What would you take with yourself?

[snoopy]

So... You have been taken away by a bunch of mean and strong people. These people are going to drop you off on an island where you will be the only human.

The island is not that bad. It's a tropical island where you can get food relatively easily, but sometimes your food will walk away...
Water might be a bit harder, because there is no source of water on the island, so it will have to be gathered from rain which comes every 1-2 days.
The island is full with lots of plants and animals you probably never seen before... Some of those animals are dangerous and some of the plants are poisonous!



Your kidnappers allow you to pick 3 items out of a lot of things, which you can take with yourself to the island.

Choose 3 items from the available things, post them and post why did you chose them! You will have no other items on the island, just the 3 things you have chosen.

These are the things:

Flawed S.p.o.o.n. (stupid word filter)

Rope

Old Teddy Bear

Saw

2000$

Fancy Bowl

A piece of rusty iron

A photo of your math teacher

Compass

A map of the Sahara

Holy Bible

Box of 200 match-sticks

Computer

250 Exotic Recipes (cookbook)

Flawless Jewelry Kit

Portable Cooker

Tent

Paper & Pen (lots of paper)

Empty Bag

Play Station 3

Knife

Machete

Wristwatch

A gigantic bag of Confetti

Salt

Empty Bottle

Bottle of Wine

Glass

Seeds of various plants

Flare gun

Green Power Ranger suit

[Bertram]

Here we go:

Useless (or so it seems):
Old Teddy Bear
Holy Bible (Same family as the Teddy Bear)
2000$
A photo of your math teacher
Computer
Play Station 3
Green Power Ranger suit
A map of the Sahara
Paper & Pen (lots of paper) (I want to live, I don't want someone to get my bottle in the water years after.)

Can be bypassed easily with self made tools or a bit of ingeniousness:
Flawed S.p.o.o.n. (stupid word filter) (What would you do with a word filter or a broken spoon?)
Fancy Bowl
A piece of rusty iron
Salt (The ocean water is, already)
A gigantic bag of Confetti
Knife (By machete or saw)
Wristwatch
Empty Bottle (By the bottle of wine)
Compass (You've got a few days to get to know the island).
Flawless Jewellery Kit (There can be useful things, but nothing more worthy than a machete IMHO)
Seeds of various plants (You can wait for month before eating, if there are any seeds giving eatable plants)

Useable (or so it seems at first glance):
Rope
Saw
Box of 200 match-sticks
Portable Cooker
Tent
Empty Bag
Glass
Flare gun
250 exotic recipes

After careful think about this, I would take:
Machete
Bottle of Wine
Flare gun

Why?
- The machete is better than the knife or any kinf of metal cutting thingies. With it, I could cut everything woody needed to build a small stilt plan to sleep with branches, cut palm trees leaves to braid ropes, cut wood to get some material for a fire, etc...
- The bottle of wine is always better than an empty one. You've got the wine as an extra .
The wine could be used for food or daily disinfection for the first days, the bottle could used to recover water from rain (with palm tres leaves around its neck) and transport it, and its glass could be used to magnify the sun light to make fire. Plus, i could play some flute at night with it.
- The Flare-gun to be able to quickly make a visible signal when necessary. (I'm hesitating with the 250 exotic recipes, helping to avoid poisonous plants).

For the poisonous plants problem, I would try to look at what vegetables the animals are eating, and mainly avoid those they don't eat.

Would I survive?

[Crush]

Machete
(see Bertrams explanation)

Box of 200 match-sticks
Making fire is important for survival and all the outdoorman tricks to make fire with other methods need a lot of practice.

Tent
Shelter for the first nights until I've built a hut and afterwards the materials will be very useful. The fabric can be used for creating clothes and for countless of other purposes (water filter, animal trap, bag), maybe I can even use it as a sail. Depending on the kind of tent it might also include some useful nails, glass fiber rods and/or some rope.

[DarkWater]

If you are on a tropical island with no running water, you are good as dead. Period. Let me explain why. Even if it did rain every 2 days, hell even if it rain every day, you would have to collect 3-6 gallons of water a day every day to survive.

Your body will take a beating in the tropical island. It the heat and humidity would be so high, all you would do is sweat. To get 3-6 gallons of water a day, you would need it to rain alot.

Do the math. There is about 7 gallons of water per cubic foot of water. Assuming you are living in a "normal" tropical island that gets about 50-60 inches of rain a year.

