Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Which era in American history would you choose to live in?

It's just that our sheer numbers in relation to consumption rate is likely to bite us on the arse pretty damn hard in the near future.

Yes, a visit from Saint Malthus is long overdue. I am afraid the longer the interval, the stronger the correction will be.

Captain Thomas Kennedy lived in Newville and Carlisle Pennsylvania from 1745 to 1831. He found in the 2nd Pennsylvania regiment and went through Trenton and Princeton. He weathered Valley Forge and his first wife died. He fought under Mad Anthony Wayne and directly under Col. Walter "the Irish Beauty" Stewart in the 13th at Montmouth and saved the nation right there in the Point of the Woods engagement. He returned after that and went with Col. Davis south to South Carolina and was a Captain of the 2nd Militia when they cut the British to ribbons at the battle of King Mountain. His one Brother in Law, Major Colonel James McFarlane was killed by Col. Kirkpatrick in the Whiskey Rebellion trying to settle the peace. He was the Sheriff of Carlisle and wanted to keep the peace but wanted to represent the rebels. Thomas Kennedy raised 15 kids in Newville and lived to see his oldest son John become a Judge and his second oldest son Thomas fight valiantly in the war of 1812. Thomas suffered from PTSD after the war and went a roaming and travelled around the world for three years. He returned from Africa with elephant ivory and gold. He died of malaria 4 years later and the family moved to Indiana. Thomas the patriarch remained in Pennsylvania and probably watched most of his generation fade on. The men of Carlisle found Native Americans with their Lancaster style long rifles and tomahawks and used them to great effect against the British as well. I am sure that he had a great life.

My Great Grandfather John Eliot Kennedy lived from 1882 to 1971 in Gary, South Dakota. He lived close to the Indians and they would stop at his farm and were welcome there. He was a farmer but also worked as a blacksmith and tinkerer. He invented all kinds of mechanical devices. He was extremely strong until he was in his late 80s. Many people even today remarked about how strong he was. He had forearms like Popeye from work and blacksmithing. When he was 76 his named started making fun of him. His neighbor was a bigger fella who was a drunk but worked as a sheriff's deputy in the town. He used to cuss and swear at Grandpa John from the other side of fence. John habitually carried a tool belt that had some metal punches and always had a hammer. My uncle was visiting with him and Grandpa John tool a punch and hammered him with this his hammer right through the fence. They put him in jail for two weeks and took a picture of him in jail. The deputy and nobody else in town ever bothered him again.

1760s-1820s in Western Pennsylvania would have been pretty cool.
South Dakota in the 1860s to 1930s would have been cool.
But Alaska as an adult living from 1950s to 1980s would have been the best.

Some argue that discoveries in science will prevent a crisis and propel us into a glorious future, but I suspect that we are running out of time to avoid the crunch. When it happens, it may not destroy civilization, but the world will be an entirely different place after the dust settles.

Being a 3rd Gen German American living in the 60's, I met all types. I once had the dubious pleasure at age 9 of having a middle-aged fellow tell me how grand it was to be in the SS.

" . . . ah! und ze uniform! Strong, young, virile, handsome. . .blond(!) Ah! You would have been a God! Ze women would all go vit you. You had any woman you vanted."


. . . but of course he was never actually in ze SS and he only knew this from friends, and he spent ze entire war in Berlin, because he was . . . not able to go. Blah! Blah! Blah!


What is bizarre is that this was almost verbatim the speech Roschmann gives Miller at the end of The Odessa File. I'd say my guy had just lifted it from the book, but Odessa File didn't come out until 1972 and I was hearing this bunk in the mid-60s. I can only speculate that this guy and the author, Forsythe, got it from the same source. I find that even 50 years on to be rather terrifying.



Just as an aside: I also bumped into a group of "Vikings" having a regional conclave back in 1996. I was bowhunting a private campground, and the owner mentioned he had a party coming in. They seemed like fairly nice people. I brought in a button buck that I'd arrowed mid-morning and got hailed as the mighty hunter, and spent some time with them drinking coffee and such. I suppose everyone has to have a hobby.

Fur trading era up around Hudson Bay or maybe the gold rush days in California and Alaska.Call of the Wild by Jack London has always intrigued me.

