Millennials lack basic survival skills

[BudAshes]

Kind of funny they mention a sheepshank knot which is incredibly easy to tie but also a rather shitty knot.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Last time I checked, breathing oxygen, eating, drinking water were basic survival skills. I'd say by the overpopulation of the world, everyone..even millennials..have that down just fine.

 

[jlee]

(Not a Millennial)

Couldn't one create a slightly different poll with bias and try to use the results to chastise those >55?

For example, "Only x% of those over 55 use Google Maps. Instead they prefer to use a paper map. The problem here is the paper map has likely has not have been updated in the last few years to account for all of the growth that has occurred across the area over the past several years."

Not to mention the lack of traffic information on a paper map.

 

[pauldun170]

It's not important. When is the last time you tied sheepshank knot? I've never. Last time I used paper map was back in 2001 before I got TomTom GPS. And I haven't used standalone GPS since I got my smartphone. And fishing is a hobby or job. It's not survival skill. I would rate gardening/farming higher on survival scale than fishing and I consider gardening a hobby. I'm surprised they didn't include grilling or BBQing as survival skill.

We still have all of our paper and laminated Hagstrom Maps. From the monster "Never gonna refold right" ones to the big spiral bound jobs.
I have my Grandfathers map of Germany when back when he was fighting in WWII.
His generation probably saw all our Hagstroms and probably grumbled how our maps have been pussified.

 

[Mike64]

You can end up in a current or get sucked in by strong waves or fall off a boat

Which is only relevant to the tiny percentage of the population that travels on large bodies of water, or over them at altitudes low enough to give them even a snowball's chance in hell of making it into the water alive in the first place. And that's assuming the water's warm enough water to let them to survive long enough to be rescued even under the best possible circumstances...

Not that I really disagree with the basic premise of this thread. It amazes me how few people, especially but not exclusively urban and suburban people, of any age, have even the slightest clue how pretty much anything but their cars and TV remote controls work (more or less, in both cases) or how deal with any situation that doesn't fit squarely within the parameters of their daily routines...

 

[Homerboy]

My parents didn't know how to drive a horse and buggy. My grandparents did.
Imagine that, skill sets don't need to carry on.

 

[bshole]

My parents didn't know how to drive a horse and buggy. My grandparents did.
Imagine that, skill sets don't need to carry on.

Yea but every generation has one skill set down pat, an innate ability to sense all the weaknesses and failures of the generation following them. My father did that to my generation and I find myself doing it to my son's generation.

 

[Brainonska511]

Yet another let's hate on young people thread. This crapping on younger people has been going on since the dawn of civilization.

 

[xthetenth]

Those damned kids have been terrible since Roman times. The more things change, the more people stay the same.

 

[Nashemon]

I love camping (roughing it only, never been in a camper), and I'm a natural in the water. I haven't fished or hunted since I was young, though, being vegetarian the past 14 years. I know how to tie quite a number of knots, never bothered to learn the names of any of them, though. I have a great sense of direction and an atlas in my car in case the tech fails, but still use my GPS for areas I'm not familiar with, which is maybe 3 times a year. I could look at Google Maps all day.

FWIW: 1983.

 

[Humpy]

LOL at fishing and tying knots.

Damn kids these days don't know how to flintknap or tan hides either.

It's surprising how common practices fade away when they become irrelevant.

 

[PottedMeat]

A tire change is just a phone call away.

knowing the basic parts of their car and where ( or if ) the spare/jack/tools are and how to use them are more important than knowing different knots or how to fish (heh catching is something else)

 

[Mike64]

Yet another let's hate on young people thread.

Not entirely, I was crapping on clueless people of all ages. Roughly 1.75 (collectively) of my three nephews-and-niece have at least some clue, while their father/my brother (somewhat older than my early middle-aged self) would most likely be Dead Meat very quickly if any sort of Serious Shit were ever to really hit the Cosmic Fan, without ever even quite realizing what it was he didn't know how to do... Their grandfather/my father would have probably been Dead Meat at any age, but he would've had some idea what he should've been regretting not knowing how to do... And last but not least, I don't know how long I'd survive either, seriously/realistically speaking, but at least I have enough of a clue to have a sporting chance...

 

[GagHalfrunt]

knowing the basic parts of their car and where ( or if ) the spare/jack/tools are and how to use them are more important than knowing different knots or how to fish (heh catching is something else)

Not relevant when you're too stupid and lazy to be able to afford a car or pass the test for a drivers license.

 

[Hugo Drax]

What Millennials really lack is street smarts. The problem is they were raised in a very structured life and raised to have a total phobia about failing/losing. It also seems the lack imagination and problem solving skills.

You see toddlers glued to ipads or other types of gadgets (ie portable DVD players etc) I wonder what will happen when the critical years of their lives in terms of brain development is spent staring at an ipad.

The next 25 years will be real interesting.

Even sex probably has lost its mystique with millennial. Boys/teens jerking off to all kinds of shitty mechanical hardcore porn. Back in the days when you start having fun with the opposite sex as a young person it was all exciting and new, you learned together and it was all new. ie: the first kiss, making out,exploring the female body and her exploring yours etc.. it was all exciting/innocent and fresh

I wonder if Millenials even know how to have good sex. The modern porn is real shit, all mechanical. A boy exposed to this 24/7 must have some impact on what kind of lover they end up becoming.

One thing I can say I sure am glad I grew up in a different era, I feel bad for kids today, it just seems like a shit childhood.

