If everyone in Manhattan had Bear Grylls-level survival skills, most would still starve in the long term without modern supply chains and industrial agriculture. The damaged ecosystems around large population centers can't support millions of primates, however skilled, suddenly relying on it.
replySame would be true if you dropped off a million wild black bears in their natural habitat. The natural environment just can't support that many large animals in a small area.
Its irrelevant if you can provide for yourself. The ecosystem cannot support 9 billion Hunter gatherers - period. Subsistence level agriculture is also wildly inefficient and so again: the ecosystem cannot support it.
replyA hunter-gatherer dropped into a metropolis where all the logistics has suddenly failed would be as dead as everybody else.
> Its irrelevant if you can provide for yourself. The ecosystem cannot support 9 billion Hunter gatherers - period.
replyI didn’t suggest that it could, but the number that it can support is certainly more than zero. If that’s the only choice in a hypothetical scenario where global infrastructure goes kablooey, then people who can figure out how to provide for themselves will outlive those who can’t. From there it’s natural selection.