So there you are. You wake up midway through your backpacking trip and a bear has made off with your food. You look at your map and see you are several days away from any sort of civilization.

What do you do now?

Step one: don’t panic. This is manageable. Well actually step one is to learn how to properly hang a bear bag, but no need to dwell on that now.

As long as you can still boil or filter water, you can survive two weeks without food. You won’t enjoy it, but you’ll be alive. What you have to focus on now is not just living, but, getting out of the wilderness. And that means burning calories.

Survival is all about calorie-cost v. calorie-benefit.

Everything your body does burns calories. The more energy you use the more calories your body needs. So the name of the game here is to use the least amount of energy gathering the most food. For example, if you run around trying to catch a frog for a few hours, you might end up burning more calories trying to catch it than the frog has in it.

This will put you into a calorie deficit and you’ll wind up dying even sooner, which will put a damper on your whole trip.