 

[Mike64]

Back in the days when you start having fun with the opposite sex as a young person it was all exciting and new, you learned together and it was all new. ie: the first kiss, making out,exploring the female body and her exploring yours etc.. it was all exciting/innocent and fresh

You obviously didn't get out much as a young teen. Hardcore porn has been around for the relevant post-pubertal years of at least the past, what, 3 generations? Not as readily accessible perhaps, but even buillshit porn-lite like Playboy fueled plenty of raunchy fantasies, often less-connected to physical reality than actual porn-as-in-real-people-in-front-of-a-camera, and of course for the mid-late Boomers, there was Hustler... #NuffSaid

If nothing else, the post-Internet generations won't have to deal with heinous phenomenon of middle-aged people "discovering" kinky sex for the first time and making complete fools of themselves in the process, not always as privately as one might hope... They'll have either gotten it out of their systems when they're young and understandably stupid rather than when they're middle-aged and embarrassingly stupid, and moved on, or at least by the time they are middle-aged, will be good enough at it that they don't make (occasionally semi-public) spectacles of themselves...

 

[Hugo Drax]

The porn when I was a kid was Playboy magazine was the big find and we did not get exposed to the amount of porn kids see today. Remember we had no internet. Where is a 9-10 year old kid going to watch all the stuff they get access to today? There is nothing left to the imagination anymore.

I am not against porn etc.. but I wonder if millenials know how to have good sex,foreplay etc..

 

[GagHalfrunt]

The porn when I was a kid was Playboy magazine was the big find and we did not get exposed to the amount of porn kids see today. Remember we had no internet. Where is a 9-10 year old kid going to watch all the stuff they get access to today? There is nothing left to the imagination anymore.

I am not against porn etc.. but I wonder if millenials know how to have good sex,foreplay etc..

It doesn't have to be good, they'll get a participation trophy just for showing up.

 

[Darwin333]

Well I can tie a ton of knots, mostly from my experience in the oil field and construction. I can use paper maps and that skill came in damn handy after Katrina but I pretty much exclusively use GPS when I can which is pretty much all non-SHTF situations.

As far as fishing, hunting and all that crap if my life depends on it I will be shit out of luck. Then again, not sure I'd want to live in some post-apocalyptic world that my life depends on being able to live in a tent and hunt for the rest of my days. I've always said, that if the global nuclear war happens I want to be under one of the bombs that hits and not some survivor living in a fucked up mad maxx world.

 

[dainthomas]

I'm not sure what swimming in 'open water' has to do with a lack of life skills. To me that doesn't read as 'cant swim' but more 'hasn't gone swimming in the ocean.'

Also - preferring google maps over a paper map doesn't mean you can't read one. I can read one but still prefer google maps because it reroutes me based on traffic, construction etc and I don't have to try and find a map for every country\state I visit

I'll buy a map book if I know I'll be going through rural and/or mountainous areas with no cell service. Additionally, if you become stranded you're not reliant on a dying cell phone to figure out where the nearest town is. When we went to Yosemite I grabbed one that covered the entire state of California for less than $20.

 

[vi edit]

I'd wager this is more of a location/income thing than absolute age. I'd guess that the more affluent and urban the person, the less exposed they are to many of those things. This whole election cycle talked about being "in the bubble". That's an income and location thing layered in with a generational element. But generational in regards to the bubble is more in regards to your families income and prosperity from generation to generation rather than an absolute timeline of a specified generation/decade.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I think you will find that this isn't a generational thing so much as a location thing ..

City folks less likely to "rough it" in the wilderness and camp and swim in lakes because they are in the city and they have to drive for a hours to get out into wilderness.
Country folks more likely to camp and fish and swim in lakes because hey, they are already out in the country.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

I'd wager this is more of a location/income thing than absolute age. I'd guess that the more affluent and urban the person, the less exposed they are to many of those things. This whole election cycle talked about being "in the bubble". That's an income and location thing layered in with a generational element. But generational in regards to the bubble is more in regards to your families income and prosperity from generation to generation rather than an absolute timeline of a specified generation/decade.

There's undoubtedly a lot of truth in that. A person in Tennessee or Arkansas is going to know more about fishing, hunting and camping than a person in New York City. But I also think there's a lot of truth to the notion that compared to people in the same areas and same income brackets and separating groups only by age, millennials are less adept at pretty much anything other than selfies. If there's not an app for it they can't do it.

 

[Hugo Drax]

There's undoubtedly a lot of truth in that. A person in Tennessee or Arkansas is going to know more about fishing, hunting and camping than a person in New York City. But I also think there's a lot of truth to the notion that compared to people in the same areas and same income brackets and separating groups only by age, millennials are less adept at pretty much anything other than selfies. If there's not an app for it they can't do it.

Yeah forget tying knots etc.. It just seems that Millennials seem to lack the street smarts/drive/common sense/problem solving. A fear of failure as well. I am not impressed with the output coming out of Universities. All that safespace shit is so weird and then the whole outrage issue, it seems anything sets them off. I am not sure what the heck is going on anymore. They also seem intolerant about anything that is outside of their lane and will go apeshit about stupid stuff. The whole situation is quite odd.

It will be real interesting to see how it all pans out.

 

[JulesMaximus]

It's not just millennials. Heck, forget outdoor skills. What would a person was out somewhere and lost their phone. How many phone numbers do you have memorized these days?

I'm almost 50 and I could probably give you 4-5 phone numbers. My home, my wife's phone number, my good friend's number and my work phone number. Maybe Moto Forza Ducati dealer in Encinitas.

I don't know my Mom's number or my son's phone number off the top of my head.