How far would you go to survive?

I was scooping out Willow’s dry dorg food tonight to put into her bowl, and I had an odd thought while I was doing it: “I could eat this… if I had to.”

I wouldn’t like it (she’s not too awful fond of it herself, sometimes), but if I had to eat that dry dorg food to survive, I could do it. In fact, if it came down to it, I could probably even cook Willow and eat her, too. (I hadn’t thought about that until just now… as I actually consider the idea, maybe not.)

How far could you go and what could you do to survive, if a near-total and prolonged disaster or famine struck? I’m not talking about “stuck in the house over a snowstorm weekend with no bread and milk”, or “a week with limited groceries” or “running out of money before running out of month”. I’m talking prolonged time – maybe months – without food supplies in your area, and no way to get to where there may be more: no food banks, no free pantries, no government cheese, no crops, no air drops – nothing available; total famine. What would you do to keep yourself and your family alive?

Let’s assume that civilization would have broken down past the point at which “you would steal a loaf of bread”. We’ve gotten past that point: there is no bread to be had “in markets” that can be stolen. How would you live? Along the same lines, how closely and how violently would you guard what you do have (or can gather) from others who are willing to take it from you?