A Missing Australian Man Says He ‘Survived On Mushrooms’ For 18 Days

A man who was missing in Australia for 18 days has been found after surviving on mushrooms and dam water, reports the BBC.

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Robert Weber, 58, was discovered near a dam in Queensland by a “property owner” who turned out to be a local politician, as search efforts continued nearly three weeks after he’d gone missing.

Robert had last been seen leaving a hotel in the town of Kilkivan with his dog on 6 January. He ran into trouble when his car got stuck in dirt on a farm road.

Police said Mr Weber spent three days in the car before running out of water and setting off on foot. He then became lost but remained near a dam where he survived by “sleeping on the ground, drinking dam water and eating mushrooms”.

Oh wait, these weren’t magic mushrooms? Well that’s lame. Still, a very impressive feat for a man of 58 to survive out in the Australian wild on nothing but mushrooms and water, because I’m pretty sure I’d be dead within 24 hours without real food, let alone 18 days. What a trooper!

And before anyone wants to lecture me on how long humans can survive without food, this genius on Twitter already has it covered:

Oh really? I would love to see this guy put his theory to the test because I am telling you now I would have 0% chance of survival if I had no food and was “sleeping on the ground, drinking dam water” for 2 months. Fuck that!

Although, maybe MartyB is onto something…

I guess you would find yourself in an ethical pickle if you were to run that experiment these days. Still, it would have been pretty interesting to see how long Robert Weber would have survived if he hadn’t been found after 18 days. And it would have been a much cooler story if the mushrooms he was consuming were of the magic variety! Unfortunately they were just regular ol’ mushrooms. Oh well, hope we still learnt something anyway.

P.S. Here’s an idea as to what it may have been like: