Headscratchers / First Blood

• Sure, Rambo was hungry the evening he broke out of Teasle’s Police Station as he ran into the mountains, but why hunt and kill an Entire Boar just to sate that evening's hunger? When something smaller like a snake, fish or beaver would have been more practical? Especially considering he was on the run:
  1. The bones and guts of a boar would leave a LOT of evidence for expert trackers.
  2. To say nothing of the easily trackable fire and smoke used to cook the darned thing.
  3. He can't possibly eat ALL of it, much less carry leftovers which would have weighed him down.
  4. What he told Teasle and Trautman ("All I wanted was something to eat") implied all he needed was a meal the equivalent of a sandwich at a diner.
  5. Which means the large animal that he caught would have been a waste of his stamina considering that it was COLD, and it takes a LOT of stamina already to CATCH and KILL a boar, when the proteins you get in return does not come anywhere near what he has spent to catch and kill the beast.
  6. Therefore, why would he have wasted so much energy hunting an entire pig when he could have just caught a snake/frog/bird/beaver, gained and more importantly CONSERVED more of the much needed stamina he needed for the battle ahead, and not risk having to dispose of more trackable remains of his meal and make a giant "I'm right here" bonfire that allows him to be caught with?
  • Siiiiiiiighhhhhhh.... Okay, let's take the above post in it's entirety and respond, from the perspective of the highly trained and experienced combat vet that Rambo was. If you pay attention to the scene, Rambo was up in a tree with his knife tied to a pole, waiting. The boar was walking underneath, he jumped down on it from above and killed it right away. This is a standard hunting tactic used in survival situations where you can't waste energy hunting. Find a game trail or a watering hole and wait for an animal to come to you. He wasn't burning calories hunting it or chasing it down. The return on investment he got in terms of calories expended versus how much food the boar represented was entirely in his favour. He didn't go after something smaller like a snake or a beaver for the simple reason that he killed the first thing that came along. In a survival situation, you can't afford to be picky and pass over a meal in hopes that something better will come along. He wasn't worried about trackers finding his campsite. He was hunkered down for the night, not planning an extended stay. He would have been gone by the time they found it, and he knows how to cover his tracks. Disposing of the boar's remains would have been easily done by tossing them in the nearest stream, and he probably wouldn't have bothered, because he would have stopped caring about them finding his campsite the moment he left. "So you know I spent the night there? Big deal. Doesn't tell you where I am now." He wasn't worried about eating all of it, he was concerned with his immediate needs. The fire actually is a good point, he had to cook the meat because he couldn't afford to get sick from eating uncooked pork, but a trained soldier like him would have know how to make a smaller and more smokeless fire that would have better suited his needs.
  • And perhaps, just perhaps, Rambo wasn't in the mood for snake or beaver and just wanted to have some pork.
  • It could also have a little something to do with blood lust. He kills the boar for a meal, but also because it's a reasonably satisfying target that gives him an outlet for his anger and urges for violence in a way that a smaller prey animal might not and that he is still trying to hold back from fully unleashing upon the police officers pursuing him.
• Why was that mine tunnel infested with rats? The mine was abandoned, so there wouldn't have been any miners' lunch wrappers or whatever for them to scrounge from. Maybe if there'd been an adjoining sewer tunnel or a shaft leading up to a garbage dump or granary then their presence would have been justified, but there couldn't have been any such opening or we'd have seen Rambo investigate it as a potential route to the surface. So what are those rats supposed to be eating, rocks?
  • Rats are omnivores; they can eat almost anything, and have been known to survive in the wild outside of human settlements (and in this case they're close enough to one to migrate there as necessary). They almost certainly tagged along with the humans when the mine was operational, but then just kind of lingered around eating whatever wild grains, plants, bugs and smaller animals they could get their little paws on when the mine was abandoned.