| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/15/2008 6:02:34 PM | Ten years after devastation, what could you do for yourself? Would we revert to stone age society? I know a lot about cars, but I couldn't build one. I wouldn't be able to build a bike, let alone a nut and a bolt.
Do you have a skill you could barter with to survive? | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/15/2008 6:57:20 PM | I can paint and draw and talk all friendly to strangers...
My skull would probably become a mug for some anarchist.  | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/15/2008 7:54:45 PM | Assuming I survive 10 years after some devastating event that causes civilization to collapse, by then I likely would have honed whatever necessary survival skills became necessary.
That's assuming a gradual collapse, where we can see the inevitable approaching. If it's a series of unexpected, unprepared-for disasters, like dozens of Katrinas a year for several years, an asteroid strike of city-killing size or bigger, a series of major earthquakes involving the New Madrid system, or a major global all-out war with nukes, I think the question is moot. I'll do what I can, what I have to, to survive. | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/15/2008 8:18:54 PM |
Do you have a skill you could barter with to survive?
I know enough intelligent people to "restore" the world. You're safe!
Additionally, I spend a large portion of my youth studying calculus, geometry, trigonometry, finite/combinatorics, statistics, logic, physics, chemistry, philosophy and computer science. I can probably "restore" a good chunk of "the lost world" myself - if I can remember it all.  | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/16/2008 12:49:37 AM | Revert to the Stone Age? Not in my lifetime. A skilled metalworker like myself will always be in demand, and you can bet I'll have electric lights, too.
Nuts and bolts? That's kid stuff, but why build a car from scrap when millions are all around you? No gas? Fire up the still! A decent grasp of science and technology goes a long ways when coupled with a creative mind. Necessity is the mother of invention. | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/16/2008 1:36:54 PM |
Revert to the Stone Age? Not in my lifetime. A skilled metalworker like myself will always be in demand, and you can bet I'll have electric lights, too.
Nuts and bolts? That's kid stuff, but why build a car from scrap when millions are all around you? No gas? Fire up the still! A decent grasp of science and technology goes a long ways when coupled with a creative mind. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Assuming all your metal working tools survived, you would have something. But do you have the skills/knowledge to do what you do without an industry supporting you? Maybe I read the question wrong, but I'm assuming there is nothing left. Just some miraculous form of life that survived 10 years past "devastation"
My answer is no. Being a carpenter in the industrial age, I can honestly say I wouldn't have the skills. I can't build myself the tools necessary to harvest and mill lumber. Plus I don't know much about masonry, and wouldn't be able to make concrete, so my house wouldn't have a foundation.
I think perhaps a better word than devastation would be helpful in reading your post correctly. | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/16/2008 6:00:03 PM | Well you know that old saying…
“Only cockroaches and Ren-fair enthusiast will survive the apocalypse.”
Really those people can shoot bows, blacksmith, make beer. They got mad 17th century skillz.
Oh and anyone interested in this subject should really read Lucifer's Hammer. | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/16/2008 7:29:12 PM | The highly paid personel in modern life, bankers, estate agents, lawyers etc would become the least necessary.
The one's most required if everything went to crap are the ones who has basic life skills, builders, engineers, farmers...even scavengers.
Oh! and you can make a basic concrete from ingrediants found on any limestone beach.
Heat up the limestone, add sand and water and hey presto! a basic concrete.
I suppose a good chemist would be the most in need.....What's the ingrediants for gunpowder exactly?  | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/16/2008 8:26:19 PM | Well, Brett, 'assuming' that millions of tons of steel aren't vaporized, I can confidently state that yes I could continue my work. Most of my tools are hand-made already, and I'll bet I could whip up a functioning lumber mill for you. What have you got for trade?
IMHO, the key to survival is between my ears, and a complete set of the Foxfire books sits on my shelf to fill in the blanks.
I pity the paper-pushing cubicle crowd in such a scenario.
As for gunpowder, Goodman: charcoal, sulphur, and potassium nitrate(saltpeter). I made my first batch when I was 12. Mom was NOT pleased. | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/16/2008 10:56:58 PM | I think we'd disintegrate long before all this stuff around us, especially the stuff buried in land fills. I already do well scavenging parts to build stuff now, love to tear stuff apart and tinker with it until I figure out what everything does. Just this weekend I built a really strong turbine based fan with just common items you can find anywhere in the world, with a good enough battery it could probably move a small rowboat if it was water proofed.
Electric generators may seem hard to create but really they aren't. Take a read about producing and storing electricity sometime, theres plenty of websites out there that give you examples you can make with stuff that lying around pretty much anywhere in the world. | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/16/2008 11:02:21 PM | | Serious answer here, I have zero desire to among the living if everything went to crap. Let the young'ens rebuild, I'll be happy to give up my spot, I like my easy life. | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/17/2008 6:57:38 AM |
The highly paid personel in modern life, bankers, estate agents, lawyers etc would become the least necessary.
Douglas Adams though of this in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe with the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/17/2008 9:44:40 AM | | I'd become a monster, killing, looting, eating my victims. I'd start a band of marauders and we would sweep the land of all that is good, clean and decent. | |
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| If everything went to crap
Posted: 6/17/2008 10:03:24 AM | It's called a SHTF situation...the Squishy Hit The Fan.
Watch Tremors. Pay attention to the Survivalist couple. That is the setup you will need.
Watch The Stand. Hope it's not God & Satan's last cage match.
Watch Any Zombie Movie. Every Day is Zombie Awareness Day...otherwise it's Huuuurrrrhhh, Brrraaaiiinnnsss Day.
Brett, a sawmill used to just involve a bigazz crosscut saw and two schmucks working it. That was a lumber mill. Learn about the past as well as the modern.
Draskinn, you're absolutely RIGHT!  Ren-Faire types WILL do rather well.
MrgoodMan2, The recipe for Gunpowder is on the Star Trek episode where Kirk fights the Gorn. Memorize it, Know it, Love it. Find out where saltpeter comes from!!
What do you call a lawyer after the Apocalypse?? LUNCH!  | |
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| If everything went to crap
Posted: 6/17/2008 1:53:56 PM |
Find out where saltpeter comes from!!
Believe it or not, saltpeter is aptly named...it crystallizes out of urine in your outhouse. In days of old, outhouses were dug up for that reason.
No sh!t. | |
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| If everything went to crap
Posted: 6/17/2008 8:35:10 PM | "How to Make Anything"...a textbook on how to make basically anything...from booze to gunpowder...and, best of all, where to find the ingredients for it! They explain what it will look like, certain properties of it, and the combinations in which to mix it. Need to make a nut and bolt...but have no metal...it will tell you what to smelt..how to smelt it, get the metal and how to make that nut and bolt...from scratch! Or poison gas. Or preserving salts for canning. Or glass.
It is one handy book!
The one thing we would all need is information. Keeping a few books around would help a lot...along with a bit of working knowledge about surviving. Can you make meat jerky? Grow veggies? Drive a nail?
Check into the ways things were done in the past. A waterwheel did a lot of work...milling, sawing, etc. How do you fletch an arrow? Make a bowstring? Reload shell casings for guns?
What about food preservation...one of the arts that is slowly being lost to many. Try canning.
Can you smoke a ham? | |
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| When everything goes to crap
Posted: 6/18/2008 1:41:58 PM | When everything goes to crap, the first 10 days will be way more important to my survival than what I can offer ten weeks, months or years down the road.
Bring it on. | |
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| When everything goes to crap
Posted: 6/19/2008 8:10:17 PM |
Can you smoke a ham?
Maybe, if I can find a big enough rolling paper, but can you tuna fish?
Point me towards ground zero. | |
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| When everything goes to crap
Posted: 6/20/2008 7:02:55 AM | A person who is for Gun Control after hurricane Katrina is like a chicken rooting for Colonel Sanders.
