How Long Could You Survive if Trapped in your own Home?

Is it possible to eat cat hair and survive? That would keep me going for a couple of years, and no need to eat the beast.

Wouldn't you also be able to eat cotton clothing and linens or paper? I know that none of that has much caloric value and it may be hard to digest, but I can't imagine leather being much better.

I know a wonderful recipe for Old Boot Soup.

34 days

They didn't ask about water, I guess they assumed that the water supply would still work.

And the idea of burning books, barbarians.

Answer for me seems to be 311 days if I'm going by that page.

Having extra food, a water source, first-aid kit, tools and all the rest are pretty much common sense to have on hand in Florida with the hurricane season coming up. Also makes sense to have enough plywood, lumber and tarps to cover the roof and shield the windows.

Worse comes to worse I could always pay a visit to my neighbors with my shotgun and put that 'How may cannibals would my body feed' page to work. There is that plump little vixen a few doors down and ...

Is this from the person who wrote "I am not sure if you've noticed or not, but I've been having a rough time leaving my apartment these past few weeks, which has affected my writing"?

It's not easy being green :)

The major limitation will be calories. From that perspective, valuing a pound of pickles (almost zero calories) as highly as a pound of pasta (about 1800 calories) is just plain stupid.

When it asks how many people live with you, is it assumed that you're sharing your food, or using them for food?

"I know a wonderful recipe for Old Boot Soup."

Yeah, but it's not nice to eat granny.

"They didn't ask about water, I guess they assumed that the water supply would still work."

That's the problem, isn't it? Power, running water, some way to get rid of waste...

BTW, just how and why would somebody expect to be trapped in their own house for more than a day or two?

As a long distance hiker, I have things most people don't have - 3 stoves, 2 water filters, 3 tents, 3 sleeping bags and assorted tools needed to start fires without matches, dig holes, snare animals and so forth.
As for eating the pet, that would be the first thing to go. It's a competitor for food and wouldn't think twice about eating me if it was hungry enough. Heck, I always threaten it with a one way trip to the Korean BBQ often enough.
As others pointed out this quiz is absurd. The 40 pounds of flour I have (I bake my own bread and shop at Costco) is a great staple, but without running water is all but useless. Furthermore living living in a semi-arid environment, I couldn't rely on capturing rainwater as others could.

Quite honestly, I think my cat would cotton-on straight away & I'd be the one who get eaten.

Onkel Bob: I was thinking along similar lines, although without the trapping aspect--I have the usual assortment of cookers, fuel, dehydrated and freeze-dried food, etc.

The water thing is a bit curious. One of the most obvious situations in New Zealand for having to rely on yourself would have to be a major earthquake and you'd think that mahor earthquakes would disrupt the water mains, etc. On of our recommended emergency kit items in NZ is water! (You can get some from your hot water cylinder, though.)

Karen: maybe its a good thing I "lost" my furry friend last year and haven't replaced her...! (yet)

Excuse the daft typos... *sigh*

Hmm. My cat would not be a major competitor for food, in that if I stocked food for a crisis, my supply would be pretty light on meat! At the same time, she couldn't hunt for squat, and if I had more than a month or two's worth of her kibble, it would probably start going bad.

Agreed, water would be the biggest issue almost everywhere, and my city is distinctly overdeveloped for its natural water supply.

385 Days, I live on the coast of Oregon and have prepared for the tsunami. They left out alcohol, the drinking kind. I think I would run out of that well before the 385 days.