131–140 of 250 posts
To me the most likely scenario is global thermonuclear war. Surviving that and then getting back to normal means finding the stuff/people not broken, fixing the broken things, and not really starting completely over. Granted, after seeing how many people freaked the eff out over the pandemic which is absolutely trivial in comparison to nuclear war I wonder about the mental stability of anyone. Would there be anyone t…
Weird take. Sure, you could try to re-build what you had before the apocalypse. Or you could build a new world that isn't the one that just plunged everything into chaos. If our technology wasn't so good, the world wouldn't be as populated, we wouldn't need so many resources, there wouldn't be so many ways to poison the earth, and the earth would be habitable and sustainable for millennia. After the apocalypse, I wan…
What a weird gymnastic split this comment is. Yeah, let’s go back to pre-industrial technology. But let’s do it with “government”. You really think that you’re gonna have some kind of cross between a hippy commune and modern centralization of force/taxation? A world were all of us now-middle class folks can just go to work on the permaculture farm 8–6 and relax with our organic root beers afterwards? Welcome back to…
> Besides, skim-milk and bread (the milk being boiled) is quite strong food enough for any children’s breakfast, even when they begin to go to work; a fact which I state upon the most ample and satisfactory experience, very seldom having ever had any other sort of breakfast myself till I was more than ten years old, and I was in the fields at work full four years before that. I will here mention that it gave me singular pleasure to see a boy, just turned of six, helping his father to reap, in Sussex, this last summer. He did little, to be sure; but it was something. His father set him into the ridge at a great distance before him; and when he came up to the place, he found a sheaf cut; and, those who know what it is to reap, know how pleasant it is to find now and then a sheaf cut ready to their hand. It was no small thing to see a boy fit to be trusted with so dangerous a thing as a reap-hook in his hands, at an age when “young masters” have nursery-maids to cut their victuals for them, and to see that they do not fall out of the window, tumble down stairs, or run under carriage-wheels or horses’ bellies.
Cobbett, William. Cottage Economy To Which Is Added The Poor Man's Friend (pp. 55-56). . Kindle Edition.
The first duty of government is the security of its citizens and their property. That is what war lords provide, and later more sophisticated forms of government should do the same.
If I were to take one book with me "down into the bunker," as Dartnell puts it, I'd hands-down take with me the Bosch Automotive Handbook[0], a phenomenally dense and thorough text covering not just cars, but their constituent parts--and their constituent parts' constituent parts--all the way down to the materials. It has wonderful tables of data on the properties of various materials (from advanced plastics and allo…
I think the more interesting question than how to reinvent some technological gizmos is how to reinstate governance. It's handy to know how to build a solar panel but it isn't worth much if someone hits me on the head with a club five minutes later. It's kind of funny to me that so much post apocalyptic writing is so overly concerned with technology when technology without much wisdom was what likely caused the apoca…
how to reinstate governance And that's hardly something there's an easy how-to answer to. A primitive tribe or band tends have each member strongly connected each other member since with few resources, the people are the resources. Modern people don't have to care in the slightest about their neighbors and this is weakness in an emergency situation. Moreover, a "collapse" situation, in many instances, would imply a g…
I live in central Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County - there's an Amish farm walking distance from where I sit.
I think about societal collapse a lot, and was just recently ruminating on how the Amish would do in that scenario.
They're clearly more prepared for it than most of us, but they're a bit more dependent on the outside world (or "the English", as they refer to us) than you might expect.
It's pretty common to see buggies parked at farm and tractor supply shops around here, and you'll even see them in the local ERs. When they sell stuff at farmer's markets I've seen a lot of plastic wrap, plastic containers, plastic bags, and aluminum foil. Some even have cars, depending on the sect.
All that said, they do live much simpler, lower-tech lives, with plenty of ingenious manually-powered tools (I once saw a mule-powered lawn mower in action while driving past a farm).
I expect they'd have some bumps adjusting, but that they'd mostly be able to, unlike the rest of us.
Weird take. Sure, you could try to re-build what you had before the apocalypse. Or you could build a new world that isn't the one that just plunged everything into chaos. If our technology wasn't so good, the world wouldn't be as populated, we wouldn't need so many resources, there wouldn't be so many ways to poison the earth, and the earth would be habitable and sustainable for millennia. After the apocalypse, I wan…
> can dig wells, practice permaculture, organize a farm, keep sheep, spin yarn, blacksmith, prep lumber, fire pottery and glass, hunt, fish, manage woodlands I'm very confused by why you think this is sustainable - this type of life uses FAR FAR FAR more resources than modern living. It only works with a low population. England for example basically cut down every tree it has in order to sustain this type of (old) li…
What is not sustainable is high technology, which likely can't be quickly restored, once it crashes. It might take a couple of centuries to put all the systems back in place, if the crash is deep enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder, aren't virtually all "easily" available resources already dried up to such a degree that highly advanced/specialized equipment would be needed to extract whatever is left?
After an apocalypse, if you survive and society has collapsed, resources will be abundant. You will just have to strip materials from cars and buildings instead of digging them out of the ground.
In _Earth Abides_[2] by George R. Stewart, the protagonist eventually gives up on his attempt to provide for the future, eventually deciding that the best he can do for his clan is to teach them to fend for themselves instead of foraging in the rubble.
That conclusion always reminded me of one of the conclusions of the WIPP report[3]: we may not be able to communicate with the future, so hopefully if nothing else, they'll learn to avoid the contaminated area through attrition....
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Abides
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warnin...
[3, (big pdf!)]: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1279277/m2/...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, preppers overdo it because it's fun for some people. I have a case of water bottles in the trunk of my car, a bit of camping gear in the closet, and enough dry pantry goods on hand to last a good long while. None of this is to "prepare" for anything besides the water in case of some incident that strands me in my car. Not that much special is required to survive for a couple of weeks. Maybe if you want to practic…
That's what I'm saying haha. I'm not looking to "prep" and the prepper manuals go overboard for what >99% of people are looking for. I'm looking for the practical things. An emergency action guide of some sort...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
After an apocalypse, if you survive and society has collapsed, resources will be abundant. You will just have to strip materials from cars and buildings instead of digging them out of the ground.
Parent post is probably referring more to energy resources. Gas and diesel degrade fairly quickly and unless you live in the middle east, aren't just flowing out of the ground anymore. Solar + BEVs might be an option, but only if the apocalypse scenario didn't involve an EMP, otherwise you better know your way around diesel engines and making biodiesel + live close to a hydroelectric plant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Can anyone really foresee a collapse of civilization which somehow renders all our technology useless and unrepairable, but somehow leaves access to computers and printers available? I mean it's great to imagine if you want to be a pretend-prepper but the reality is that there will be millions of tons of food in the ground, tens of thousands of pounds of seeds available, oil, gasoline, kerosene, millions of cubi…
>Can anyone really foresee a collapse of civilization which somehow renders all our technology useless and unrepairable, but somehow leaves access to computers and printers available? No but I can foresee a number of different collapses of civilization which render almost all computers useless within a relatively short amount of predictable time and the ability to connect those computers before they become inoperable…
Maybe I'm weird but it's always sorta bothered me that if I accidentally went a thousand years back in time, I wouldn't know how to restore any significant modern technology. In the same way it used to bother me that I didn't know how to make stone knives and fire without matches, the most basic technologies of human history. Learning how and doing it made me feel like a more complete human being.