature' cannot provide anywhere near enough food for the population without advanced farming. A disruption in the social order or supply chains would mean that people would have to cannibalize to reach an equilibrium with the surrounding nature.

Survival is nowhere near as hard as most people believe, especially in a warm country without seasons. I used to do week-long camping trips to remote islands without any civilization there. There are people who have been living on remote islands by themselves without any issues for years. Australia is actually quite safe. The things which can kill you are pretty easy to avoid. Snakes are scared of you, crocodiles are only near rivers and lakes and only in some states, sharks and jellyfish are only in the sea, dangerous spiders are pretty rare and mostly mind their own business... No bears, no lions, no wolves (except dingoes but they're smaller and more like wild dogs), no nasty bug-borne diseases.

I didn't say it couldn't be done. I said that it wasn't commonly done. Procreation is one reason, but even if you have enough kids you generally want to talk to other people regularly.

In many cases I know of somebody did live alone for a few decades, but when they got old they eventually gave it up.

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