That is only .15 of and inch of rain a day. Only .15. So 7 square feet of material would get 1 cubic inch of rain. So to get 7 gallons of water would need 84 square feet of material.

Assuming there is no water loss.

There is no real way for you to get 84 square feet of material any where on a tropical island. Palm leaves will not work because they would lose about 3/4 of the water.

So your best bet is to get off the island as quickly has you can.

Use the machete to cut down trees and vines to make a rift.

Use 1/2 of the tent has a sail, the other to protect you from the sun.

Use the flare to signal for help, if it had rounds to fire. And use it only when you see another boat.

If it did not then compass to determine direction and speed.

But to repeat staying on a island with only rain fall for water is suicide.

It would have to rain buckets and buckets of water for you to survive.

You can survive on a raft for about 7 days, the tent as a sail your chances of getting swept into a shipping lane is really good.

You can survive on the island for about 7 days. But there is zero chance of some one finding you.

[DarkWater]

and its glass could be used to magnify the sun light to make fire.

Can I offer advice, test this theory before you need it.

You can not magnify sunlight with wine bottle glass. Because the glass is tainted. Heavily tainted.

Making fire is not all that hard. Can be done in a few mins. If you know how to.
It is quite easy.

Oh and they did not drop you naked on the island. Remember you have items on you.

[enchilado]

There is no real way for you to get 84 square feet of material any where on a tropical island. Palm leaves will not work because they would lose about 3/4 of the water.

Let's say you need to drink 2.5 litres of water a day. According to http://www.tropicalweather.net/climocaribbean.htm, the Cayman Islands get 10.7611333cm of rain a... I think that's per month. A litre is 10x10x10cm, or 1,000 cubic centimetres. So if your collecting spaces was 1cm deep, it'd need to be 31.6227766 x 31.6227766 centimetres to get a litre a month. Now let's say you want to get 75 litres of water a month (2.5 per day). That's 75,000 cubic centimetres 0 you guessed 7.8. I must admit I was surprised at how close your guess was to mine. 1cm deep = 273.861279cm per side. Approximately 2.73 metres...

I would take:

Machete (for reasons mentioned above)
Flare Gun (for reasons mentioned above)
Tent (2.73 metres per side? Easily.)

[Bertram]

Hmm, and what if you managed to get water from certain exotic tree roots?

[Kage]

Box of 200 match-sticks
Bottle of Wine
Knife


I would use the matches to start a fire on some trees or dry drift wood.

I would drink the Bottle of Wine, sitting next to the warm fire.

Then I would slit my wrists with the knife, curl up next to the fire, and try to fall asleep.

[Bertram]

Care to tell the "correct" answer, snoopy, if by the will of God, there was one?

[Crush]

If you are on a tropical island with no running water, you are good as dead. Period.

Don't forget about ground water.

[snoopy]

I forgot to mention that your kidnappers are robots with powerful armor that a knife or a machete can't even scratch.






And what are you planning to do with it on an island with no electricity?

[Turmfalke]

can you bribe them?

[DarkWater]

If you are on a tropical island with no running water, you are good as dead. Period.

Don't forget about ground water.

That is possible but given that 99.99% of all island are either volcanic or limestone. Digging for water would be impossible. Secondly, making sure that you get an open, non running, fresh water is impossible.


If there is no running water, then digging for water would be pointless. If there is running water, then there must be a water table.

Given that you are going to dig thought limestone and volcanic rock. You would spend you last few days onthis planet digging about 4 foot down. Only to find out your island is an atoll.

Regardless, It is says "because there is no source of water on the island," sorry no wells.

[ZeShadok]

This test is coming from the NASA and was made to check the capability of the astonauts...

now it is used in coaching to see team work

well anyway good game

[Turmfalke]

If you are on a tropical island with no running water, you are good as dead. Period.

Don't forget about ground water.

That is possible but given that 99.99% of all island are either volcanic or limestone. Digging for water would be impossible. Secondly, making sure that you get an open, non running, fresh water is impossible.


If there is no running water, then digging for water would be pointless. If there is running water, then there must be a water table.

Given that you are going to dig thought limestone and volcanic rock. You would spend you last few days onthis planet digging about 4 foot down. Only to find out your island is an atoll.

Regardless, It is says "because there is no source of water on the island," sorry no wells.

It's a tropical island where you can get food relatively easily, but sometimes your food will walk away...

There has to be water, or how should the animals survive?