Good point. Having a *really * good stash isn’t a bad idea. BUT then there’s the rubber hoses. To avoid the looters, then, means moving away from them … and not leaving tracks to the stash.
I know a couple of things about making log cabins. For someone who’s got food and my back.
There was a TV series based on that idea; it got weird after a while but does point out some of the complexities of living without power. The show is called Revolution and came out in 2012.
Personally though, I doubt a majority of people would be able to survive long due to complications of getting fresh water, food, not to mention medical care, etc.
If property rights are still enforced in the turmoil probably indefinitely. Doesn't mean I'd enjoy it, though.
I come from a place where survival agriculture was the norm well into the 1980s. Would have to start having cows and pigs again, need to work out a salting station, which we haven't had for a few decades. I remember soap making was a mess. We got rid of our wood-fueled kitchen at some point, so that's a problem until society settles back in enough to start selling those again. We'd probably have to go back to setting up a corner for a fireplace in the meantime. That's before my time but it should be possible.
I know a place I could last for months, depending on what time of year the power’s lost, but it’s a long ways from here. And then, only if bullets for hunting were still available (they’ll get scarce fast, faster than toilet paper when COVID came around). Once the bullets are gone, I’ve either learned to trap or become a vegetarian.
black powder tech is very simple, you just need a mediocre blacksmith - and that’s just a strong man (or a woman, maybe) - and a little bathtub chemistry. basic black powder rifles are not the most accurate, you need rifling for that (grooves that create a spiral down the inside of the barrel of the rifle), but it’s easily doable. long/recurve/compound bows are an option if you have the knowhow and material science.
trapping/fishing is an option, as is animal husbandry, but hunting would never disappear
So just to start on your first point, let’s assume the flare hit and you need to start making black powder from raw ingredients. Since there are no more available with supply chain breakdown, without consulting the internet (also down), where are those coming from within walking or bicycle distance with maybe a paper map if you still have one?
well black powder is just a mixture of charcoal (you need wood and mud to make a charcoal pit), saltpeter (aka potassium nitrate), and sulfur. nitrate is found in many household products - hence the bathtub chemistry. there’s a lot of that stuff all over the place, it’s in just about everything - from salts, makeup products, fertilizer, plant food, etc. I’d use that first while building a natural extraction process since it takes a long time, months usually.
you’d take dung from animals (horse works well or cow patties), wood ash, dry straw, and lots of urine (barrels of the stuff). a few months later you drain off the liquid, boil it with finely ground charcoal and then filter it with cloth. simmer the strained liquid until it’s reduced by 3/4, you want it really concentrated. spill it out onto very shallow pans and let it dry to crystalize the nitrates. sulfur is readily obtained from many sources - usually volcanic but these days its in a lot of building/construction materials like gypsum. basic chemistry will allow you to extract it. I live near geologically active areas, so sulfur would be relatively easy to obtain in the future.
there’s no real set recipe for black powder, but approx 75% dried & powdered nitrates, 15% dried and powdered charcoal, 10% dried and powdered sulfur. you want to grind each individually and then mix them together in those ratios. now you have black powder. keep it dry and away from spaks/flame/heat - bull horns work really well for this.
casting shot is just melting lead in a specific form - my father probable still has his old tools for that but if he doesnt they’re not hard to make. the only tricky bit in the whole process of building your own diy black powder rifle is the barrel - you have to hand forge those around a mandrel (a rod of a specific thickness) - I’d use high grade steel rods for that, since they’re just laying around. blacksmithing is usually a two or three person setup. once I had a water wheel constructed I’d probably build a hydraulic powered trip hammer to make things easier.
I feel like if this ever happened, you’d want to practice that first step, because it might be easier to get gallons of urine then extract from a number of those sources.
the average person produces about 5 cups of urine in a day, and a gallon is 16 cups, so a group of people could easily produce anywhere between 1 and 3 gallons every day. the standard drum size is 55 gallons, so that’s easily obtainable. it’s a very slow synthesis, lasting 6+ months, you’d have between 3 and 10+ drums full of urine saved up at that point.
the average black powder musket or rifle gets about 50 shots per pound of black powder, and it takes a good minute or so to reload if you’re skilled, so you really dont carry that much powder around with you at any point in time. I figure you wouldnt need more that 5 pounds of it every month in a survival/hunting/defense against random invaders (rural setting) situation.
Indefinitely, but significantly less life expectancy than if it didn’t happen.
I’m relatively well set up and experienced for that kind of thing. Don’t get me wrong, it would suuuck. But I think we’d be okay. I personally would probably not live as long because living rustic is fucking hard work and my kids are still too young to help much. We’d have a rough time of it, but I am confident that with our help my kids would figure out how to thrive by the time my health is failing. So yeah at least another generation or two seems likely even though I doubt I could last more than another 10 or 15 years living that way. Especially given that the first few years would be the hardest.
Hell yes. I remember watching that during the premiere in theaters many years ago, and it was so emotional and powerful. Fucking love these movies so much.
I think he’s referring to the last battle where everyone basically agrees that they are all doomed unless Frodo is still alive and has the ring so they decide since all hope is lost, they’ll put all their men on the front line in the hope of buying Frodo an opportunity to get to Mt Doom. But I think most of them only go along with it because they know they are pretty much gonna die either way.
In all likelihood the water system would probably stop working at some point, so whenever that goes plus two or three days is likely an upper bound on how long I could survive for. It’s pretty dry here so that would be a lethal problem.
If somehow it stays working, I could probably survive for a few months… basically until society and the supply chains completely break down and stop functioning followed by a period of mass starvation
Protip. If the apocalypse begins at a punctuated point (bombs literally dropping on major powers as opposed to say global warming), fill your bathtub with water. That can hold a lot of water and should help you out.
I live in the middle of the Mojave Desert, so I think it would depend on the time of year. There would be too many people fighting over what little water we have, and if it was in the middle of the summer, I don’t know that I would make it very long.
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