I know this is an old thread, but ive been looking into it a lot lately. Ive eaten fried mealworms and crickets, theyre pretty tasteless and really just crunchy. But id say theyre a great survival food, since theyre abundant and easy to catch and high in protein. Ive read that caterpillars are a bad idea unless you know what type they are since many can be poisonous. A lot of people cant even hunt with a modern rifle or shotgun, let alone a bow and arrow or a bushcraft weapon, and even trapping takes some skill as dar as placement, camoflauge and design go, not to mention that field dressing, butchering and preserving meat is becomimg a lost skill. But anyone can lift some rocks or pieces of wood and collect bugs. You can take a bottle, cut the top part off and put it into bottom half of the bottle to act as a funnel, and put it into the ground. Bugs fall in but arent smarrtenough to get out. Get some of those and youd have a source of daily protein.
The one tip I have as far as preparing them is to hold them without food for 24-48 hours to purge the poop out of them. I fried some mealworms I got at a petstore without doing that. It took me a couple batches to realize the black gunk all over the frying pan and stuck onto them was feces.