Part of it is that the reader gets to enjoy a hundred yard view of the situation. You’re not personally dirty and cold and hungry and unsure whether the next person you meet will decide to make you into food or to dress straight kill you for your resources or enslave you.

You don’t have to deal with any of the terror of actually being in that situation, and instead you get to comfortably relax and wonder what life would be like without so many of the systems that we have adapted to being a constant presence in our lives.