• curiousaur@reddthat.com
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    4 months ago

    I was playing tag with my kid yesterday. He’s 3, almost 4. He’s very fast for his age, but not as fast as me. He asked to play tag because he just learned it in school. I could dodge to the side as he was getting close and change direction. I could fake him out. I could sprint to the other side of our 1 acre meadow to creat space. But he just kept coming. Smiling and laughing the whole time. I’m starting to get winded. Hands on my knees for a second after a sprint, but only for a second as he’s closed the gap already. His undeterred motivation and pace was scary. He was going to get me eventually, and he seemed to know it.

    I now know how the victims of Chucky must have felt.

      • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        You know, this is actually the type of fear that the zombie horror genre really reverses back on us. Classic zombies are not fast. They’re not smart. They can’t run, climb, or plan elaborate traps. They have no sharp claws or terrifyingly large teeth. You can outrun them at a brisk walk.

        But what makes them so dangerous is that they’re relentless. If they get your scent, they’ll follow you and keep following you. Blow their legs off and they’ll crawl towards you. Remove all their limbs and they’ll slither like a snake towards you. Only destroying their brain can stop them.

        If you’re on foot, it is virtually impossible to escape them, as they’ll just keep on coming. And while you need to sleep, they don’t. They can just keep right on shuffling towards you 24/7. If on foot being chased by a zombie, your best bet is probably to find a river you can swim across that will sweep them away. Oh, and of course, they are rarely alone.

        Zombies are predators that turn our species’s natural hunting strategy back upon us.

        • yngmnwntr@lemmy.ml
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          4 months ago

          Similarly the Terminator is ceaseless but does run, jump, climb etc. Our own hunting strategy, but perfected by machines. Even more tireless and persistent.

        • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 months ago

          Not really related, but it makes me sad that this isn’t easily possible in Project Zomboid. It’s the exact sort of feeling I want from it.

          • Leonixster@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            4 months ago

            Could you not adjust the settings so zombies see/hear you very easily and from far away, as well as making hordes a bigger amount for the feeling of being hunted by a pack? I haven’t played the recent unstable versions so idk if they added other things that zombies can do to find you, like smell or whatnot

            • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              4 months ago

              You can adjust settings, and I do, but once you clear an area if you stay near the area the options are either “randomly spawn in zombies where you’ve cleared” (ignoring whether a zombie could actually path there or not, last I tested it) or “no more zombies”. There’s no built in way I know of to simulate a glob coming in from the edges of your safe zone if the edges are farther out than the limit of cells it simulates around you.

              I could probably get something together with the horde night mod. Just haven’t had time to tinker lately.

  • LilB0kChoy@midwest.social
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    4 months ago

    Pursuit predation/persistence hunting has to be one of the most metal characteristics about humans.

    • BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz
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      4 months ago

      What I never got about this theory is, fine, you run after the Ptadgedrwgydon for 87kms, when it gives up due to exhaustion and you kill it with a stone. What now? You’re 87kms away with a carcass that weighs 500kg, how do you get back the food to the tribe?

      • nanoswarm9k@lemmus.org
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        4 months ago

        Group hunting for mega-fauna. Partial field-processing of remains, beyond a dressing.

        idk, moose hunters might still. Is there a moose hunter at the forum today…?

    • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
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      4 months ago

      Also our accuracy and reach when throwing stuff.

      Especially when combined with our ability to make stuff sharp by banging it against other stuff and breaking it just the right way.

      • Nikls94@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        And THEN add to that that once you got hit with the spear and are running slower, a wolf just appears and starts hunting you too.

        Imagine being hunted by 2 different apex predators working together

        • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          Then later in history…

          An hawk flies down and attacks you, joining the wolves and the humans. They’ve got the fucks birds in on it now! God is dead.

        • BeeegScaaawyCripple@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I went on a hike and a coyote started hunting me on the last mile back to the car. I carry at least a large stick when I hike now.

      • LilB0kChoy@midwest.social
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        4 months ago

        You’re missing a \.

        There have been many extinction events in Earth’s history. There have been five big mass extinction events and several smaller ones.

        There have now been many studies focused on the question of whether humans were a key driver of the QME. Many suggest that the answer is yes. Climatic changes might have driven an initial decline in large mammal populations — small population crashes — but human pressures are likely to have thwarted their recovery. Large mammals survived previous periods of climatic change, but the arrival of humans put pressure on already-depleted populations.

  • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Fun fact: the guy who first proposed this “running man” hypothesis about persistence hunting in the late 1960s (Grover Krantz) was better known as a staunch advocate for the existence of Bigfoot. Personally, I can’t believe that anybody could still believe in Bigfoot - it’s so obviously just a Yeti in a gorilla suit.

    For some weird reason, Krantz’s skeleton and that of his favorite dog are on display at the Smithsonian.

    • jnod4@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      The father of modern day physics changed course and started studying alchemy, chronology, biblical interpretation, losing himself to mysticism. He’d probably research big foot if he was alive as well. That doesn’t mean I’m going to dismiss his real magnum opus

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Wikipedia politely labels persistence hunting as “conjecture”. It’s interesting that pretty much everything important from our ancestral past (e.g. fire-making, flint-napping tools, spears, skins and furs etc.) can be and regularly is reproduced by modern people. But somehow you never see modern people jogging down deer and killing them - even with the benefits of modern footwear, portable water containers, a carbohydrate-rich diet for energy, and GPS trackers.

          somehow made it into popular science

          The “somehow” as far as I can tell is the David Attenborough documentary bit that supposedly shows a Khoi-San hunter doing it. Richard Lee and a team of Harvard anthropologists extensively studied the !Kung (a Khoi-San people) during the '60s and '70s and there was never a mention in any of the literature this produced about these people engaging in persistence hunting. What they did describe was the practice of hunting with poisoned spears and arrows and then tracking the wounded, poisoned animal for days until it dropped and could be butchered. Needless to say, this is not persistence hunting.

          The popular anthropologist Marvin Harris also featured Krantz’ work is his final book Our Kind (which is where I first heard of it), but I don’t think enough people read that book for it to have been the source of the idea’s current popularity.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      That what I keep saying, but people still seem thoroughly unimpressed by my ability to sweat profusely the moment I get a little hot!