A couple of rabbits skinned and dried - a few stitches and not a bad pair of shoes - cosy too. Reliance on anything will impede survival the best bet will always be adaptation and improvisation. Just don't forget to pack the knife AND the needle.

There is a man in Australia named Rob Bredtl that is called the "Barefoot bushman" or something like that. He has a show similar to Steve Irwin, but he does everything barefoot. He walks around the jungle with bare feet, looking for poisonous snakes. If he can do it, anybody else can too.

Humans are just animals too. There was a time when we never had shoes. Just wearing socks and shoes your entire life has made them soft and useless in nature. But it is possible to toughen up your feet. Try walking around without shoes on this summer wherever possible. In the backyard, on hot sand in the beach. Especially walking on pavement will toughen them up quickly. However you may not like how your feet will look, especially if you are a female and you want nice lady-like feet instead of one solid callus on the bottom of your foot, but that's not what survival is all about. Instead of looking for a short-term solution, look for a long one. Change YOURSELF and your body structure, instead of relying on your environment. If you don't rely on footwear in the first place, it won't be an issue. Like most survival issues and skills, it's something you need to build up NOW while you still can, before any situation actually happens. But you can't be afraid to get your feet a little muddy, or even let them bleed at first.

If you have good hiking boots or steel-toed boots that lace quite a ways up and you wear them tight, I don't think it should be an issue. Any shoe that slips off in mud or water isn't meant for survival in the first place.

If you HAD to make shoe replacements in nature, I would go with the tried and tested native-made moccasins.

In a real survival situation though, you will more likely:
1) Be in such a state of emergency that if you lose your shoes, you will just keep running, and not even stop to consider wrecking your feet. No time to stop and knit yourself a pair.
or
2) Things will be in such a state of chaos that you can just break into a shut-down shoe store or house and get an easy replacement. Someone has likely already beat you to it and taken all the good stuff (money, weapons, supplies), but most people would likely disregard taking the shoes. You can get by in a pair of shoes that are one or two sizes too big or small if it was an emergency.

[edit on 26-4-2007 by Yarcofin]

Apes don't wear shoes and they havent died from foot infections. Im sure its possible but i think our bodies are tougher than that.

By the way kilgourtrout. which way round do you have the rabbit skin? Do u have the fur inside or out?

I don't know where you are, but here in Texas, any rabbit you catch by hand during warm weather is probably suffering from tuleremia (cat scratch fever), which you can contract merely by skinning a diseased carcass. And EVERY carcass here is diseased, basically, unless there is snow on the ground.

. . . watch your step . . .

.

Originally posted by dr_strangecraft

I don't know where you are, but here in Texas, any rabbit you catch by hand during warm weather is probably suffering from tuleremia (cat scratch fever), which you can contract merely by skinning a diseased carcass. And EVERY carcass here is diseased, basically, unless there is snow on the ground.

. . . watch your step . . .

.

Hmm, so that must be what I had a few years ago... I pricked my finger on a wire cage that a rabbit was being kept in, and it got really infected. Took several different antibiotics and months to get rid of... I shall heed your advice.