If you really cannot resist the urge to stir shit MLA, go french kiss a blender.
Oh..so they GIVE you a knife? stands to reason they would give you THE most fundamental survival tool there is.
Water can be had from drinking animal blood if it has to be done, although if it isn't boiled first (one would want to let the erythrocytes fall to the bottom, filter it off and then boil it, this will coagulate the proteins in the plasma, but it will be safe to drink. IIRC the maasai of kenya drink cattle blood, and the milk [without killing the cattle, they just bleed them as needed], if there are nontoxic vines (those with milky sap should be avoided, indeed ANY plant with milky white sap must be avoided, most are toxic, and ESPECIALLY 'cacti', with the sole exception of the barrel cacti of the north american arid areas and deserts, although like many other cacti they are very, very slow growing, so really one shouldn't hack them open and raid them unless you actually DO need it to live. The others with milk-white latex
exuded when broken are NOT to be consumed, most likely of the genus Euphorbia, a pretty large family including all sorts of plants, from small temperate leafy herbs a few inches tall, to larger leafy garden ornamentals, to succulents that resemble cacti, although are unrelated, to trees. The euphorbia cacti are very toxic indeed, containing powerful carcinogens called phorbol esters, and to boot they are highly toxic in the acute sense and can blind a person if the sap gets in the eyes (in some of the larger ones like the christmas cactus, this can actually squirt out when wounded, making them pretty dangerous) the trees are especially nasty. One of the two I know of, Hura (H.crepitans is the one I am thinking of here) or the sandbox tree produces large woody fruits, that when ripe, explode with a loud crack, resembling a gunshot, firing the seeds quite some distance. Its so toxic that few animals do, or CAN eat it, although parrots do, then fly off to eat certain natural clays that bind the toxins and inactivate them. The other one is much, much worse, its called 'manchineel', Hippomane mancinella, and grows in the afrocarribean region and is so extremely poisonous and corrosive that the carib natives use or used the sap to poison arrows (IIRC only the condemned were sent to fetch the poison, I presume if they succeeded and yet lived, they got pardoned, but I don't know. And for people they REALLY, particularly and absolutely despised, those who had committed some abomination in their eyes, would be tied to a tree and left there to die a slow, excruciating death. Because even the rain falling from the leaves of this member of the Euphorbiales is enough to flay the skin off someone, and then they would die of a combination of pain, shock and fluid loss after the tree burns their skin off, and of course, poisoning from the tree itself. And thats just from skin contact with rain water which has touched the leaves. Either that, or possibly burn out the lungs due to vapors of the stuff being volatilized. People have been said to die merely from approaching the trees, and apparently there have also been deaths from prolonged exposure. Not sure of the veracity of the former claim
as its a bit over the top even for a species as toxic as manchineel. Produces deadly poisonous fruit too, that apparently smell and appear appetizing, until some poor fucking miserable bastard takes a bite out of one. The same has been said of the Upas tree of java mainly although the distribution is pantropical , although it produces milk-white latex, its not a euphorbia or relative, actually, its a relative of the fig and mulberry, but its again, so damn toxic, that a mere scratch from a twig, or bit of the wood can be lethal within minutes, because like lily of the valley, oleander, Strophanthus and Digitalis/foxglove its loaded with cardiac glycosides. Apparently similar legends abound where its found, such as killing from its exhalations, which in that case is reportedly inaccurate. And legend has it,
I don't know how accurate, but not unbelievable for a cardiotoxin, that a man poisoned by it has time to take just a few steps before dying. Astonishingly the trees bark is used, after special preparation of some kind, for use as fiber.
If it were up to me, I'd suggest one of the team, if two people, takes a modern firestarter, and myself, pack the team a medical kit, same goes if its four people, although I'd try and persuade the other two to bring some low-visibility fishing line&hooks [can make the hooks out of bone or thorns if needs be, or even fish with a grooved, sharpened bit of wood, although I am not going to tell how here, for fear that someone might try to use the technique, because its a cruel and utterly barbaric way of catching a fish, that condemns them to a slow and miserable end regardless of if the angler eats the fish or if its not fit to eat, it will still kill, and slowly, its a technique that should only ever be used if its the thing standing between you, and the grave, its that unpleasant, so I'm not going to risk somebody who doesn't give two shits running off to try it, or to poach fish with etc. I've never done it, and hope I never have to, because the way its done involves a truly abhorrent degree of cruelty, if I ever do, it will be because I'd starve otherwise, and would be somewhere having no other means to get a meal) of a high weight capacity, as it would be difficult or impossible to improvise actual fishing line, and the last person, I'd suggest a decent sized can of some low-ignition point volatile flammable fuel for use in getting damp tinder started, ether would be my choice because of its dual use, both for lighting things that don't want to be lit easily, and if needs be, or for a little R&R, of course it makes a very good dissociative anaesthetic (and by mouth, a hangoverless alcohol substitute)
And its flammable as fuck, you don't need much of a spark to ignite it (its used in cold-start sprays for car engine intakes, due to the low ignition temperature, sometimes in a mixture with diisopropyl ether. Actually as a little kid before I could go online and order my lab supplies, I'd get my diethyl and diisopropyl ether via fractional distillation of car starter fluid. Not suitable for inhalation, and certainly unsuitable for drinking from that source, but once freed from the usual small proportion of heptane via distillation, which also leaves the traces of lubricating oil behind, for many purposes the ethers
decent enough for use as solvents, although nowadays I just buy it cheaply from eastern europe, unless I have run out and have to finish something that day, or the next day or two, and cannot wait
for a shipment, its still a useful emergency backup, albeit one needing some work to clean it up and separate the diethyl and diisopropyl ether, then distill off the remaining heptane so I can recycle that too. All that goes to waste is the spray propellant gas, and the traces of oil, if you do not count the can itself although they still get recycled, just tossed in a bin for someone else to deal with, that recycles steel/iron, hoping the empty cans do not just end up in a chinese landfill site.
As for comfortable shoes...well high heels are just fucking stupid. Painful to the wearer, and forces the feet into unnatural positions that can cause a lot of damage over time, add to that
to preventing the wearer running and balancing when needed. Although I'd imagine a kick in the nads from a set of high heels effectively negates the need to make a fast exit, who, afterall
needs run from a mugger, who is too busy trying to retch a kidney out through his nostrils and wallowing in his own uncontrollably evacuated excrement and piss to be concentrating on doing much mugging
Wide shoes are a shit to find, I'm nominally a size 10 (UK)n but need sometimes to buy 11s to fit me. Most comfortable pair of boots I've ever had, although pricy (mine cost about 180 iirc but it was ages ago I bought them) were my pair of thigh-length newrock boots, huge chunky leather affairs having leather straps all down the front, big flat, heavy platform soles several inches thick and metal plates all up the sides. Weighty but really really comfy to wear. And god help any wouldbe mugger that'd be stupid enough to pick a fight with someone wearing those, because they have a new take on steel toecaps, basically they have a steel cleat stuck to the outside surface where the toes go, and with the weight of those boots behind a kick, I imagine they would be pretty good at putting a dent in things:P I've leaned a thin metal plate against a wall (thin enough that is to manually bent, reasonably speaking, iron, and managed to put a small dent in it without t.hurting my feet. It does feel like your wearing trees tied to your feet but its strangely comfortable, the weight and are more maneuverable than you'd expect