Survivalists know best...they're the ones who tend to Survive!! | |
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| When everything goes to crap
Posted: 6/21/2008 1:20:17 PM | | Assuming we recognize when things begin going to crap; it could be happening now, but we can't even come to agreement about issues like global warming or controlling immigration. After the comet fragments hit Jupiter a few years ago, Congress spent a few million on asteroid detection, but as soon as we all forgot about it the spending was drastically cut back. Gas over $4 a gallon, and people aren't slowing down on the freeways, although SUV sales are down. By the time some realize the danger, it's going to be too late. | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/21/2008 10:01:41 PM | My skill would be a night light. Since I would most likely glow in the dark from the DU and nuclear bombs.
But on a lighter note....everything has already gone to crap. Filled up your car lately?
Takes me $136 from empty. | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/22/2008 5:30:06 PM | Funny thread after the book request for the end of the world.
I think I see a lot of small communities of smurfs - lots of males and one or two token females. If you have ever been to Vegas (little silicon valley) you will understand that most of the females will either drop dead cause
1. there is no Starbucks/Vietnamese Fake Nail Salon strip malls any more ~ OR ~
2. they need more calories than the average national park bear & starve.
So I think I am lucky as I am smart, run super fast, shoot an open sites gun accurately and am female. I definitely plan to be Smurfette. | |
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/23/2008 9:36:33 AM | I have never let my mind rest so I would be in pretty good shape to thrive and move on. (insert resume here)
If all the remnents of our infrastructure somehow dissappeared, I doubt anyone would have survived the event so its pretty safe to assume there is still something around to start with. It's the consumables that become a problem. Food, water etc. Bartering can easily replace money, government, financial institutions etc. Those that produce and trade in what people really need will be valued. Those that have things only through hording or theft will themselves be targets. In short, the materialistic world will be reversed.
Water, shelter, food, clothing, medical help, etc. will all be immediate needs but the things that are most important in the long run are intelligence and adaptability.
Gunpowder is not that hard to make. I was making it when I was 14. Assuming a few libraries still exist, you can find just about any information you need. Will you survive long enough to learn?
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| If everything when to crap
Posted: 6/23/2008 12:04:39 PM | Most SHTF situations are localized...like Hurricane Ivan...Hurricane Andrew...floods...if you plan properly, they're not that bad.
Hurricane Zone...build higher than it would be possible for a Cat-5 to push water. Concrete & Steel construction in a no-flood-zone is KEY. Few windows & hurricane shutters make life nice. A good generator (preferably propane w/ a 100 gallon tank in a purpose built concrete shed) will get you through the next three weeks...which by then order will be restored if it went nuts like in NO...Pensacola only had random looters which were shot at with vigor! There are many forums which deal with SHTF situations far better than on POF...try googling SHTF.
For those living in NO, are you INSANE???? If you insist on living in a city where you are likely to drown, take note of the buildings which took light damage...First Floors in a Flood PLain are for Garages ONLY. If you are betting on the Army Corps of Engineers to save your bacon bits with a LEVEE...well...it's been nice knowing ya!
Flood Plain Zone...don't build single story houses...the levees will NOT hold. If you haven't built on stilts you are a moron. At least 12-14 feet to the living floors. Most floods (key: Most) average around 5-10 feet...if your expected worst flood will go over 14 feet, DON'T BUILD THERE YOU MORON! I have no pity for those who refuse to prepare.
Tornado Alleys...if you've ever had a tornado hit your town and you aren't already living in concrete & steel...you lack a certain decision making property (a brain) which makes you more likely to achieve bodily harm and catestrpohic loss to yourself and your family.
No, I'm not a concrete maker, I'm a retired Firefighter/former military. I WENT to many Southern disaster scenes and got to see exactly where people went wrong. I've seen what held up and what didn't. Concrete & steel rebar aren't perfect, but they're a dang sight better than anything else out there...anyone living in a WOODFRAME home should seriously consider the lay of the land, safety, and history...and THEN rebuild stronger. Building Ranch-style homes is really not an option anymore...not if you want it to be there for the long haul. There are a lot of options in Concrete & Steel Rebar...domes, Quonset, box, rectangle, geo-desic, underground dwellings...find one you like! It gets less expensive the more YOU do. B'sides, in a SHTF situation...bullets don't go thru concrete easily...but your woodframe house is gonna look like Swiss Cheese. | |
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