My daddy used to say when someone asked him if he was going to vote Republicans "I have voted Republican but Eisenhower isn't running. ".

Science won't save us.

Really? How does education perform this miraculous deed?

All things considered from reading this thread I'll take post WW2 when you could go to Alaska and homestead. I had an old WW2 veteran friend who passed in 2014 who told me that IIRC, he had the chance to go to Alaska and get either 500 or 1000 acres just for showing up and staying there I believe 5 years. He and his brother were seriously considering going out and getting adjoining blocks so they would control either 1 or 2 thousand acres together. Their wives nixed it.

A guy could have "lived off the land" like Daniel Boone but at the same time had the potential of a bailout from modern medicine if needed, assuming he could get to it. No Indians left to lift your hair or burn you at the stake.....but it was the last frontier.

And yet it is the only hope we have. Science is not going to create a utopian society. None of us will live to see utopia nor will we see the end of days but when we or someone we love gets some illness that has killed people in the past, we will pray science has found a cure.

People have a tendency to make better decisions based on knowledge rather than ignorance.

Are you a prophet?

History teaches us knowledge allows people to make bad decisions more efficiently.

🤣🤣🤣👍👍👍

My great-grandfather went west at the age of 12 riding on a pony next to a wagon driven by his 19 year old brother and his brother's 16 year old wife. They left a farm in Ohio near modern day Columbus and settled on the edge of the Prairie in Illinois. That was in 1824. Great-grandfather was a member of the old settlers' association in Champaign County which was restricted to the first 400 white settlers in the county. John Deere hadn't yet invented his steel plow, and the prairie soil was unbroken. The Potawatomi and Miami tribes passed through the area into the 1830s.

I often think of those three living in a grove on the edge of the empty prairie when I see young people today who fail to launch into their 20s and 30s.

Well, do you run around grabbing anything you want out of the hands of people on the street? Do you walk up to every attractive woman in town and rip her clothes off?

Or did your Mother and Father educate you that such was not acceptable behavior?

80s and 90s
Love to do it all over again.

I will play the role of prognosticator.

It is easy to see that history repeats itself over and over again. Man is the same basic animal he has been since civilization originally arose independently in six locations around the globe during the third millennium BC.

There was once a glorious golden age with world travel, trade, global exchanges of culture, and growth of science.

Climate change led to massive famine, then plagues, and the dark ages ensued. The churches used the fear and superstitions of the surviving people to exert draconian control and theocracies arose across the globe.

The next famines and plagues could be avoided, if the world were to be ruled by the likes of the Chinese Govt.

If some entity forced women into sterilization after the first baby was born every where in the world, then human population growth could be reversed. But who among us is willing to live in that world? Not I!

(of course, this is just the world which global leaders like Soros, and Gates envision)

And soon as population starts to diminish, every city in the world would begin to look like Detroit. No profits can be had in that environment. It would lead to a great depression to shame the 1930s.

Human societies of today function on growth. No longer is a man willing to stand at his father's side, learn his trade, and take his place in support of the community. Every person wants more than his/her parents had, And they want to give even more to their children.

So it is inevitable that human population will grow until it is no longer sustainable. (just as is the case with every other biological population on earth). Then those numbers will crash.

We will have a choice at that point. Will we let superstition and fear rule the day again? Will we once again hand our futures over to a handful of priests who will suppress science and retard the recovery of civilization?

Or will we hand our futures to the scientists who will quickly rebuild our industries, and accelerate the coming of the next over population and collapse.

Or maybe the Yellowstone Caldera will let loose, or another giant asteroid will fall out of the sky and mammalian life will go the way of the dinosaurs. Then Mother Nature can determine which species will come to dominate the Earth after the next several million years.

I doubt they will find as much trace of man as we find of the dinosaurs.

Then eventually our sun will supernova, and Earth will be left a smoking husk.

Ok Thats a good upbringing. But your folks accepted that risk of child labor with increased risk of trips, falls, trampling also kids being more susceptible to hypo- and hyperthermia . Some might consider it child abuse. I guess my point is some would accept even more risk, disease and famine ihcluded. Some of us are in jobs like that rignt now. I'd agree some fellas dont understand what the old days entail though.